5 ms·

The power of suggestion, maybe? Honestly, I wonder how much of it isn't the effect of publicity affecting people's expectations? If you have two people giving

by rnd0 5y ago

The power of suggestion, maybe? Honestly, I wonder how much of it isn't the effect of publicity affecting people's expectations? If you have two people giving the same performance who look similar but the audience for one goes in with the expectations of seeing a maestro perform and the other is just watching an unknown they would feel differently because they're carrying expectations with them that skew their view of the performance. I don't want to go too far out on a limb and say this is definitely the case; I'm not in the industry. But I was wondering about the same subject (what makes a star's performance "riveting" even in something mediocre?) and that was the best answer that I could come up with.

oh_sigh 5y ago
I was wondering the same thing. Is it just the case that people for whatever reason see those more-familiar to them as better actors? Which also explains celebrity worship that certain people engage in, where they might go wild to see George Clooney, but would just walk right by a less-famous but equally or more skilled actor? If you took who was a hermit in Alaska with no media exposure for their entire life and showed them 3 performances from 3 different tier actors, would they actually say that the A-lister is better than the B-lister, who is better than the C-lister?
- ectopod 5y ago
  There are a few actors where I still remember the first time I saw them in a film. I had no idea who they were but they were mesmerising. They all became stars. Being gorgeous helps (and is sometimes enough to succeed) but some people really do have an astonishing talent.
- jfengel 5y ago
  The experiment isn't entirely meaningful, because it is culturally dependent -- not just the star-ness, but the expectations of the performance. You don't have to go back very far in time to watch actors who were highly praised but seem off now. And go 20 years in the future, and a lot of what you see now will seem weird and fake. It's also really, really hard to tell from a finished product. There is a lot going on in a film between the performance and what you see in a theater: editing, music, lights, sound. A good cinematographer can make anybody, if not a star, at least somewhat charismatic. I wish I knew how they did that -- it's spooky magic, but I've watched it happen. I know that's not really what you meant. I'm just highlighting the challenge of defining what "it" even is. I can say that a lot of it isn't really about "better" acting. A lot of people who are only mediocre actors, or worse, are stars. George Clooney is both a genuinely talented actor and also a star -- but the two are almost entirely orthogonal.
  - handrous 5y ago
    > The experiment isn't entirely meaningful, because it is culturally dependent -- not just the star-ness, but the expectations of the performance. You don't have to go back very far in time to watch actors who were highly praised but seem off now. And go 20 years in the future, and a lot of what you see now will seem weird and fake. Exactly that. I was just watching King Kong the other day, and most of the acting reads as terrible today. Delivery's bad, physical acting's way too much, timing's extremely bad. Ed Wood level, much of the time, and that's not an exaggeration. Some of the best (to my modern-viewer perceptions) is from the side characters. Yet, presumably, the leads were at least considered OK actors, at the time. This is true for lots of older films, especially before the 70s or so when the typical style seemed to shift to something much closer to what's in use today, and requires adjusting expectations and some, if you will, immersion therapy, to get over that hurdle and start to enjoy them on their own terms. But then again, you can go back all the way to the silent film era and find some performances that still feel real and very good, even today and without much expectation-adjusting. Some of it seems to depend on the country producing the film—so, again, it's about culture. And comedy seems nearly immune to the problem, I guess because actors in comedies in all eras are rarely even trying for "believable", and are always kind of in on the whole thing with the audience. You also see this with oration. Old speeches that are recorded sound totally strange. Part of it's that we had entire accents and styles of speech that were once common, that are now all but gone, a century or less later. Makes one wonder exactly how alien the past might have been, really, if one went even farther back. Written language makes it seem so close, at times. And yet....
    - jgwil2 5y ago
      > Part of it's that we had entire accents and styles of speech that were once common, that are now all but gone, a century or less later. Language is constantly changing, but it's only in the past 100 or so years that we've had the technology to make audio recordings. Linguists seem to have a pretty good ability to reconstruct older pronunciations but of course they can't capture every detail with certainty. There is an original pronunciation movement[0] in Shakespearean performance that can convey a sense of it. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shakespeare_in_Original_Pronunciation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shakespeare_in_Original_Pronun...
- WalterBright 5y ago
  I've had conversations with a couple celebrities. It's remarkable how quickly the star aurora fades away and the real, quite ordinary, person emerges.

