A Screen Acting Workshop E-Book

Mel Churcher

• Herausgeber: Nick Hern Books
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2014

Beschreibung

A comprehensive training course in screen acting by an internationally renowned teacher and acting coach who has worked with actors of all backgrounds and experience - from drama school students at the start of their careers to Hollywood stars, including Daniel Craig, Angelina Jolie and Keira Knightley. Structured as a series of five workshops, Mel Churcher takes you step by step through the process of creating, developing and delivering assured performances on screen. Online video clips, linked to throughout the book, show you all the work in action, allowing you to participate in the exercises as you progress through the workshops at your own pace. - Workshop 1: Keeping the Life encourages you to find what is unique about yourself and how you can preserve this vitality when acting on screen - Workshop 2: Inhabiting the Role focuses on the emotional and psychological steps required in preparing your performance - Workshop 3: The Physical Life introduces a series of practical exercises to develop the physicality and imagination of the actor - Workshop 4: Through the Eye of the Camera explains the technical skills you must master to act in front of a lens - Workshop 5: Off to Work We Go covers how to prepare for auditions and then how to handle specific challenges when you get the job Each exercise, technique and tip is vividly illustrated in the clips by footage from the author's actual workshops. The result is a vital masterclass in every aspect of acting on screen. With a Foreword by Jeremy Irons. 'When the whole business seems to have gone loopy, dip into Mel Churcher's book; somehow she always makes sense.' Bob Hoskins

Leseprobe

Foreword by Jeremy Irons

NICK HERN BOOKS

London

www.nickhernbooks.co.uk

To Chris and Ben

Contents

Dedication

Foreword by Jeremy Irons

Acknowledgements

Using this Book

Epigraph

Workshop 1: Keeping the Life

Introduction

The Natural versus the Unnatural

You are Unique

What About the Character?

Staying Alive

Nature and Nurture: You ‘As If…’

Stepping into the Role

Differences Between Stage and Screen

1. There is No Audience

2. You Work Out of Order

3. You Rehearse Alone

And the Other Differences…

Text – What Text?

Big and Small

Workshop 2: Inhabiting the Role

The Power of the Lens

Close-Up and Personal

The Eyes Have It

Thoughts and Wants

The Picture in Your Head

Letting the Words Fall Out

Connecting Up with the Script

Learning to Unlearn

Emotional Truth

Finding the Core

Breathing Life into the Role

Recipe for STAR Quality

Straight and Strong

Instant Posture

The Power of Preparation

How to Rehearse Alone

The Need – Raising the Stakes

Beware of the ‘How to’ Demons

Get Out of Your Own Way

Building a Life

Pictures and Memories

Unconscious versus Conscious

You Gotta Have Attitude

Being in the Right Subtext

Uncovering the Truth

When Subtext Disappears

Workshop 3: The Physical Life

The Actor’s Crucible: Physiological Alchemy

The Power of the Breath

1. Fighting Lions

2. Tics and Tensions

3. The Connected Voice

4. Emotional Release

5. Inspiration

6. Vital Energy

7. Empathy

Ongoing Posture Work

Shoulder Workouts

The Actor’s Toybox: Physical/Psychological Games

The Pavlov’s Dog Effect

Improvisation as a Rehearsal Tool

Physical Metaphors

Psychological Gestures

Emotional Props

‘Gestus’

Patterns of Energy

Circles of Need

Mask Work as a Rehearsal Tool

Chakras, Secondary Centres and Archetypes

The Animal Inside You

Triggering Emotions

Sensing Your World

Waking Up the Senses

Brain Games

Nodes

Workshop 4: Through the Eye of the Camera

Filming the Script

Every Picture Tells a Story

Public versus Private

The Camera Bends Space

Coming into Focus

Shooting to Edit

Continuity

Continuity of Energy

Props

Sound

Post-production

Round-up of Technical Tips

Workshop 5: Off to Work We Go

Getting the Work

The Casting Director

The Casting Process

Audition Nerves

Round-up of Casting Tips

The Working Actor

Checking the Monitor

Corridor Acting

Filming a Series

Cheating the Shot

Terrible Dialogue

Costume Dramas

Action Movies

Health Hazards

The One-Day Job

Accents and Dialects

Those Tears Again

Prosthetics and Extreme Physical Changes

Extremes of Imagination

The Never-Ending Story

The Actor and the Director

Making Your Own Movies

What Kind of Film Are You In?

