Preparing for an Emotional Scene
The moment has arrived, what you have been dreading for weeks…the emotional scene, a crying scene. You have been wracking your brain, searching for that memory, that trigger that will allow you access to tears. The director shouts Action! and the camera is on you and an entire crew awaits your performance….
And the tears don’t come…
Emotional scenes can be a tough experience for any actor. We feel that ability to cry is somehow tied in with our worth as an actor and a failure to squeeze out those droplets appparently means you are a failure. (That is not true by the way, it is a common misconception and a rubbish one at that)
So how do we prepare for that dreaded scene?
We start by realising that tears should not be our aim. Despite what the NLP industry would teach you, the emotions are not biddable, they are not really within our control. If you don’t believe me, right now, tell yourself to cry. It won’t happen.
Instead we change our thinking and start by accepting that emotion is the byproduct of intention. In any truly emotional part of your life, tears, or anger or love or joy did not just spontaneously erupt out of you. They came as a result of you doing something.
They came from you proposing to your girlfriend and her saying yes.
They came as a result of you telling the doctor that there has to be something more he can do for your sick mother.
They came from seeing your child take their first step, you spurring them on as they stumble towards you with arms open.
Emotion stems from doing.
So to access what we need in an emotional scene, we first need to understand the drive behind the character and their actions. This comes out of scene analysis. Let’s say character A, in the scene, is saying goodbye to their father who is terminally ill. This is a very sad and heartbreaking moment.
Again though, if you approach this thinking “I must cry for my dying father“, then you have all it wrong. Instead, parallel the moment in the scene with a moment in your own life. We call this an As-if or a Daydream.
In the above example, I would discover what is driving the character (saying goodbye to their father), then I would parallel this drive in my own life (telling my parents that they really don’t know what living with Lyme Disease has been like for me). My parallel, or As-if, while at its core contains truth, is nonetheless rooted in my imagination, for no such conversation with my parents has happened.
Suffice it to say, your imagination is far more powerful than you know and you do not need to torture yourself with real emotional trauma that may have scarred you in your life.
Before the camera started rolling, I would simply talk out what I would say in my imaginary situation with my parents. Again, I am not trying to cry. That is never really my aim. Instead I am talking about an emotional situation but I am letting my intention drive me.
MY INTENTION: To tell them they don’t really understand what is has been like for me.
Emotion is the by-product of intention.
The final step, and it is the one that will be the hardest, is letting myself be affected by what I am saying. It is a fine balancing act where I avoid squeezing the emotion (for it is not biddable) while allowing what I am saying (but more importantly doing) to affect me.
If I have done my job correctly, my body now…remembers what it felt like for me to have this imaginary conversation.
When the scene starts and those cameras are rolling, I now tap into this. When I speak the words of the script, what I am really doing is speaking to my parents about my life and meningitis.
To those watching, it appears as if the impending death of my father is making me emotional but the truth is that it is my pre-scene prep with my As-if that has allowed me to reach the emotional peak the scene demands.
Emotional scenes will never be easy. They demand so much of us as people and actors. Above is glimpse into how to prepare for them however and I advocate you use it.
Your other option is to fake it, dry sobs and or the tear stick.