#and also there's a year's worth of bbs brainrot in my brain

[airenyah]

@gillianthecat thanks for your tag! i haven't watched this show that you're talking about here, so i can't really say anything specific on these actors themselves

re: your question on disentangling face and acting [spoilers ahead for "bad buddy" and "theory of love" if anyone reading this cares]

disclaimer: this is not proof-read

this is possible, actually! there's a bunch of actors whose faces i like but i still have some negative criticism on their acting. however, in order to do so you need a trained eye and some first-hand acting experience also helps. although i would say your eye is more important here, bc i don't think an actor who never learned how to look and analyze would have that much helpful feedback to give either. personally i was just lucky that i had two teachers at drama school who would make a point of us students analyzing each other's performances. (and i'm also lucky to have a mother who's got an insane eye for performance and who'll watch thai bl with me so i can train these skills even at home)

point is, once you know what to look out for then you will have an easier time distinguishing between what's good or bad even when you like someone's face

(disclaimer: i struggle with acting terms in english bc i usually talk about this in my native language german)

sending: a big topic at drama school was for example "senden" (i guess you can translate it directly to "sending" in english). i won't get into this concept right now, but when you know what that is and what it looks like when an actors "sends" then you'll see it even when the actor has an interesting face

dringlichkeit: also something my monologue teacher talked about all the time. i guess it's best translated with "urgency". this is all about how much urgency comes with a character's emotions and actions, how important everything they're doing or saying is to them. big topic, but hard to explain in a tumblr post

changes? another thing i look out for is whether anything changes. some actors tend to do the same thing over and over again (in a single scene up to throughout the entire series). this can also really difficult to catch if you don't know how to look, but once you do it gets really obvious. basically what i pay attention to is what emotions i can get from a character and whether they're always running on the same basic emotion throughout a scene/epsiode(s)/entire series. hereby it's important to remember that even if the emotion has the same term it can still be different bc emotions are a LOT and we usually feel a whole MIX of emotions. what i mean by that is that when a character starts a scene (or monologue or whatever) angry and ends that scene angry, something about that anger should change by the end of it. maybe the character starts out the scene in a hot rage where they're just angry and annoyed and pissed of and just DONE and ends the scene in a kind of anger where that annoyance and and rage has been replaced with an underlying desperation and the feeling of betrayal and pain. changes apply not only to the portrayed emotions, but also on things such as tempo, volume, etc.

processing: this is another very subtle thing. basically what happens in real life is you see/hear something, your brain has to process that new information and only then you can (re)act. actors who have memorized a script and know exactly what their co-stars are saying should still go through that process. i can see it when an actor doesn't let the words of their co-stars sink in first before they continue with their next action and i can see it when they character is supposed to have new thought and the actor doesn't play the moment a split second beforehand when the character is supposed to have that next thought (you can't act when the thought of the action hasn't even crossed your mind first. your brain is controling your actions so it all has to go through there first). i can see it when a character is supposed to be taking a decision but the actor doesn't take that decision in their head first. and you can also see it when actors do act all of these things out (an absolutely fantastic example: look at the journey of facial expressions ohm goes through in the ep5 rooftop scene right before pat answers "no"!! you can see how he takes in pran's question of "do you want to be my friend", you can see how he considers this question, how he really thinks about it, about what he should say and probably also how pran might react to it, you can see the moment he comes to a conclusion in his head after all that thinking and you can see how he switches to determination right afterwards as he decides to tell pran the truth that no, he does not want to be friends. and my favorite thing about this is that it actually takes him two tries! there is a moment where his lips fall open as if he wants to say something but the words don't come out and it's only on the 2nd attempt that he manages to let out a breathless "no")

thoughts/images: ok so my monologue teacher would talk a lot about "having your thoughts straight" (to put it this way in english. in reality he kept saying various versions of "die Gedanken haben müssen"). my mom instead keeps going on about "creating images". personally i feel like these two concepts come together because in order to create images (you know, like panels in a comic book or pages in a flip book) you need to have actual thoughts. once you know what it looks like when an actor is in no-thoughts-head-empty mode it becomes really obvious when there is absolutely nothing going on in their head. (again for an absolutely fantastic example of an actor having A LOT of thoughts in their head i refer you to my boy ohm pawat, specifically his facial journey on the rooftop between "do you want to be my friend?" and "no". or also the ep4 scene with pat, ink and pran at the bar after ink and pat had the photoshoot, just watch pat the entire scene and you can also see that there's a lot going on in pat's/ohm's head)

