Researching Acting...

Through our many discussions as a group and researching various existing film openings, the other group members chose to cast me in the main role as Ariadne. This was for numerous reasons, one being that they believed I could understand her character motives and that I would be able to portray the character accurately.

One of the best ways that we have heard of that helps actors to portray the character to their best ability is method acting, in which the actor uses various different practises to get into the characters mind.

An example from film... The Iron Lady (2011) 
In preparation for her role as Britain's first woman prime minister Margaret Thatcher, actress Meryl Streep carried a bag similar to that of Thatchers with her before filming. In this bag, she placed items that she believed her character would have carried. By doing this, Streep effectively created a link between herself and the person she was portraying, trying to understand their motives and thought processes whilst also learning more about the person.

Of course, as I could already empathise with some of Ariadne's struggles as a character, I was able to pull from my own experiences and apply them to the way I portrayed her on screen. Costume and prop design worked intrinsically together to improve the verisimilitude of on screen character to on page/script. Although they were not essential to filming, we filled a bag with all the things that we thought she would carry with her to help me get into character: water bottles, some snacks, various different maps of London, the handwritten map and lots of scrap paper, covered in writing that showed her thoughts, escaping onto paper as they cannot escape her lips.

Key to our film is the use of voice over to convey the main characters thoughts as she cannot speak. This meant that body language and facial expression were at the forefront of how to act as Ari. Long looks to show frustration that she works hard to suppress, a sense of hopelessness at some points as well. This should definitely be evident in the close ups that we have of Ariadne fiddling with her hands in  nervous hesitancy or pushing back her hair when it gets to be too much. At times, we also had her tense up in fear, or contrastingly looking around frantically, skittish and wary of her surroundings even though she goes unnoticed by many around her. The constant switching of all these mixed emotions had to be clear to the audience and therefore, the acting could be somewhat exaggerated to a point to back up the voice over affectively.