Turn your aware-beam on the close-up. Your close-up.

We're all familiar with the poker face and the overactive face. A poker face is all right for playing poker and an overactive face is fine for the life-of-the-party. But neither is much help to the actor. A poker face transmits nothing at all, and an overactive face soon becomes a meaningless blur.

Training the facial muscles is a "must" It can be done more easily than some truly heroic muscular feats.

The late Commander Frank Wead, who was one of Hollywood's outstanding writers, lost the use and control of his legs and feet due to an injury.

By determined concentration he mentally located the muscles in one of his big toes. That was his starting point in learning how to use his toe again. From that beginning he gradually taught himself to use the other muscles of his feet and legs.

There are many facial muscles you can train physically after you have located them mentally. Some of your facial exercises will also help you overcome the fear of absurdity.

Carol Channing doesn't feel a bit absurd when visitors on the set catch her "making faces." She's getting ready to "go on" stage with facial muscles well trained, alert and responsive to her mental commands. She's confident that her face will be expressive.

There are twenty-one sets of muscles in the face that can be trained for controlled flexibility, tone and expressiveness.

Try touching the tip of your nose with your upper lip.

Don't cheat yourself by trying to push the upper lip with your jaw, lower lip or tongue.

Sit in front of a mirror and study the muscles which control the movement of your upper lip as you work it up and down. Try this exercise using the "elevator" muscles at the point of the cheek bones to lift the upper lip.

Exercise

    1. Use the elevator muscles on the right side to raise and lower
        right side of the lips; show the teeth.

    2. Repeat for the left side.

    3. Alternate these actions.

Now push both lips out as far as you can in a whistling position, at the same time locate the muscles that control the movement You'll find them completely surrounding the lips.

Command these various muscles to perform for you—and they will.

Next, try to turn your lip inside out.

It's surprising how many "stiff upper lips" there are. Yet for natural expression, and to get equality and firmness of diction, you need to overcome that stiffness and acquire flexibility and control of the upper lip.

Without flexibility the mouth cannot be relaxed and natural for speech. Without control it will move too much—and in the wrong way. Imagine mouthings that are noticeable in normal size. Now imagine these mouthings magnified in CinemaScope, Vista Vision, Todd-AO, Cinerama, Cinemiracle and all the rest of the gigantic, colossal and super-colossal systems of film projection.

A flexible upper lip will keep your face youthful. One of the first signs of old age is "losing the upper lip." Maurice Chevalier's upper lip has retained its controlled flexibility. His smile has retained a magical youth. With a flexible upper lip you can develop a relaxed smile.

In motion pictures and television, the whites of the teeth, like the whites of the eyes, are of utmost importance. These whites reflect light which the camera picks up.

Study close-ups of top ranking motion-picture and television players. Count off in your mind exactly how long they hold their eyes perfectly still, without blinking or moving. Then consciously measure your eye flexibility and control against theirs.

Under the stimulation of excitement or dramatic tension, or from force of habit, eyebrows have a tendency to go wild.

With a two-hundredfold enlargement of a face in mind, imagine whipping eyebrows. You, as the audience, would be so fascinated by the weird movements of the eyebrows that you’d scarcely be able to keep your mind on the dialogue.

Compare your own eyebrow acrobatics with any close-up of Marlon Brando, Shirley Booth, Ingrid Bergman, Marlene Dietrich or Ralph Bellamy. There is never excess movement of eye or brow to distract attention from these stars’ expressions of emotion.

The “choker shot”, pioneered by William Cameron Menzies, magnifies even more than the ordinary close-up. Sometimes, it fills the screen with only a part of the face. Often that part is limited to the eyes and eyebrows.

You probably remember some choker shots in which a star’s compelling gaze was more eloquent than works. The greatest economy of movement always creates the greatest impact.

Untrained eyebrows go wild. Trained eyebrows become tools of expression which can be used under subconscious control.

Here is an exercise to develop flexibility and control of eyebrows. Repeat ten times.

Slowly arch your eyebrows—as high as you can—slowly return to normal—then slowly pull the eyebrows down and together as close as you can in a frown—then return to normal.

Practice all exercises slowly and under conscious physical control.

We all know people whose faces seem to have no vitality. Their expressions are bloodless and flat. Organically, these people may be healthy and yet give the impression of being anemic. They are almost without expression because there is no tone or alertness to the muscles of their faces.

After locating certain muscles with your mind, you can develop the muscle tones for a vital, live, animated face.

You can be as wide-eyed as Judy Holliday or as menacing as Anthony Quinn by controlling the small muscles just underneath the eyes. The powerful Humphrey Bogart was a peerless master of this delicate technique.

Look in a mirror and locate these small muscles—the lower eye-lids. Focus your aware-beam on them until you can move them; at first your movements will be very broad. After exercising these lower eyelid muscles, you will develop amazing control. You’ll be able to make movements delicately and the motion itself will hardly be noticeable—but its effect will.