spielrichtungen: this is one of those words where i have literally no clue how to say it in english and it's frustrating bc my mom and i talk about this A LOT when we're analyzing acting. a somewhat literal translation would be "direction of acting" or "direction of playing". i guess the best way i can explain it is that what we mean by that is the direction in which the focus or an action of the character is going. it can be outwards it can be inwards (for example a character talking to someone else vs a character talking to themselves). it can be forwards, it can be backwards, it can be up, it can be down. it's always amazing to see when actors are able to jump around with their directions a lot (on that note, i went to watch one of my acting teachers in a play last month and he did that so well, it was a joy to watch). a character's direction can be backwards even when they're talking directly to someone (for example if the character is talking to someone they really don't want to be talking to). a character might be in a conversation and then suddenly switch their focus inwards as they think about something that has just been stated or they might even say entire sentences to themselves (on that note one of the major differences between ohm's acting as pat in bbs and phukao in 10 years ticket is that as pat his direction tends to be very outward and forward whereas as phukao it tends to be very inward. what i mean by that is these are the main directions the characters go through the world in, however ohm does switch up directions at any given moment depending on what the character is reacting to, thinking about, saying or is trying to achieve. meaning that even when phukao has a tendency to be very inwards he'll switch to an outward direction when needed and even when pat has a tendency to be very outwards and forward he too will switch to an different direction when needed. for example that scene in ep4 where ink fixes pat's hair, his direction is away from her and rather inwards, which is completely different only two scenes later in the nivea product placement where his direction is very outward and towards pran. and i LOVE ohm for these choices, it makes it so much richer bc you just KNOW my boy pat has zero interest in ink, no matter how hard he tries)

anyway, this is just the tip of the iceberg of things you can look at to judge whether an actor is better or worse. and these are concepts and techniques that you can absolutely notice even when you like an actor's face. and i know this from experience: for example, theory of love is a very important drama for me bc it helped me deal with a very similar situation in my real life. also, i absolutely ADORE gun atthaphan (his face is so cute?? help??) and i really look up to him as an actor. and yet there are still individual moments where i'm like "ok this doesn't quite work bc [insert reasons] and it would have had a stronger effect if he did [insert my own solution(s) i could come up with]" (for example that moment in the 2nd half of the series where third is sleeping in the theater and then khai comes up to him and kisses him? gun reacted too quickly there: we don't get to see third wake up and process the fact that he's being kissed and realizing exactly who is kissing him and reacting to that realization before he jumps into action. so then that entire scene falls a little flat, it would have been much smoother and would have had a better effect if we'd seen this whole process in third first) (speaking of gun.... on the topic of "does anything change?": gun cries a lot in various dramas and there are no words to describe how amazed i feel at the fact that he cries differently every single time. you can watch all his crying scenes back to back and it's always so DIFFERENT, it's never the same, like???? anyway, when it comes to actors i have a favorite crier and it's him, it's gun, bc damn that boy can cry. and it's so different every time)

also at this point i want to say: how one feels about an actor's performance is also a very subjective thing. just because i'm saying one thing doesn't mean that someone else with the very same experience and knowledge agrees with me. sure there are techniques and concepts that can help you judge whether a performance is good or not so good, but at the end of the day all art is about how it makes you feel and how it touches you personally. an inexperienced performer might touch you much more than an experienced performer for various reasons while for someone else it might be the other way around.

another anecdote from drama school on the topic of subjectivity: my colleague was preparing a bunch of monologues for an important acting austrian acting exam. she practiced them with our monologue teacher (an AMAZING teacher btw - one of the main people who trained my acting analysis skills) and there was this one specific monologue where he really loved her portrayal of it and said he didn't really need to do anything to help her improve it bc to him it was perfect as it was. personally i liked her protrayal just fine, but to me it wasn't all that special and so it wasn't one of my faves from her program. then at some point my colleague presented all of her exam monologues to our voice/articulation teacher for some more feedback (this teacher is the one i mentioned above aka who i went to watch in a play last month! also a very skilled actor). on this particular monologue the voice teacher gave the complete opposite feedback from our monologue teacher. (and actually, that was a really eye-opening experience for me bc i was like "oh WOW i get it, i totally knows what he means!! so that's what my problem with this monolgue was, that's why the monologue wasn't all that interesting to me, he's so right omgggg") needless to say, this caused a bit of a crisis for my colleague... (though there's a happy ending: she got through the exam!!)

alright, i'll stop here as i've already said way too much. also, all of this would be so much easier in person where i could pull up various clips from various shows and compare good performances with not so good performances and where i can point all the things out that i've just talked about and so you can see for yourself what effects that can have on you as a viewer and how much there is to discover 😅

I appreciate everyone's good advice to just drop the damn thing, but for some reason I feel compelled to keep watching Candy Color Paradox, and then complain about it. It's feeling like my experience watching War of Y, although they are very different shows, in that I'm fascinated by it's successes and failures. And I now want to find out what the show ends up saying (either intentionally or not) about the morality of paparazzi journalism. I did notice that two minutes after I paused to write my last post Kaburagi was questioning the ethics of what they did and how it impacted their subject, so I have some hope that the show is at least trying to say something.

