Accelerated Screen Performance

Practical Techniques to help Performers Deliver Truthful, Controlled, and Compelling On-Camera Work.

This unit encourages you to identify with yourself as artists: building meaningful and truthful screen characters, stretching and accessing your imagination, becoming more present, impulsive and in the moment.  Term 1 is focused on giving you strong techniques and foundations to approach all performance work.  It is about finding what works for you.

Students will engage in principals from Practical Aesthetics, Meisner, Strasberg, Stanislavski, Uta Hagen, Michael Chekhov, Stella Adler and Ivana Chubbuck, all of which are taught by leading actor trainers in these specific fields and techniques sourced Australia wide.  

You will be encouraged to identify your strengths and weaknesses as an actor and articulate your own personal plan for improvement over the next 30 weeks.

Objectives for term 1:

• The company (the student actors) working towards being free and in your bodies, releasing imagination, spontaneity and becoming playful, inventive actors in the space.
• To ensure that after your first 10 weeks you are able to apply some of your script analysis work, voice and improvisation techniques to a monologue/scene to camera with the outcome of being more connected, in the moment, embodied and truthful.
• Students should be able to demonstrate an understanding of (or well on the way towards) an approach to text, to a rehearsal process, and show signs of being able to connect to the language and their given circumstances.

Screen-Focused Immersion into Genres from Soaps to Shakespeare, while Developing Screen Performance, On-Set Skills, and Script Analysis.

Applying the principals learned in Term 1, students will be working alongside key industry professionals and will be given due time to connect and be mentored by working screen performers from around Australia. Each week actors will perform in genres with the appropriate actor and/or special guest director.  Each genre will match an appropriate profile working professional.  This term will expose you to a variety of scripts and performance styles, so you are equipped with the knowledge of the many types of genres and are able to approach it effectively in future work or employment opportunities.

The focus is to build on the basics, and then advance your technique work with more complex material; to expose you to the widest range of script genres, and experience working with a range of professional actors and directors, all at the top of their game.  It includes an introduction to the more technical aspects of working on set and how to use the camera and work with a crew.  Your afternoon units will see you go deeper into script interpretation, character building and using language with confidence and precision.  Actors will apply these techniques to a variety of genres – training under industry professionals outstanding in their individual fields that include: 

• Television Soaps
• Children’s Television
• Police Drama
• Social Drama
• Tele-movies
• Feature Films
• Period Drama
• Shakespeare
• Chekhov

Term 2 will see actors get physical and focused through training in:

• Archery
• Fencing
• Screen Combat

Refine your screen acting skills under industry conditions as you prepare for your Showcase Shoot & Screening.

In this term, students revisit and strengthen the core techniques explored in Terms 1 and 2, working with a range of trainers and directors to deepen their craft and build confidence on camera. The focus then shifts toward preparing for a professional on-location showreel shoot.

Showcase Shoot and Screening:

In the final weeks of Term 3, actors will film professionally produced scenes with an industry director and crew. Carefully selected with the studio team, these scenes are designed to support your progression in the industry and showcase your work to agents and casting directors.

Following the shoot, students will celebrate their work at a private cinema showcase screening attended by invited friends and family.

This is a highly competitive and in-demand program, with strictly limited places for 14 participants only.