Prompting Emotional Acting with Physical Micro-Expressions

Don't prompt the emotion, prompt the physical reaction. Instead of 'she looks sad', break it into actual movements: 'her brows slowly pull together, creating two faint vertical lines', 'her lower lip starts a tiny tremble, less than 1mm', 'the tension between her brows slowly releases and her face becomes completely still'. Tell the model what the face is physically doing, not the emotion. Add contradictions: real emotions are rarely clean. Give conflicting instructions like 'only the left corner of her mouth pulls slightly upward into an incomplete bitter smile. the movement stays around the mouth and never reaches her eyes' or 'her lower eyelids remain red and wet while her gaze suddenly becomes sharp and focused'. Use numbers instead of words like 'slightly': 'lower lip trembles less than 1mm', 'both shoulders move inward around 2-3cm over 1.5 seconds', 'eyelids open quickly at first, then slow down, with a 0.2 second hesitation before fully opening'. Make the action stop halfway: 'her eyes become red and wet, but the tears stay at the edge of the eyelids. the lower eyelid tightens and trembles as she tries to hold them back', 'she begins shaking her head, but after around 10 degrees the movement suddenly slows and stops, as if she just remembered something', 'she starts to wrap her arms around herself, then stops right before completing the movement'.