Can a system make acting more realistic and more effective, or is it a matter of the actor’s innate talent, or is it a mixture between systems and talent?
Firstly, and one of the important questions is whether there is such a thing as talent ?
What is talent? When we were young, we always heard that someone had a talent for drawing or studying, and when we got older, we started hearing that someone had a talent for leadership, acting, business, business administration, etc. What does it mean that someone has talent? Does it mean that a person is born innately or in the scientific sense genetically with a talent for drawing, leadership, scientific thinking, or acting?? Or does it mean that the person has enough ability to be a painter, actor, leader, or scientist! There are several intellectual fronts on this issue. Some support the purely genetic basis, some support the purely environmental developmental basis, and others support a mixture of the two.
But regardless of the conflicts and far from them, everyone in his life notices certain people who have higher abilities than others, some of them can read for shorter periods and get higher results than others in the same study and some of them are very good at the sports or the leader of the distinguished youth group and some of them have a distinctive speech and some of them are a skilled painter or an excellent actor on stage and they received the same amount of study during the courses, are these features considered talent. Are these phenomena a genetic advantage or an environmental product or a mixture of the two or is the answer to the question something else considered a driver for these features that are considered talents that can be refined through systems, passion, practice and training to perfection.
Here we come to the concept of genetic readiness and competence and the role of exploiting it in forming and refining talents to reach the convincing and influential professional person in his field.
The important question is also whether following certain systems and harsh systematic training of a person who lacks genetic readiness and competence can bring a person to this degree of perfection in areas that are considered talent by the general public.
Now let’s talk about genetic readiness and competence, first of all, the concept of genetic readiness and competence should not be confused with the concept of skill that comes from learning, training and passion.
When we talk about innate talent, we talk in a simple way, but the word innate and genetic talent is a very complex subject. We are not talking about a single inherited trait, but rather a group of simultaneous and compatible physical, physiological, cognitive and behavioral traits and elements that help to achieve exceptional achievements in the field in which the person shows talent.
Some of these constituent traits primarily include acquiring the requirements of experience, for example, imagine that a person is born with an extraordinary athletic ability such as physical and physiological ability, but without any interest in sports, this talent will remain completely absent. There are no specific genes for each talent, but there are general genetic predispositions, such as sharp intelligence, for example. There are also genes that help in forming the talent, such as the genes that help in hearing and hearing sensitivity. Sometimes there are several genes that work at the same time to form the talent, such as a mixture between psychological stability and physical endurance.
What are examples of genetic aptitude and competence? First and most important is intelligence. There is no single gene called the intelligence gene, but there are multiple and overlapping genes that have a direct effect on intelligence.
- One of the most studied genes is the BDNF (Brain-Derived Neurotrophic Factor) gene. BDNF is involved in neuronal growth, synaptic plasticity, and memory formation.
Other candidate genes include those related to neurotransmitter receptors (e.g., dopamine receptors), neural development (e.g., NRG1), and synaptic function
- Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have identified numerous genetic variants associated with cognitive performance. These variants collectively contribute to an individual’s intelligence.
There are tests to measure intelligence quotient, which is a set of standard tests that measure different types of cognitive abilities, including verbal, spatial, visual and thinking skills. These tests are called IQ, and are used in several fields, including academic, professional and even security. But these tests are affected by other, more complex, non-genetic aspects, the most important of which are environmental influences. Evidence of this is the Flynn effect. The Flynn effect, which describes the increase in average IQ scores over generations, indicates that environmental factors (such as improved nutrition, education and reduced exposure to toxins) play a decisive role… The subject of intelligence tests, especially the IQ test, needs in-depth and separate research.
Secondly, the non-cognitive genetic physical characteristics (height, muscle mass, limb length, nerve response speed, bone strength, hormonal balance and rates, hearing sensitivity, visual acuity… and even metabolic patterns, psychological state and immune system) all of which are mentioned in the second case and the overlap between them are directly affected by genes. These two points indicate that potential talent is due to a certain and large percentage to any genetic trait or group of traits that work to accelerate the acquisition of experience and enhance the performance of experts in a specific field of talent. But genes do not work in complete isolation; genes work with environmental stimuli and interactions.
