Whenever I see a fiction film or TV program with a protracted scene of a dead person, I can’t help but look for a telltale twitch that gives the game away - aha! Acting! And in some cases it’s not hard to spot. Of course, you’re supposed to suspend disbelief and all.
But then, there are some who really don’t seem to move at all. The current Atonement has a scene with about two dozen schoolgirls in a field, and I can’t say I saw a single one of them stir, squirm, shudder, bounce, jounce, palpitate, twiddle, quiver, quake, tremble, heave, flicker, flap, bustle or undulate (see Thesaurus.com). It’s a short scene, though. A better example that everyone knows: Janet Leigh in Psycho, lying face up in a running shower as the camera backs away slowly from her open, staring eye. If she moves a single corpuscle, I cannot detect it.
Is there a trick to this? I could never hold that still! Perhaps some Hollywood yoga coach who specializes in this sort of thing? Or is it drugs?
Actually I think if you look close you can see her swallow. I’m not 100% certain as it’s been a while since I’ve seen the film but I remember hearing someone point that out.
Brian Blessed in “I, Claudius”. In his death scene, Siân Phillips is walking around a table where Brian B. is lying and he simply ‘passes on’, until after about 2 - 3 minutes, she closes his eyes. The camera doesn’t move from a close up of his face, and he doesn’t blink. You can see the change in shadow on his face as Siân P. crosses between the light source and him. As far as I know, no special training was done, just a tremendous determination on the part of Brian Blessed and the Director, Herbert Wise, to get that shot exactly that way.
On stage, the distance makes it easier to fake being dead, but sometimes, the live aspect means that you’ve been fighting with a sword for the last five minutes, or jumping up and down the barricades, etc., etc… Trying to lie still without obviously breathing, (esp. if you’ve landed in an awkward position that night) can be a real challenge. That’s the real reason you see those blousy ‘Hamlet’ style shirts in so many productions - if the shirt is baggy, it’s easier to conceal the breathing.
YES, she swallows. The first time I saw this movie, I thought time myself, “Hey, she swallowed, what the hell, why didn’t they reshoot that” Then I checked out IMDB and found this
That always seemed oddly defensive to me. (Hey, I saw her swallow…No you didn’t, she blinked and we edited it out…Yes I did, I saw her swallow…look buddy, she didn’t swallow, maybe you need to rewatch otherwise you might find yourself sleeping with the fishies) Watch the movie, it’s pretty clear she swallows after she dies. And besides, I noticed her swallowing without any prior knowledge of the confusion over that scene, so it’s not like I was looking for it or anything.
In televison and movies where there is no outside stimuli (rain, wind, people walking by, etc) often a director or editor will just use a single frame or small loop that has the body lying there with no movement. I have been told (I don’t know how true it is) that these days that CGI can be manipulated to eliminate some of the suggestions of life.
In Psycho of course, this is impossible because of the running water and seeping blood (chocolate) and the time which it was made which was long before computer graphics.
The test of a good actor used to be, can he pull off being dead on stage? There he has no cuts, no time away from the audience and generally he is lying there right at eye level. One of the biggest challenges for any actor was the scene in **Dial M for Murder **where the potential killer is killed by the potential victim. The body is dead stage center for about seven or eight minutes. I have seen it done a couple of times - once excellently and once pretty badly.