However to avoid polluting the tags with my negativity for people who are enjoying the show, I'll keep my criticism below readmores.

Before I get into that, are the editors at the magazine trying to match-make Kaburagi and Onoe? 🤔Because they keep singing the praises of each of them to the other one. 👀

I think the biggest problem for me is that I just don't think the actors are very good. According to MDL they're both idols and don't have much previous acting experience, and I can tell. They're both trying their best, but there is this awkward amateurism to their acting that is distracting me and makes the characters feel less real. I'm just now watching the scene with Congressman's secretary, and it's clear just how much more comfortable this older actor is on screen (at least before he sexually assaults Onoe). He moves and talks and inhabits his body in this unselfconscious way that is engaging to watch. And in the scene when Onoe is talking to his bartender friend, Masayan, my eyes kept being drawn to the bartender, even though all he was doing was listening and nodding. But he just seemed so much present and real.

I bring these two other (much more experienced) actors up because it affirmed for me that it wasn't just my imagination. Both young actors have this tentativeness to their physicality, which really doesn't work for the supposedly cool and dominating Kaburagi, but neither does it feel like it matches the awkwardness that Onoe has. It feels like the actor's own awkwardness, rather than the character's, somehow. It doesn't help matters that they both seem made-up and styled like idols rather than journalists. They just both look so young.

They're not terrible, they both have some nice moments, and Onoe's face especially is growing on me. I think he's the stronger actor, actually, he has this wonderful wide-eyed way of looking at Kaburagi that temporarly creates the illusion that these two have chemistry. The roles I suspect are actually deceptively hard to do well, balancing complex emotions with slapstick comedy. I'm not an actor, but I imagine that's something that requires a lot of experience to pull off well. But it does mean that the chemistry isn't really there, that Kaburagi's philosophical musings feel shallow instead of like insights into a moral crisis, and that Onoe's panic about falling in love doesn't ring true for me.

And oh my god that final sex scene in the car, there was no connection there, it felt like they were each in their own world, not like they were reacting to each other. Which I get, it probably feels much safer for the actors to approach it that way. But it's so obvious on screen. At least a JBL is willing to portray sexuality on screen, I guess? Next step is helping inexperienced actors get comfortable with it. (Eternal Yesterday and Utsukushii Kare were on a different level all together, production and direction wise, and the actors in Old Fashion Cupcake are such pros that they probably could have managed it on their own, though I imagine they had support. And thus concludes the list of JBL I've seen that have attempted more than dead fish kisses.)

The other problem is a mismatch of my expectations and what the show actually is. I keep wanting it to be more serious; it touches upon these complex issues—the sexual assault, ethics in journalism, Kaburagi's feelings about trading sexual favors for information—and then glancing right off of them. Whereas I keep hoping for them to dig in. But it seems very devoted to it's yaoi roots, particularly with a sexually aggressive seme and a blushing maiden uke, and not interested in going much deeper.

And since this is my space to vent, I just watched another show where a completely untrained person was miles better at tailing people and taking covert photos than than these two are. The shows are completely different in tone and budget, so perhaps it's not fair to compare, but it did make me laugh. (I don't want to spoil that show, though it's barely a spoiler, but it's this one for anyone curious.)

[gillianthecat]

Thank you! I don't have any specific questions or responses right now, but I will be thinking about all this while watching actors from now on. (And no worries, I wasn't asking about that particular show, just about the general question of acting and actors' faces.)

I'm adding in your tags, if you don't mind, because as usual you have so much good stuff in there too:

