I’m training to be an actor at the moment which means that a few days a week I travel out of town to an acting school where I get to learn about humans from brilliant people. Every so often we have a special teacher brought in for a particular focus and in the last month, we were introduced to screen acting by an amazing producer: Paul Currie.
When talking about casting people in roles, Paul gave us a brief rundown of something that impacts on casting. One of which I would describe as what a person’s natural inner ‘tempo’ is. In short, we naturally rest ourselves not in a neutral spot, but somewhere on a spectrum between any of these positions: high positive, low positive, high negative, low negative.
Now, this isn’t to say that someone is good or bad, it’s just the overall vibe and different roles with the right inner energy can really pop. For example, if a personal trainer at the gym was a low negative, they would come across very differently to one that was high positive. In fact, I can’t think of many motivational speakers that make a name for themselves capitalising of their low negative vibe. That doesn’t mean high positive is where it’s can. Can you imagine if James Bond appeared on screen with Daniel Craig playing him high positive? What about Sherlock Holmes? Benedict Cumberbatch plays the character pretty high negative. But there are gentler energy levels too. Jane Bennett in Pride and Prejudice is low positive. The lead detective in Happy Valley I get a vibe for low negative. Hamlet? I feel that character as low negative.
I will note that this also wasn’t to do with introversion and extroversion. That’s about where you get your energy from more than it’s about what energy you give off. I already know I’m an introvert, but what would my energy level have been if I was on this scale? After a bit of thinking and with some helpful input from some friends I realised I’m high positive. Not just that, I realised how much I diminish the natural sense of play and joy that I have in most things, particularly in corporate and professional environments. So I’ve spent the last few weeks letting come out a bit more and I’m finding ‘being myself’ so much easier. It’s like a deep feeling of confidence because I’m listening to my heart and my instinct when they respond to things.
Enough about me though, do you agree with my suggestions of where to align characters on the scale? Do you agree with them all? If not, where do you see the character sitting? Where would you place yourself on it? Where would you place your on-screen heroes? I’m keen to hear!
This dress was a gift from the gorgeous team at Lazybones and I believe that truly great clothes deserve to be worn more than once, so here I am styling it again for you. It was one of my first outfits of spring on the blog and is also one of my last.
For these photos, I had my sister Goldfields Girl as my assistant.
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I never heard about the positive-negative spectrum (or rather, square) thingy. It makes sense, though, right down to the part about it being different than being an extrovert or introvert. I like how you used it to learn about yourself and be happier: "So I’ve spent the last few weeks letting come out a bit more and I’m finding ‘being myself’ so much easier. It’s like a deep feeling of confidence because I’m listening to my heart and my instinct when they respond to things." I know just what you mean; when you give yourself permission to stop playing a role, or even just being stiff at work or whatever, everything becomes easier.