Acting Out in the Age of The Cloud

It is a strange time that life has become a stage for most of us, in ways that are more concrete and less metaphorical than Shakespeare refers to in Hamlet. We may have always been mere actors. Now as I write these blogs nearly every week, as millions of other people do,  I am performing, or at least expressing myself, for audiences all of the time, even though I never actually go on a stage anymore. This has not always been the case for me. Actually, I tried to be an actor and found that the experience was completely different depending on the size of the audience, and who was in that audience, more so than my own performance. This may very well have been due to my inadequacies as an actor.

In 1995 I had just finished two years of studying in a musical conservatory. Mostly that means taking classes and practicing alone in a room (that is the school part at least. I did my fair share of college dorm parties as well). I also had the chance to be in operas, concerts, and musicals. I loved being on stage, despite the fact that I never played major roles, and looked for every chance the college or the community in Ohio where I lived gave me. I started to look outside of music, and did a few plays, rather unsuccessfully. Acting is a very personal art form when done correctly. It is not so much about performing, but rather about empathy. It is important to relate to your character and the others on stage. I am an empathetic guy, but I am also easily distracted by my own anxieties. I could never get the audience out of my mind. A close friend, Jenn Gambatese, who was going to NYU had recently left the formal study of musical theatre, and started training in an intense acting method called the Meisner technique. She explained the technique, and together we did some of the exercises. It was inspiring to me, because in those exercises I wasn’t acting at all, but rather connecting with someone else in a moment that was often emotionally charged. That summer I went to New York to study this technique further at a small acing school called the Neighborhood Playhouse. There were very few college acting students in my class. Mostly they were models who were trying to transition to acting or former childhood television stars who were trying to grow up and be serious adult actors. The classes were everything I had hoped they would be. In fact I did very well in them, as I took my teacher’s advice and didn’t act at all. Rather I was myself in either an improvisation or a scene. Since it was only a summer class we never had the chance to go as far as actually becoming a character that was so different than ourselves that research was required. Still I went back for a final year in Ohio, prepared to finish my degree and hurry to New York for a career on the stage. Though I would finish and move to New York, I had an experience during that last year which made me realize that I would likely not be an actor.

Because I had such a good experience at the Neighborhood Playhouse, I had picked up an acting agent who was not ready to exactly take me on, but to at least try me out with some auditions. He called me in Ohio and asked if I could be in New York the next day for a terrific opportunity, which was to audition for a lead role in a new Neil Simon play which was going to Broadway. The agent faxed the portion of the script I would be using for the audition to me at my school. I picked up my mother who agreed to help me out, got in the car and drove to New York. My mom and I practiced the scene in the car.  I was unreasonably confidant that the role was perfect for me. I went to the audition and in front of me were the director and Neil Simon himself, as well as two other people I didn’t recognize. I did the scene very poorly with another actor, and the director gave me some notes, and asked me to try again. The second time I was even worse. They thanked me for coming, and I left the room. I wouldn’t admit this to anyone out of embarrassment, but I knew I would never be a professional actor after that. While I was good in class, I could not even be convincing in front of even that small audience, let alone an entire theatre.

I think that being a good actor is a very rare talent, as it is so much unlike what we are used to. If he is empathetic, as an actor must be, how can he take into account all of the feelings of the other actors on stage and the audience as well? It is just too much to think about simultaneously when you need to be impulsively in the moment of a scene. This kind of exposure is not for everyone, yet many of us now do it much more frequently than we used to, even when we are not seeking acting careers. The speed at which we blog, and tweet, and group IM, and receive comments and responses requires an emotional and intellectual vulnerability that only artists, such as actors were exposed to in the past. This is often criticized, just as actors are criticized, as being self indulgent. Perhaps it is in a sense, but it also, like acting, requires empathy. Millions of us are forced to think about audiences and collaborators in new ways which in turn makes our writing more profound at its best. Even at its worst it is an attempt to live more fully. Perhaps that part of us that is attracted by actors is those emotions, and that vulnerability. The technology available to us lets us all do that without subjecting audiences in a theatre, or playwrights in an audition to painfully bad performances. On the other hand we may very well be compensating for a lack of direct contact.

Last week I went to the Abramavic show at MoMa in New York, which in so many ways succeeded better in being art and theatre than any class or stage production. The first piece is simply the artist herself sitting at a table. Visitors can wait in line to sit across the table from her. Once you are in that seat, it is a wordless communication, which is unique with each coupling, even though the setting never changes. I was told that one visitor sat through an entire 8 hours with the artist.

So can we achieve anything similar to this through blogs, and comments, or is there something about being alive that manifests itself only in person? Is this what I had hope to achieve as a college actor? I am not sure.  This is one reason that I also play improvisational piano with groups of other musicians. Finding connections through art and writing has many new opportunities. Whether we take them or not is the challenge.