by rnd0 5y ago

oh_sigh 5y ago

I was wondering the same thing. Is it just the case that people for whatever reason see those more-familiar to them as better actors? Which also explains celebrity worship that certain people engage in, where they might go wild to see George Clooney, but would just walk right by a less-famous but equally or more skilled actor? If you took who was a hermit in Alaska with no media exposure for their entire life and showed them 3 performances from 3 different tier actors, would they actually say that the A-lister is better than the B-lister, who is better than the C-lister?

ectopod 5y ago
There are a few actors where I still remember the first time I saw them in a film. I had no idea who they were but they were mesmerising. They all became stars. Being gorgeous helps (and is sometimes enough to succeed) but some people really do have an astonishing talent.
jfengel 5y ago
The experiment isn't entirely meaningful, because it is culturally dependent -- not just the star-ness, but the expectations of the performance. You don't have to go back very far in time to watch actors who were highly praised but seem off now. And go 20 years in the future, and a lot of what you see now will seem weird and fake. It's also really, really hard to tell from a finished product. There is a lot going on in a film between the performance and what you see in a theater: editing, music, lights, sound. A good cinematographer can make anybody, if not a star, at least somewhat charismatic. I wish I knew how they did that -- it's spooky magic, but I've watched it happen. I know that's not really what you meant. I'm just highlighting the challenge of defining what "it" even is. I can say that a lot of it isn't really about "better" acting. A lot of people who are only mediocre actors, or worse, are stars. George Clooney is both a genuinely talented actor and also a star -- but the two are almost entirely orthogonal.
- handrous 5y ago
  > The experiment isn't entirely meaningful, because it is culturally dependent -- not just the star-ness, but the expectations of the performance. You don't have to go back very far in time to watch actors who were highly praised but seem off now. And go 20 years in the future, and a lot of what you see now will seem weird and fake. Exactly that. I was just watching King Kong the other day, and most of the acting reads as terrible today. Delivery's bad, physical acting's way too much, timing's extremely bad. Ed Wood level, much of the time, and that's not an exaggeration. Some of the best (to my modern-viewer perceptions) is from the side characters. Yet, presumably, the leads were at least considered OK actors, at the time. This is true for lots of older films, especially before the 70s or so when the typical style seemed to shift to something much closer to what's in use today, and requires adjusting expectations and some, if you will, immersion therapy, to get over that hurdle and start to enjoy them on their own terms. But then again, you can go back all the way to the silent film era and find some performances that still feel real and very good, even today and without much expectation-adjusting. Some of it seems to depend on the country producing the film—so, again, it's about culture. And comedy seems nearly immune to the problem, I guess because actors in comedies in all eras are rarely even trying for "believable", and are always kind of in on the whole thing with the audience. You also see this with oration. Old speeches that are recorded sound totally strange. Part of it's that we had entire accents and styles of speech that were once common, that are now all but gone, a century or less later. Makes one wonder exactly how alien the past might have been, really, if one went even farther back. Written language makes it seem so close, at times. And yet....
  - jgwil2 5y ago
    > Part of it's that we had entire accents and styles of speech that were once common, that are now all but gone, a century or less later. Language is constantly changing, but it's only in the past 100 or so years that we've had the technology to make audio recordings. Linguists seem to have a pretty good ability to reconstruct older pronunciations but of course they can't capture every detail with certainty. There is an original pronunciation movement[0] in Shakespearean performance that can convey a sense of it. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shakespeare_in_Original_Pronunciation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shakespeare_in_Original_Pronun...
WalterBright 5y ago
I've had conversations with a couple celebrities. It's remarkable how quickly the star aurora fades away and the real, quite ordinary, person emerges.