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The Actor's Craft and Career Training Intensive

ACTOR TRAINING
Instructor: Sean Barnes
Price: $225/month
Schedule: Thursdays 7-10 PM
Location: Raleigh Studios, 650 N Bronson, Los Angeles, CA 90004
Next session starts February 10th (audits welcome - call to arrange)

INTRODUCTION 
(by founder/creative director Sean Barnes)

"I taught for many years with Sean and his actors always improved wonderfully. He is an excellent teacher who gets results." - Jeff Goldblum

It is wise to be patient and focus on each step intently in pursuit of your acting craft. It is also wise to be cleverly impatient and diplomatically bold in pursuit of your acting career. In this class, we get positive results by staying true to what never changes and adjusting properly to the aspects of the profession that do change.

We also get positive results by surrounding you with like kind. I'm happy to take brand new actors or veterans, but all of the successful actors I know have nothing in common except this - they are smart about acting, have some natural insight into it, and enjoy or are driven to play at it every day. This is what I expect of you.

What you can expect from me - The Truth.

I will not nurture or coddle you toward failure. I will never humiliate you or embarrass you in front of the class. I will always work to inspire you toward your best. In class, the focus will be on your work. You will work twice (once on-camera) - every class. I will bring you face to face with the reality of where your training is, and what needs to be done by when, and offer you the tools to achieve it. I will demand that you put first things first.

Sound like fun? No? Good because I'm not always offering fun. I'm offering happiness. Fun is what you feel during an experience. Happiness is what you feel after you've done something fulfilling or important to you. Fun is fleeting. Happiness is long-term.

We divide each class into two sections: DEVELOPING CRAFT and GETTING WORK. Our bifurcated approach works to meet the necessary realities of your artistic development, and the business demands of your career as a working actor.

DEVELOPING CRAFT (1st Half of class)
Pragmatic exercises or scenework that gives you the tools to always act well in any situation and be prepared when your career throws you challenges. "They give you the part, because you already know how to do the part." Section 1 deals with the truth that it takes time to master your craft, you must put in the hours to achieve success at acting. Section 1 is divided into 3 parts. We delve intensely into each part for 8 weeks, so the program is completed in 24 weeks. To give you a sense of the pace, we took 2 years to cover the same amount where I taught previously.

  • FUNCTIONING OR RUDIMENTS AND FUNDAMENTALS (Weeks 1-8)
     You learn all of the below by doing and experiencing, not via lecture. I'm not talking about intellectual ideas that you know in your head, these are principles that will become present in your instinctual performance. Learned in your gut/body.
     
    • LISTENING - Learn to really listen when you act, truly take in what is said and done to you, and allow a genuine experience to occur in your heart.
    • SPONTANEITY - Learn how to get caught up in the moment so much that it truly feels like real life. (Stanislavsky called these "moments of inspiration" and they were the catalyst for his intense study of acting and development of the method. Happily, today they are quite commonplace in my classroom.)
    • DOING - Learn "The reality of doing". To truly do things when you act, no faking, the camera is like a lie detector, so one must learn to live truthfully under imaginary circumstances.
    • CHOICES - Learn to make the strongest (deeply motivated) choices.
    • VULNERABILITY - Learn how to open up and become affectable and passionate.
    • VOICE - Learn how to find your artistic "voice" and the emotional tools in your guts that will motivate your acting.
    • BEHAVIOR - Learn to become much more sensitive to, and an expert in, human behavior.

    These skills are developed via Repetition, Independent activity, 3 Moment, Coming to door, Improvisations on imaginary circumstances, relationship exercises, emotional preparation and assignments dealing with emotional diaries, music, reading materials, and a taught artistic perspective.
     
  • SCENEWORK (Weeks 9-16)
     
    • PERSONALITY - Learn how to bring your unique personality to material but still fulfill the materials demands on character and circumstance
    • MOMENTS - Learn how to use your partner's behavior to find unique moments on each take.
    • CHOICES - Learn how to discover unique/creative "star" takes (choices) when performing a take/scene.
    • RELAXATION - Learn how to be completely relaxed and comfortable with yourself, even doing "nothing" on camera or before a live audience.
    • RELATIONSHIPS - Learn how to make relationships real and deepen them.
    • ENVIRONMENT - How to creatively use your environment and set.

