Recent Entries

• A Film Festival with a Mission

  by Steve Cleberg February 14, 2012
    The independent filmmaking movement seems to have gone the same route as the off-Broadway movement in New York in the 1950’s. Off-Broadway arose from the need to offer a creative platform apart from the commercial pressures that required prohibitive resources and dictated a high but narrow stand...
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• Acting for Film; Part 5 - Managing the Transitions

  by Steve Cleberg February 9, 2012
    Genius happens in the transitions. Going from one thing to another, particularly in an artistic design, almost defies the time/space relationship within which the performing arts claim their existence.    Understanding a script’s structure relies on the actor’s ability to answer three sentences:...

• Acting for Film IV - The Actor’s Obstacle

  by Steve Cleberg January 21, 2012
    In the last entry, we said that getting to the structure of a script involves answering three questions: What does my character want? What’s preventing them from getting what they want? When does what they want change? Finding your character’s objective is the first step in discovering the stru...

• Acting for Film III - The Actor’s Objective

  by Steve Cleberg January 15, 2012
    When an actor picks up a script, they need to regard it in the same way that a musician regards a piece of sheet music. Those who have no training in music will look at a piece of sheet music and try to glean its contents from the lyrics. The trained musician, on the other hand, is able to discer...
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• Acting For Film II

  by Steve Cleberg January 7, 2012
  It’s often said that acting for the camera is “doing nothing very well.” It’s understandable why many would embrace this oversimplification. There is a grain of truth in it. In fact in the early part of the 20th century, a Russian filmmaker, Lev Kuleshov, in an attempt to prove the importance of ...

• Acting For Film

  by Steve Cleberg December 17, 2011
  “The reason that there is so much bad acting is because there can be.” Constantine Stanislavski said this over a century ago bemoaning the fact that the low expectations of the audience and the manipulations of directors toward these low expectations were the reasons that the art of acting neede...