Actor 4
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#004 The Audition Experience - 3
TL : Cnine
ED/PF :
Part 1
For Toru Nagara, this job was what you might call the sort of 〝relationship you couldn’t refuse〟.
The drama Toru was currently working on was a drama with a middle-school student as its protagonist.
Then, an image-building strategy from one of the sponsors had been brought into the mix: they would recruit extras from a school attended by ordinary middle-school children and give them the opportunity to experience the world of work.
Toru had come along with the intentions of the people in charge, but the result was exactly what he had expected.
――Well, I suppose this is what you get with middle-schoolers.
What the children would be doing was a small acting test.
They were only looking for extras. With a little acting instruction, you could use practically anyone.
But that was a 〝thing you could say to someone with a reasonable sense of judgement〟.
Even if their acting was awkward, that was fine, as long as it was difficult to notice.
A child who has never even studied acting, and one who is being gathered as an extra at that, is hardly someone you would expect to yield some dazzling talent or uncover a diamond in the rough.
This acting test was simply intended to determine whether they could be “thrown into the world of acting without seeming out of place”. That was all.
That said, the candidates were middle-schoolers, and highly impressionable ones at that.
From attention-seekers whose eyes gleamed with an overenthusiastic longing for the glamorous entertainment industry, to painfully earnest children who had convinced themselves that they possessed some hidden talent, the whole thing could, in a certain sense, be described as a parade of second-hand embarrassment.
Being unnecessarily grandiose was obviously out of the question. But, at the same time, someone who somehow drew the eye too much, or who mumbled away like visual noise on the screen, was no good either.
Viewers instinctively look for meaning in whatever appears on the screen.
If something strange or out of the ordinary slips into the frame, they may mistakenly assume that it is some kind of foreshadowing, or that it is leading to something.
An “extra who makes the audience pay attention” is therefore nothing but an obstruction to the work.
That was why the test needed to be a little strict. In fact, that was probably just about right.
Don't try to show yourself off, and don't be awkward.
They were made to do those things, and if it happened to be a lucky hit, they moved on to the next task.
One after another, they were made to perform the same theme, and a tick mark, a mark indicating failure, was written beside their names.
(That's why I don't want to use amateur kids. Every last one of them hasn't got a clue. We could just contact some random agency or theatre company and be done with it.)
In the end, what gave Toru the biggest headache was their lack of the industry's common sense.
An actor's job, when you got right down to it, was “how well they could perform the role they were asked to perform, exactly as they were asked to perform it”. Bringing children onto a shoot who couldn't control their own individuality, who had no sense or restraint whatsoever, was completely out of the question.
It was unbearable to bring in a child as an extra, only for them to do something unnecessary and get in the way of the lead of the scene.
If they attended a theatre company, this sort of awareness would be firmly instilled in them.
But when it came to using amateur children, they would start expanding their expectations and dreams in completely the wrong direction, thinking that they might become someone special, and end up running wild.
So, to put it bluntly, this sort of “request from the sponsor” was the most troublesome kind of order.
Toru had graduated from a specialist film school with the aim of becoming a director, and was currently building his career as an assistant director.
He had firmly established himself in the position of First Assistant Director, commonly known as the Chief Assistant Director, and had spent around two years working on all kinds of jobs as the person responsible for the set. He was beginning to feel that it was about time he took the megaphone as a director, but opportunities simply weren't coming his way.
The reason someone like him had ended up coming to something as mundane as selecting amateur middle-school students to be extras was, in short, a matter of deference to one of the sponsor's senior executives, who happened to be an alumnus of this school. Even so, Toru was already desperate to go home and felt like throwing the whole thing away.
「―― Still, this is pretty awful.」
「… It really is.」
The cameraman who had come along with him was a man named Kai Mukouda.
He had accompanied Toru ostensibly as a precaution, and also as a little practice in filming, but ever since the audition-like exercise had started, he had been having a difficult time himself, getting physically uncomfortable from the second-hand embarrassment and repeatedly having to suppress his laughter.
He muttered those words just as the audition-like session for the first class had come to an end.
Fortunately, the teacher who was present seemed willing to pretend that he had not heard anything, but if a student happened to hear it, there was a risk that all sorts of true and untrue things could end up being written about them on social media.
It would be unbearable if that turned into people saying that he had “caused trouble at his old school”.
All that mattered was that matter ended safely and without incident.
In the worst-case scenario, Toru could pull some extras from a theatre company and simply insist to the sponsor that they were current students.
Thinking that, Toru nodded to the teacher who was present and had the next class, Class 2-2, the class Kyoya belonged to, come in.
