You died too pretty

"You died too pretty. At the finish, you arranged your body to make a good camera shot; it would remind the audience that you're an actor and not a robber. I warned you that 'acting is the one art you can't be caught doing.'

So begins Don Richardson's segment on 'the ragged edge' in Acting Without Agony. He goes on...

"I tell the class not to try to make pretty pictures; that's the cameraman's job. Truth isn't always nice to look at, and truth is what good modern art is about. Artists have moved from the slick externals, to searching deeper for meaning. The surface is less and less important. Modern sculptors intentionally rough-up their work to find a texture that conveys feelings. The new painters learned from the impressionists; they use paint in a much freer way than the classicists, and don't run for a rag every time it dribbles. The key to modern art is what I call 'the ragged edge'....

I explain that 'making pretty pictures' comes from an actor's vanity and vanity can destroy your work. The bank robber was honest in the scene until the end, when he put himself on an imaginary cross and posed for a Pieta. You can't play the result: that's telling the audience how to react. Get them to react by planning how to accomplish it, but don't let them in on it."

I think Richardson's chapter is a good answer to the questions I posed here and here. The desire to prettify things in visual effects often leads to a poor performance robbed of its believability. Believability is not accuracy, fidelity or randomness but requires knowledge of how to perform appropriately in the various modalities made possible by cinema technology (color correction, fx, virtual camera work, crowd simulation, etc.). What makes a post-production performance interesting is is not its beauty, accuracy or algorithmic complexity, but the way a medium is used to express observation tempered by understanding.