[30 days of HappinessJune 11-2016Act 8Scene 6Take 1]
"I'm not leaving until I find him, Arthur. I can't just go back after everything. All this wild adventure, I need an end to it."
"There's no end. We are only here for today and tomorrow is our flight. If we don't leave for home right now, we are going to miss our high school graduation. Maybe he never existed."
"He does exist! I need answers from him!"
Claire said in a slightly raised voice. She looked like a genuine mess with her hair somewhat disheveled, and her expression was solemn, like she was on the way to losing her last hope.
On the other hand, Arthur frowned.
"We checked every place. Every clue we got from the letters. He's not here. He's not on the internet, and everyone says he never stops at one place. We can never find him."
It was already the end of their road trip, but they had failed to find Charles, and Arthur seemed like he had already given up on it. But that was not the case with Claire.
"I'm not going, Arthur. You can go." She said and looked up at him. Staring in his eyes, she said words akin to opening a pandora's box. "Anyway, you came on the trip just to win me over. You are not the type to do all this. You did it just because you think you love me when you don't. You never wanted it in the first place."
"What?"
Arthur stared in shock, feeling like someone had plunged a knife in his chest. It was that sort of sharp, depressing feeling that soon turned to anger and frustration.
"You know what. You are not wrong." He said. "I had motives, and they were stupid. I thought coming with you on this was my last chance to live my life. But it didn't give me what I was looking for. Because of you, I nearly lost my life, and had to sleep on a bench, and I'm questioning why I agreed to it every day. But I'm not the only one with motives. Claire Price, you are worse than me."
"Don't go there." Claire glared at him.
"Oh, I will. You didn't come on this trip to learn about your grandma. You came on this trip to find Charles to validate that love exists because you still love your fucking, cheating ex-boyfriend who never loved you but doesn't like him leaving you. You are just—"
Splash!
As Arthur was talking, Claire stood up suddenly, grabbed a glass of wine from the table next to him where an old couple was dining, and splashed it on him.
Everyone in the restaurant looked at them as a voice came out.
"Cut it. Can we do it again?"
Leo said, looking down at the screen where the recorded footage was playing with squinted eyes.
"What's wrong?"
Aiden asked, breaking down his immersion and tasting the wine dripping down from his face. He felt like the scene was fine, but it didn't seem like that from Leo's reaction.
"Nothing much. The quarrel was perfect, but the expression while throwing the wine can be better. Let's do one more take?"
"Okay."
Both Katie and Aiden nodded, and someone in the crew filled the wine glass again. The extra actors gathered for the restaurant scene sat down again.
For the next 45 minutes, Aiden kept getting splashed one after another.
"No, you need to show both surprise and anger."
"Let's do one more?"
"Katie, where are you aiming? Don't throw the glass. Throw the wine in it. We don't want injuries on the set."
"Aiden, I'm sorry, but can we do another one?"
Like that, Leo kept requesting one more retake every time, and Aiden's clothes kept getting soaked. He changed clothes after every take and was getting frustrated and exhausted.
Katie was the same as both tried to satisfy Leo, who apparently wanted the scene to be perfect in his eyes.
Finally, after a lot of tries, they got that perfect scene.
"Okay! That's it. It was perfect. Cut!"
When Aiden heard Leo say that, he couldn't help but take a sigh of relief.
He felt like he hadn't drank this much wine in his life. But in the end, it was finally over. He felt like he had even started to hate alcohol a bit because of this scene.
'I should avoid alcohol for a while after this.'
He thought, thinking that being an actor was not always fun.
***
The continued shooting day by day, and Aiden was clearly able to see that everyone on the set was working very hard daily. It was because they were at the end, and although people were exhausted, they were close to finishing it.
They were taking their motivation from there.
As Aiden was shooting more and more scenes, he showed his affinity rising every day, and it was also helping him out in the song as he made more progress on it.
But somehow, it wasn't enough.
He felt like he needed to push a bit more to capture the essence of Arthur completely, at least to his full capability, but something was stopping him from doing that.
It was like a wall that cultivators in web novels would often come across.
His affinity was currently stuck at 73, and Aiden still needed to finish the end part of the song. As they entered the second half of June, he started feeling more and more anxious about it.
"Young man, what are you thinking about?"
"Fred, hello." Aiden raised his head to look at Fred, the old veteran playing the role of Charles Dunkin. "I was just thinking about my role. The next scene is pretty important."
"Yeah, it is. But I think your acting is pretty good already. You impressed me a lot."
Fred said, sitting down next to him. He had first met him alongside the other cast in the case, and Fred had joined the set directly for the parts they were shooting in Europe.
He and Aiden got along well as the old man seemed like a jovial person who loved to play different types of characters. Aiden had noticed a faint innocence in himself, like he only lived because of his love for cinema.
"Thanks for your praise." Aiden smiled and then let out a sigh. "I'm just struggling a bit. I think I'm lacking something as to how I'm playing Arthur. It's like there's a thin wall between Arthur and me that I can't seem to cross."
Aiden explained. Fred was a veteran, and the old man was in Intermediate Grade 7 according to his system. It was a level that was very high for the current him, so he felt like Fred could help him out.
"That's a common problem between young and old actors. It's a good thing. It means you are taking your role very seriously."
"There's a way to cross the wall?"
Aiden raised an eyebrow and asked. Fred seemed to be in some sort of thought for a moment before he put a hand on his shoulder.
"From what I have seen of you, you make the script your religion. Actors do that, and it's a sign of a great actor. Give everything to the script but…" Fred trailed off in his words.
"But?"
"Sometimes, one needs to get out of the script. A type of acting that just doesn't keep on the pages of the script, but it is something more than that. Don't breathe like the script wants you to. Breath like the character." Fred smiled and shrugged. "I don't know if my advice will work or not but good luck."
After saying that, he patted his shoulders and walked away to talk to an assistant director.
His words kept ringing in Aiden's head.
"Get out of the script… Breathe like the character."
Aiden muttered and fell into some sort of thoughts. Fred's words seemed a bit philosophical, but they were extremely true when Aiden looked back at how he was going on with his scene.
He was an actor who would memorize the whole script and try to focus more on the actions of the characters to get a better idea of them but while acting, he would still follow the script and won't act out of line.
The only time he did it was in the interrogation scene as Kai, but even then, he had just tried to make the scene very real and grounded.
What Fred had told him was very different, but it surely was something that interested Aiden.
'I need to let my character control my actions and not control him. It's basically letting myself get lost and not try to come out of immersion.'
Due to his system, he felt like it could be pretty dangerous as he won't know how he would move next. It would all be very unexpected, but it might really help him reach the required affinity.
As he was thinking about that, some notifications suddenly appeared in front of him.
[You have gotten a better sense of the art of acting. It's a unique achievement.]
[You have gained experience.]
[You have acquired the unique skill 'Breakout scene' for a one-time use due to getting new insight into acting. In your next scene, you will break all your limits.]
[You are now one step away from improving your skill.]
Reading that, Aiden's eyes widened.
The next scene was with Fred, in which both characters would have a deep conversation.
It was one of his favorite scenes in the whole script.
...
