This will be my first try with Wahlberg, so I've looked at a few of her prior performances. She's definitely beautiful, but she tends--like many of the younger actresses--to be a bit wooden. I've sent her some notes, hoping she won't be irritated by them. Working with Katie sets the bar fairly high in terms of acting, so I'm hoping for the best.
"I once asked Katie how she achieved her consistently revelatory performances. She said she allowed herself to believe that these things were really happening to her. She allowed herself to react without rules about how you "should" move when you are helpless and being tortured. She IS helpless and being tortured. She knows no more how she will respond than a person really being tortured...
I can tell within a few seconds of watching an actress whether she has learned some rules of "how to act" in any given situation. She is always watching herself "acting." Katie is not acting. She IS. It takes courage to allow yourself to be that vulnerable - even to feel the terror, pain, and hopelessness in an imaginary situation.
Acting is a special form of singing. W has a lovely stillness, and she made some excellent full-throat screams. So she expresses both ends of the scale, but the middle tones are missing. She is very polite, chatting with Alex even during the action. If she were really in that situation (and not just acting in a video), she would show more of a range of emotions...
Acting is also a special form of dance. In the video I've seen, W is quite rigid. She acts with her head, but not with her body, and often not even with her face. It's like a dancer who counts her steps during a performance, instead of feeling the rhythm...
A crucial part of the dance is not just body response but also facial expressions In W's performance her face is fairly stoic. If I could only see her face (hard to focus on it when her naked body is so enticing}, I would never guess she was being whipped or shocked by a cruel interrogator. Another secret of acting is breathing. When you are terrified and in pain, you breathe fast and hard--trying to catch your breath. It's automatic. So when you breathe that way in a performance, you convince your brain that you are afraid and in pain.
About Electro torture: Unfortunately, some online "experts" have decided how a person "really" acts when being shocked. A number of Cruel World's models have learned those rules: During electroshock the body goes rigid and the person only makes a kind of choking sound.
The points you raise above are completely valid. I can usually tell when a model is trained or experienced in still photography because of how they hold their body and check the cameras. Anna Luna will look at a camera and check her appearance during a scene. It was distracting at first, so I wrote scripts with her to be her as a victim on a live-feed to an online audience, so that when she checks herself in a camera, it works within the story, as if she were pleading directly to the audience.
Very few of the actors that CW has used or currently uses have acting experience. Adri was one that seemed to either be trained or a natural on stage. Her reactions were subtle for a small screen, and matched the character she was playing perfectly. She's moved on to other projects, and I hope she's landed a gig as a tv actor or a spokesmodel somewhere because she was perfect in the role of the Squalus Labs spokesmodel intern.
For Wahlberg, I play to her strengths: a stoic and brave victim. Minimum screaming. No thrashing around. The victim takes the pain. I focus on how to position her body, and then I let White Rose do the work around her. White Rose has mastered the character of Dr. Squalus perfectly and can run an entire story so long as she has a model to work on. When I bring on a new model for a scripted story, I give instructions to keep the moans and cries to a minimum because so many models do it so poorly. I learned that with Victoria; she looked good in stills but she sounded like a goose when she moaned and cried. My other strategy is to keep the action "real" within a fake story so that there's no acting necessary.
A good example of real acting in a fake story is the Memory Test series. The plot is fake - there is no secret underground lab conducting psychological tests on human volunteers willing to experience corporal punishment. Dr. Squalus is not going to write a white paper to submit to a medical journal with her findings (although unofficially the results were quite striking). However, everything you see on screen is real. The women really are being spanked and really are reacting to that spanking. The fear, the nervousness, and the laughter are all what the actors are feeling in that moment. No acting necessary.
You mentioned dance, and I agree. Selling an effect works if you have both your facial expressions and your body working in harmony. Trained dancers seem to have this ability; actors a bit less so. Fortunately, for the small screen, facial expressions can go a long way to communicating emotion in a scene. Some models can act, but most can't. It's a tricky thing striking that balance.
After testing things in the "Rope or Money" scripts with Anna and Alina, my early scripts required more acting. An evil doctor kidnaps young women to test torture devices and then harvest their organs for sale on the black market (I was inspired by the "Ilsa" films and urban myths). The first actor I brought on was White Rose to play Dyanne Thorn's version of "Ilsa: She-Wolf of the SS" but with less Nazi symbology. She did a very good job on her first outing, so I kept her in the role. I don't know what her day job is, but she'd make a good teacher. Her presentations are good. The second actor I secured was Victoria. She was good to look at and could take the stunts, but the honking drove me crazy. Fortunately, the story idea allowed me to rotate several models through the victim role, so I did. Some where better than others. Anastasia did an amazing job playing the innocent redhead victim. Cry has electrocution down pat; a true artist and actor for that stunt. Adri nailed the role of enthusiastic intern and spokesmodel. I have my favorites and I cast them when they're available. Right now my short list is Anna Luna, Demonica, Cry, and Wahlberg.
As for electrocution, my reference is the electric rat trap videos I found on YouTube, wherein the whole body tenses. So I go with that direction.
One last thing: it's cold and flu season, so be sure to go visit a doctor for your vaccination. You might as well get a full check up while you're there.