– Make a choice! ANY choice that is a CHARACTER choice is better than PLAYING IT SAFE. for your scene.
– Actors are storytellers! WE tell STORIES. In this industry, we are GIVEN stories to TELL, but WE TELL THEM, through OUR eyes and OUR point of view. Simply tell the story that’s been given to you as you would ANY story you’ve ever told and THAT’S what they are looking for. We ALL know classic kids stories and songs, yeah? We all know the same story, hear it time and time again, but the REASON they LAST is because they’re never told the same way TWICE. You will NEVER hear two people in class tell ‘The Three Little Pigs’ the same way. EVER. It’s all about how WE learned the story, what WE thought about it when we heard it, what WE think about the story AS we tell it (get where I’m goin’ with this?)… Sides are handed to HUNDREDS and HUNDREDS of actors; casting will hear the same 2 pages for days on end, and only the few that somehow manage to make them curious to hear that The Big Bad Wolf was unable to blow down the third Little Pig’s brick house will give them a boner and a callback.
– Not sure how to start the scene? Peek at how the scene ENDS. It’s called an ARC- THIS IS GUARANTEED TO IMPROVE YOUR SCENE!
– MAKE SURE YOU’RE SELLING YOURSELF AS SOON AS THE SCENE STARTS! Once they buy the car and drive it off the lot, your job is DONE, right?
– It’s a cliche term, I know, but the ‘moment before’ entices the audience to follow you into the story. It’s unspoken flirting that LEADS TO SEX.
– Dressing the part will often times do half the work for you.
– You don’t get cast for your choices, you are cast for embodying the character. Choices are tools. Never in the history of this solar system has a brilliant architect been praised or had heaps of fortune piled upon him because of his protractor and graph paper.
– Borden
