Advanced Acting and Performance on Camera

Catalog description

This studio intensive on-camera performance workshop is designed for multidisciplinary artists who want to strengthen skills specifically for acting on camera. The act of being filmed every class gives actors and performers more confidence and prepares them for auditioning and working in professional settings. Class projects allow for collaborative interdisciplinary work incorporating writing, directing, music, animation, and visual arts. Actors work to develop and expand their individual set of acting techniques and technical skills that work best on screen to create specificity in "moment-to-moment being," all of which expands the understanding of the actor's role in visual storytelling. Students perform analyzed scripted scenes, "cold" reads, and improvise unscripted on-camera exercises. Equal time and energy in this workshop is dedicated to creating original work with two projects: Bio-Pic project and Big Short. The Bio-Pic project is a deep dive into character with each actor choosing a real person they identify with to research, curate, improv, write and portray in short scenes with acting and design support from other students. Big Short is a devised collaborative short film project. Production teams will develop and film individual or group generated and improv-based shorts. For the Big Shorts, each student is required to act in at least one film (cameo, supporting or lead) and take the lead on the creative production team as head writer, director, production design, director of photography, in at least one production. The short is open for the creator to interweave other art forms (dance, design elements, music, digital art, etc) into the narrative.