Did you ever hear of the “five-second rule”? The premise is that if you drop food on the ground, it receives less bacterial contamination if you scoop it up within five seconds. Therefore, it is still safe to consume. Right! I’m not so sure about the scientific support behind this theory.
Well, I have a little rule I use in my acting classes that I call the “three-second rule.” (It has nothing to do with licking food off of the floor, you’ll be happy to hear!) Especially when students are first starting out, they tend to get stuck just doing the same thing throughout the whole scene. They don’t change or grow. There are no dynamics. It’s boring and I don’t care about their characters because they seem unreal and flat.
But the character should actually be just like a real, flesh and blood human being, and should be affected by people and the environment and all of the tiny nuances that are teeming in the life energy around them.
Thus, the three-second rule.
As an exercise, I ask them to decide that every three seconds something must change. In order to encourage students to stay alive and to be affected by the scene constantly, I tell them, “Just stamp on your
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