Archive for the ‘Tutors’ Category
Acting for the Camera
“ Find your mark, look the other fellow in the eye, and tell the truth.
The camera is a lie detector at 24 Frames Per Second . Godard.
Acting coach Milfid Ellis talks about acting and the course she teaches at london academy
The actor is given the opportunity to be brave and simple in difficult circumstances. I think this to myself as I approach The London Academy of Media, Film and Television, in Euston. It is a grey November day and a new group of students are waiting to start their seven lesson course with me. For the next seven weeks, we shall take our first steps to becoming professional actors. The students waiting for me are all different shapes, sizes, ages and come from a myriad of different backgrounds and walks of life, but they all share something in common, they want to express themselves as actors. They want to feel what it is like to experience different lives from their own. A lot of people, just want to have fun and meet new friends. Some of have not performed since school, others have never performed but have always thought they would like to. There are those people who don’t even think they’ll become anything more than enthusiastic amateurs, but know that the tools we need to learn will help them in their lives.
So, what are those skills? Well, learning how to breathe properly, is one and how to use your voice to the best of your potential, is another, so that you say what you want to say and are heard, and lets be clear here, that doesn’t mean you have to lose your natural accent and force an artificial and ‘ posh’ voice, no, it means, realising your individuality. After all, what matters in the end is what we say rather than how we say it. What we work towards is helping you to connect to words, to language so that it can respond to the heart of our inner selves.
We also need to learn how not to act, but how to be truthful in front of the camera lens. How to listen and to be alive and spontaneous and ’ in the moment’. This means we need to wake up all our senses. We need to start being awake and alive and noticing what goes on around us. We need to remember how things taste, how things smell, we need to remember touch, awaken memories and reconnect to important moments in our lives. We have to open our hearts and to become generous and curious. We need to be prepared to enter into imaginary worlds and make them feel real and we need above all to battle with that dreadful enemy the ego.
Of course, we also need to remember lines, to think about what it would be like to play someone living in a different time, historical period, country, situation even a different planet, from our own. That means we need to research and read about other things. It means we also need to watch films and think about other actors choices, about other actors approaches. We need to look at films from different periods and to learn about different directors and writers.
We need to start going to the theatre and to the cinema and we need to start reading different styles of writing to help us to expand our thoughts about the world, to expand our vocabularies and to give ourselves permission to become our true potentials. We will learn about screenplays and how to analyse them and break them down, how to play with subtext, how to build up a person, from lines on a page.
At London Academy the only requirement is courage and a willingness to learn and to join a group with a generosity of spirit. Lets not underestimate just what courage it takes to walk through the door. To stand up and speak in front of others, to make oneself vulnerable and also to have to start working very hard at learning scripts not just for ourselves but also for our co-stars.
Most have little or no idea what that means yet and together, we will begin a journey that will hopefully become a practise for the rest of our lives. As I hurry to my class from my other job at Neal Street Productions, where I have an office in Sam Mendes company I think about how that morning went. I have been working with professional actors who are dedicating themselves and their lives to this most wonderful profession and of the courage it takes to work with no guarantee of success, often to go for a period of unemployment and sometimes, to have to go to audition after audition with no luck, but doing it because, it offers the most wonderful experience. Actors having a need to communicate other realities, other stories, other truths, to enrich our reality of life. To live your dreams, to work with other creatives in an atmosphere where wonderful stories can be told and quite honestly, isn’t this what continually makes our world, wonderful; the myths and legends, and tragedies, and comedies that tell us who we are as human beings. Stories that show our determination, courage, wisdom, folly and tragedy.
I have been fortunate indeed to have spent twenty five years, working with actors in both the theatre and film. I love what I do with a passion and every time, I open the door to a studio and see a room full of excited faces all waiting to begin, I know that I am one of the luckiest people. Now it is time to go inside and start our warm up. If you want to know more, then please, join us, the company is wonderful and grows into a tribe and you will make great friends, as well as pushing yourself to a new level where you feel connected to the world of ideas and expressed enough to communicate them from your heart.
That dedication is up to you, everything else is with the Gods.
Written by Milfid Ellis – Professional Acting Coach
Tutor at London Academy of Media Film TV
writing for film + tv
I think about a script, like building a house, its all in the structure, start with a strong foundation ( a storyline and treatment ) before moving on, to erect the floor, walls and ceiling ( a character and scene breakdown )
Finally, you can start decorating (writing dialogue ) skip the foundation and your house may fall down – and your script collapses…. not good and difficult to fix.
