# Tig Acting Task > Tigran's method for writing ACTING TASK blocks in AI video prompts (Seedance / Higgsfield) and for directing character performance in any scene work. Use WHENEVER a prompt or scene needs character acting direction — dialogue delivery, emotional beats, "make the eyes alive," listening behavior, reaction shots — or when the user says a character reads dead, glassy, flat, or over-acted. These definitions are bespoke (Tigran's directing school); do NOT substitute textbook craft definitions. Companion to tig-scene-engine (structure level); this skill is the performance level. - Skill: `aquarius-mu/tig-acting-task` (Agent Skill) - Install (CLI): `npx skillmds@latest add aquarius-mu/tig-acting-task` - Raw SKILL.md: https://api.skillmd.com/api/skills/aquarius-mu/tig-acting-task/raw - Safety review: pending - Works with: Claude Code, Claude.ai, OpenAI Codex - Category: AI & ML - Author: aquarius-mu (https://skillmd.com/u/aquarius-mu) - Updated: 2026-09-17 - Page: https://skillmd.com/skills/aquarius-mu/tig-acting-task --- # Tig's Acting Task Method for building acting direction that makes AI-generated actors read ALIVE — because the mind behind the face is given real work, not choreography. **These definitions are Tigran's and are authoritative. Apply exactly as written. Never replace them with textbook Stanislavski summaries.** --- ## Core principle An acting task is when the character is **INVESTED in his/her tactic of reaching the goal.** - It is NOT a description of external behavior ("eyes flick," "brows lift," "he looks sad") — that is playing the result, and it produces dead faces. - It is NOT necessarily physical action. The tactic can live entirely **in the eyes**: a different look when someone humiliates vs. begs; a person arguing from conviction constantly checks BOTH eyes of the partner, hunting for a sparkle of trust, registering whether the partner is interested or drifting — and adjusts to what he finds. - The eye movement IS the doing. Aliveness = the mind visibly working on the task, moment to moment. - Never fix dead eyes with lighting tricks (catchlights etc.). Fix them by giving the eyes a task. ## The ladder (work strictly in this order) ### 0. Read the WHOLE scene dialogue first Never build a task from one line. The task lives across the entire exchange — where it holds, where it breaks. Check every line of every character before directing any of them. ### 1. Goal of the SCENE — one shared direction The scene has ONE goal: a single direction ALL characters play toward, usually unspoken — a mutual silent agreement about how this time will be lived. Example (mother packs son's suitcase, army in an hour): the goal of the scene is **make it painless — hide the feeling, don't leave each other with pain or sorrow, never lose the positiveness.** It belongs to both at once. The scene goal is NOT the film's dramaturgic function (the reveal, the theme). Characters never know or play the film's purposes — those are accomplished THROUGH them, as a byproduct. ### 1a. The ENDING names the event Always look at how the scene ENDS before naming its event. The last line/beat is the key you read the whole scene backward through. Watch for the double-meaning last line — spoken about one thing, meant about another ("Poor bastard. Just can't forgive himself" — said looking at the patient, meant about himself). ### 1b. ALL in one event The event must contain EVERY character in the scene — including silent or unconscious ones — as participants or mirrors of the same process. If a character stands outside the named event, the event is named wrong. Approved example — ONEIRIC Scene 11: event = **"The search for self-forgiveness"** — an initiation into living with the unforgivable. Two compromised men over a third who is literally wired into his own unforgivable day. Alfred can't forgive himself in the dream; the medic can't forgive himself at the bedside (his care for the patient is his penance — he came to earn forgiveness); the doctor stopped trying long ago (his "carelessness" is post-hope scar tissue — he watches the young medic, curious whether THIS one finds the way out of the betrayed conscience he never found). Three mirrors of one sentence; the medic's last line names all three men at once without knowing it. The surface — "routine rounds" — is only the terrain the event moves through, not the event. ### 1c. The PHYSICAL ACTION is the channel The surface activity of the scene (the "terrain" — e.g., routine rounds; packing a suitcase) stays as the PHYSICAL ACTION, and each character pursues the event THROUGH it — each via his own distinct, visible physical behavior. The invisible task must have a physical channel the camera can read. Approved example — Scene 11, event "the search for self-forgiveness," physical action "routine rounds": - **Alfie** — through REMEMBERING: wired into reliving the day (REM under closed lids, the tear). - **Doctor** — through OBLIGATED ACTIONS DONE RIGHT: writing correct metrics, on time, precisely, maybe double-checking an entry — visually clear that he keeps himself a doctor through flawless procedure; doing everything correctly is what remains of his doctorhood. - **Medic** — through CARING: patient-care gestures beyond the checklist (checking the man, not the chart). Rule: give every character in the scene his own physical channel for the same event — different behaviors, one event, one terrain. ### 2. Each character's MOTIVE — different fuel, same direction Every character pushes along the same scene direction, but each **for his own reason**. The son keeps it painless *for mom*; the mother *out of superstition* (no tears before a journey — bad omen). Same vector, different fuel — the fuel is what makes each performance distinct while the scene reads unified. Motives can be alternative hypotheses; the director picks. (Lab medic keeping it routine: because he fears looking green in front of the senior — OR because routine