Entry 24 - Acting lessons (Botan)

Although they were there as teachers for our idol career, the Sano siblings were more than just singers and dancers, they were also good at being actors. Or rather the girls were good actresses since the boys didn't really do it as much.

But anyways after Kana watched the clips of Hololive Error she said we needed to have a class on acting right away since we completely lacked the necessary skills to properly act. Calling the work we did on those clips, mere caricatures of the characters we were meant to play.

She said that the only ones who felt as though she managed to play their characters well were Sui-chan and to an extent Sora-senpai. The rest of us still needed work.

With those things now in the front end of our heads Kana dragged us outside and told us she was going to show us how to play characters just with our voices and make them come to life.

Her major critique for us was the fact we were still using our regular voices when we were clearly capable of many more. It didn't feel as though the people in Error were different from us when clearly there were some.

She used Fubuki-senpai and Sora-senpai as an example, who were shy and timid girls in Error.

Kana showed us the clips and said that these two played their roles well since they captured the air of a shy girl through their voices, but on the other hand, Matusri-senpai felt stiff to her. The way she spoke felt like she was just churning out lines but not really speaking. Then she played Miko-senpai's part and said that Miko-senpai didn't really feel laid back but rather she felt like she was acting as if she was drunk.

Though she did acknowledge were reading the script and that our models were restricted, but she still wanted us to feel a bit natural and play our roles well.

The first thing she did was to show us how to use our voices to convey the character naturally. She used Matsuri-senpai's lines to give us an idea and boy did she really hit it home.

She rearranged some of the words and changed how it was said, but she was right, it felt more natural than the one in the actual video. She still kept Matusri-senpai's peppy speech and the word choices, but those little changes made for a much more natural feeling to it.

After that, she then took Noel-senpai's lines and played them as well. This time it was completely different, it felt more imposing than the one Noel-senpai played. She didn't change a thing, except the way it was executed. She did add some sighs and 'hmphs' in there but that made it come to life even more.

Once that was over she told us to take off our blindfolds and tell her what we felt. No one said a word, but if I were to guess what everyone was thinking, it would probably be like this:

"Holy hell we're noobs!"

The next part of our class was our body language, while she said that our models were restrictive, we could've still done something to make the performance better. Again she used Miko-senpai's and Noel-senpai's scene.

She said that Noel-senpai was doing the wrong stance for someone trying to scold someone else. Noel-senpai should've been more imposing, standing straight and only minimal movement. According to her, even if she wasn't a stiff character the difference in stance and speech can give off a feeling of slight insecurity, as if this was someone trying to be taken seriously when she wasn't.

Similarly, Miko-senpai didn't seem laid back at all in terms of movement, her speech was laid-back but her body language didn't match and in this instance matching them would be better. She advised Miko-senpai that laid back characters, may not move around as much and may hunch forward and shrug a lot more since they aren't as invested in conversations as others. She gave her a couple of examples on how to act with a more laid-back attitude and it did make a difference.

When placed onto the scenes those changes and little edits to the movement really made distinct characters. But of course, it wasn't perfect since we didn't a director to properly guide us, but it did feel a bit more improved than what we originally took.

I didn't expect us to be practising acting under them but I guess since some of us getting voice acting roles, it's best we do and who better to learn it from other than Kana.