Fine-tuning

Stereotypes

Action for Actors

Sample Scene Rehearsals

Scene 1: The Silence

Work to Do on Scene 1

Scene 2: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

Work to Do on Scene 2

Scene 3: The Constant Gardener

Work to Do on Scene 3

Resources

Viewing the Videos

List of Film Clips

About the Author

Copyright Information

Foreword

Film acting has traditionally, in the UK at least, been rather looked down on as being something that the Americans do and which really doesn’t need the technique of a theatre actor. In England, we’re mainly theatre actors, and film actors have been historically regarded as overpaid and under-talented.

But in reality, film acting can give you a real insight into acting in the theatre, because you can’t lie on film whereas you can get away with lying in theatre. In other words, the camera will see you if you are pretending. You have to be. Now, I believe you have to be in the theatre also. You have to have a technique to enlarge that state of ‘being’ so that an audience, whether it’s two hundred or two thousand, can understand what you’re saying and what you’re thinking and what you’re feeling. And you have to be able to transmit that. But in order to do that honestly, you have to be able to be in that moment – with no pretence. And if you come to film and think that you can ‘pretend’ in front of the camera (which you can get away with on stage, and which you see a lot of actors doing) – it doesn’t work.

In life, we recognise the difference between someone pretending to be angry and someone being angry. We can tell whether they really find something funny or if they’re pretending to find something funny. So, if we ‘pretend’ on stage, a perceptive audience can sometimes tell. Well – they can always tell on camera.

So I think film is a real testing ground for actors. You have to find ways to get, very quickly, into your role – to learn the techniques that you need when you’re going to shoot, probably, in short little bites. You have to understand what the scene’s about and what the arc of the scene is, as you would in theatre, but then you have to be able to get immediately into the right bit of that arc for the particular shot that’s being done. These days, people tend to shoot longer takes, shoot wide and use multiple cameras, so things are easier than they were. But you’ve still got to have tricks to make sure that – very fast – you’re ready. You don’t want directors to have to do more than two or three takes. The old days of fourteen or fifteen takes are over.

The misunderstanding arises, I think, from people assuming film and television acting is no more than being ‘real’. Hopefully you will seem to ‘be’, but you are being someone else in a different situation. You have to get yourself into that situation. Now some work doesn’t require very much. Some work requires much more, requires you have to make a huge leap – into maybe a different century or to a personality that’s completely different to you, the actor. I think great acting should be seamless. It shouldn’t show. It’s a god-given talent that some people have. I watch the great actors and try to learn from them.

Training is important. I think it’s useful to get used to the situation on set – to get used to dealing with the pressure. People will say so often, ‘Real people are so much more interesting than actors – let’s have a real person playing that role.’ And so you bring in a real person and you put the lights on them, turn on the camera, and they just collapse with nerves. What you have to do, as an actor, is to be used to all that tension and the time pressure, and learn not to worry about it.

Keep your own space. Know the jewel that you carry – what you have to offer, that no one else can do. Make sure you are in a completely calm space that is the right space for that moment in the scene. So that you don’t see the camera, you don’t see the lights, you don’t see the technicians watching. That’s clearly very important, and you will learn to do that with practice and training.

You have to allow the lens into you. You have to be open to it but not play for it. It’s an attitude. When I say ‘Keep your own space’, it’s about making the space to allow us to see what you’re thinking, see what you’re going through. Because storytelling is what we do in a film – sharing experience, sharing emotion. And people who put things out to you tend to make you, as an audience, pull back…

I’ve always thought that making a character is like making an advent calendar. In each scene, you open a window and you just show a bit of life inside that particular room from that angle, and then the next scene you open another window…

But invite us in. Don’t feel you have to justify yourself or show yourself. You don’t. Just intrigue us…

Jeremy Irons

Acknowledgements

I am deeply indebted to all my teachers and directors as an actor, and all my actors and colleagues as a teacher and director – with special mention to friends at the BritishVoice Association; to Cicely Berry, who is always my mentor; to Tim Reynolds, who gave me my first chance to direct; and to Luc Besson, who has provided me with some of my most exciting film projects.