#also i know i talked about ohm a lot in this post but that's mainly bc he's currently fresh on my mind with 10 years ticket airing rn #and also there's a year's worth of bbs brainrot in my brain #i have watched the entirety of bbs like 19x now and i've had a Lot of thoughts™ #(although this is still nothing compared to the 27 times i've watched the khaithird parts in tol in the past 2 years <3) #(although my thoughts watching tol have always revolved less around the acting and more around my own irl situation and my irl khai) #anyway another thing i want to point out is that all of this that i said about acting is also very relative #you have to go on a case-by-case basis #a scene-by-scene basis sometimes even moment-by-moment basis #something that works in one scene or one moment might not work in another moment #sometimes it can even be GOOD if a character doesn't show too many reactions on their face! #again it all depends a lot on the story and the character #again take ohm pawat as an example #i have to go and rewatch all of 10 years ticket again and really pay attention to what i'm about to say before i can confirm with certainty #but it seems to me as if ohm is waaaay more expressive with his face as pat than he is as phukao #which does fit the characters #judging whether someone's acting is good is often just about #''ok so there are all these concepts. so HOW does the actor use them exactly? what do they do with them?'' #and then seeing whether what they're doing is in accordance with the plot #it's really a lot like cooking: you have all the ingredients and how the outcome will be depends on how you actually use these ingredients #what works for one recipe might not work for the other and a recipe that one person likes might be hated by someone else #sometimes the outcome is totally passable and will totally satisfy your hunger #but an experienced cook might know exactly what to do in order to make the passable meal taste so much better #(like these videos where someone turns a fast-food meal into a 5 star meal) #(fast food might be good enough and satisfy you but maybe that fast food could be so much more) #(or maybe someone prefers the fast food over the 5 star meal who am i to judge 🤷🏼‍♀️) #anyway it's half past 12 so i'm gonna go watch today's ep of 10yt now bye

I appreciate everyone's good advice to just drop the damn thing, but for some reason I feel compelled to keep watching Candy Color Paradox, and then complain about it. It's feeling like my experience watching War of Y, although they are very different shows, in that I'm fascinated by it's successes and failures. And I now want to find out what the show ends up saying (either intentionally or not) about the morality of paparazzi journalism. I did notice that two minutes after I paused to write my last post Kaburagi was questioning the ethics of what they did and how it impacted their subject, so I have some hope that the show is at least trying to say something.

However to avoid polluting the tags with my negativity for people who are enjoying the show, I'll keep my criticism below readmores.

Before I get into that, are the editors at the magazine trying to match-make Kaburagi and Onoe? 🤔Because they keep singing the praises of each of them to the other one. 👀

I think the biggest problem for me is that I just don't think the actors are very good. According to MDL they're both idols and don't have much previous acting experience, and I can tell. They're both trying their best, but there is this awkward amateurism to their acting that is distracting me and makes the characters feel less real. I'm just now watching the scene with Congressman's secretary, and it's clear just how much more comfortable this older actor is on screen (at least before he sexually assaults Onoe). He moves and talks and inhabits his body in this unselfconscious way that is engaging to watch. And in the scene when Onoe is talking to his bartender friend, Masayan, my eyes kept being drawn to the bartender, even though all he was doing was listening and nodding. But he just seemed so much present and real.

I bring these two other (much more experienced) actors up because it affirmed for me that it wasn't just my imagination. Both young actors have this tentativeness to their physicality, which really doesn't work for the supposedly cool and dominating Kaburagi, but neither does it feel like it matches the awkwardness that Onoe has. It feels like the actor's own awkwardness, rather than the character's, somehow. It doesn't help matters that they both seem made-up and styled like idols rather than journalists. They just both look so young.

They're not terrible, they both have some nice moments, and Onoe's face especially is growing on me. I think he's the stronger actor, actually, he has this wonderful wide-eyed way of looking at Kaburagi that temporarly creates the illusion that these two have chemistry. The roles I suspect are actually deceptively hard to do well, balancing complex emotions with slapstick comedy. I'm not an actor, but I imagine that's something that requires a lot of experience to pull off well. But it does mean that the chemistry isn't really there, that Kaburagi's philosophical musings feel shallow instead of like insights into a moral crisis, and that Onoe's panic about falling in love doesn't ring true for me.

And oh my god that final sex scene in the car, there was no connection there, it felt like they were each in their own world, not like they were reacting to each other. Which I get, it probably feels much safer for the actors to approach it that way. But it's so obvious on screen. At least a JBL is willing to portray sexuality on screen, I guess? Next step is helping inexperienced actors get comfortable with it. (Eternal Yesterday and Utsukushii Kare were on a different level all together, production and direction wise, and the actors in Old Fashion Cupcake are such pros that they probably could have managed it on their own, though I imagine they had support. And thus concludes the list of JBL I've seen that have attempted more than dead fish kisses.)

The other problem is a mismatch of my expectations and what the show actually is. I keep wanting it to be more serious; it touches upon these complex issues—the sexual assault, ethics in journalism, Kaburagi's feelings about trading sexual favors for information—and then glancing right off of them. Whereas I keep hoping for them to dig in. But it seems very devoted to it's yaoi roots, particularly with a sexually aggressive seme and a blushing maiden uke, and not interested in going much deeper.

And since this is my space to vent, I just watched another show where a completely untrained person was miles better at tailing people and taking covert photos than than these two are. The shows are completely different in tone and budget, so perhaps it's not fair to compare, but it did make me laugh. (I don't want to spoil that show, though it's barely a spoiler, but it's this one for anyone curious.)