Insanity or Persistence?

The power of a word to invoke emotions is certainly evident in the word insanity. There are 10 normal definitions for this, all of which are familiar, having to do with lack of mental health, court room pleas and your run of the mill "craziness". The definition that I have known for about 6 years now is one that was first credited to one of my heroes Albert Einstein. He said that the " definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results". The reason I am familiar with this connotation of insanity is that it is the one that is explored in a movie that my wife and I were Associate Producers for, which is just now available on DVD called "The Definition of Insanity". The film deals with the stubborn passion of a talented actor who endures torturous loss of integrity, family and even mental stability in the pursuit of succeeding in the only thing he feels he must do. In one important scene, he compares his acting with a disability. This is so self analytical that the character reveals both intelligence and an insightfulness that makes us see a depth in his personality that is very profound.

The fact that this particular definition of insanity was originally Einstein's is not acknowledged in the film, but since the film was made, I haven't been able to get it off of my mind. I often wonder why Einstein addresses insanity in this way, as his most famous contributions in special and general relativity were not insane at all. In fact both have been shown to be accurate throughout many experiments. So he didn't fail at this by doing the same thing over and over. Though this is true in looking at a snapshot of that particular success, when looking at a long shot of Einstein's life we see some of the insanity he described, and not just in his wild hair. Amongst people interested in 20^th century science, Einstein is not only known for his successes. He is also known for his insistent denial of the century's other biggest breakthrough, which is the probabilistic nature of Quantum Mechanics. Einstein actually won a Nobel Prize for his contribution to Quantum Mechanics. Still he could never take the ultimate step, which was theorized by Bohr, Heisenberg, Dirac and Born. They had theorized that momentum and position of electrons and other sub atomic particles could never be located simultaneously, and with certainty. This theory has been tested thousands of times, leaving little doubt to its validity. Still, Einstein despite his rigor and genius famously said of the theory "god does not play dice with the universe". Not meaning God as a deity, but believing in a deterministic beauty of the cosmos was key to how Einstein viewed the universe. He could not break with this view, no matter how many times he tried. In other words using his own definition he was "insane". When challenged about this seemingly denialist view, Einstein would say that there were hidden variables that Quantum Uncertainty was missing. He wanted to find those, but even if he didn't he felt they were there.

Finding the hidden variables for the meaning of life is both what Einstein wanted, and what the main character in "Definition of Insanity" wants. In fact that desire, without the label of insanity, is often considered a kind of persistence that is admired; the actor trying to understand himself and others through characters, and the scientist trying to understand the universe through mathematics and observation. The difficulty becomes knowing when to stop. At what point does daily reality, like family and happiness, trump eternal questioning? More importantly, at what point is the questioning pointless as the question is already solved, or may never be solved? There is a philosophical strangeness to this whole question, and it is one that scientists seem to be aware of. In Brian Greene's book "The Fabric of The Cosmos", he has an introduction which is mentioned to me by more people than anything in the rest of the long and very engaging book. In it Greene discusses finding a copy of the Albert Camus book "The Myth of Sisyphus" as a child. Sisyphus is a book which uses the Greek legend as a backdrop to explain modern existentialism; a man endlessly pushing a bolder up a mountain, never to reach to peek. Why did this story of hopeless persistence make Greene want to be a scientist? The philosophy seems to suggest that the goal to reach a full understanding of the universe will never be achieved. Perhaps this shows Greene's self awareness. By Knowing that life will be only process and repetition; we can embrace the climb rather than the goal.

So what of insanity? I have been accused of being insane for producing plays and films, which always lose money. I have been accused of insanity for arguing about religion with religious people, as no one has ever changed their views from these arguments. The list goes on and on, and those making the accusations certainly have a point. I would say though that in the Einstein sense we are all insane, and that those of us that acknowledge it may actually be on the journey that Brian Greene has taken. It is a pointless persistence of trying and failing that is the reality of living.
By the way, please do buy "The Definition Of Insanity" I am persistently trying to make this film a much deserved success. http://www.amazon.com/Definition-Insanity-Robert-Margolis/dp/B0030EFZZ8