A special thank-you to all the actors who bravely allowed me to use their private rehearsal work on the DVD and film clips, and to all the actors whose work it would have been wonderful to use if space had permitted.

Thank you to my publisher Nick Hern and to my editor Matt Applewhite for their tireless support and encouragement.

Thank you so much to Jeremy Irons for his clear and thoughtful Foreword.

Thanks to the Actors Centre (www.actorscentre.co.uk) and my colleagues there for all their help and assistance: Matthew Lloyd, Michael John, Diane Shorthouse, my long-suffering film editor Daniele Mercanti (who also devised the complex navigation system for the DVD and uploaded all the film clips online), and DOP Ivan Dalmedo.

Thanks to Holger Borggrefe, Johanna Schenkel, DOP Andreas Kohler and sound mixer Gerd ‘Ide’ Lödige and all my colleagues at ifs international film school Cologne (www.filmschule.de).

Thanks to Interkunst e.V. in Berlin (www.interkunst.de) and my colleagues there: Til Dellers, Arkadiusz Zietek and DOP Matthias Kremer.

Thanks to Penelope Cherns at LAMDA and DOPs Alvin Leong and Nayla El-Solh.

Thanks to Amanda Brennan and Catherine Alexander at Central School of Speech and Drama and DOP Keir Burrows.

Thanks to Drew Stocker at Alleyn’s School for providing the means for a workshop and to Ben C. Roose for organising it.

Thank you to sound mixer John Rodda and his kind colleagues for providing me with real studio sound effects.

Thank you to actors Daniela Holtz and John Keogh for permission to use extracts from their e-mails.

Thank you to Kevin MacLeod (www.incompetech.com) for the use of his music as credited on the DVD and films clips, and to Kirsty Mather for the use of her song.

…Last, but always first, love and thanks to Chris and Ben Roose.

Mel Churcher

The author and publisher also gratefully acknowledge permission to quote from the following, in the book and on the DVD and film clips:

China is Near by Marco Bellocchio, translated by Judith Green (copyright © 1969 Grossman Publishers, Inc.), published by Calder and Boyars (Publishers) Ltd; Playing by Heart by Willard Carroll, by kind permission of the author; Savage in Limbo by John Patrick Shanley, published by Dramatists Play Service, Inc.; Junebug by Angus MacLachlan, by kind permission of Epoch Films; Girl, Interrupted by James Mangold, The Spider Men by Ursula Rani Sarma, in Shell Connections 2006: New Plays for Young People and Victory by Harold Pinter in Collected Screenplays: Vol. 2 (copyright © 2000 Harold Pinter), published by Faber and Faber Ltd; ‘Three Women: A Poem for Three Voices’ by Sylvia Plath in Collected Poems, published by Faber and Faber Ltd in the UK (copyright © 1989 The Estate of Sylvia Plath), and in Winter Trees, published by HarperCollins Publishers in the US (copyright © 1968 Ted Hughes); ‘Burnt Norton’ from Four Quartets by T.S. Eliot, published by Faber and Faber Ltd in the UK, and by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company in the US (copyright © 1936 by Harcourt, Inc., renewed 1964 by T.S. Eliot); The Freedom of the City by Brian Friel, by kind permission of the author and The Gallery Press; To the Actor by Michael Chekhov, published by Harper and Row; clips from Ministry of Information films, by kind permission of the Imperial War Museum; The Naked Civil Servant by Philip Mackie; The Silence from A Film Trilogy by Ingmar Bergman, translated by Paul Britten Austin (copyright © 1963 Ingmar Bergman, this translation © 1978 Marion Boyars Publishers Ltd), and Face to Face by Ingmar Bergman, translated by Alan Blair (copyright © 1976 Ingmar Berman, this translation © 1976 Alan Blair), both published by Marion Boyars Publishers Ltd; Beautiful People by Scott Rosenberg; Building a Character and Creating a Role by Constantin Stanislavsky, translated by Elizabeth Reynold Hapgood, The Cut by Mike Cullen and The Memory of Water by Shelagh Stephenson, published by Methuen Drama, an imprint of A&C Black Publishers Ltd; Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind by Charlie Kaufman (copyright © 2004 Universal Studios Licensing LLLP), Honour by Joanna Murray-Smith, Low Level Panic by Clare McIntyre, and The Treatment by Martin Crimp, all published by Nick Hern Books Ltd; On Acting by Sanford Meisner (copyright © 1987 Sanford Meisner and Dennis Longwell), published by Random House Books; cartoons from Will Write and Direct for Food by Sir Alan Parker (copyright © 2005 Alan Parker), published by Southbank Publishing, by kind permission of the artist; Departure Lounge by Lorna Holder, by kind permission of Lorna Holder of Tuareg Productions; and The Constant Gardener by Jeffrey Caine (copyright © 2005 Focus Features), by kind permission of Universal Studios Licensing LLLP.

