An email exchange with writer/actor Tamara Branch where I get to sound off about Scene Study classes.
Mark, I have a quick question. I remember you said you hated scene study classes. I forgot why. Why? Just wondering. I know there was a good reason.
Before each TRAVIS TECHNIQUE workshop, directors are tasked with writing a 3-minute autobiographical story, based on an event in their life.
This is a letter from New Zealand director, Charlie Haskell, who is writing about a motorcycle trip he took with two of his friends 28 years ago.
Beginning a new relationship can be both exciting and challenging. In the world of filmmaking, directors initiate many relationships, the most vital and crucial being the ones you have with actors.
Director/actor relationships are like none other in life. Their goal is to create believable characters that exist in a fictional world.
Actors are amazing. They willingly thrust themselves into the persona and life experiences of another character. We, directors, are constantly challenging them, provoking them, and hopefully inspiring them to fully embody the emotional states of these characters.
Yet, what many directors overlook, or are not aware of, is that there is an evolutionary change in every actor as they move through the key phases of filmmaking: Auditions, Rehearsal and Production.
It’s 1995, early in my teaching career, and my parents are visiting me in Los Angeles. Because I am always looking for something to impress my father with, something that would make him proud of me, I show him a brochure of a seminar that I will be teaching. It’s a very detailed brochure with bullet points of all the aspects of directing that I promised to cover. I am watching as he reads every line of the brochure, making those little ‘hmm’ sounds as he absorbs the information.