July 23, 2007 by webmaster.

“The art of acting consists of keeping people from coughing.”

Sir Ralph Richardson

“My old drama coach used to say, ‘Don’t just do something, stand there.’”

Clint Eastwood

“Talk low; talk slow; and don’t talk too much.”

John Wayne

“Acting is like sex.  You should just do it.”

-Joanne Woodward

“Come to work on time, know your lines and don’t bump into the other actors.”

Spencer Tracy

“Don’t take life too seriously.  You’ll never get out alive.”

- Bugs Bunny

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July 16, 2007 by webmaster.

“For when the heart insists on its destiny, resisting the general blandishment, then the agony is great; so too the danger. Forces, however, will have been set in motion beyond the reckoning of the senses.  Sequences of events from the corners of the world will draw gradually together, and miracles of coincidence bring the inevitable to pass. ”

Joseph Campbell

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July 16, 2007 by webmaster.

Three Parts of a Screenplay

1- Subject- Where or who. Often indicated in the title. Not the actors domain.
2- Plot - What happens. Not the actors domain.
3- Story - The human heart changing. The actors domain
Five Concerns of the Actor
I -HERO - Central character. The hero strives or aspires to a quest. Makes improbable choices look necessary. Make your character the hero no matter how small the part.

2 - GOAL - Power or Love. Love = There is a person in the story more important than what you want. Power = Nothing more important.

3 - ACTION- What you do to get what you want. Demonstrable choices that yield behavior.

4 - OBSTACLE- What gets in your way. Always outside the hero. Usually in the other person.

5 - PROBLEM- Inherent in the character. What the character arrives to the story with.
Tidbits
-CIRCUMSTANCE »»»»[CONFLICT]««««DESIRE
-Unexpressed hurt (or fear) = anger
Unexpressed anger = rage
Unexpressed rage = depression
-Characters with low self esteem = Threats to their esteem are huge.
-BASIS OF DRAMATIC LITERATURE = People who’s arrangement is ending -­Relationships = fluid, flexible, can withstand change
Arrangements = have a plan in place. Have it figured out. Brittle. Fall apart during change.
***Find the arrangement that is falling apart***
-Love scenes = fear of loss
-Make huge physical and emotional choices, then step back into the character.
-LOOK AT THE ARC OF THE STORY - For each scene - am I closer or further away from my goal. Risk increases. Trouble increases. Time is running out. Arrangement is falling apart. Cover is cracking. The emotion which is in place at the beginning breaks through.

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July 16, 2007 by webmaster.

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July 12, 2007 by webmaster.

I’d been to at least six or seven different acting schools - some of them hailed as the best in Los Angeles - before coming to Carter Thor.  And the reason I left those schools was because none of them were in the business of capitalizing on individuality, of exploring what made their students unique as human beings, as artists, and bringing that to the fore.  Those schools were factories, and their business was tearing actors down and building them back up in some predetermined mold that they believed - falsely - guaranteed success in this industry.

I can’t define the methodology used at Carter Thor - it seems to be half technique, half intuition - but I can tell you that Cameron and Alice have no interest in helping you become the next Tom Hanks or Julia Roberts.  Their only interest is in helping you become the next YOU, in helping you develop, hone and trust in your ability to walk onto a set and bring something to the table that’s honest, inspired and unforgettable.

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July 12, 2007 by webmaster.

“There is a spiritual Universe that lies beyond all images in the material world.  It is the work of the poets, the artists to bring that Universe out.  To know what it is and to render it as the old seers and prophets did.  Render it – bring out the transcendent principle of it.  That is what we lack today, really – the few poets and artists who really speak of the mystery – the mystery beyond the image.  The function of the true artist is to bring that out – open up the mystery.  What we really lack today are those true artists.”

Joseph Campbell

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July 12, 2007 by webmaster.

I’ve been working a lot lately back and forth on a couple of sets; “Smallville” in Vancouver, B.C. and “Bullet Proof Monk” in Toronto.  One, of course, is the highly successful WB Network Television series based on the young life of Clark Kent as he struggles with his newfound super powers.  The other is a big budget action adventure feature film produced by John Woo and starring my client Jaime King.  Working on set allows me the chance to focus on some of the practical and critically important parts of the acting craft unique to the television and film medium: the script, production design, camera, editing, and directing.  I want you to take this lesson and begin to consider some of these parts and where they fit into the storytelling puzzle.