    These skills are developed via: Improvisations into scenes, particularizations into scenes, relationship work on scenes, doing activity/door exercises into scenes, Home Alone Exercises, and Fantasies – how to access every facet of yourself to fill out role requirements that ask you to "go for it!" Ever wonder where the actors you admire find the guts to do some of the "crazy" performances that make them stars? Right here. Also learn to live out highly imaginative circumstances. This exercise has become extremely useful for the way many films are made today.
     
  • ADVANCED CHARACTER WORK AND SCRIPT ANALYSIS (Weeks 17-24)
     
    • Monologue Improvisations – When you learn to hold an audiences attention and interest with nothing but words and yourself, you've come to a new level. Also learn to deeply personalize material, so that you can convince anyone you lived through it.
    • One Actions – Learn the trancelike concentration necessary to fall asleep on a busy set with everyone watching you, or be genuinely surprised on the 17th take. Also learn the ability to accept and live out extreme or heightened imaginary circumstances. (Horror films, Action films, etc.)
    • Short Poems – The ultimate creativity test of an exercise that challenges your ability to live the truth "acting is not in the words". Film acting especially is a visual medium. The best actors learn to speak volumes about their character, relationships, and help tell the story, with a costume, or prop choice, or with one simple action or inaction. You will learn to let the audience know, without them becoming aware of you "showing" them.
    • Advanced Intro to Script Analysis – The importance of Theme, Tone, Character Spines, and more. The actor as storyteller. Objectives and Super Objectives.

GETTING WORK (2nd Half of class)
Gaining On Camera experience and working practically with the technology and situations that will enable you to book work and get your career started. Section 2 deals with the truth that your career will not wait for you to master your craft before it makes demands of you. In fact, those who focus only on class work at most schools for years, before they audition, tend to bring so much pressure in the room with them to be good, under new and completely unfamiliar circumstances, they tend to have confidence shattering, deeply depressing, experiences. Where those who dive in and begin to learn to deal with audition realities and on set realities, while also practicing good acting principles, go into their early auditions familiar, confident, and looking solid to casting directors. They may not be masters yet, but they show promise, and can do the job at hand.

  • INTRO TO AUDITIONING ON CAMERA (Weeks 1-8)
     
    • How to bring your relaxed presence through the camera
    • How to make an audition scene "pop"
    • How to be true to the circumstances but creative in a standout way
    • When it's appropriate to improvise in auditions
    • How to learn audition material quickly and with confidence
    • What to wear, what to do about heavy action, and props in an audition
    • How to prepare for auditions
    • How to handle pre and post audition interviews

     
  • MASTERING THE CAMERA AND BREAKING DOWN THE SCRIPT/SIDES (Weeks 9-16)
     
    • Learn to adjust performance for Master, Medium Shot, or Close Up and Extreme Close Up
    • How to see your work and self objectively for productive self-critique
    • How to make the camera love you, and learn to love being on camera
    • A solid approach to auditions and scenes that never fails to show your best
    • Making the most of the first moment
    • Finding opportunities for behavior
    • Connecting all of the dots or avoiding false behavior. (No bad acting-ever again)
    • Finding the dynamic doing in the scene
    • Personalizing the sides, even though you don't know the whole script

     
  • ON-SET CHALLENGES AND ADVANCED AUDITION TECHNIQUE (Weeks 17-24)
     
    • How to work with eye line marks instead of a partner
    • Working with freedom and spontaneity within a narrow field of focus
    • Working off of the imaginary
    • Hitting difficult marks naturally
    • Walking on dolly tracks
    • When overlapping dialogue is OK
    • Working with a terrible actor or reader
    • Making the best of bad writing
    • Never becoming self-conscious, while overcoming these on-set or audition challenges.