The Master Guide / 09 Performance
Performance
Seedance acts the way you write it: as tasks, timings and visible behaviour, never as named emotions. This chapter directs the faces and bodies inside a generated shot. Speaking shots, the camera and the light have their own chapters.
Seedance acts the way you write it: as tasks, timings and visible behaviour, never as named emotions. This chapter directs the faces and bodies inside a generated shot. Speaking shots, the camera and the light have their own chapters.
Acting
Acting written as a task and sized for the frame, the inner line, restraint, Arab roles, the master acting profile, and drawn acting.
Acting as a task: Give each character something to do to someone, not something to feel.
Size for the frame: Four rules keep a performance alive and the right size [proven].
The inner line, silent shots only: One short thought the character has and never says, written as direction.
Clamps, restraint, energy for presenters: Generated actors overdo emotion and underdo energy.
Arab roles: dialect and gesture: An Arab audience reads a face, a gesture and an accent at a glance.
The master acting profile: A character who recurs gets one description of how they behave, kept with their anchors.
Drawn and stylised acting: Drawn, anime, clay and 3D characters act in their medium's timing, not in photographic micro-acting.
Reactions and the eyes
The reaction pair and its clock, the eyeline, listening, and blinks.
The reaction pair: When a reaction carries the scene, let the cut carry the feeling, not the face.
The reaction clock: Every planned reaction has a type and a time.
The eyeline: Where each pair of eyes looks, written as one line, so cuts match and a look reads as attention.
Listening: A listener with no line will start talking.
Blinks mark thought: Glassy, unblinking eyes give a generated face away first.
Comedy
How comedy is performed inside a generated shot.
Comedy: Comedy is diagnosed, not prompted for laughs.
Blocking and hands
Where people stand and move, and hands and touch points.
Blocking: Decide who stands where before you write anyone's acting.
Hands and touch points: Hands are a hard stop: a frame or take whose hands fail at full size is not approved (decided; all the hard stops: The quality bar → The hard stops).