“She was asking questions like, ‘Why am I saying this line louder or softer?'” Helderman said. “Or, ‘Why am I doing this when the camera is there, but not when it’s not there?'”
She said her biggest challenge was just memorization: she immediately mastered his lines. But it took months to understand the concept of not just reciting a line, but speaking it softly or out loud depending on the context, and reinforcing the words with body language. Khoze said they taught him dialogue for one scene in one session, then worked on emotions, character development, and body language in another.
Of course, there are limits to your abilities: You cannot improvise. Well, she can, within limits, Helderman clarifies, it just wouldn’t be as neat a performance as a practiced sequence.
And unlike a human actor, you will have to convince the audience not to dismiss it as creepy or repulsive.
Japanese robotist Masahiro Mori proposed a theory in 1970 known as the “Mysterious Valley,” which says that the more human a robot appears, the more positively humans will react to it, but only up to a point. If the resemblance is too strong, the robot may cause a feeling of revulsion or restlessness. Exactly what triggers the mysterious valley is still unclear, said Karl MacDorman, associate professor of human-computer interaction at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis: factors could include facial and body proportions, the rate and naturalness of speech, and fluency or jerking motion
He said a lack of sympathy in the face of adversity may be an advantage for robotic or computer-animated villains like Gollum from “The Lord of the Rings,” using the concern of viewers to his advantage. “You are not supposed to relate to or empathize with Gollum, although sometimes you do,” he said. “But when we can’t relate to a protagonist, we are supposed to be successful, that’s where the mysterious valley can become disruptive.”
