Some acting teachers resort to teaching mumbo jumbo: academic waffle with no real application or logical outcome for professional on-camera performance. One of my students told me recently that she had learned this “amazing technique” in an intensive acting course. Valuable time was wasted teaching the students to cry out of one eye only! Why? It’s a mystery to me. When you cry, you cry. Was it an effort to save tears for camera set-ups from both sides of the face? Who knows? But I do know that when my mother died my wife, my children and I cried almost non-stop for a week. And we didn’t run out of tears. Your time spent studying in an acting class should be time spent learning valuable and meaningful methods and techniques; not useless mumbo jumbo. To this end, I can highly recommend that you read one of the best books available on screen acting: Acting for the Camera by Tony Barr. Tony’s book was written over twenty years ago but is still completely relevant to modern day screen performance. It covers the important areas of screen acting craft with no waffle or useless mumbo jumbo. If you want to know what is required for no bullshit cutting edge screen performance then this book is a must read!
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