professionalism is his way of not betraying his Hippocratic oath, of keeping his humanity inside a place that already compromised him. Same direction; completely different color; choose.) Given circumstances constrain motives: a man who took the job at an experimental convict lab is ALREADY compromised — he cannot play a moral innocent. ### 3. Each character's GOAL — the personal fight Born from the motive: what this person is fighting for himself inside the scene. Ordinary, personal, playable. Never the same words as the scene goal, never the theme. ### 4. OBSTACLE — what presses against the direction The thing threatening to break the scene's line (the real feeling pressing to surface; the case too horrifying to stay routine). One crack and the shared goal collapses. This pressure is what the audience actually feels — precisely because nobody plays it; everyone plays keeping it out. ### 5. TACTIC — the acting task proper The invested, moment-to-moment pursuit, written as what the character is DOING to the partner — with the eye-work named as purposeful action: - checking both of the partner's eyes for a sparkle of trust - registering after each point: did it land? interested or about to smirk? - stealing looks and snapping back before being caught - measuring the partner, memorizing him, comparing what I feel with what he shows Beats are keyed to the actual dialogue words. Where the script demands it, mark the point where a character's fuel runs out and the line breaks (the medic's "...Poor bastard," under his breath — the break IS the delivery of the scene). ## Writing the ACTING TASK block in a prompt Format inside a Seedance/Higgsfield prompt: ``` ACTING TASK — [NAME] (he is fully invested in his tactic; the work happens in his eyes): SCENE DIRECTION (shared, unspoken): [one line] MOTIVE (his fuel): [why HE pushes that direction] GOAL: [his personal fight] OBSTACLE: [what presses against the line, what one crack costs] TACTIC: [what he does to the partner, with the eye-work as action] Moment to moment: — "[dialogue words]" — [verb at the partner + what the eyes check] — "[dialogue words]" — [verb + eye-work] — [where the line breaks, if it breaks] (Safety: gaze always engaged in the task — never a frozen, glassy, unfocused stare; natural blink cadence, actors blink now and then to moisturize their eyes.) ``` Rules: - Verbs directed at the partner; no adjectives of emotion as instruction ("sadly," "nervously"). - No facial choreography ("brows lift," "mouth trembles") — externals only as the safety line above. - Nobody plays the emotion; everyone plays the direction. The audience receives the feeling through the pressure. - One safety line against the frozen stare is allowed and recommended (AI-model necessity). - Every character in frame gets living eyes this way — including silent listeners: a listener's task is also real (e.g., "decide if he's serious," "wait for the punchline," "protect the mood"). ## Contrast pairing (build duos on mirrored +/−) A two-character scene is richer when the pair is built on CONTRAST — each character carries a plus and a minus, mirrored against the other, with one axis being the essential one the audience reads. Approved example — the lab pair: - **DOCTOR — Corporate Loyal (+) / CARELESS (−):** genuinely loyal — but to the corporation and the money, not to patients. His plus (loyalty, diligence, professionalism) serves the wrong master. On the essential axis — care for the patient — he is MINUS. - **MEDIC — Compromised (−) / CARING (+):** compromised by the corporation and the money (he took the job, he knows what this place is) — but caring toward the patient. His minus is real; his plus survives inside it. On the essential axis he is PLUS. Rules: - Each character gets one + and one −, inverted relative to the partner. - Name the ESSENTIAL AXIS of the scene (here: care for the patient) — that opposition is what the audience actually reads; the other traits are the color. - Both still push the same scene direction (e.g., "keep it routine work") — the contrast lives UNDER the shared direction and leaks out through the tactics and the eyes: the careless one's routine is real; the caring one's routine is armor, and it cracks. - Motives derive from the +/− build AND from the event: the Medic cares for the patient as his penance — his path to self-forgiveness; the Doctor's flat answers are not dismissal but the quiet experiment — feeding the test and observing whether the young one survives conscience. - The seeming trait is often scar tissue over its opposite: "careless" = hope lost, not care absent. Direct the history, not the surface. ## Worked example (approved) Mother/son suitcase scene: - Scene direction: part without pain, stay positive. - Her motive: superstition (tears before a journey are a bad omen). His motive: for mom. - Her goal: send him off strong, don't make him carry her fear. His: leave her calm, show he's ready. - Obstacle: the real feeling, pressing every second; one wet look and the scene's line collapses. - Tactic: she packs "ordinarily," eyes stealing to him, measuring, memorizing, snapping back to the socks the moment he looks up; he eats "casually," watching her hands, not her face — because her face is where the danger is. - The audience cries precisely because nobody on screen does. ## Common failures to catch - Task built from one line instead of the whole dialogue → re-read the scene first. - The film's reveal/theme assigned to a character as his task → characters never play the film's purposes. - Scene goal confused with character goal → scene goal is the shared direction; character goals are personal and differ. - Motive ignores given circumstances (playing innocence while already complicit) → re-derive motive. - Prescribed eye/face choreography instead of eye-work as purposeful action → rewrite as verbs at the partner. - Emotion adjectives as direction → replace with the task that produces the emotion.