The Micro Feature

I have trouble thinking too big, even when I am trying to change the world. That sounds like a paradox of course, but what I am admitting to is a basic inability I have to really comprehend the inner workings of societal macro-structures. In that I include not only the running of countries and economies, but also large corporations. Though I do feel that there must inherently be something useful in large corporate cultures (as millions are employed by corporations) yet the impersonal nature, and betrayals of greed from them have left a bad taste in my mouth. I used to be one of the owners of my family business, Tech Pro, which was a small high tech scientific instrumentation firm. Though we had global scope, we always thought very micro in a sense. We focused on understanding our limited, but important customers, our few dedicated, and wonderful employees, and the technology that we invented and made. This didn't produce a large business, but did produce a profitable small one. This is not the way most people think of small businesses. Tech Pro was not a family store. It was computer science, material science and international business. Yet we were relatively small. This is a model that I think could apply to a number of businesses including our new business Nanotronics Imaging. The question I ask myself is whether in an age of instant media, it can also be an effective model for the movies.
Like so many people of the last hundred years, I grew up not only living with movies, but wanting to make them. I even studied acting, directed plays, and shot a television commercial. There is nothing unique in dreaming of being a filmmaker. It is though somewhat like dreaming of being president, or being an astronaut. Being a filmmaker has always been left to a very few. There have always been hobbyists, making home movies, or low budget features, but until very recently making a movie required a lot of money. Even now when talking to film producers, or listening to interviews an auteur will remark "this was such a cheap film. We made it for 10 Million". Of course it goes without saying that to do anything that cost a mere 10 million, you must either be working for an enormous corporation or already wealthy yourself.
Painters and composers have always been fortunate. If you had a canvas, some paints, or pen and paper you could do your art. I admit that even that was difficult for some artists, such as Van Gogh, who had to beg for housing, or money for paints. Still, the painter could express himself with a few easy to get tools. At least that has always been my impression. The reality for painters is however that they need to know a lot. They need to understand color, lighting, perspective, as well as have a unique vision in order to not just be doodlers but recognized professionals
For the first time in films history, the filmmaker is like the painter used to be. Nearly everyone can make a film. There are multiple sources for production, from HD Video to cell phones. There are also a growing number of distribution methods, which even at the beginning of this decade didn't exist. There is of course You Tube, and HuLu, but also Facebook and Myspace. There are cinemas that show films, computers to watch films, video on demand, and a growing amount of I-Phone content. So this is indeed an exciting time if you have dreamed about being a film maker. No longer are film makers reliant on studios, or even the film festival circuit. The one thing that we tend to forget though is that like the painter, anyone can do it, but it is not easy to do it well. Most people know this to an extent. They realize that they need to learn how to use the camera, and some basic editing software. They may even become very good at this. What is often missed however are some basics, which the great film makers of the past did an excellent job with. I am not an expert on filmmaking, but as a scientist, technologist, and amateur in film production, I have some opinions on how the micro budget feature might become a reality.
The following two areas that are not considered by many people to be mandatory, but that I consider being important to creating quality film:

1. Theatre and story – In an interview at the Apple Store in SoHo Francis Ford Coppola recommended that young film makers should not just shoot little films, but put on one act plays. I think this is an excellent idea. After all, Orson Wells started in theatre, and learned drama from learning Shakespeare. He learned how to work with actors while directing and acting in the theatre. Theatre uses cutting in a different way. The director allows the audience to see multiple things at once, because he has no choice. This makes you aware of composition in interesting ways. You tend to see where your eyes are repeatedly drawn to. The film director can use that experience to make choices for the camera.
   
2. Optics and lighting – An understanding of optics was a necessity for the film maker of the past. Only with understanding magnification, depth of field, and spectral variance could a film maker capture a quality image. With HD video, many assume that this knowledge is not as important. This has cut down on budgets, as directors are not as reliant on expensive cinematographers. This is a good thing of course, but the quality, in my view, has suffered. Films look like amateurs shot them. This could be compared to 19^th century naturist literature, except for a very crucial difference. The naturalist literature dealt with real life in more natural ways, but the writer was still an expert at his craft. Emile Zola was as artful as Victor Hugo, even though one was Romantic and one Naturalist. The reason is that the both understood writing. For an understanding of filmmaking, the tools need to be an understanding of how optics work, and how lighting can be exploited, and manipulated.
   

These two points may sound obvious, but I am not sure they are. I think that new film makers can learn a lot from the struggles of the founders of the medium, which were lab scientists in France and New Jersey, as well as story tellers who came from the stage. The most rewarding thing about living now however that is with knowledge, not money, a vision can be realized. There is no technical reason why a film needs to cost so much.

As I finish this essay, I wonder why I am writing this at all. I am not a film maker, and not likely to become one. The reason is that I am a romantic. I want to live in a time where humans have a unique and profound understanding of the universe and can create great art. I think that the ability to do a lot with a little does two important things. It makes it possible for more people to invent (or make movies), and it takes away a huge amount of financial anxiety. The anxiety that comes with raining and managing Millions of dollars not only prevents many people from doing things, but also makes those that do it often unhappy. So, I hope that someone can figure out how to do white balance on a cell phone, distribute it for free, and make a living. This is not yet possible, but only will be when the people making the cheap movies are better than the ones making the expensive ones. Lucky for them, most big budgets movies are not "Citizen Kane" anymore. There is certainly room for genius.