Here we come to the second important question: Can the harsh, systematic training and systems of a person who lacks genetic readiness and competence bring a person to this degree of perfection in areas that are considered by most people to be talents (environment and upbringing)? and this question is answered in details in the article “The Making of an Expert” published in Harvard business review website, and i will use some of this article information.
The best answer to this question Those are the conclusions reached by Ericsson, a professor of psychology at Florida State University; Prietula, a professor at the Goizueta Business School; and Cokely, a research fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development, who together studied data on the behavior of experts, gathered by more than 100 scientist.
This Scientific research reveals that true expertise is essentially the product of years of intense practice and dedicated training. Regular practice is not enough: to reach elite levels of performance, you need to constantly push yourself beyond your capabilities and comfort level. Such discipline is the key to becoming an expert in all fields, including management and leadership. These studies were conducted on elite surgeons, chess players, writers, athletes, pianists and other experts. What distinguished these people was the habit of deliberate practice and high and continuous focus on tasks that they could not accomplish before, as they analyzed the error and constantly tried to correct it. The study also included drama schools. By working with them, they also found that charisma and persuasion are the product of rigorous training directed in innovative ways and precise systems.
One of the most important of these experiments was that of two Hungarian teachers, László and Klara Polgár, who challenged the common assumption that women do not succeed in fields that require spatial reasoning, such as chess. They wanted to make a point about the power of education. The Polgárs homeschooled their three daughters, and as part of their education the girls began playing chess with their parents at a very early age. Their systematic training and daily practice paid off. By 2000, all three daughters were ranked among the top ten female players in the world. The youngest, Judit, became a grandmaster at the age of 15, breaking the previous record for the youngest person to achieve this title, held by Bobby Fischer, by a month. Today Judit is one of the best players in the world and has defeated almost all the best male players.
In 1985, Benjamin Bloom, a professor of education at the University of Chicago, published a landmark book, The Development of Talent in Youth, which examined the critical factors that contribute to talent. He took a deep, retrospective look at the childhoods of 120 elite performers who had won international competitions or awards in fields ranging from music and the arts to mathematics and neuroscience. Surprisingly, Bloom’s work found no early indicators that could predict the success of creative people. Subsequent research has shown no relationship between IQ and expert performance in fields such as chess, music, sports, and medicine, and has confirmed his findings. The only innate differences that have been shown to be significant—and they are especially significant in sports—are height and body size. All of the elite performers he studied trained intensively, were taught by dedicated teachers, and were enthusiastically supported by their families throughout their formative years. Later research, building on Bloom’s groundbreaking study, revealed that the amount and quality of practice were major factors in the level of expertise people achieved. The evidence has consistently and overwhelmingly shown that experts are made, not born. These conclusions are based on rigorous research that looked at exceptional performance using scientific methods that can be verified and replicated. Most of these studies are compiled in the Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expert Performance, published by Cambridge University Press last year and edited by K. Anders Ericsson, The 900-plus page handbook includes contributions from more than 100 leading scientists who have studied expertise and high performance in a wide range of fields: surgery, acting, chess, writing, computer programming, ballet, music, aviation, firefighting, and many more. Others. Some highly skilled doctors lose the ability to detect rare diseases in the body because they are no longer trained intensively, and so do top athletes who relapse at certain points in their careers because they are no longer trained intensively, focused on, and correcting errors. Testing methods could also be designed for creative professions such as art and writing. Researchers have studied differences between individual visual artists, for example, by having them produce drawings of the same set of objects. With the artists’ identities hidden, these drawings were evaluated by art judges, whose assessments clearly agreed on the artists’ competence, especially with regard to the technical aspects of the drawing. So the level of talent can be measured and can be scientifically replicated!
