Chefs, Taste & The Cutting Room Floor

Hi There,

In the midst of our current societal madness, the stories told in film and television have become an even bigger source of family bonding, entertainment, and emotional escape than ever before.

And with the extra time many of us now have, we can embrace the opportunity to dig deeper into what moves us as artists. We can also spend time investigating the techniques employed by our fellow craftspeople, and how it impacts our work.

In this fourth issue of The Dialogue, I’m focusing on the Importance of Developing Taste and the Editor’s Role in Crafting Film Performance:

• Couch-Friendly Exercises to sharpen your eye for excellence
• Video Essays that will change the way you watch movies
• Editor Advice for giving a performance that holds up in the edit bay

FYI – The waitlist for the September On Camera Lab is open. Actors currently enrolled in August sessions get first access to September classes. While all classes are currently full, we will notify actors on the waitlist when space becomes available.

Click here to find out how you can join the On Camera Lab waitlist and be first in line for open spots.

Be well,

JC

This I know for certain: to become great at anything you must first embrace being bad at it.

In my opinion, there is no “right” way to play a scene — there are only various levels of effective methods in telling the story the writer intended. But often, I see actors search for the “right” way… driven by a desire to avoid “being bad”. “Not being bad” is the enemy of being great. This is why in any space I coach or teach, my goal is to create an atmosphere that welcomes failing.

In no way do I mean that you should look at everything you do, or experience, and convince yourself you like it. What I do advocate is trying everything, good and bad, without preconceived judgement, and developing your taste.

Develop Your Taste Palate

I learned a lot about developing literal taste when casting the Food Network Series, Chopped. Interviewing dozens and dozens of professional chefs, many at the top of their game, opened my eyes to the incredible variety of methods and tastes that each relied on to build a signature style.

But before establishing a style, they first had to develop and refine their palate. Their literal sense of taste.

If you look up recommendations for developing a more sensitive palate, you’ll notice a lot of the techniques can apply to developing your taste as an actor:

• Use all your senses
• Focus on what you’re experiencing
• Expand your horizons
• Refine your vocabulary

Taken literally, this would involve different kinds and sources of foods, spices, cooking techniques, and even cultural applications. Taken metaphorically, it can mean even more.

Use All Your Senses

Living in New York City through the COVID-19 pandemic has been a lesson in the importance of sensory life.

Walking through the deserted streets, the familiar smells of morning coffee, varying cuisines, and baking bread have all but disappeared. I’d never noticed how much those smells meant to me until they were gone. What do you notice when you take the time to experience your surroundings, using all your senses?

Stella Adler famously sent students to Central Park in search of thirty different shades of green in order to highlight and develop the importance of sensitivity. How have you worked on this sensitivity in your own instrument?

TRY: Spend some time alone using all your senses. What do you pick up around you? How sensitive is your instrument?

Focus on What You’re Experiencing

When watching TV or Film at home, I often find myself referencing IMDb on my phone. And when walking the city, I frequently listen to music – my headphones blocking out the world around me.

So, I’m writing this mostly to remind myself: Stay in the moment of the moment. Taste your food. Hear the sounds of the world around.

Whatever you’re doing, give it your full focused attention. Not only does this help to heighten your sensitivity; it’s also a sneaky way to develop your ability to concentrate when it matters.

TRY: A ten-minute stroll without your phone or other distractions. Stay in the moment.

Expand Your Horizons

If you were going to build your tastebuds, an obvious method to do so would be trying more and varying foods. The same is true when it comes to developing your taste and eye for great performances, scripts, direction, and the like.

If you want to know more about your art, you must see more. Do more. Learn more. And especially around works that might not immediately appeal to you, or for which you have limited exposure and experience.

TRY: Weekly, watch a film, TV show, or performance you’d normally skip right over. Tune into a genre of music you rarely experience. Purposely pick things that you know little about.

Refine Your Vocabulary

Before a Chef opens their own restaurant, before they invent their own dishes and create their own recipes, every Chef goes through a period of learning and apprenticing. And while that path is different for every Chef, there is a long history of learning and passing on the elements needed to not only cook in the kitchen, but to create in the imagination.

Learning “how things are done” and “what things mean” is the first step towards “mastering how things are done”, and ultimately “innovating how things are done”. It also leads to clear communication during times of stress, and when interacting with others. How things are done in one kitchen (or on one set) might differ from how they are done in another. But a shared understanding of what is being done allows everyone involved to perform at the top of their game.