The Method, with its duel level technique of both psychological and physical choices in creating character, was a system developed specifically for the stage actor.  The modem film actor must own and continue to grow a strong use and understanding of the Method.  It’s most useful power: the ability to bring a character to life is not nearly as important in the collaborative art of film as it is on the stage.  The Method was created by stage actors to be used a survival backpack.  While that backpack becomes your life raft on a stormy night, it can break and drown you on a sound stage.

The stage actor is necessarily self-reliant, when the curtain rises it’s all on their shoulders.  Film acting, on the other band, is far more collaborative medium.  The film actor has to be aware of their relationship to the screenwriter’s story by forcing the audiences assumptions with transitions, commit to the production designer’s environment, understand the camera lens and it’s focus of the story, assist the editor in creating movement of the story, and finally aid the director in combining all these elements into a singular vision.

I always found it puzzling that so many highly trained actors couldn’t make it in film.  It’s a common notion that too much training leads to broad, stagy acting.  But that’s an over-simplification.  It’s not, “too much training” it’s simply non-specific training.  The trained stage actor working in film and television rarely prepares for these equally important disciplines.  The over simplification of the problem of stage acting on film leads the actor to under react.  The most common reaction of the stage actor to being told that they are “stagy” is to stop doing anything, get dull, and go numb.  That reaction will not get the story told or be satisfying for the artist or the audience.  The trick is to understand how film is a different medium, with different rules, and a different set of tools used to get the job done.

While it is a life study to master and understand all the elements that make film acting work, let’s take a moment to look at just one of those relationships so that we can start to think and take action on this distinct and disciplined craft.

The Editor

The Editor is without a doubt the most important person in the posses.  Film is the editor’s medium.  When you watch something take place, let’s say you glance across the restaurant and look at a couple having dinner, your eyes tell your mind that you’re seeing it all.  This isn’t entirely true … in fact what is happening is your eye is picking out thousands of tiny particulars in the overall picture and collating them in a fashion that lets your mind comprehend what it’s seeing.  A common mistake of the young filmmaker when they run short on time is to grab a whole scene in a master with no coverage.  They figure when they look at the scene it makes sense, the actors are good, no problem.  Coverage is for wussies.  When they get into the editing room they sadly realize that while they were looking at the scene with their naked eye their brain was doing a fantastic job editing, picking up many details to allow for that comprehension.  But now, with no coverage, the scene looks flat and lacks rhythm.  It’s the editor’s hand that makes us believe that what we are seeing is real.  It’s the editor’s hand that tricks our brain into comprehending the scene.

The film actor has to contribute to the editor’s works.  The more time you spend on film sets, or more importantly making your own little movies, the more you will understand the relationship between the actor and the editor.  But, in the meantime, here are a couple of things to think about.

First and foremost editors cut on action.  When an editor is looking to make cuts from one camera position to another in a scene they are looking for some action to do it on.  It may be grand like the sweep of the arms, or it may be subtle like a glance cast down, but action is the axle that the editor pivots on.  Becoming aware of this the actor can begin to lead the editors knife.

Let’s say the editor has got a scene with two people talking and is looking for his cut points.  You can help him with these points by choosing to cast a glance, a slight nod of your head, a tight smile, or a raised brow.  Let’s say at the end of the scene you hold stock-still.  You do that, and that poor editor is going to have to go to the other guy and hope he moves in some small way to cut out of the scene.  But if you give him some small move he can go out on you.  Not only have you helped him find his elusive cut point, but you have played a part in where the editor makes his moves.  You’ve moved out of the realm of the actor who falls victim to the editor’s knife, and into the world of being a contributing partner in the editing posses.

