Character Development: Mal

In order to fully and personally develop my character for “Inception”, I have refrained from seeing the movie. When I think about my character Mal, I think mostly about her presence in the scene. I think of her as a constant dream like character. While she is present in the moment and is serious in her scene, she is able to act very calmly. I think that if I were to portray this in my scene, it will allow the scene to maintain its tense feeling, while giving an in depth look at Mal and how she reacts. In order to do this, I have thought about her posture and actions during this scene. It is hard for me to know fully what I want to do in the scene physically because we have not staged it yet. However I have thought of possible things that I can do to present my character as relaxed as possible during a passionate scene. For example, I thought that I might start sitting, and as the scene gets more heated, eventually I could stand, or lean toward Ryan (depending if he is sitting across from me). Once we do stage the scene, it will be more helpful in figuring out how I want to present my character and her body language. Another aspect of Mal that I have to portray is how sure she is of herself. The whole point of this scene is Mal trying to convince Dom to choose the reality that she is in. Through this, I feel that deep down she is desperate, but that she doesn't want Dom to know how she is really feeling. That being said, I want to pick out certain lines in the script that my character can immediately get more passionate about when delivering them. 

"Fridge" Scene

Even though John and I work very well together and completed some of the goals I set for this scene, I was overall disappointed with my performance for the “Fridge” scene. After we ran through the first take and I received feedback, I felt confused with who my character was. Prior to our performance, we had discussed in class that my character was a shy girl who was flirty with Bruce (in an innocence manner). I felt that. I had the attitude of my character the way that I wanted it, however once Ryan told me to hold back more, I felt as though I did not know who I was trying to portray. As a result, when we filmed the second and final take I became too focused on being more shy and not enough on projection and thinking of my lines. I think it is extremely important to take suggestions from classmates seriously, however I became too focused on trying to change my character. I would have benefited if I had received the advice earlier, and could have worked on it and practiced my scene differently.

If John and I had been able to memorize our lines more, our scene would have been much better than it was. To be honest, I am disappointed with how this scene turned out. When I first read the script, I loved the scene because of it's quirkiness and how cute the characters acted with each other. If I could go back and work harder on the scene I would. I would pay more attention to the blocking, my projection, character development (although I personally really like what I originally thought of my character), and would work on memorization.

I was, however, very impressed with everyone else's scenes that I was able to see him before he had to leave the rest of the week. I think each group's performance stood out and were each different i their own way.

In the future, I would like to begin receiving more notes in person from my classmates. I think that when notes are given in person ahead of time, people are able to understand them better and describe them more efficiently to the actors on stage.

I hope that my next performance will be better than this previous one. Hopefully I will have more time to review notes, to memorize lines and to focus on blocking.