AH! That would make sense and might indeed have the desired effect.
In Of Mice and Men,, Lenny accidentally kills Curly’s girl, so as George, I come on the scene, and put my ear to her chest to ascertain death.
Well, our Girl was not only beautiful, but she also had a wonderful rack. The first time we did this in rehearsal, I looked down at her on the floor, with her large, lovely Lolos surging upwards, and was so was so intimidated, I gulped.
How was I going to do this without embarrassing either one of us, I wondered.
Well, she saw my discomfort and gave a small, devilish smirk.
That made it easy. We got it done without a hitch.
Oh Scriv, say it ain’t so! I love Cleveland.
Okay, you mean all those bodies at the beginning of Law & Order episodes, which have been on TV for years and years yet suddenly I can’t stop watching, those are not real bodies? They seem real.
I could never do it. Just being in a concert I immediately need to scratch my head or my nose or something.
That was the best take. I read a recollection by Ms. Leigh that lying in a shower was about as comfortable as it sounds and they had to shoot several takes as something kept going wrong. She had some moleskin stuck to her girly bits up top and over time, with the heat and moisture, the adhesive began to fail. As she was lying there on the last take, she said she could feel one of the pieces departing entirely and momentarily considered jumping up to preserve her modesty, but then thought, “I just want to get off this floor; let 'em look.”
This is a commonly known trick among acting professionals. It’s very effective; you’d be amazed what the camera can “see” when it’s that close to you. Part of the reason it works is that in order to deliberately relax the muscles holding your eyes in focus, you also have to let go of a lot of other unconsciously held muscles in the face, so your whole mask goes subtly slack.
(Another pro trick: Need to look teary? Don’t blink. Your eyes will rim with water and, after a couple of takes, start to turn red. No weepy method acting required. Look for it in crying scenes and you’ll notice actors not blinking. Eventually you won’t be looking at anything else. Sorry for ruining your future moviewatching with this distraction. :p)
Some actress, I want to say Bette Davis but I could be wrong, said that when she had a crying scene she would yank out a nose hair.
Or you can have a Private Moment™, *remembering * and *sensorally recreating *what it felt like to yank a nosehair.[/theater school geek hijack]
“Dead Body Guy” actor Chuck Lamb doesn’t give away many secrets of his craft, unfortunately.
I’ve seen enough June Allyson movies to know she didn’t need the nose hair trick, but I’ve never looked closely enough to notice her blinking or not. The snuffling nose bit might have been harder, so hard that only she could do it.
So*, nu*, it was a living for her.
They can also make a very realistic life-sized model of the entire actor, as they did of Sean Bean (Boromir) in LOTR, for the scene in which his body is sent downriver in a boat.
They just imagine that their career is over, and then pass out.
Boom-chikka-wow-wow.
Another really fine example of playing dead is Brian Blessed as Augustus in I, Claudius. As he lays on his bed in his devoted wife’s arms, she calmly explains to him why it was necessary for her to kill him. As with Kevin Spacey’s performance cited above, you can watch as the light goes out of his eyes and he remains motionless for quite some time. I read somewhere that this was done by freezing the frame, but I beg to differ. You can see the bedsheets moving on one side as the wife continues her monologue. The only flaw in the whole scene is that his eyes snap shut a fraction of a second before her hand passes over them.
I’m hoping you meant to say “attach it to a dummy.”
I’ve seen exactly one—though, arguably, the character was just very badly hurt, as they were stretchered out a few scenes later without a body bag.
Also, it wasn’t that great a movie, so they probably wouldn’t have cared, if they even caught it.
I’ve never died on camera, so I can’t answer for how it works in film or TV. I can tell you from onstage that there are a few tricky things about dying.
First off, holding your breath isn’t a good idea. You need to breathe slowly and calmly so that your rib cage doesn’t move, but if you try to hold your breath for more than about 2 minutes, you’re going to breathe whether you like it or not. Depending on what you were up to before you died, it can be really hard to find that calm breath - if it was a big fight scene, you may well be out of breath, which is fine if you get to die slowly, but if you have to die suddenly and be still after running up and down the barricade a la Les Mis, that’s hard! I think that’s why we were directed to go into slow motion at the end of the big barricade scene - to make it easier for everyone to slow down their breath. Enjolras got more time to calm his breath, but he also had to climb up and down the barricade about 6 times before he got shot. Fortunately, the focus was on Jean Valjean and Javert for much of it, but there was still a good 30 seconds of total silence and strong light where the least little twitch, swallow or fart would completely ruin the scene.
Try to die in a comfortable position - if you’re holding your body with tension, then that tension will eventually cause a twitch or a tremor.
This is a huge part of why Hamlet shirts (white so the fake blood can be boiled and bleached out, long sleeves and really baggy to help hide the movement of the chest.) are so popular onstage. It also helps that the focus will eventually shift to the people left alive onstage, and unless the lighting designer has been particularly cruel, usually the lights will go down on the dead guy to guide the story to those still telling it.
My (possibly wrong!) understanding is that in real life, the eyelids may need to be physically closed - onstage, this isn’t a good idea, as it’s a great way for someone to slip and put a finger in the eye of the dead actor, which usually gets a reaction.
There’s also a huge trust when you’re dead - actors like to arse around onstage, and the dead guy is a sitting target. Nothing like having someone yank out a nose hair or tickle you when you’re supposed to be past knowing… Yet another reason to always be good to your fellow performers - bad behaviour can come back to haunt you…
There is a Canadian movie called Kissed that had extended scenes up close with “bodies” in a funeral home and they did indeed have trouble with being able to see the pulse in some of the scenes. In an interview, the director stated that they had to edit things carefully so it wasn’t obvious. On a TV screen it wasn’t so bad, but she said during the dailies when they were projected on a movie screen, it was noticeable.