"For me, acting is about the art of it and it's about being on a film set and doing your thing, painting a blank canvas." --Shailene Woodley
This past week at school we began filming our final film projects. Basically, what that entails is that you have your scene partner and your chosen scene from an existing film and we all come together to create the world of a real film set. We transform the studio space as realistically as possible for each scene, light it, and gather up a full batch of crew members. In the end, we come out with an amazing, professional-looking film scene and a great experience.
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So far with this project I have worked both on the crew and in front of the camera. What I discovered while filming my scene is that I am so much more comfortable working on camera as opposed to crew. I personally found crew to be very stressful. But when I was sitting in front of the camera and doing my scene, I felt at ease, which I did not expect to feel. In our previous on-camera acting classes I always felt nervous and anxious when I had to get up in front of the camera. But in the case of our projects it's all about you, everyone is there for you, their job is to make you look good and provide a safe environment in which you are able to do your best work.
Working as an actor on a film set is a lot of fun. It does not require the same kind of strenuous rehearsal that a stage production does. There is not nearly as much stress for an actor when working on a film set as there is for stage. If you make a mistake during a take, it's an easy fix and is, therefore, nothing to worry about. You can change the delivery of the lines, and you constantly get immediate feedback from the director, so you can improve with each take. You get to have more freedom with the material, and you can take your time.
While it can be exhilarating to go out on stage and do a show for a new audience every night, I kind of like the aspect of filming where once you've finished filming something it's over. Sometimes when you work on a piece of material for too long you can get tired of it real quick. But I don't feel that the nature of filming even allows for that to happen.
The theatre used to feel like home to me, but a film set is starting to feel even more like home. It is a comfortable, happy environment for me and one of the few time I actually enjoy being in front of a camera.
