Screen Acting Studio

06/09/2024

Rohan's short film Distant Space was judged "Best SciFi" at the June 2024 Stockholm City Film Festival. Rohan also took out "Best Actor". Congratulations to Producer Simon Wilmot and all involved in the film's production.

24/06/2024

Warm up the kids with some of the world’s FUNNEST drama games!!!

Due to popular demand, Screen Acting Studio are offering one-hour drama game workshops during the winter holidays. The games will be a selection of our young actors’ favourite games, plus some exciting new ones. Come and have some fun, fun and more FUN!!!

For more info please read the poster below… or click on the link to our Winter Holiday Workshops info and enrolments page:
https://www.screenactingstudio.com.au/winter-holiday-workshops

20/05/2024

Have you ever wanted to make a film?

During Covid I reconnected with my English-Australian friend Steph who had moved to France. I helped her make her first film at seventy! The process changed her life:

“My name is Stephanie Moore. I am 73 years old. Yes, I know, it’s unbelievable when I feel about forty-five.

I live in France. After the death of my husband 6 years ago, I knew I had to live my life differently. I got introduced to Sebastien, a French filmmaker. He offered to work with me on a project of my choosing. I had nothing in mind. But suddenly one day the idea for a short film arrived. I had known Rohan from a previous connection. He offered to mentor us through the process. He did. It was fun. His experience and knowledge helped us develop something amazing for a first-time film, complete with novice screenwriter and director (me!). Sebastien, who was on camera, didn’t speak English. Rohan didn’t speak French. I was translator, and my French wasn’t fabulous at that time. With patience and joy we muddled through. Rohan’s belief in me, and his teaching, gave me enormous confidence about my creative abilities and vision, that I was on the right track. Plus, when he offered different perspectives, which could have quashed my confidence, he did it with grace and gentleness, and I was able to see the world through other eyes.

I was pleased with the result. I was even more pleased when my film ‘The Knitted Heart’ won Special Mention at the Meriel Film Festival in Paris!

As a bonus, all that we did together has informed other areas of my life. It reinforced my belief that life-long learning is just great. That at my age I am not only able to learn, but to embrace new things. My thinking is flexible and fluid. I can still add to my life at a time when others may be feeling life has nothing new to offer. I do this with joy and excitement about what I might discover. It’s like opening a big box of creativity and not quite sure what will pop out. And at my age, I no longer care what people think of me, so it’s a pleasure to explore. That change is good, healthy and nourishing. If you work with Rohan, regardless of your age, you are in good hands. Have a go, is what I say. Surprise your Self. Laugh a lot.”

Maybe you want to:
• hear people speak dialogue you write.
• tell a story through the framing you select with a camera.
• create characters you can perform as an actor.
• design visual sets for a genre you love.
• build a story with sound.
• work out how to stitch a story together in the edit.
• meet others to help you make a film.

All of these inspirations, and more, can be creative starting points. If you’re interested in a creative mentorship (age and experience level are no hindrance), email [email protected]

=personaldevelopment

English and French description.The Knitted Heart - a short film abou...

17/05/2024

I had a great time last night watching Beau Travail!!!

The Capitol... it's been a while since I'd experienced a film there and forgotten just how beautiful it is. The sound was sooo crisp! And have the seats been refurbished?

Watching the movie again I remembered Denis' communication of the fragility of colonial occupation, the domesticity of some of the soldiers tasks, the intensity of the many moving camera closeups on faces and bodies, the contrast between scenes with diegetic and non-diegetic sound design/score, and I really feel the film also pays homage to the physical beauty of men.

Other emotions I felt when watching the film was Denis' daring regarding how she chose to create her choreographed action sequences, how she filmed them, how they were assembled in the edit, and how her subject matter was the French Foreign Legion. I know she came up against a lot of resistance to making the film because of her gender. I can only imagine her extraordinary efforts to convince others to fund the film, to assemble the cast and choreograph sequences beforehand, and to shoot on location.

