It is a time of rituals. I have decorated my tree, brought in holly and sent cards. There are presents under the fairy lights and a wreath of green on my door. The larders are full and the candles are lit. The Winter Solstice has provoked rites since time began – predating any Christian beliefs. […]
Tag: directors
How do You Solve a Problem without Knowing what the Problem is? When you first start screen directing, you know there’s a problem but you can’t put your finger on what it is – so you can’t solve it. Here’s a little check-list to help you identify what the problem might be… Symptom: The actor […]
‘Subtext: Any meaning or set of meanings which is implied rather than explicitly stated in a literary work…’ (Oxford Reference) I did a blog a while back called Concealing and Revealing about what lies beneath words (what doesn’t! We’d all get arrested or ostracised from society if we couldn’t hide our thoughts…) and I’ve […]
This point comes up every time I work with an actor. I spent 20 years of my life as an actor trying to sort this out. And another 20 years as a director and coach. Let’s start with the question – ‘What is a character?’ – a character is a person from real-life or fiction […]
Yes – we all get frown lines eventually. And it is normal to frown. But frowning is a solo activity – by that I mean that it is when we engage with ourselves and not with other people. We frown when we are thinking, remembering in order to be precise, concentrating, squinting to see clearly, […]
Directors and Actors Sharing a Language Directors are busy, harassed, stressed-out people. The buck stops here. This is true for all directors, but especially so for screen directors. They may have to get 30 minutes of screen time in the day. Or maybe only a minute and a half, but it involves a helicopter shot […]
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