Secondly an actor needs to help the editor by maintaining tension from scene to scene.  The filmmaker wants to carry an emotion from one scene to the next, from one cut to the next.  And while they call on the editor to do that, the editor calls on the actor to create the emotion that can be sustained to the next scene or cut.  For example let’s say you’re filming a mystery.  In this scene you and your partner think you know who did it, and that they’re hiding out at the warehouse.  A typical transition is to have you say something like … “But the warehouse is locked down tight, it’s impossible to get in there!”  And on your partners raised eyebrow make a quick cut to … you guessed it … the warehouse!  Where you stand, flashlight in hand, and say something like … “This is crazy … “  Well, in order for that transition from your declaration of impossibility to the flashlight to work the editor needs tension.  It’s his job to cut on tension and your contribution to his process is to be keenly aware of how your behavior and energy you leave the scene with helps establish the audience’s connection to the next scene.  A film actor’s awareness of this helps the editor move the story forward from scene to scene and maintain the critical tension.
And finally the actor’s attentiveness that the editor needs clean dialogue on close-ups to cut from person to person within a scene.  When new film actors discover this it usually leads to some incredibly clumsy work.  They’re told, (usually without any grace at all) to, “Not overlap or we can’t cut into you”.  Terrified, the young actor then puts artificial beats before and after their lines in the close coverage.  This problem is diminishing slowly as more and more cameras are produced and fewer taken off the market thereby driving down the cost of camera packages and allowing more two camera coverage on the average production.  With two cameras running, overlap ceases to be a problem.  But still the great majority of productions, and especially television, work with one camera and require the no overlap rule in close-up overage.  The end result is that the young actor looks like a deer caught in the headlights in their close-up.  Here again there is an art to what might at first glance seem like a problem.  The experienced, (or in your case well educated) film actor knows that rhythm and fluidity in a scene doesn’t come from dialogue dropping out of your mouth but instead comes from your intention and your energetic.  Knowing that, the actor won’t worry about becoming stiff as they hold to not overlap.  Not overlapping is a real issue; the actor has to give the editor clean stock to cut into.  But the actor that knows that the intention of the character they are playing, and the energetic that comes from that character are the real spine that holds a scene together, will never look like that deer in the headlights.  They will give the editor clean stock, while still maintaining the flow of the scene.

Are you starting to see the important relationship between the film actor and the editor?  Are you beginning to see how the film actor is a contributing artist in the editor’s process?  Once again the actor can move out of the victim identity and into the partnership role.  The only reason actors, “lose it on the cutting room floor” is because those actors didn’t use their skill to give the editor the, “loving” he needs to do his job.  Sustaining emotion and tension from scene to scene, guiding the editor to his cut points within a scene, and maintaining flow and open space for the editor are just a few of the important tools the actor uses in their relationship with the editor.

Take a moment to see if you can discover of a few more.  Watch films closely to look for the places the actors contribute to the editor’s work. Take a look at the films of Scorsese ; he started as an editor and studying his work can be a teaching tool.  Better yet, get a cheap editing program for your home computer, grab your digital video camera, shoot a scene with some actor friends and cut it together.  You’ll learn more from doing that than anything else.
We started with the editor because his work is most critical, but in the coming weeks we’ll look in detail at the actors contribution to the screenwriter, the production designer, the camera, and the director.  In the meantime, get your brain going about this subject - how does your work reach out into other professional relationships?  The more your work gets off of you, and into your service to others, the greater it will become.

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July 12, 2007 by webmaster.

By  Bruce Feirstein

“Vanity Fair” contributing Editor

1. ACCEPT THE BASIC SOCIAL CONTRACT

“I’ll believe you’re a producer if you’ll believe I’m a screenwriter.”  You just never know: Today’s dry cleaner might turn out to be tomorrow’s as-yet-un-indicted mini-mogul.

2. ALL RELATIONSHIPS ARE TRANSACTIONAL

Friendships are based on the promise that you can help each other.  Once you can’t, it’s over.

3. GOSSIP IS CURRENCY

If you’ve got nothing else to sell, you can always sell someone out.  And no matter what anyone tells you, you’re always obliged to reply, “Yes, I already knew that.”

4. OPINIONS ARE LIABILITIES

Nobody ever tells anyone the truth about anything in Hollywood.  All scripts are brilliant, every film is fantastic, everyone is a genius.

5. TAKE CREDIT FOR EVERYTHING

The mythology of Hollywood begins at the front door.  Don’t hesitate to create your own.

6. NEVER CONFUSE ACTIVITY WITH ACCOMPLISHMENT

Just because you spend lots of time in your car driving to meetings doesn’t mean you’re getting anywhere.

7. ALWAYS ESTABLISH BLAME

Nothing is ever your fault: blame the director, blame the studio, blame the star.  They’ll all blame the writer.