More importantly, and more profoundly, what is deliberate training? Are all types of training the same? No, let’s take a closer look at how deliberate practice works in leadership. You often hear that charisma is one of the essential elements of leadership and management, and that’s true. Being a leader often requires standing in front of your employees, your peers, or your board of directors and trying to convince them of one thing or another, especially in times of crisis. A surprising number of executives believe that charisma is innate and cannot be learned. However, if they act in a play with the help of a director and coach, most of them will be able to appear significantly more charismatic, especially over time. In fact, working with a leading drama school, we have developed a set of acting exercises for managers and leaders that are designed to increase their powers of charm and persuasion. Executives who do these exercises have shown marked improvement. So charisma can be learned through deliberate practice. Consider that even Winston Churchill, one of the most charismatic figures of the 20th century, practiced his oratory in front of a mirror.
Let’s take a sports example to illustrate the idea of deliberate practice: Imagine you’re learning to play golf for the first time. In the early stages, you try to understand basic strokes and focus on avoiding serious mistakes, playing rounds with others who are likely to be beginners like you. In a surprisingly short time (perhaps 50 hours), you’ll develop better control and your game will improve. From then on, you’ll improve your skills by putting more balls and participating in more games, until your strokes become automatic: you’ll think less about each shot and play more intuitively. Your golf game now becomes a social outing, where you occasionally focus on your swing. From now on, spending extra time on the course won’t significantly improve your performance, which may remain at the same level for decades.
Why is this? You’re not improving because when you play a game, you only get one chance to hit the ball from any given spot. You can’t figure out how to correct mistakes. If you are allowed to take five to ten shots from the exact same spot on the court, you will get more feedback on your technique and begin to adjust your play to improve your control. In fact, professionals often take multiple shots from the same spot when they practice and when they review the course before a tournament. It is very easy to neglect deliberate training. Experts who reach a high level of performance often find themselves responding automatically to certain situations and may rely exclusively on their intuition. This leads to difficulties when dealing with atypical or rare situations, because they have lost the ability to analyze the situation and work through the correct response. Experts may not be aware of this creeping intuition bias, of course, because there is no penalty until they are faced with a situation where the usual response fails, and may even cause harm. Older professionals with a lot of experience are particularly susceptible to falling into this trap, but it is certainly not inevitable. Research has shown that musicians over the age of 60 who continue to practice intentionally for about ten hours a week can match the speed and technical skills of 20-year-old expert musicians when tested on their ability to play an unfamiliar piece of music.
Did you know that young amateur athletes in specialized universities or sports institutions such as runners, football players or swimmers in the current century are better than the winners of gold medals and major awards in the twentieth century??
What is the reason for the lack of major scientific discoveries such as those in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and the transformation of sciences into precise and complex fields and the cumulative experimental construction on previous fixed theories with attempts that are not sufficient to form a new large scientific picture??
What is the reason for the weakness of the role of philosophy compared to the previous time? What is the reason for the increase in IQ rates worldwide?
The reason and the accurate answer to these questions and others is the system.
What is a system?
A system is a collection of elements that work together as a whole by a law, understood or not understood, it is a complex dance of interactions where each part affects and is affected by the others. Imagine a living organism: every cell, organ, and system works in harmony to sustain life. Or consider a city: its infrastructure, economy, and social fabric intertwine to form a dynamic entity.
There are two types of systems:
1- Natural system: governed by known and unknown abstract natural laws. They are characterized by the following:
Self-organization: They arise spontaneously without external intervention.
Complexity: They exhibit complex patterns and behaviors.
Resilience: They can adapt and recover from disturbances.
Sustainability: They operate in balance with their environment.
Examples:
Ecosystems: Forests, oceans, and grasslands are complex networks of organisms and their physical environment.
Weather systems: Atmospheric patterns that cause rain, wind, and storms.
The human body: A marvel of interconnected organs and tissues.
2- Intellectual systems: Systems that are man-made to achieve a specific goal. They are the product of human creativity and depend on technology and social structures. They often interact with natural systems, sometimes harmoniously, sometimes with unintended negative consequences.
