How do child actors exposed to gruesome scenes (like murder on a horror film) not get traumatized/PTSD?
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Child Psychologists have found that if viewers are shown that something is demonstrably fake, they are often not as affected by it.
I remember seeing a video in my “Children and the Media” course with a bunch of actors in the 70s showing how fake glass bottles were made (and broken over heads!) and how to make fake blood.
These simple demonstrations lessen the impact for children viewers of faked violence on TV or film.
For the actors, the experience of filming a scene is usually nothing like the end movie; the experience is even more fake. Filming a scene includes a ton of stopping and starting, cameras and lights and friendly people everywhere… Lots of food and crafts services and parents and agents everywhere.
The boundary between movie making and scary experience is really stretched to the limits when you are on set filming.
That said, the recent film about the Underground Railroad had a staff psychologist on set in case the actors were disturbed by being involved in scenes of slave masters torturing slaves.
So the movie making process can be a bit of innoculation against confusing things on set for reality but sometimes it’s worth going further just to be careful, especially with children.
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