/higgsfield-acting

name: higgsfield-acting
description: "Writes the character-performance layer of a video prompt as behavior under pressure, not displayed emotion — objective, obstacle, tactics, beats, subtext, listening, body/status/proxemics, and mandatory eye life. Produces a reusable 150–220-word acting master profile per character plus a per-scene rewrite of it, and a locked voice prompt. Use whenever a prompt needs acting, performance, or emotion direction; whenever characters read wooden, dead-eyed, or 'AI'; whenever a character must stay themselves across many shots; or when the user asks for character behavior, mannerisms, tics, a gait, or how someone reacts. Pairs with higgsfield-facs (muscle-level AU codes) and higgsfield-seedance (the prompt the paragraph goes into)."
user-invocable: true
metadata:
  tags: [higgsfield, seedance, acting, performance, character, behavior, emotion, subtext, beats, eye-life, voice, ensemble, master-profile]
  version: 1.0.0
  updated: 2026-08-07
  parent: higgsfield

Higgsfield Acting Director

`[OFFICIAL — Higgsfield "Hell Grind" open-source brief]` — the performance system behind Higgsfield's 95-minute AI feature film, adapted to this repo's prompt surfaces.

**The core axiom of the entire system: acting is BEHAVIOR under pressure, not a display of emotion.** A character wants something, something is in the way, and they act to get it. Emotion is a byproduct of that struggle — never the thing you write directly.

This is a **layer on top of** `../higgsfield-seedance/SKILL.md`: the paragraph this skill produces goes into the PERFORMANCE / CHARACTER ACTING block of an otherwise normal Seedance prompt. It does not change camera, light, wardrobe, or grade.

QUICK FACTS

*Generated-checked block (scripts/build_index.py verifies anchors). Routing aids — read the linked sections for the rules.*

• Write the **objective** (a verb aimed at a partner), never the state — "make him confess", never "be angry" [→](#the-five-pillars-of-every-scene)
• **2–4 beat changes** per scene, each one visible in behavior: a pause, a posture change, a tempo change, a shift of gaze. Unchanged behavior for the whole shot = played flat [→](#the-five-pillars-of-every-scene)
• **Listening beats speaking.** The reaction starts *before* the partner's line ends; a hard question earns a micro-pause before the answer [→](#listening-and-reaction)
• The body carries the biography: **center of gravity, tempo, openness, breath** — set all four before any psychology [→](#the-body)
• **Business** — a physical task the hands are doing — kills theatricality; the strongest accent in a scene is the moment the character **stops** it [→](#the-body)
• **Distance is drama**; a change of distance *is* a beat change. Status is what you DO, and status **breaks** are the most interesting thing in a performance [→](#the-body)
• The **master profile** is 150–220 words, one paragraph, fixed block order, written once per character and then rewritten per scene — never pasted [→](#the-acting-master-profile)
• Every tic carries a **trigger**; every mask carries a **crack** — at least one "However, when X…" clause per profile [→](#the-acting-master-profile)
• **Eye life is mandatory and never optional** — saccades, blink quality, live catchlights, eyes-lead-thought. Dead eyes are the number-one tell of AI acting [→](#eye-life)
• Scene adaptation **transforms, never deletes**: a behavior that can't physically happen is displaced into another outlet, not removed [→](#scene-adaptation)
• The **voice prompt is locked** — one per character, pasted verbatim into the audio field, never adapted per scene [→](#voice-fixed-identity-never-adapted)
• **States, not transitions.** Models fail process and nail state: "mid-throw, arm extended", not "reaches in, pulls out, winds up" [→](#states-not-transitions)
• Ensemble reactions travel in a **wave, never in sync**; the strong are still and quiet, the weak fidget and shout [→](#ensemble-and-space)
• 15 named bad-acting symptoms with prompt-level fixes, and a 0–5 self-check scale — **aim every hero shot at 4+** [→](#the-atlas-of-bad-acting)

---

Where this sits among the repo's performance tools

| Layer | Skill | What it controls | |---|---|---| | **Craft** — why the character does anything | **this skill** | objective, obstacle, tactics, beats, subtext, status, business | | Muscle | `../higgsfield-facs/SKILL.md` | facial Action Unit codes (AU12, AU6…) | | Named expressions | `../higgsfield-soul/SKILL.md` § Micro-Expressions | expression vocabulary for identity work | | Production form | `../higgsfield-seedance/HELL-GRIND.md` § Two extra blocks | the CHARACTER ACTING block this output fills | | Backstory | `../higgsfield-character-design/SKILL.md` | who the character is before any scene exists |

Use this skill to decide **what the body does**; use FACS to specify **which muscles** do it in a close-up. They compose — a FACS beat schedule inside a paragraph written by these rules is the highest-resolution performance the platform supports.

---

Part I — The craft

What good acting is

Truthful behavior under imaginary circumstances. Not depicted emotions, not recited text, not "expressive faces."

| Bad acting | Good acting | |---|---| | Shows the emotion ("I am angry") | Pursues the objective ("I will make you return the money") — anger arises on its own | | Waits for their cue | Listens and reacts to the partner every second | | Body illustrates the words (gesture = word) | Body lives its own life, sometimes contradicts the words | | All lines in one tempo and tone | Rhythm changes with every change of tactic | | Emotion switches on at the line and off after | State is continuous — there is a life before and a life after the line | | The face "performs" — eyebrows, grimaces | The face thinks — the thought is readable in the eyes before the words |

The five pillars of every scene

Every character in every scene decomposes into five elements. If one is missing, the