R485 [quote]Just chew real food. Actors love to drone on about the drastic sacrifices they made for their craft - why not chew a bite of fucking food for your art if the scene calls for it?
As R117 said, food goes bad under hot lights and furthermore the actors need to talk. You could be shooting a scene with a lot of people eating for hours. As a kid this used to bother the hell out of me until I started acting myself. However, I'd add that one of the biggest reasons people have to be careful of (and things you don't want to fuck up) is continuity.
It really depends on the style of what you're shooting and how many takes you're going to do. You may have a shot, a reverse shot and a master shot of a person talking to another person. You can't have something on your plate in one take and something not there in the next because if things get changed or mixed up, it takes people out of the scene.
At the beginning of my career I did a scene where I was supposed to drink coke out of a glass. I had a few lines. (I was a random friend of the lead.) I was at a table with a few other people. Twenty takes of various ones of us later ... I wanted to die. I probably drank the equivalent of about 10+ bottles of coke. (It was diet.) I couldn't "not" keep it up exactly or else I'd fuck everything up if that glass was in a shot. I had the option of spitting it out but we were too squeezed for me to maneuver to do that.
R464 [quote]3)Everyone hanging out together all the time after work/school even if they are married or have other obligations. Also everyone moving to the same place or getting the same job or going to the same college.
TV shows generally aren't day to day. So just because they're at Central Perk on every episode of Friends doesn't mean they were there yesterday or even that last week's episode took place immediately before this one. Shows allude to time passing between episodes but they never usually say it outright. It's usually implied. When it is stated, there's a reason why, "They broke up three months ago" when it just took place two weeks ago viewer's time.
As for moving to the same place, getting the same job or going to the same college; that can happen. I had a group of friends I did that with when I was younger. Every now and then we lost one but there was still a core group. College with 6 of them, then 5 of us moved to NYC, then 4 of us lived in the same building and then they all met people at various times and started their own families. I was the gay.
If you mean like on Glee that was complete bullshit.
R492 [quote]Characters who say "mmmm" as they are swallowing their liquid refreshment and are about to make their point.
That's called "indicating" and it is totally shit acting and writing. If it's written down for the character to say then the writer sucks. If the actor is saying it on their own then their acting sucks. It is so annoying.
I'll add one my friend and I came up with when I mentioned NCIS. His response was, "Not that many people die in the Navy, weekly for 10 years." It is so ridiculous.