Voice: The Cinderella of the Film Industry Overview: Voice is little regarded in the film business, either by actors or directors. Sets are dry, smoky, unhealthy places. Unlike theatre, many actors don’t see the need to warm up or cool down for screen. Directors hope to ‘fix it in post’. Yet voice is vital for […]
Category: Screen Acting
Because they are talking to themselves… Because they are on learned lines which is highly unnatural… Because they are embarrassed by the script… Because the new lines came under the hotel bedroom door at 3am Because THEY came in the hotel bedroom door at 3am… Because it’s a night shoot – the night after a […]
@MelChurcher – Thinking Like An Actor: It’s not WHAT your characters say; it’s WHY they say it. And the way they say it depends WHO they are, what they WANT and the LIVES they lead – the speed of their thoughts, their dreams, passions and predicaments. There is no such thing as dialogue – only […]
(This was first published in ‘The Great Acting Blog 2011 but links were invalid..so updated.) Actors are often obsessed with sub-text and when they find it, they want to share it. But what is sub-text? Literally it is what lies beneath the words. But we deal in sub-text all the time, even when we are […]
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 […]
When you are fighting to get auditions, change your agent, fix your showreel, cope with earning enough money in a job that lets you off for castings – it’s easy for the joy to go out of the work. ‘The world is too much with us…’ as Wordsworth put it. But there is a joy! […]
‘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 […]