Every effort has been made to contact copyright holders. The publisher will be glad to make good in any future editions any errors or omissions brought to their attention.

Using this Book

What follows in this book is based on my five-day Acting for Screen workshops. Please refer to the Viewing Video Clips section at the back of this ebook for details on how to view the videos.

These film clips show real moments that happened during some of my workshops. The filming was not set up for the purposes of this book – hence the variable technical quality of the clips. Because the actors were genuinely involved in their work, the examples have an immediacy that would not have been possible to replicate in a controlled environment.

The clips are designed to enhance and elucidate the text by providing examples and visual references. You may view them as you wish but, initially, I would suggest that you watch each entire workshop after reading that chapter in the book. Alternatively, you can watch the exercises and examples as they are described in the book.

A symbol will alert you to relevant clip so that you can return to it whenever you wish. Separate sections are indicated by Workshop Number then Scene Number, so that [Click here 3.8], for example, refers to Workshop 3 (‘The Physical Life’), Scene 8 (‘Toybox: Circling’).

From time to time, I shall also add clips to my website that might be of interest: www.melchurcher.com On Twitter you can follow me @MelChurcher.

You’ll hear a few instances of strong language as the actors use examples from modern scripts, so please be aware that you might not consider it appropriate for younger viewers. It’s infrequent, though, and shouldn’t cause any worries for anyone familiar and comfortable with the average television drama after 9 p.m.

‘Qui vit sans folien’est pas si sage qu’il croit.’

‘He who lives without follyis not as wise as he thinks.’

Rochefoucault (1613–80)

Workshop1

Keeping the Life

Workshop1

Introduction

I was an actor once, so I know what it’s like to go in front of the camera. I know about the actor’s nightmares the night before filming, the butterflies in the stomach, the panic that rises when you forget your lines, the dry mouth, the racing heart, and the performance that’s over before it began.

A long time ago, I started teaching and directing and trying to calm other people who were going through what I used to experience. I began to see how the responsibility of trying to be ‘good actors’ was getting in their way. How seeking a feedback that they were really ‘feeling’ was leading to the opposite effect. How when they said it felt ‘too easy’, it had suddenly become real and powerful.

I first worked as an acting coach on a film around twenty years ago and since then I’ve been standing around on a set for months at a time, watching the monitor for twelve hours a day on more than forty major films and television productions. I have been lucky enough to see many different directors at work and to watch how the actors’ performances grew and changed with the input of those around them. I have also taught thousands of actors and would-be actors in workshops and studios both in groups and in one-to-one sessions. Out of this work came my first book, , which is a thorough overview of all aspects of film acting. Now, I want to share my practical workshops, designed to prepare you further for your work on camera work that is not only magic and instant but also long and tedious.