Wednesday, March 31, 2010
Pursue Your Career and No One Else's
Pursue your career, not your competitions' career.
...any market you're in, if you're in a good market, they're gonna be competitors and if you don't have any competitors you need to question your product, like where are you at? And that's just business. What it is, my philosophy is you just run your race, you know? You just look forward and you run your race. And you worry about providing the best product you can to your users, you know? And you let everything else take care of itself
(emphasis added, from Noah Everett interview).
Labels: inspiration
this posted by David August at 8:45 PM - 0 comments - 
Thursday, March 25, 2010
Allow the Fear
This isn't the same as feeling the fear. This is where you just let it get on with making a mess everywhere else, while you focus on enjoying yourself in another part of the room. You're not running into another room, you're not talking about it with anyone, and you're not hovering nearby it to make sure it doesn't throw up all over the carpet. Eventually even the most hardened life-crashing fear will bore of being starved of attention and will slink away in search of a more attentive audience. Fear lives off resistance. So humour it. When you stop resisting, it zaps away the power of the fear leaving it all floppy and impotent. And in this case, that really is a good thing
(from Natalie Christie).
Labels: inspiration
this posted by David August at 7:28 PM - 0 comments -
Tuesday, March 16, 2010
Unknown Shakespeare Play Published
A play which was first discovered nearly 300 years ago has been credited to William Shakespeare.
The work, titled Double Falsehood, was written by the playwright and another dramatist, John Fletcher.
(from BBC news).
Labels: Shakespeare
this posted by David August at 12:24 PM - 0 comments -
Thursday, March 11, 2010
Crying Over Tears
Once in High School while sitting in class another actor and I had a "competition" between ourselves to see who could cry first; I won. It was a good way to amuse ourselves during class, a parlor trick. Nice to win, occasionally useful, and rewarding in a "cool, I did it" kind of way, but in the end unneeded.
Crying on cue is professionally irrelevant, even if there are people in the industry who think otherwise. Menthol Tear Sticks have been used in Academy Award winning performances, so clearly chemically prompted tears can get the job done. The reality is that while many people, especially those not in the profession, are awed by seeing actors' ability to cry on cue, which is nice, crying-on-cue is not the be-all-end-all of acting.
Avoiding blindness by being safe with the methods you use to achieve tears by not using untested chemicals like onions or breath spray is worth considering.
Labels: process, technology
this posted by David August at 11:07 AM - 0 comments -
Wednesday, March 10, 2010
Casting Finds the Right Actor
How (casting workshops, auditions, etc.) is secondary.
...the central requirement of my job as a casting director is that I find talent. Where I find this talent, via what means, or in what location is secondary to the fact that my job depends on my finding it
(from Middleton Casting blog).
this posted by David August at 3:53 PM - 0 comments -
Tuesday, March 02, 2010
Acting Between Lines
When [actors] are talking, they are servants of the dramatist [or screenwriter]. It is what they can show the audience when they are not talking that reveals the fine actor.
Labels: inspiration
this posted by David August at 11:23 AM - 1 comments -
