Thinking about thinking…I keep getting emails from confused actors about thinking – or not thinking… It is confusing… ‘Stop thinking. You’re too much in your head.’ It is advice that many directors give. I believe what they mean by not being ‘in your head’ is that the actor needs to turn off any decisions about […]
Category: Screen Acting
@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 […]
Time for those resolutions… Instead – think of it as dusting off the cobwebs and letting in the sparkle… Some quick thoughts for basking in that sunshine that will grow brighter as the weeks go by: 1. Step out of your own shadow. Allow yourself to believe that you are worthy of doing what you […]