From almost invisible muscular movement comes that exciting, subtle play around the eyes. It’s a bit of technique much admired in actors Dirk Bogarde, Ethel Barrymore, Van Heflin, Dorothy McGuire and other stars.

The smaller the muscular motion of the lower eyelid, the more subtle is your effect The uncontrolled broad movement is a tool of the ham. Once in a while, it's fun just to be a great big ham— but the actor who knows how to slice it is the one who gets the best results, the greatest rewards and the deepest satisfaction.

The eyes have often been called the mirror of the soul because they reflect inner feelings. For an actor, the eyes are also "windows" through which an audience can read the thoughts of a character created by a performer.

In motion pictures and television, where camera close-ups sometimes come within a few inches of the face, the importance of the eyes cannot be overemphasized.

A fine film director develops a sense of what an audience wants to see in any given situation. With the aid of the camera, he picks up the spectators, bringing them face to face with the actor. Then the camera focuses on the actor's eyes and lets audiences see what the director wants them to see.

The actor should do everything he can to improve the use of the eyes and to increase their flexibility and control until they become a manageable tool of his trade.

Ida Lupino's eyes are so revealing in their range of expression that they are a dictionary of silent synonyms for actual words.

Learning to relax the eyes can be an important tool also.

Do you recall the old school physiology-book picture of an eye with the muscles and nerves visible behind it? Remember how the muscles and nerves come together in a sort of knot just behind the eyeball? The point of relaxation is at the very place where those muscles and nerves bunch together.

Close your eyes and imagine that you are relaxing the knot. Locate the point of relaxation with your mind and your eyes will soon become relaxed.

Keep this on tap in your memory file—especially for motion pictures and television. With your well-developed power of concentration, you can close your eyes lightly for a moment or two just before going in front of the camera to play a scene. When you reopen them they'll be relaxed and fresh, even after a hard day under bright studio lights.

When the untrained actor starts acting, he's inclined to use his eyes artificially. He blinks too much.

A careful study of the length of time good performers go without blinking, and how annoying too much blinking can be, is an effective way to become aware of your own blinking habits.

Here is an exercise which will also help you eliminate this weakness.

Exercise

Concentrate on the elevator muscles at the point of the cheekbone. Contract and release these muscles. Try for independent muscular control. Don't close your eyes or even squint as you contract the muscles.

Always keep in mind that these mechanical exercises serve specific purposes.

Our next exercise (Smile up—smile down) was used by Bill Williams early in his career.

Upon entering an elevator, Bill had a broad smile; as the elevator descended, he gradually realized that he had been hood-winked, his smile went down in the exact scale pattern of the exercise.

This simple exercise received rousing applause at the Hollywood premiere of the film—and Bill learned an object lesson in the importance of dependable technical resources, or tools. This exercise will give you the same results.

The exercise serves three purposes:

    1. It develops muscle tone and flexibility.
    2. It is an emotional "scale."
    3. It helps develop the line of concentration.

Exercise

Sit comfortably and mechanically force the broadest "vaudeville" smile you possibly can, stretching every muscle in your face. Show your teeth to the utmost.

Hold this smile for an instant, then—slowly—so slowly you can hardly feel the movement—go out of the smile. Slowly let the smile—and the energy that controls it—go down until you almost break into a sob.

Just before you break into a sob, let the energy return gradually and slowly. Go back up to the high, forced, mechanical smile.

It should take approximately a minute to go down, and the same amount of time to return to the original smiling position. Two minutes for the complete exercise.

In the beginning, the muscles of your face will jump and quiver during these facial calisthenics. Soon, you'll be able to blend, smoothly, the muscles used in going from the top to bottom to top.

Add another control factor—imagination—and make it a four-purpose exercise.

Imagine a story. The story has a happy beginning, gradually descending through conflicting processes of doubts and hopes, until it sinks into a hopeless tragedy. Just before you break into a sob, you realize the whole thing is a mistake. Your hope, gradually, rises until you reach your original point of happiness.

When you have done this two-minute exercise a few times, you will find that the physical action scale and the emotional scale synchronize and support each other—if they are controlled under strongly disciplined concentration.

Notice when you are at the bottom of the emotional scale, your breathing is heavy and labored. Your heartbeats are slow and loud. As you come back up the scale, you can feel your breathing and heartbeats speed up.

The effect is highly dramatic, as you have seen in the performances of the great Anna Magnani of Italy, Deborah Kerr, Paul Muni, Marlon Brando, Jorge Mistral of Spain, Paul Newman and virtually every exciting star.

Who can ever forget the glorious, emotional color palette of Greta Garbo!

Are You Ready To Move Onto The Next Lesson? Click Here