Original subtitles

- Your ultimate goal

is to have your talent's performance be truthful.

And one of the best ways to help them achieve that

is to use action verbs instead of adjectives

when providing them with direction.

This helps your talent do what's called being in the moment,

focusing on the details of what's happening

right now in the scene.

Directing with action verbs

rather than using adjectives

let your characters do things rather than just say things.

Be excited or be disappointed or be sad

makes actors make faces,

not actually experience emotions in the moment.

When you don't use action verbs,

performances come off as false

and definitely one-dimensional.

Using adjectives just describe the result.

Actors will focus on achieving just the result you want,

that they're sad,

and not being a character that's interesting.

Instead of, let's say, be angry at Bill,

for example, as a direction,

try accuse Bill of cheating on you.

Or you could even use an opposing verb

for a really dramatic effect, like flatter Bill.

How much more interesting would that be

instead of accuse Bill of cheating on you?

You want to explain the circumstances and the facts

that will produce an emotion, not a reaction.

There's a great listing on indietips.com

that lists out tons of action verbs

you can use in your direction.

Action verbs are specific.

The more specific you are,

the better and more concise of a performance

you're going to get from your actor.

Using action verbs like these

in the direction of your talent

will keep performances fresh and interesting,

and will work to serve Meisner's idea

of behaving truthfully under imaginary circumstances

that we talked about earlier.