Guess what I did today?
Cried on camera.
Without expecting it.
And without doing horribly.
In an improvised thing for a class, because I had to.
See, my drama class is shooting a film noir movie, and to help us build up to the actual shooting (developing character and stuff), our teacher is having us do this thing where we go into her office (either alone or with someone our character would normally talk to) and she would film us talking (either to her, if we were alone like I was, or with the other person). My character had some issues with the person who died (we were sisters), and so when I was talking about said issues, I just started crying. Because that's what my character decided she would do.
So I did.
And my teacher wasn't mad; she was actually really happy that I had finally gotten to the point where I could cry and make it look and feel normal, because I was just feeling it. After all, most people don't intend to cry, but they do. I wasn't intending or expecting to cry when I went in and started the thing. But I did. Go figure.
Apparently, not a lot of people in the class would let themselves get to the point where they would cry, on camera or off, in character or not.
But yeah. I did it.
I think it was easier because I was alone (instead of with someone else) and could actually talk about the issues that I wasn't allowed to talk about with anyone else, because that's the way the movie works (everyone has their own experiences, and there was a confidential bit in the info email that we got telling us what our specific, forbidden-from-informing-anyone-else-about experiences were).
In all, it was actually really fun.
Really.
Crying on camera - or crying at all, for that matter - is not usually fun for me, but afterwards, I just felt kind of liberated. I think it was, again, because there was nobody else around and I (or my character, whatever) was able to get the stuff off my chest (or my character's chest) that I was not allowed to talk about normally (or would not let myself talk about normally). My character doesn't really have any friends, you see. She's kind of a loner. Well, she has a few friends, but none of them are in the movie.