They are characterized by:
Purpose: They are created to achieve specific goals.
Control: They are often managed and regulated by humans.
Evolution: They are constantly adapting based on feedback and new knowledge.
Interdependence: They depend on other systems for their functioning.
Examples:
Transportation systems: roads, railways, airports.
Economic systems: markets, trade, financial institutions.
Communication systems: the Internet, telephones, media.
Note: There are human-made systems that are self-adapting and have the ability to function and evolve without human intervention, similar to natural systems, but this is a larger topic that needs separate research. The distinction between natural and human-made systems is not always clear. They often interact and influence each other in profound ways. For example, agriculture is a human-made system that relies on natural processes such as photosynthesis and pollination. Climate change is a result of the interaction between natural climate patterns and human activities.
The systems is a very complex concept and I cannot explain it and give it its due in this research, but I will extract what is useful for this research.
I will answer one of the questions that were previously asked: Did you know that young amateur athletes in specialized universities or sports institutions such as runners, football players or swimmers in the current century are better than the winners of gold medals and major awards in the twentieth century??
The answer: The reason is due to several factors:
1- The development of training systems: advanced training methods, including specialized training, scientific methods of exercise, and data-based performance analysis.
2- The development of nutrition and recovery systems: access to advanced nutritional knowledge and nutritional supplements that enhance performance and the development of medical sciences that help in speeding up recovery.
3- Scientific developments and technological breakthroughs: Scientific research available today that benefits training systems, injury prevention and improving performance in addition to the great development in training places and equipment.
These reasons above have made the competition more intense and this new competition itself generates a stronger generation of athletes due to the natural systems adapted in the human body that push people to much higher levels. This mixture between natural systems and artificial systems is the answer to the question.
After this amount of important details and necessary introductions about the concept of genetic readiness and deliberate training, and introduction to systems now let’s return to the origin of the topic:
the art of acting and persuasion and what are its special systems. The most important special system in acting is the Stanislavski’s system, which is a system developed by the Russian theater practitioner Konstantin Stanislavski in the first half of the twentieth century. This system is somewhat not that complicated, but it is revolutionary. I will explain it briefly: The most important rules of this system:
Magic if: This element is considered one of the most important and most famous elements in this system, and it is simply an actor asking himself, “What would I do if I were in this situation?” This helps create a sense of reality and authenticity in the performance.
Emotional memory: This element depends on the fact that actors can rely on their personal experiences to evoke real feelings on stage. By remembering past feelings, actors can add depth and authenticity to their characters.
Goal and action: Every character that an actor wants to embody has a goal or purpose. To achieve this, they take specific actions. Understanding these goals and actions is crucial to creating a realistic performance.
Circumstances: This element refers to the background of the character to be impersonated, their relationships, and the world they live in. Understanding these elements helps actors create a rich and detailed character.
Subtext: The meaning beneath the lines, the unspoken thoughts and feelings that drive the character’s words and actions. Sometimes this element leads the actor to improvise.
Teamwork: This element emphasizes the importance of teamwork in order to create a cohesive work of art and to understand the feedback that actors receive while impersonating characters.
This system focuses a lot on concentration, calmness, and increasing the actor’s imagination. It encourages deep analysis of texts and building more complex details, and then intensive training. The advantages of this system are that it is very flexible and its results vary from one actor to another according to the mechanisms of its application and the training patterns specific to each actor. This system focuses a lot on the art of feelings more than the art of delivery, so the focus of this system is on the actor’s awareness and his ability to control his deep psychological feelings. When these mechanisms are combined with a high-level physical delivery that is consistent with the actor’s inner feelings, the outputs of this system are realism and influence in acting.
This system has been developed over time by many specialists in different fields such as Lee Strasberg (the psychological aspects), Stella Adler (the sociological aspects), Sanford Meisner (the behavioral aspects) and Michael Chekhov, one of Konstantin Stanislavsk’s students who studied and promoted the practice of this system in a natural way with the subconscious or with a strong focus on psychology, To generate the currently popular and most influential technique in the world of acting, which is Method acting, which is an advanced system and differs in results from one actor to another, based primarily on Stanislavski’s system.