8. HEAT DISSIPATES

Success, power, and fame all come with expiration dates.  Nobody really needs a private jet for their exercise equipment, but as long as someone else is willing to pay for it, ‘tis better to have supped at the trough of gluttony once than never at all.

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July 12, 2007 by webmaster.

The art and craft of acting changed dramatically with the introduction of the motion picture camera . Yet, even with that sea change in the art, the craft is still steeped in the rituals and techniques of stage training.  My goal in these series of papers is to begin in the actor a habit of investigation, a need to look deeper into the new art of acting with the camera.  The words, “acting with” are an important distinction from the Conmen phrase, “acting  for”.  “Acting for” sets the artist up in a relationship where he is doing what he is doing to serve an over-lording master.  “Acting with” sets the actor up in a relationship of peers, where he is searching step by step to find the dance that exists between the actor and the lens.  We could spend a couple of semesters discussing the history of the motion picture camera and its greater historical impact, but the goal is to begin a habit of investigation, not finish one.  So, I’ll stay away from history for the most part and instead concentrate on the practical application of how we think in terms of the camera, leaving the history up to you and your relationship with your local library.

The camera as character

In the early days of filmed entertainment the motion picture camera was a huge, noisy, unreliable monster.  It was used only to film what were essentially stage plays.  The actors had to stand about in little half circles pretending to have natural conversations.  Needless to say, the conversations didn’t appear too natural, and while movies were a new and wonderful form of entertainment they lacked any sense of urgency.  In the ensuing decades visionary directors like John Ford and George Stevens began to move the camera where they could.  Hollywood has always embraced new technology and the gadget guys raced to accommodate the director’s desire for a moving camera.  Technology has raced ahead, sometimes faster than our ability to use it, and the director has now a full arsenal of moving cameras at his disposal, from the omnipresent Steady Cam to the brand spanking new technology of Bullet Time where the lens is no longer dedicated to a single subject (The details of that are for a later discussion, it gets a little weird.).

The ultimate value of these leaps in technology is to turn the camera into a character.  Moving the audience from a voyeur peeking through a crack in the forth wall, to a participant dancing along with the actors as they tell the story.  Your self study course in the technical aspects of the camera will come to you much easier if you know why it is important to learn. . It is as important to learn about the camera, as it is to learn about your scene partner.  And you can approach the camera the same way you would your partner.

What does the camera want from you?

Well, nothing less than your immortal soul.  Don’t worry; the camera doesn’t want your soul all the time.  You don’t have to live on screen ripping your heart out every second.  It only wants some glimpse of that, some small taste in each scene to keep it interested in your story.  Just like in a marriage, you don’t keep it alive by keeping the floors vacuumed; you keep it alive by opening your heart wherever you can.  The floors will come later.  I remember directing a picture once where I thought I would be a hotshot actors director by leaving the monitor and sitting right at the lens with the actors.  We shot the scene and needless to say I was very pleased with myself - very old school.  But when I looked at the footage some days later it was dreadful.  Later, on that same picture, I had two actors playing a quiet conversation on a bed.  The small space in the bedroom we shot in made it impossible for me to get to the monitor.  I had to watch the scene from close to the lens and as it played out I was deeply disappointed.  The actors seemed flat and lifeless.  But when I looked at it in dailies the scene jumped off the screen and became one of my favorites in the film.  By sitting close to the lens and not watching the monitor, not seeing what the camera was seeing, I had inadvertently learned a valuable lesson.  The lens sees things the naked eye does not.  It looks closer.  It looks for who you are and it responds to that.  It has very little interest in your talent.  The only value your talent has is that it functions as a vessel; it can deliver who you are to the lens.  If who you are isn’t there, all your talent and a quarter will buy you a cup of coffee.  The first lesson in the camera as a character; give it what you would give your scene partner - who you are, not what you do.
What can the camera do for you?