Lastly, as a filmmaker and actor, I am grateful that a film like Beau Travail exists. I enjoyed being immersed in the film's extraordinary world as an audience member, and watching the film filled me with excitable energy about taking creative and technical risks when making my own films.

Thank you to Djoymi Baker and her RMIT for putting the film on. I look forward to seeing what other films will be selected in "The Best Films You've Never Seen". Personally, I'd love to see Mikhail Kalatozov's 1957 film 'The Crane's are Flying' on the big screen. The film was shot by cinematographer Sergey Urusevskiy. Kalatov and Urusevskiy and their teams made some exceptional work together.

Sergei Urusevsky will be remembered as one of the most innovative and resourceful figures in the history of cinematography, a proponent of a filmmaking in which…

16/05/2024

I'm very excited to be watching Claire Denis' 1999 film 'Beau Travail' on the big screen tonight. The film is being presented by RMIT as part of: "The Best Films You've Never Seen".

I used the film in a subject I used to teach at Deakin University - Acting and Directing for Screen. The presence of the characters on screen is authentic contextually, but the film is not a classical shot-reverse-shot, naturalistic, classical 3-Act film. The film is beautifully stitched together in distinct vignettes of narrative, sometimes showing the mundanity of French Foreign Legion life, interwoven with splices of unexpected physicalised conflict, bracketed by intense evolving voyeuristic malevolence from one of the central characters and his voice over, with some beautifully choreographed training sequences (most of the cast in the film are dancers).

The film's cinematographer is longtime Denis collaborator, Agnès Godard. How Denis and Godard choose to frame the film's physically beautiful male characters is fascinating when interrogated alongside John Berger's theory of the male gaze, and Laura Mulvey's 1975 groundbreaking essay "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.".

One of the many discoveries I made when researching the film was that Michel Subor plays Commandant Bruno Forestier. Bruno Forestier is a character Jean-Luc Godard invented for his 1963 film "Le Petit Soldat". In Godard's film Forestier is a young French secret agent working against an Algerian terrorist network. In Beau Travail, thirty-nine years later, the character pops up as an officer in the Legion... and the character is played by the same actor!!! As a filmmaker and actor, I find this kind of creative inspiration, decision-making and experimental story making very inspiring.

The Best Films You've Never Seen is thrilled to present Claire Denis's 1999 modern classic Beau Travail.

10/05/2024

Robert De Niro at Work: From Screenplay to Screen Performance, by Adam Ganz & Steven Price (2020).

I had no idea this book existed until last week, so for those who enjoy Mr. De Niro's work, this book exists!

I have watched Mr. De Niro's films more than I have watched the work of any other actor, and he remains one of my favourites. In 2006 he (quoting directly from the book) 'donated his entire archive to the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas... arranged in over 500 boxes, in addition to hundreds of books and other bound volumes, as well as an extensive collection of costumes, props and other personal effects and artefacts.' Wow. The working processes of a screen actor over the last forty years. Very rare.

I have not been this excited to read a book for many, many years!!!

However there is a caveat - the book is not researched from a performance point of view, but through the study of the screenplay. Nevertheless, the reader discovers how Mr. De Niro uses the screenplay to construct his character through research, preparing himself for performance. And for someone like me who loves to research screen acting and directing process, this is mind blastingly thrilling!

The authors also posit this opinion in their introduction, 'if we accept practice as research, in the manner of current emphases in academic research in the humanities, then De Niro is the most profound kind of researcher into the nature of film narrative as it is expressed through his performances.' An inspirational statement for an artist researcher/teacher like me.

09/05/2024

Distant Space screening and ticket info for St Kilda Film Festival:

https://www.trybooking.com/events/landing/1216410?

Our beloved Dark Matters is a must-see for those who like their cinema dark and dangerous. This program of thrillers and chillers journey into deep...

08/05/2024

Lina Zackariya has been invited to discuss her production design for Distant Space at a St Kilda Film Festival (StKFF) Q&A. This is part of a series of StKFF screenings and discussions for films that show outstanding craft elements. The event is free for public and is part of StKFF’s professional development initiative called "The Big Picture". Lina designed real and virtual sets for our science fiction production.

