For this exercise, you have to spend a minute or two examining a coffee mug from every possible angle - the shape of the cup, its weight, the heat coming from the coffee, etc. You then have to apply this same critical thinking while drinking the coffee, analyzing its taste, texture, etc. After this, you must attempt to pick up an identical imaginary cup and experience the same sensations drinking from it.
When looking at the comments for this video, I was surprised to see how negative many of them were. Many people seemed to see it as a waste of time, since at first glance it has nothing to do with developing a character; however, that is missing the point. The idea of this exercise is to develop your ability to imagine. Personally, my takeaway from this is that it gets much easier to imagine and truthfully portray abstract concepts like a character's germ when you are able to imagine more concrete, physical objects as accurately as if they were real. This also makes getting immersed in the scene easier, and if you end up having physical props, it will feel even more natural since you have practiced just as effectively without them.
This video provides instructions for imagining yourself in a set environment - specifically, being outside in the snow. I noticed that this exercise specifically involved all five emotions, and although it served as a blueprint for the progression of the scene, it also provides multiple options (is it sunny, the sun reflecting brightly off the snow, or dark and cloudy?) and thus encouraged the participants to do their own thing. In everyday life, I feel there are certain senses that seem to overshadow others in terms of importance, so this was a good reminder that when acting out a scene, it helps to take all five basic emotions into account, covering all your bases.
Video 3
This video contains two exercises. In the first, the actors had to imagine themselves as being in a kitchen with imaginary props, very similar to an exercise from our textbook. In the second exercise, the actors had to hold a pen and some sting with their eyes closed and try to figure out what the objects where, then imagine that the pen is priceless and see how their relationship with the object changed.
These two exercises tie back to the two previous videos. The kitchen exercise is an expansion of the snowfall exercise, not just standing still and imagining the location in your mind but acting as though you are in that location. If you were to take the snowfall exercise to this level, I figure that you would have to start by walking as though you were trudging through snow or trying not to slip and fall on ice. The pen and string exercise is similar to the coffee mug in how it has the actor examine a physical object, and then use that to further their ability to relate to such objects in a scene.