TRY: Seek out the unknowns in your art. Do you have a weak spot in Film Genre? Or basic Set Etiquette? Do you know the various jobs and duties among the crew? Find the areas where you feel unsure and bone up on the “vocabulary”.

Embrace Your Own Taste

Over time, by exposing yourself to a vast array of experiences inside and around your craft, you will start to develop your own sense of taste. You will find that some performances, films, shows you appreciate… and others you don’t. You might find “master works”, revered by others, that just don’t appeal to you. And you might find works that others consider trivial that truly speak to you.

This is what developing taste is all about. It releases your art from the criticism and judgement of “good” or “bad” and instead opens you to experiences you might otherwise reject. This is how Chefs create new cuisines – hated by some, cherished by others, but novel and new and therefore important.

Taste is something that grows over time. But there are ways to intentionally sharpen your own. Here are some of my favorites:

Watch Performances

• Create a list of award-winning performances and start watching.
  Which performances resonate with you? Which don’t?
• Re-watch performances that spoke to you in the past.
  Do they still? Is there a common thread between them?
• Revisit performances you didn’t like.
  Can you identify what didn’t appeal to you? How does it differ from a performance you enjoyed?

Read Scripts

• Hunt down the script for a film, TV show, or Play that you love.
  What is it about the writing that appeals to you?
• Something you watched and didn’t enjoy? Find that script too.
  Can you see in the script what’s missing for your particular taste?

Identify Trendsetters

• Make a list of Writers you prefer.
  What, if anything, do they have in common?
• Make a list of Directors whose work you enjoy.
  What, if anything, do they have in common?
• Repeat this process for Producers, Cinematographers, Editors…
  Developing and building taste is a lifelong affair. It’s not something to master, but to embrace.

Ira Glass perfectly identifies the problem for artists when taste and abilities are not aligned, what he calls the “Taste Gap”. Your taste right now might outpace what you’re able to accomplish… for now. So embrace this dichotomy. As Ira Glass says, “It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions.”

Develop your taste and aim your abilities toward matching that taste. Focus on the what and the how and release yourself from the worry of “being good”. Find a safe place to be bad, good, and everything in-between… where you can try, fail, refine, and grow… find a place that builds your own taste, the one you care about.

When you’ve found a space like that, you’ve found a place where you can walk toward excellence.

From Martin Scorsese’s use of silence (this is truly eye-opening) to the Coen Brothers mastery of the reverse shot, Tony’s discussion around what goes into the filmmaking brings new appreciation to the art of telling visual stories.

His take on visual comedy and the brilliant work of director Edgar Wright is my all-time favorite.

You can check out the complete collection here:

https://jamiecarroll.me/every-frame-a-painting

What if you could help that editor out by delivering performances that make their job easier? Turns out, you can…

“I’ve edited all kinds of actors — awful ones, amazing award-winning ones, and actors who performed terribly on set but looked brilliant once they were pieced together from many different takes.

My job is to make them all look great.”

– Jordan Goldman, A.C.E.

In How to Avoid the Cutting Room Floor, Emmy-award winning editor of Homeland and Masters of Sex Jordan Goldman reveals meaningful ways that actors can make performances editor-friendly.

Topics include:

• Dying on screen
• Blinking and eye contact
• Continuity, and what an actor is and isn’t responsible for on set
• Flubbing a line
• And many more

I recommend purchasing How to Avoid the Cutting Room Floor as an eBook. Littered with specific, actionable tips, savvy actors could copy and paste highlights into the notes app on their phone for handy review while on set.

Purchase on Amazon:
http://jamiecarroll.me/cuttingroomfloor-amz

Purchase on Barnes & Noble:
http://jamiecarroll.me/cuttingroomfloor-bn

Purchase from an Independent Bookseller:
http://jamiecarroll.me/cuttingroomfloor-indy

Or, check the stacks of your local Public Library.

On Camera Lab is designed to be an on-going practice for your development as an artist. This work is structured, specific, and follows a repeatable set of steps designed for actors to craft and hone their own On Camera Technique.

It’s different from any ongoing On Camera acting class out there, and I’m so glad to share it with you.

Actors are encouraged to return to the Lab each month, as long as they are experiencing growth and progress.

The waitlist for September is now live—and since we’re still in a time of economic upheaval, upcoming sessions are still available at a special “relief rate”.

Click here to learn more about the workshop—and find out how to apply.