Cleanup: Enforced Method Acting

Enforced Method Acting is supposed to be where the director doesn't tell the actor about something in order to make his reactions more genuine. Most of the examples are correct, but this is a huge page, and there are a whole bunch of examples that more correctly belong in Throw It In! (the director didn't know either, it just happened) or regular Method Acting (the actor, not the director, did it). If I had more time on my hands I'd try and fix it myself... but I don't. 8-(

I've been through the Live-Action TV section and deleted a few entries.

We don't have a trope for Method Acting?

Weird, isn't it? O_o How Did We Miss This One?

Re-reading the description, I think that some of the things I thought didn't count actually do, because the name is misleading - there are three points in the description and I thought the trope only covers the first one, where the director tricks the actor in question. The acting is not necessarily "enforced", it might simply happen to be Real Life Writes the Plot.

I recall a similar problem with Enforced Trope.

edited 25th Nov '10 1:56:12 PM by Cidolfas

There is a little bit of a Venn Diagram relationship going on between those tropes. Enforced Method Acting can be used by instructing actor(s) to use Improv and the resulting conversation was unexpected so they decided to Throw It In!. Basically the way it works is that Enforced Method Acting means it was planned in some way, Throw It In! is a "happy accident" and Improv is anything unscripted.

As far as a Method Acting trope, it would likely have to be no examples because Method Acting is just getting into character in some way. The extreme is something like Dustin Hoffman trying out his Tootsie character in public, all the way to the lower end by jogging around the studio so you sound out-of-breath. Examples could work but there would just be a million and a half entries because it is so broad of a concept.

We can limit examples to the extreme ones.

I think if we are going to go with the current description of this trope we should rename it. "Enforced" sounds like someone specifically sets out to do this, whereas the description and many examples include cases of Throw It In! and Real Life Writes the Plot.

Eliminating examples that are not "enforced" is the way to go, rather than trying to get agreement on which of them are "extreme".

Method Acting turns up as a trope. We don't need Real Life examples of it put in use, but there are plenty of stories that use the premise of "this actor was getting into his role and went too far."

Sorry, was addressing 2 different issues there. 8-) I meant that Method Acting examples could be limited to extreme ones.

For Enforced Method Acting, if we want to limit examples to "enforced" ones, then we would need to change the description as well. Right now it includes any kind of acting that's somehow "real", whether enforced or not.

It seems like right now, the description and examples cover Enforced Method Acting, Acting in the Dark, and Throw It In!. I think it needs to be limited to cases where the director actively tries to get a more realistic reaction, rather than just not giving someone their script in advance (which would fall under Acting in the Dark).

The ones I'm wondering about are the ones where it's not the director doing it — it's one actor doing it to another.

I would consider those to still count. The person doing the enforcing shouldn't matter unless the trope were entitled something like Director Enforced Method Acting.

Oh, and Acting in the Dark is pretty much a subtrope.

edited 29th Nov '10 12:18:34 AM by BigT

Oh yeah, there's also a couple examples that fall under Harpo Does Something Funny. Like, the one about the Janitor in Scrubs.

edited 30th Nov '10 6:26:09 PM by smashingmelons

It's really about how much we want to really keep the examples distinct, because being a supertrope means that any subtrope example will fall under the supertrope. Harpo Does Something Funny is a subtrope to Improv, pretty much anything that goes in one goes in the other.

Throw It In! is by far the most bloated trope so parring it down is a decent idea, but for the other's we've been talking about they aren't exactly out of control or misused. I don't see much misuse of Enforced Method Acting to begin with.

Maybe the name is the problem. Several examples listed are just examples of method acting that the director required the actors to go through . (Eg several mention military bootcamp for actors, and making certain actors except to build resentment or a sense of separation)

Bump. Was the cleanup done?

I don't think so. I don't think we had figured out how to clean it up yet. The lines are fuzzy between two supertropes and at least half-a-dozen subtropes.