For any discipline to really succeed it must have a fairly narrow path.  The motion picture camera is that narrow path to the actor.  Most actors complain bitterly about the limitations placed on them by the camera.  They cannot move freely because of focus points, they have to repeat the same actions over and over with each passing piece of coverage, or to satisfy some focus pullers requirements the actor has to move in an unnatural way forcing a rack focus.  There are as many complaints as there are actors, actors who fail to understand that all those limitations are really a rail that the actor can ride to a clear and moving performance.  For an actor to really come across on film his work must be focused.  He must know what he wants, how to get it, why it matters, and what gets in his way.  If he is living all this in the moment he will seem focused.  Often on a set the camera team member responsible for keeping you in focus, the focus puller, will need a certain type of stillness from the actor to keep you from going soft.  The stage trained actor thinks this is a limiting thing.  The new actor knows that those limits really let him narrow his own focus and in turn serve his team member working the focus ring on the camera.  It is a win-win situation; the focus pullers need for focus, forces the actor to focus his work, and the story becomes much clearer to the audience.
Another thing that camera can do for the actor is to give him frame lines.  The understanding of where your body fits in the frame lines helps you to paint the portrait you envisioned.  Art is an arrangement of forms to evoke a common experience.  The actor without an understanding of his lens edge is like a painting without a frame.  It becomes much harder to understand composition and the message it is trying to deliver if we don’t understand the borders that frame it.  Look if you will at Marlon Brando’s work inside the frame in, “Last Tango in Paris”.  Here is an actor who understands clearly the edges of the frame and is using them to paint a picture inside that frame that moves the story forward.  Ask your camera team what lens they are using, ask where your borders are.  When you know this you can begin to start looking for how your movements inside the frame help to tell the story.  This work with the frame lines is advanced work, but don’t wait for a couple of years of experience to teach you.  With the digital video cameras flooding the market you’re bound to know someone who has one.  Beg, borrow, or steal that camera and start playing with movement in the frame.  I want you to walk on to that sound stage with enough knowledge from your homework to set you up for real learning with the Big Boys.

How does the camera get in your way?

The obstacle question can be applied to the relationship with the camera just like it can be applied to the relationship with the scene partner.  The lens will become an obstacle to your good work only if you make it what it is not.  It is not your parents; it won’t love you or hate you.  It won’t tuck you in at night.  It doesn’t have the power to turn lead into gold.  It won’t make you happy or satisfied.  It won’t make the loneliness go away.  It won’t make you thin, it won’t make you young.  And it won’t make your life any less confusing than it already is.  When you attach your ego to the camera it becomes an obstacle to your good work.  But don’t underestimate its power.  When that camera comes rolling towards you it’s going to be very difficult to avoid those dark thoughts.  Your will power won’t do you a lot of good when it comes to thinking sensibly about the camera.  The only thing that will give you any power over those ego centered thoughts that will turn the camera into an obstacle is … how much you know about the part the camera plays in your work.  If you want to be set free from the ego burden the camera puts you under, learn as much as you can about how the frame lines and the need for focus can set you free.

These are some starting points for your thinking about the camera and your relationship with it.  Take these and discuss them, debate them, trash them if you like.  Come up with your own theories and make me look like an asshole.  The goal is to get you thinking about this young and daring art.  The rules are just forming, you have a chance to make your own.  Start now, and change the world with your work.

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June 14, 2007 by webmaster.

Having just made my way back across sinew, bone, wasted nerves, and the Pacific Coast Highway from a Fourth Grade camping trip where eight nominal adults withered under the attack of thirty ten and eleven-year olds; I am happy to be alive and only slightly regretful that I failed to return with the next, “Joseph Campbell Book Study.” I will use this next week to recover from that Orwellian vision of my past and have at the ready the latest installment promised, and not delivered today, of our study of the Hero’s Journey.

In the meantime, by way of an apology, and so that your endlessly active minds can have something to rest upon; I have brought you the following:

This is a section from the, “To The Reader” introduction that prefaces the novel, “Look Homeward Angel” by Thomas Wolfe in which he explains, (and in essence apologizes) to any readers from his hometown who might be offended by his deeply insightful, (and sometimes quite personal) account of life in rural North Carolina:

“We are the sum of all the moments of our lives – all that is ours is in them: We cannot escape or conceal it. If the writer has used the clay of life to make his book, he has only used what all men must, what none can keep from using. Fiction is not fact, but fiction is fact selected and understood, fiction is fact arranged and charged with purpose.”

Thomas Wolfe was born in Ashville, North Carolina in the year 1900. He began work on, “Angel” at age twenty-six, finished shortly after, and died of milary tuberculosis of the brain in 1938, at the age of thirty-seven. “Look Homeward Angle” was his first novel and to this day is widely considered one of America’s greatest works of fiction.

On this note, young friends, I welcome you to the practice of the art of acting.

Cameron Thor

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