Dystopian Creativity and Making Movies

Hi There,

In these challenging times, I’m looking for bright spots wherever I can find them.

One positive aspect, for me: an increase in “found time”. Moments normally spent commuting between sessions or appointments now add up to extra hours for practice and study.

In this third issue of The Dialogue, I’m focusing on cultivating and creating, including:

• Crafting a personal practice to improve the skills you value
• Recommending short films to inspire quarantine creation
• Reviewing an expert’s guide to making movies

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

See below on how you can also join the On Camera Lab waitlist.

Be well,

JC

In my opinion, since work opportunities are currently scarce, this can be a great moment to strengthen your technique. But setting out to just be better isn’t likely to help you get better.

Here are two questions to ask yourself:

• What traits do I believe make an actor great?
• Based on that list – what skills do I need to strengthen or acquire to walk towards that?

There is no one “right” answer to the first question – it will vary from actor to actor depending on your taste.

But if you don’t know the skills or traits that make an actor great in your own estimation, then you’re going to get stuck trying to just generally “get better.” Or worse, fall into someone else’s opinion of what makes an actor great.

So, let’s try using the theory of First Principles (breaking something down to its most basic components) and build exercises from there.

Here are my own top three (wildly subjective) traits of a great actor:

1. Top Notch Script Analysis Skills
2. Relaxed and Responsive Body and Voice
3. Empathy and Imagination

Once you have your list, you can work one skill at a time. This makes improving manageable and deliberate.

You can always find exercises in books from great teachers, from classes you’ve taken, or you can even try inventing your own.

Start small. You’re developing a practice – and that takes time.

Below, I walk through some of my favorite ways to sharpen these skills.

Top Notch Script Analysis Skills

There are a multitude of methods for analyzing and breaking down scripts. If you’re new to the practice, or just want to get started in a simple way, use this exercise to begin your own practice.

• Find a script from a film or television show that’s also available to stream.
• Read-through the script once.
• Go back to the beginning of the film and figure out the intention, tactic, and obstacle for each character in the first scene. Write it down somewhere.
• Now watch just the first scene – can you figure out the intentions, tactics, and obstacles for each character as you watch it?
• You can repeat this for each scene, noting intentions, tactics, and obstacles, and making a note when relationships between characters change.

Relaxed and Responsive Body and Voice

When I was still acting, I found daily vocal warm up and relaxation exercises essential for accessing my own emotions, being present, and playing well in scenes.

I have zero expertise in the area of vocal production, so when it came to developing a vocal program, I turned to the Executive Director at The Linklater Center, Andrea Haring.  Andrea was able to help me pinpoint areas of tension in my body that interfered with my voice and how best to release it.

I believe that the voice is one of the most overlooked areas of our work. Having a full voice that is open and responsive to your inner life is key not just to work in the theater, but film and television as well. In my experience, the placement of your voice can play a crucial role in the types of parts that you’re called in for.

So much of our emotional world lives in our voices. Freeing the voice can open your work up in so many ways. While I highly recommend Andrea as a voice coach, you could also ask your fellow actors for their referrals.

For a simple relaxation exercise:

• Set a timer for five minutes
• In a comfortable seated position, take an inventory of your body. Note where you’re holding tension.
• Breathe into that area and exhale to release.
• Keep doing that from head to toe.

Pay special attention to the tongue, throat, and jaw. Areas of tension become so habitually tight that you might not even notice it from day to day. But if you’ve ever gone to an audition and felt as though you had a lump in your throat, or tripped over your tongue when you’re nervous, body tension is a likely culprit.

Empathy and Imagination

My number one recommendation to enhance your capacity for empathy and fire up your imagination is simple: read.

Read fiction, memoirs, and plays. Read articles about current events. Let your mind fill in the images instead of having images created for you by watching film and television.

Read about people of other cultures, genders, races, sexuality – and imagine what their day is like. What are their rituals, their dreams? What would it feel like to live as them for a day? What music do they listen to? What are their hobbies?

Be relentlessly curious. Keep a notebook of ideas and impressions from your reading. I keep a list of great stage direction and character descriptions, culled from things I’ve read, that I sometimes use when coaching actors.

From my perspective, one of the great gifts of spending one’s days surrounded by the arts and artists is the resulting insatiable desire to see and understand. To live an examined life.

Personalize your practice so that you look forward to the ritual – play, experiment, and test like a kid with a chemistry set. That is developing a personal practice.

While the future of the arts is in a moment of transition, one thing that will always remain a constant is our love of stories and storytelling. And while the entertainment industry may be on pause, that hasn’t stopped creativity. One bright spot: with careers on hold, we are seeing creatives tell stories they want to tell, rather than stories intended to advance careers.

Short films have always been vehicles to help creatives grab the attention of the industry. But what if we let that attention-grabbing function go, since there’s no work on the other side of that attention right now anyway? What stories could we tell if we focused instead on just telling them?

It’s said that creativity needs constraints to thrive. With quarantine and statewide limits to equipment, locations, cast and crew – constraints abound! Now is the perfect time to tell short stories, on film. Maybe you have an idea that could be made with no budget, and only a tiny crew and cast?

Here are some of my favorite short films that either shot in one location, featured a small cast, or budgeted next to zero dollars for the production. And all are under ten minutes.

THIS IS JOHN

This film by Mark and Jay Duplass cost $3 to make. It’s one actor, in one location, doing one thing – and made it into Sundance in 2003.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4I1Ylynes8A

AUDITION

One actor, one location – and a premise anyone who has ever auditioned will completely understand. Celia Rowlson-Hall is extraordinary.
https://vimeo.com/51498313

LATE

A full story told in one minute, with a two-person cast, in a single location—and still packs a punch.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gfy34-v74DM

BLACK HOLE

A simple and great concept for a short film. Features a cast of one.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ijTTyxyaKk

BOUNCE BACK

A car, a couple, and the exploration of the question: can things ever go back to normal?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IxmTjtA1uI0

This difficult moment in our history can be a reminder that films and filmmaking are about where we take the audience and not where the film takes our careers.

The first film up was Twelve Angry Men. To be honest, I didn’t have high hopes. This “cinematic education” was something I wanted to want to do. Not something I actually wanted to do.

Instead, I found all ninety-six minutes of that movie riveting. I felt the same way reading Making Movies, written by the man who directed Twelve Angry Men, Sydney Lumet.

In this book, Lumet takes us through the workings of the camera, describing the power of the lens and how it contributes to storytelling. Equal parts memoir and how-to guide, Making Movies is a heartwarming book made up of practical notes about moviemaking, woven together with stories from a life lived on set.

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

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

Purchase from an Independent Bookseller:
http://jamiecarroll.me/makingmovies-indie

Or, check the stacks of your local Public Library.

The Films of Sydney Lumet

If you’re reading Making Movies, try to watch one of the films he mentions. I re-watched several while reading it, and noticed nuances in performances, camera angles and story points I hadn’t seen before.

12 Angry Men
https://www.justwatch.com/us/movie/12-angry-men

Murder on the Orient Express
https://www.justwatch.com/us/movie/murder-on-the-orient-express-1974

Dog Day Afternoon
https://www.justwatch.com/us/movie/dog-day-afternoon

Network
https://www.justwatch.com/us/movie/network

The Verdict
https://www.justwatch.com/us/movie/the-verdict

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 can’t wait to share it.

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

The waitlist for August 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.