Lesson #4

Yesterday, i attended another lecture at NYU Tisch  Asia and to my surprise, the conducting lecturer wasn't Rob Schmidt. Instead, it was Michael ( a sundance film fest  award winning  director and NYU alumnus )...i'll have to catch his full name next time :P

It seems that Rob had flown back to the US to begin shooting a feature film ( I think it's a horror film). I wonder how many other productions are currently rushing to be completed b4 the SAG strike on June 30...

Anyways, during the lesson, i did a cold read as Gina Davis' character in 'The Fly'. It's from the scene where Jeff Goldblum shows Gina his telepods. There wasn't any female actors present so I had this rare opportunity to read a female's part. :P

For those who aren't quite sure what a cold read is, basically the actors see the scrīpt for the first time and just read without any emotion. So even if it's obvious from the flow of dialog that your character is say, annoyed, you still read it flat out...which isn't as easy as it sounds in practice.

After that, the film students split into groups of 3 to analyze and discuss various aspects of the scenes while we actors just chilled.

Then we were on again. This time the students offered 'directions' and we did 2 variations. Personally, i had my own interpretation and would have liked to try doing that but since it's their class, i knew better than to interrupt :P

Finally, we watched the actual scene from the movie and there were further discussions between lecturer and students. Listening from the sideline, i find myself gradually beginning to appreciate the science of filmmaking. Though honestly, most of the terminology was lost on me. :P

I'm already looking forward to next week's class and hopefully get to try out more interesting scenes.  Later then! :)