Performing in front of other people was already a considerable psychological hurdle, but when it came to filming, even more people would be watching their movements and expressions. That was why they had deliberately decided to bring in one entire class at a time.
Among the boys who came in, one seemed to be announcing “I'm the class clown” with every step, while the girls looked as though they might start squealing at any moment.And then, walking in behind them with a composed air, was Kyoya. At the sight of him, Kai and Toru's expressions changed ever so slightly.
―― He's calm... Or rather. Isn't he a little too calm...?
When someone stepped into a special situation like this, they normally became tense, for better or worse.
As a result, their voices would generally become strained or tremble more than necessary, and those reactions would also show themselves physically.
And yet, none of that could be felt from Kyoya.
It wasn't as though there was anything particularly striking about Kyoya's appearance.
However, he had a clean, neat appearance and good posture.
In this industry, as long as you have acting ability, having a “face that looks good on camera” is enough.
There are more than enough people with unnecessarily good-looking faces, so there is no need to compete on that front.
One by one, they would introduce themselves, exchange a word or two in conversation, and then perform a little acting exercise.
All that mattered was whether they could follow the order they were given and perform accordingly.
As for the boy who liked to show off, putting it rather bluntly, he was about what one would expect.
The bright, lively girl with plenty of sparkle was a little too eager to stand out, making her difficult to use.
The sharp-eyed girl was so stiff with nerves that it was already getting in the way of her acting.
And so, one after another, they went through the test.
Then it was Kyoya's turn.
「―― I'm Kisen Kyoya. I don't have any ‘experience’ in acting yet, but that's precisely why I found it interesting, so I decided to apply.」
Even the way he answered was different from the other children around him.
Unlike the other students, who seemed to believe that drawing attention to themselves with an emphatic me, me, me would make them stand out, he introduced himself calmly and matter-of-factly.
For the first time, both Toru and Kai felt something stir inside them. (This might turn more interestng than I thought.)
It was no more than a vague sense of curiosity towards an unusual boy, but in this industry, having something that draws you in was an important quality in itself.
Then, just as instructed at the beginning, they were asked to perform the same scene.
Since a fixed camera was all they needed, Kai, the cameraman, walked ahead.
The scene was simple: the child walking behind him while looking at his smartphone noticed a handkerchief Kai had dropped, called out to him, and handed it back.
「――Ready... Begin!」
Rather than calling “Action!”, they used a simple cue, and the two began walking.
Kai slowly made his way from the corner of the classroom, with Kyoya following behind him.
Then Kai dropped it. Kyoya looked up from the smartphone in his hand, as though a moment late to realise what had happened.
Perhaps he had noticed the movement in the corner of his eye.
Kyoya quietly picked up the handkerchief, gave it a light shake as if brushing away the sand, then folded it neatly.
He then approached Kai, who was walking ahead, at a pace somewhere close to a light jog.
“Excuse me,” he said quietly, without making any physical contact.
But that alone wasn't enough to get Kai's attention.
He was wearing headphones.
Kyoya gave Kai's arm a light tap-tap, making the latter to turn around.
Then he simply said, “You dropped this.” While Kai checked what it was, Kyoya gave him a small bow and quietly walked away without saying another word.
―― Yeah. Completely ordinary. The sort of thing you see all the time in town... Right?
(Wait a second.) Toru caught his breath.
Everything they had seen so far had involved acting that either tried too hard to attract attention or was stiff and awkward. Kyoya's performance, by contrast, had been almost unnaturally natural.
It was almost as though he had simply recorded and recreated a scene from everyday life.
That was how little Toru had felt while watching it.
――Hang on. Hang on, hang on. It was acting, and I didn't actually... Realise it? Me? Did I really just accept it as something completely ordinary?
Given his position, Toru was the sort of person who watched every movement and instinctively considered how it worked as acting.
When a shop assistant handed him his change, for example.
When a taxi driver spoke to him.
When a staff member at an izakaya took his order.
He was even adept at reading a person's feelings from such ordinary parts of daily life, from the smallest of their actions, at picking out the difference between what they truly felt and what they chose to show, and even at drawing out the truth hidden beneath a smile.
And yet, Toru had sensed nothing at all from Kyoya's acting.
Not even a hint of anything out of place. Not even the fact that he had been acting.
―――― Which meant, in other words, that it had been perfectly natural.
As though he had not even been aware that he was acting.
As though someone from a world entirely separate from this one had simply stepped out of that world, without even realising that what he was doing was acting.
A shiver ran through Toru, raising the hairs on the back of his neck, and before he knew it, he had risen from his chair.
「Thank you. May I ask you one more thing?」
What was it that he had just seen?
As though he needed to confirm the answer for himself, those were the words Toru found himself saying.