Breaking the 4th Wall

[v i o l e n t c a s e s]

Re: 4th wall

winter means that when you are in your head, you are THINKING about the acting, and when you are thinking about acting, you are no longer in the moment, you are removed. acting means going with your gut, being in your character's skin and behaving like your character is second nature.

[toto1958]

Re: 4th wall

OK, I get that.

Sorry Winter, Just needed a second explanation

[Augie Kestrel]

Re: 4th wall

Bill,

Although I agree that the ending of BLAZING SADDLES was awful, I was actually referring to at least one instance earlier in the film when Cleavon Little turned to the audience to declare how stupid the townspeople were.

I don't think it worked very well then, either.

[Miss Modular]

Re: 4th wall

Half Baked, anyone?

[ComicBent]

Re: 4th wall

The "fourth wall" concept goes back a long way. I encountered it in college in the 1960s in a theater class. It was originally used as part of a description of dramatic technique as practiced by such dramatists as Ibsen (nineteenth century, for the innocent out there ).

The notion was that the audience was, in effect, a voyeur, looking into the lives of the characters by viewing through an "invisible" fourth wall. The concept became prominent when dramatists began to violate the conventional pretense that no audience was there. The most notable of these new dramatists was probably the German Bertolt Brecht (died around 1950), who was active in theater in the 1920s and 1930s in Germany before the Nazis ran him out. Brecht set out to break the conventions of verisimilitude of traditional drama. Consequently, his characters may do things like hold up signs for the audience or directly speak to the audience.

[TomTom]

Re: 4th wall

Is it possible to have an actor staring straight ahead
without it being a recogniton of the camera?

For instance, imagine a normal two person scene
where the characters are talking with each other
and the camera moves over more with every shot
until the dialogue is spoken directly into the camera
but we, the audience, experience it as them talking to each other.

Is this possible?
Any examples?

Can an actor talk toward the 4th wall without breaking through it?

[Wolfy262]

Re: 4th wall

Alfie (the original)