Welcome to ActingReality.com!
Hello,
Thank you for stopping by my acting resource site. I put this
site up for one specific reason and that is to give aspiring actors and
actresses somewhere to go to learn what it really takes to work in film
and television.
As for me, I've been fortunate enough to have worked on some really
wonderful shows and movies, and I've been doing so for close to 14
years now. However, I didn't realize until recently that most actors around
town don't know a number of crucial things about the job of acting.
As a rule, many
actors don't realize:
1- What is expected of
them during an audition.
2- What is expected of
them on a professional film or television
soundstage.
3- What specific skills
they need to do their jobs correctly.
4- What the crew needs
from them to be an efficient member of the team.
5- What 'success' as an
actor requires
and more importantly, why.
Or, worse yet they assume
that
they know the above, which is really a shame. At best that
lack
of knowledge really slows down the filmmaking process, at worst it will
keep you from getting hired again, or even in the first place!
It's really unfortunate too, because I see so many really dedicated
people struggle and claw their way into an acting job and then show up
on set with nothing more than a vague theory as to what they should be
doing. The worst part is that because filmmaking is so
expensive
(think $700.00 per
minute!) no one has time to help these young actors out.
They simply work around them and the actor or actress is
never the
wiser. more...
New Meisner Master Class on DVD!
I am so excited to see this DVD is now available! If you want to be an actor, you literally cannot afford to be without this DVD. This is the master himself at his finest and in this amazing 2-disc set, you will be privy to the world that spawned geniuses such as Robert Duvall, Gregory Peck and literally thousands of others. more...Acting and Stage Fright
One of the most common questions that gets posed before someone embarks on an acting career is how one can overcome stage fright. The shortest answer is simply to keep getting on stage. Now, that may not sound like much, but as you will see, the power of repetition is not to be missed here.
The first thing you have to understand about stage fright, especially when it comes to acting, is the root source of that fear. Very early on in the acting school I attended, the acting teacher presented us an acronym for F.E.A.R. that I've hung on to ever since...
False
Evidence
Appearing
Real
Now, fear is a normal part of our operating mechanism...like a steering
wheel, it comes with the car, so to speak. It was further
pointed out in my acting school that as babies, we have ONE ingrained
fear when we show up in the world. That being the fear of
loud noises. Everything else is learned behaviour, as in, we
pick it up as we go. Some of those fears are legitimate and
serve to protect us from harm. The problem only starts
manifesting itself when those fears come from irrational places
and that's exactly where stage fright comes into play. more...
The Pros and Cons of Method Acting
Method Acting is based loosely on Stanislavsky's method, but utilizes 'Sense Memory' for emotional preparation. Stanislavsky himself experimented with 'sense memory' for the better part of his career and abandoned it for being unreliable.
'Sense Memory' in a nut-shell being the use of personal memories to affect and achieve appropriate emotional preparedness before engaging in a scene. Stanislavsky (as well as Adler and Meisner) eventually realized that personal memories and experiences alter greatly with the passage of time, as in, what mattered to you a great deal when you were four may present very little 'emotional' impact at the age of 45.
As it is based on personal experience, the preponderance of modern adherants tend to subject themselves to all manner of potentially dangerous situations to achieve a truly realistic experience to draw from. This has manifested in such things as experimental drug use (which actually lead to addiction and death in the case of River Phoenix) and placing themselves into actual, immediate physical stresses or harm. more...