This system has been widely adopted in specialized art institutions in the United States of America and the United Kingdom. Among the influential examples of the application of this system in cinematic films, which I can mention now because of its effect on me as a viewer :
- Marlon Brando in the movies like godfather and apocalypse now.
- Heath Ledger in the batman dark knight as the joker.
- Jake Gyllenhaal with Hugh Jackman in the prisoners movie.
- Al Pacino in scarface and godfather.
- Sean pean in the mystic river.
- Natalie Portman in black swan.
- Cate Blanchett in tar.
- leonardo DiCaprio in Django unchained.
- Christoph Waltz in Inglourious Basterds.
- Joaquin Phoenix in the joker.
- denzel washington in training day and American gangsters.
- Russell Crowe in a beautiful mind.
- Ellen Burstyn and Jennifer Connelly and Jared Leto in Requiem for a Dream.
- Gary Oldman in the darkest hour.
- Jack Nicholson in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and the shining(more leaning to Michael Chekhov methods).
There are actors who, through intensive and deliberate training on this system and its techniques, adopt the character they want to impersonate outside the studio, but rather in real life for long periods, and delve deeply into the character to master this role in the actor’s consciousness and subconscious. The most prominent and most capable actor in this type of acting is the great and brilliant actor Daniel Day-Lewis.
There are many examples of very distinctive performances by many of the great actors, deceased and currently present, whom I cannot mention now. We must not forget the role of film and theater directors and those trained to bring out the best of what actors can do in a cinematic work and the necessary effects to make the viewer enjoy the greatest amount of realism. Among the most prominent distinguished directors and those with a deep vision for this system are Martin Scorsese, Stanley Kubrick, Steven Spielberg, Alfred Hitchcock, Quentin Tarantino, Andrei Tarkovsky, Francis Ford Coppola, David Fincher, Christopher Nolan, Akira Kurosawa and other great directors.
Sometimes this system does not need a real actor, but it can be implemented in animation in a way that can be as effective or more effective than real works. This type of work is famous in Japan in particular, and then the United States of America, such as the masterpieces of Hayao Miyazaki, Isao Takahata, Satoshi Kon, and some famous Disney works such as Toy Story, and other prominent works.
Conclusion:
The difference between genetic predisposition or genetic gift and non-genetic development is a very complex and thorny topic and a subject of great controversy among scientists specializing in this field. Despite all this, in short, talent and its emergence and refinement are a dynamic process and not fixed and are affected by several factors that help in the growth of talent or in its inhibition.
The important and final topic that links nature versus nurture is epigenetics, which is the study of changes in organisms that occur when non-genetic stimuli turn genes on or off. These changes are crucial to the organizational development of the organism: Most cells in our bodies have exactly the same genome, but epigenetic stimuli have affected cells that have developed as skin, muscle, or nerve cells. Changes in nutrition, exposure to certain stressors, exposure to toxins, or infections can change the genome to influence how organisms develop. Many epigenetic changes can also be passed from parents to offspring, allowing for a form of extragenomic inheritance. This means that some of the ways in which an organism develops are determined not only by the genes passed on by their parents and grandparents, but also by the lives they have lived and that the organism lives.
This gives credence to Jean-Baptiste Lamarck’s theory of inheritance.
The interaction between genes, training, deliberate practice, upbringing, and the effects of the systems creates expertise and excellence in a particular field. A specific and precise system or deliberate training can affect a person at the genetic level by inhibiting or activating specific genes that help create and refine a specific talent leading to expertise and even the possibility of inheriting this qualitative pattern to children. Thus, the role of the environment in shaping and refining expertise is pivotal and very important in shaping the talent of a person who is genetically unprepared and or inhibiting the talent of a person who is genetically predisposed. The topic of epigenetics and complex systems is a very complex topic, and its connection to talent increases its complexity. I will devote special articles to it and part of my upcoming books.
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