Performance direction for generated media

Use performance direction to make a generated person or character appear to want something, react to pressure, and communicate through voice, face, gaze, and body. Do not ask a model for a generic emotion and hope it supplies acting. Give playable circumstances, beat-level actions, physical behavior, vocal behavior, continuity constraints, and a way to judge the take.

Evidence stance

Documented facts used by this skill:

• Stanislavski-derived actor training commonly analyzes a role through given circumstances, tasks/objectives, actions, beats, obstacles, and physical action; for AI use, translate these into concise, playable instructions rather than academic labels. Source cross-check: Stanislavski system overview and NYFA summary of Stanislavski questions.
• Lip-sync systems often map speech sound to visemes, not one mouth shape per phoneme. Microsoft documents visemes as visual phoneme descriptions and notes many phonemes can share one viseme; Meta's Oculus Lipsync documentation describes interpolation between visemes over time. Verified 2026-07-10: Microsoft viseme docs, Meta viseme reference.
• Professional dubbing guidance treats timing, natural language, audio level, and physical mouth/gesture sync as production constraints. Verified 2026-07-10: Netflix films/series dubbing guidelines, Netflix nonfiction simil-sync guidance.
• Current avatar tools expose different levels of performance control: some require clean training footage and consent capture, some accept a script and avatar selection, and some offer sentiment/emotional-state controls. Verified 2026-07-10: Synthesia Studio Avatar requirements, D-ID quickstart, HeyGen Digital Twin docs.
• Current AI video prompting can include character references, longer clips, extension, and batch workflows in some providers; treat capability limits as provider- and date-specific. Verified 2026-07-10: OpenAI Sora 2 prompting guide.
• Performer likeness, voice, and digital replica use raise consent, compensation, use-limit, storage, and disclosure duties. Verified 2026-07-10: SAG-AFTRA AI resource page, SAG-AFTRA Digital Replicas PDF, NAVA synthetic voice guidance.
• Provenance/disclosure can be supported by metadata standards such as C2PA Content Credentials, but provenance support varies by platform and workflow. Verified 2026-07-10: C2PA.

Empirical observations to collect on each job: