Visual effects have become a mainstay in modern Hollywood, and they aren't going anywhere any time soon. It's not just big blockbusters that make use of digital wizardry either, as it's used to various degrees in all genres – from horror to drama to romance. With that in mind, actor Patrick Schwarzenegger thinks that curriculums in acting schools need to be updated, and he specifically thinks that performers should be learning about how to work on green screen stages.
Chroma key compositing (which is what green/blue screens are used for) has been a part of filmmaking for nearly a century, but there is no question that it is used more today than in past eras, and the young star best known for his work on Gen V and The White Lotus Season 3 thinks that the industry could do better to prepare actors for it. Schwarzenegger was recently a guest on the hit online series Hot Ones, and he recounted his first time working on a green screen stage, explaining,
What’s not taught in acting class, which I feel like they need to do, is green screen. Green screen work. When I did The Boys, The Gen V show, and it was my first day of filming, and we were in the studio and they had this whole dorm room built out, which was amazing set design. And I remember on the first day it was the scene where I go and I wake up and I go to the door and I open it, and you’re just staring at this green or the blue screen.
There are many different applications and uses for chroma key, but it's certainly not difficult to understand why it creates a particular challenge for actors. On top of knowing and becoming their character, the use of a green screen or blue screen demands an extra level of imagination that has to be factored into a performance.
Continuing, Patrick Schwarzenegger illustrated his point. Playing Luke Riordan a.k.a. Golden Boy, he had a lot to work with from his environment when shooting a scene in the character's dorm room... but then he had to step out of that space and enter "outside" for an action sequence:
All of a sudden, you hear the director yell, ‘OK, now trees are coming out at you!’ And, ‘You’re hearing voices from the right side!’ And you’re turning like this, and, ‘Now the trees are collapsing on you,’ and you’re like, ‘Ah!' So, you know, it’s a little weird not having practiced or worked on effects or green screen stuff.
Being neither an actor nor an educator personally, I don't know what the best method of teaching performance on a green screen stage – but I imagine that one of the simple goals would be exposure and experience. Regardless of context, if someone has the opportunity to work with chroma key sets in practice before encountering it in a professional capacity, they are automatically going to be more comfortable.
At present, it's unclear if Patrick Schwarzenegger will be in the upcoming Gen V Season 2 (spoiler alert: Golden Boy memorably died in the first episode of Season 1, but he has returned via flashbacks and in hallucinations), but there is little doubt that he is now working with green screen on other projects regardless. He has recently been working on the romantic drama Love Of Your Life with Margaret Qualley and is expected to be back in action as Donny Mitchell in The Terminal List: Dark Wolf, which debuts for Prime Video subscribers on August 27.
