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Why You Should Watch Yourself on Film
It’s one of the hardest acts of self-awareness
I studied performing arts at college before writing at university. It was acting that captured me, the dancing and singing portions of my course were just something to endure.
My class were sat in the hall one day, watching the recordings of our last singing exam. I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t watch myself. Hear myself. I sat, like the petulant teenager I was, at the back with my headphones in. I cranked up some rock and drowned myself out.
That was a decade ago. And I’ve only slightly improved my tolerance for watching myself.
Why is seeing yourself recorded so difficult?
It was my voice I hated at first. That was the thing I couldn’t reconcile. I was appalled that I sounded so different from how I heard myself in real life.
This dislike of hearing your own voice when recorded and played back isn’t uncommon at all. But at first it was unbearable. It still makes me cringe, but now it’s not even that, it’s everything else.
The first lesson I learnt in film acting was this: your face is not doing what you think it is.
Every time I watched myself back, I couldn’t understand it. How was that subtle…