Place: Backlot, South Melbourne
Date: Saturday June 8th
Time: 12:40-13:55pm
Lina has also been invited to be part of a panel to discuss working within new technologies and convergent environments - venue and time will be released shortly.

Congratulations to Lina’s hard working VFX and Unreal Engine collaborators, set builders and painters, art department assistants, etc. Distant Space was made by sixteen Deakin University members of staff, over thirty students and student alumni, and Lina who had recently graduated from the Victorian College of the Arts Master of Production Design.

Attached are some behind the scenes photos and screen shots of the sets and locations created for Distant Space. The film is set on Mars. This was the first time Rohan worked with Lina, and also the first time he directed a film using Volume Virtual Production technology.

17/04/2024

Rohan is pleased to announce that his short film "Distant Space" has been selected for competition at the 40th St Kilda Film Festival! Rohan is extra excited as he was able to act in the film with his daughter, Arcadia - who was eight years old at the time. They can't wait to watch and hear the film in a cinema!

The science fiction film was made at Deakin University using their virtual production facilities. We will provide details of screening dates as soon as they are released.

Attached is the film's poster - designed by Gerlee.

11/04/2024

Jean-Pierre's Melville's film 'Le Samouraï' (1967) introduced me to the great French actor, Alain Delon. Later, I would watch another film that is one of my favourites because Delon is in it: Luchino Visconti's 1960's masterpiece 'Rocco e i suoi fratelli' ('Rocco and His Brothers'). For much of my life, this is how it went... watching a film that reveals to me an actor whose work I admired. Then following their trail, watching film after film that they were cast in. Later, I would apply this method to screen directors. Which actors and directors have you followed over the years?

This is a link to the trailer of the 4K restoration of "Le Samouraï". The film is highly stylised regarding framing, camera movement, dialogue, colour, etc... this required a particular style of performance from Delon. Performance scholar Sharon Carnicke argues that "actors recognize that narrative and aesthetic demands differ from film to film [and] adjust and attune the details of their performance to suit the director’s vision." This is certainly the case for Delon in the two films mentioned above. Delon's performance in 'Rocco e i suoi fratelli' is much more naturalistic.

'Le Samouraï' (1967) trailer
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PTFV07ah4fY

'Rocco e i suoi fratelli' (1960) trailer
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kK1WXnyEkBk

In a career-defining performance, Alain Delon plays Jef Costello, a contract killer with samurai instincts. After carrying out a flawlessly planned hit, Jef ...

08/04/2024

Last week was our first ever class in Castlemaine's Phee Broadway Theatre! As soon as we walked into the theatre I thought, “This is perfect.” There’s a large stage where students can improvise and perform, the venue is quiet, and the atmosphere seemed alive with years of creative collaboration!!! Attached is a photo of young actor Arki in the “hot seat” answering questions about a character she was creating based on a nursery rhyme.

For folks looking for some holiday fun, we have a “Create a Scene for Screen” workshop on this Wednesday the 10th.
Then on the 23rd of April we begin our 9-Week Term 2 classes:
4:30-5:30pm: 9-12 year olds
5:45-7:15pm: Teens
7:30-9:30pm: Adults

Thank you to Mount Alexander Shire Council for facilitating the use of the Phee Broadway for the teaching of drama/screen acting.

For enrolments enquiries, please go to: https://www.screenactingstudio.com.au/

01/04/2024

Screen Acting Studio had a great night out last Tuesday. We went to Mechanics Lane for the Adults class. The actors worked on their scenes with Castlemaine as exterior locations. Beautiful!!!

For those interested in Autumn holiday workshops, we still have places available for Create a Character for Screen:
*8-10 year olds at Phee Broadway Theatre at 9am on Wednesday the 3rd of April.
*Teens at Phee Broadway Theatre at 11:30am on Wednesday the 3rd of April.
For more information, go to our website:
https://www.screenactingstudio.com.au/holiday-workshops