Acting should be easy, right? It’s like playing dress-up with a little more intentionality behind it. If that were actually true, we’d all act and the pool would be that much thicker to wade through in finding the greats. So what separates the Laurence Oliviers from the Pauly Shores? Usually a semester or two at Juilliard, or just basic talent, but even more so it’s a muscular conditioning of the extraocular variety. Yes, the eyes are without a doubt the most important physical aspect of an actor’s ability to embody a character. Don’t believe me? Go back and watch Rutger Hauer in Blade Runner, Jack Nicholson in Chinatown or Heath Ledger in The Dark Knight, for that matter. All of these performances are bolstered by the intensity, discrepancy and overall directionality of the eyes. Admittedly there’s an entire body to go along with them, but every presentation has its focal point and the eyes tend to standout in the most standout performances.

The actual movement of the eyes reveals intent or contempt, love or hate, truth or mistruth. The best actors can communicate a myriad of emotions in only a few moments with their eyes. After years of directing all shapes and sizes, I finally asked an actor if my fascination and effectively higher standards for eye-performance was warranted. He told me it’s one of the most basic principles that, for the most part, goes unspoken. See, it’s like watching the NBA and saying, “wow, he’s an amazing dribbler!” Instead you’re just waiting for a dunk. The dribbling is seen, it’s registered, but is also gone unmentioned. Why? Because it’s rudimentary, a foundation. The eyes are always there, and even the most exceptional ocular effectuation is invisible simply because it’s so good. The best kind of acting is that which either goes unnoticed or becomes immortalized. Philip Seymour Hoffman as Truman Capote or Brando’s Don Corleone were both understated, with eyes that barely moved for all the weight these characters carried around their necks. In contrast, Daniel Day-Lewis in There Will Be Blood and Charlize Theron in Monster were accentuated, darkly-spirited performances in which the eyes were more carnal, frustrated and deadly bright.

In the same ways the eyes can seal a truly great performance, so can they undo the less honest ones. I’m not such a vicious critic that I’d list examples of poorer actors so cavalierly as I did the greater ones, but I’d encourage anyone interested in my theory to go back and vivisect any performances you consider to be truly bad. Watch the eyes. Watch where they track. Watch how they vibrate or else awkwardly dart from place to place. The most telling moments will be when these actors are not delivering dialogue but are instead giving silent reactions. In situations of tension the truer eyes will remain focused, unmoving and almost three-dimensional in their potency while the untruer will glaze in and out of attention, thinking more about the script or what’s for lunch than the world of the scene.

So, be you actor, director or casting manager, keep in mind the windows to the soul may in fact be the windows to your character as well.

If you were to mute the movie, any movie, what would be lost?

Movies are absolute visual stimulus, no matter the genre, no matter the plot. The audio tends to be secondary in our minds. While sound lends itself more to a villain’s monologue than a daring car chase through Amsterdam, both are ultimately on the chopping block. Direct exposition might stall in the silence but we still have visual cues: the performances, the aesthetic and the movement. In live theater, it’s all about the actor’s movement whereas film relies on the camera’s. This cinematic principle is called the “eye of god.” A camera takes you places you’re normally unable to go. Even more than that, this dynamic gives you insight – a camera will hold on an actress’ face far longer than we’d dare stare in real life, and in that disembodied, extended focus we observe every inch of her emotion. Now incorporate sound: her shuddered breath is agitating, the stifled sobs emotive. Sound is the sensory validator, confirming what we see is communicating what it should be. The screech of a violin announces a psychopath with a meat cleaver while a slammed door indicates an unseen entrance. Now remove those markers… something is lost but is something gained as well? Think of cinema before “talkies,” in the silent era when faces were dialogue and music was exposition. Now remove that music and there’s still a wholly visual experience there, with all types of indicators toward a story.

So can a movie exist without sound, or sound without picture? Should they be expected to? Ideally, yes.

Take last year’s Whiplash, for example. It’s literally a film about music, but there’s a silent, visual story in there. Imagine Whiplash on mute and the foundation remains intact through what we see: “An aspiring drummer vies for a spot in a formidable jazz conductor’s studio band but soon realizes the man is not only a master manipulator but an absolute sadist to boot.” You could watch the entire film, start to finish and while the sound may change or arguably enhance the overall experience, you’d take in all the information you need from the performances and gradual evolution of the cinematography.

Now, sound without picture is a different story, one we’re actually more familiar with. Audio plays have been around since the dawn of mass media – one of my favorite parts of the radio show A Prairie Home Companion is when Garrison Keillor and co. present a highly-involved skit with nothing but voice and sound. Even more than expositional narration, our ears pick up what is called “ambience” or “foley” to make sense of things. These audio principles ensure the environment of the story is communicated by noise, from a chuga-chuga-chuga at a train station to the skittish footsteps of a woman walking home during a full moon. While picture stimulates us, sound activates our visual imaginations. For example, the final scene of Pulp Fiction serves as its own audio play from the moment Jules and Vincent sit down to pancakes. By removing the picture, we hear only the ambient sounds of the diner and the dialogue of our characters, and once Ringo and Yolanda stick up the joint we are treated to tension in both the silence and raised voices that break it.

The take away from these examples and the theme at large is direction both in sight and sound. Directors should constantly be selling the story in the visuals, even beyond the structure of the script. Likewise, sound editors and mixers must strive to not only follow the visual cues but at the same time compose their own audible story between every screeching tire or ringing gunshot. If sound and sight can come together in these highly intentional ways, that’d make for movies that feed both the eyes and ears in a swell of cinematic awesomeness.