Topics in Acting for the Screen (377-0-20)
Instructors
Alexander John Lester Phillips
Meeting Info
Louis Hall 119: Tues 4:00PM - 6:50PM
Louis Hall 106: Thurs 4:00PM - 5:50PM
Overview of class
This course will be a workshop in techniques for developing drama and expressing themes, emotional shifts, ideas, and visual composition through the performers' movements in relationship to camera, environment, and to one other onscreen. Staging, or the arrangement and movement of performers on camera, is the key area of collaboration between directors, actors and cinematographers and perhaps is the most essential element of visual design in cinema (necessary even before lighting and editing can do their expressive work). This course will develop basic skills in designing dramatic and dynamic relationships between performers and camera through hands-on exercises in class and shooting in the field. You will introduce and practice different styles of coverage (for example, long-take vs. analytical montage) and camera technique (dolly vs. handheld vs. tripod). This class develops skills necessary for actors, directors, cinematographers, and is also highly recommended for students focused on editing and sound recording.
Registration Requirements
Please contact Prof Spencer Parsons
Learning Objectives
This course aims to develop directorial, camera operation and performance skills to control pacing and dramatic emphasis, as well as to guide audience attention through placement and movement of actors and camera. Actors will more closely focus on the technical concerns of how to behave in relationship to the camera than in other acting classes, but ideally, the chief concern remains compelling and grounded performance of a character. For the director and cinematographer, this course will give some experience in front of the camera, with an understanding of the problems faced by actors when planning and executing the best means for capturing their performances.
Teaching Method
Through in-class exercises and shooting projects outside class, we will address the balance between our technical means of establishing and altering camera space (angles, planes of action, camera motion, lens selection, and depth of field) and dramatic concerns that drive believable, engaging, and even heightened movement through space by performers. Students will apply basic dramatic principles of scene analysis to developing strategies for camera placement, movement, and editing in relation to performance. Screenings of work by fiction filmmakers will illustrate concepts, and students will practice at evaluating finished work to understand cinematic storytelling strategies that they can deploy as filmmakers.
Evaluation Method
Completion of short film assignments, class-participation, oral reports on filmmaking techniques used in films screened.
Class Materials (Required)
Textbook: FILM DIRECTING CINEMATIC MOTION by Stephen D. Katz, Additional course readings will be provided via PDF on Canvas.
Enrollment Requirements
Enrollment Requirements: Students must have completed RTVF 190-0 in order to register for this course (concurrent registration is not allowed)