In Ron Friedman's introductory screenwriting class, a student work shopped a scene that took place during a party. As the scene begins, two friends enter a house where the party is in full swing.
The student struggled to show the relationship between the main character and his friend, but the scene fell flat. We discussed the scene, and suggested various ways the dialogue could be modified, but nothing worked.
Then Ron suggested that the writer give the protagonist's friend something to do. He called this the "actors' business." I had never heard the term, and it doesn't appear in the top several pages of a Google search.
In Directing Actors course, we learned that a director should not ask an actor to become sad, or angry. The emotion must come from the story itself.
If the screenwriter includes something for an actor to do, it can provide a powerful outlet to reveal what they are feeling, and can even reveal the relationship between two characters.
An example is a cooking segment that Martha Stewart did on The Early Show in 2002. At the time allegations that she'd engaged in insider trading were surfacing; if her cooking segment had been part of a screenplay and if she were an actor, the knife she was holding and a simple head of cabbage provided the perfect "actor's business."
Martha chopped that cabbage with such fury that the story made headlines, including this one from New York Daily News: "Martha can't hack questions on TV: Knives out as Stewart minces words, Cabbage."
Though it doesn't make sense to use this or any other storytelling technique in every scene, giving the actor something to do is an interesting way to emphasize meaning and emotion that cannot come from words or from silence. It's one more magical storytelling tool that helps capture the audience's attention as they're experiencing rising tension and the movie's forward momentum. Real time stops as they take in visual and auditory (dialogue, music, sound effects) clues that are so strong that they begin to live the story with the characters.
On Facebook, a friend recently posted a link to a posting on Gawker. It's titled, "Read a disgruntled Whole Foods resignation letter."
The ex-employee's letter is posted after these comments:
"Late Friday afternoon, an employee of the Whole Foods Market in Toronto sent this epic resignation letter to the entire company. It's an alternatingly amusing, enlightening, and occasionally infuriating read—but a good read, nonetheless.
[In the letter] the employee gets deeply personal, calling out individual co-workers by name, and devotes a paragraph to each in which he details exactly what he thinks their problem is. It's all utterly uncalled for, but also pretty hilarious..."
I'm glad my friend posted the link. I imagine that if asked, letter's author could immediately name a dozen idiosyncrasies unique to each co-worker; alone mundane but taken together they are fascinating and entertaining.
For storytellers, including "actors business" into a scene can help breathe life into fictional characters (both major and minor), showing their relationship to each other and identifying each as unique from anyone who has lived, or who will ever live (Irvin Kershner quote). This is magical.
Here is the link:
http://gaw.kr/qMOiup
If I write as passionately as the letter's author, and can describe each of the characters as clearly as the Whole Foods ex-employee describes his impression of his or her co-workers, the story cannot help but come alive.
NOTE: These entries are inspired by the final assignment for "The Business of Writing for Screen and Television," a School of Cinematic Arts' course taught by Frank Wuliger. Hoping to help his students become working screenwriters, he asked us to create a personal, five-year road map into the industry.
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