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directing 101 PDF sample chapter by Ernest Pintoff ISBN 0-941188-67-1
THR334Film & MoviesTextbook Spring 2003: How to Read a FilmSubscribe to Open Class @ 200x AestheticsFilm & Video Directing (Spring 2004): textbook Grammar of the Film Language by Daniel Arijon
please prepare the exercise below if you have enrolled in the class
Sense Memory- The first exercise:
Sense memory is re-living sensations that were experienced through the five senses. Strasberg stressed the term re-living, not just remembering, explaining that the difference lies between knowing something and truly recreating it. That difference, between mental activity - remembering- and reliving the experience, Strasberg explained, was not made up by Stanislavski or his modern interpreters but is substantiated by psychology. Please prepare the following exercise for your first class.
Breakfast Drink:
Remember, you are not doing this exercise in order to learn to stage physical actions or mime! The things you do in practicing this exercise you may never do when playing a role. The purpose of this exercise is to experience and fix in memory the reliving of all the sensory aspects of the breakfast drink. Choose what you habitually drink in the morning (e.g. a cold fruit juice or a hot drink like tea or coffee). Take the cup or glass in both hands and concentrate on your five senses - one at a time. Feel the texture, weight and balance of the container and the heat, steam or cold. Smell the aroma. See the color, size , shape, groves and nicks of the container and the liquid. Hear the shloshing of the liquid, preferably several times.
While you are concentrating on the taste, also be aware of the touch of the container against your lips and tongue, the temperature of the liquid, the texture of the liquid and container and all other sensory aspects. This whole procedure should be done slowly watery investigation and exploration of all sensations. Now set the container down, turn away and repeat the entire procedure without the breakfast drink.
If you find that you are not able to recreate some of the sensations experienced with the actual cup or glass in your hand, go back to the physical object itself and explore it again. Concentrate on weak sensory aspects as you work with the container (for example, if you cannot relive the odor, return to the drink and focus on the odor in particular). By thus alternating between the actual drink and imaginarily re-experiencing the drink, weak sensory aspects may be strengthened and the experience relived. The exercise is now ready to bring into class, without the real object.Subsequent exercises will be prescribed at the end of each session. The observation procedure outlined above is highly suggested for all the Sense
Memory exercises that will follow.
(quoted from Strasberg's Method by Laurie Hull)
How to prepare for your first scene:
In acting, you are the instrument; body, mind and spirit. The second half of the class is focused on relationships with other actors and the audience. The goal is to consciously remove barriers to make us more sensitive to our own intuitive powers. Barriers or 'blocks' as they are commonly called by many actors, inhibit communication and emotional expression. Freedom from convention lets a number of things happen... namely authentic & spontaneous behavior that the audience will buy into. It also allows insights and impulses from deep within our sub-conscious to come forth and answer questions we didn't even know we had!
In order to prepare for this part of the course it is essential that you choose a five minute scene between two characters or a monologue that personally means a great deal to you. The scene can come from a play, film or novel but the most important point in the selection is that the message and circumstances of the scene are based on things you already know a great deal about from your own life experience. You must love the message in the scene. Also, you should be physically believable as the character (i.e. no young women playing Hamlet, no young men playing St. Joan etc...).
You will need to choose someone in the class to act the other character for you, and get together for one or two rehearsals before you bring the scene into class. You don't have to memorize the scene. In fact, if you are new to acting and don't know how to rehearse just bring the scene in and we will have the first rehearsal together in class. Experienced actors are expected to memorize. The purpose of this part of the course is to train the actor's mind to look at the raw emotional material that comes up while interacting with other people ... and to make creative choices that best illuminate the scene.
Vancouver Film School: Perform Your Art -- This program provides you practical experience working in front of a camera, on stage, and studying voice and body work. Working in a studio environment that prepares you for the versatility expected of working actors, you learn to make original films by collaborating with writers, directors, and sound designers. This program prepares you for the creative and functional demands expected of you by teaching you to be professional, to take responsibility for your creative growth, and how to capture audience imagination.
University of Winnipeg: Screen Acting, a 6-credit hour course at the 3rd-year level, focuses on the special problems of film acting and the role of the actor in the filmmaking process. This course may be taken instead of 83.3101/6 Acting III: General by students seeking a 3-year degree whose study area within the Major is acting. Beginning in 2002-03, students in this course will have the opportunity to work with students in 83.3310/6 Filmmaking II on short film projects.
NO FILM ACTING SCHOOL?! Why don't you look at their courses yourself?
David Kagen's School for Film Acting -- We provide a real-world approach to acting that gives you the professional skills you need to effectively compete to get work.
You learn how to perform a scene by expressing your instinctive emotional responses to everything that's going in the scene...
Movie is the king, but I couldn't find a good site for film acting program!
What does it mean?
It's over 30 years since American Film schools mushroomed, but, I guess, the film stars are making money and know little how to teach, -- and care nothing about the generations after them. How could it be?
Eisenstein was teaching -- and the masters of Russian cinema still teaching today in Moscow, the film school I came from!
Forman is the head of the THEATRE program at Columbia?
Why?
What about other American directors?
Of course, the money and fame are not their, but there is the future of cinema... Watch the Bravo, kids -- this is all what you can get, A&E -- fooling around the serious matters of profession.
Shame.
Here we go again!
What is 'Method' Acting?
If you watch the BRAVO! cable program 'Inside the Actors Studio' you are probably familiar with the techniques associated with Method Acting and the way in which professional actors talk about their craft: a synthesis of mind, body, emotions and spirit.
The 'Method' originated around 1900 with techniques pioneered by Russian actor/director Constantine Stanislavsky. It was subsequently developed in America in the Group Theater of the 1930's and at the Actors Studio, both under the direction of Lee Strasberg, one of the most influential acting teachers of the 20th century.
It was made famous during the 1950's with the films of Elia Kazan and the revolutionary acting styles of Marlon Brando, Shelley Winters, Paul Newman, Eva Maria Saint, James Dean and of course, Marilyn Monroe. The 'Method' later became associated with the work of Robert DeNiro, Harvey Keitel, Al Pacino, Dustin Hoffman, Steve McQueen, Sally Field, Estelle Parsons, Faye Dunaway, Jane Fonda and Ellen Burstyn. Over 200 Academy award winners and nominees have been members of the Actors Studio under the direction of Lee Strasberg. Sanford Meisner and the incredible Stella Adler are also closely associated with the work of Stanislavsky and were members of the Group Theater.
The 'Method' is known by many names 'The Stanislavsky System', 'The System', 'The Work' etc...Those of you who want more exact information about how the 'Method' developed may consult the Encyclopedia Britannica which has an article by Strasberg.
The 'Method' is an excellent way to learn about acting, however we believe there is no paint-by-numbers approach to becoming a performing artist. Uta Hagen, Sanford Meisner, Stella Adler, Eleanora Duse and Peter Brook are also strong influences at ACSF.
Here we go again!
