Acting: Do You Know How To Act?

I’m one of those “independent film directors”, a cinematographer, and an actor. Why am I telling you this? Because this will help me to quickly explain why a director needs to learn acting.

Since I was a director and a cinematographer, that meant that I was technically oriented when on set. But, and this was a big issue, I lacked that special ability to communicate with the actors under pressure. As a director, I could see when the actors were doing a good job, but when the actors really needed direction, which was mostly when things got hectic, I wasn’t able to communicate with them well enough to get the best acting performances.

So, I looked into taking acting lessons. Acting schools are abundant, but I don’t recommend going away to acting school in LA or New York at first. At first, I honestly had no clue of where to look, since many of the actors I had asked had literally grown up acting. Then one day, I passed by the Maryland Ensemble Theatre in downtown Frederick one day and saw that they were offering acting classes. Excited, I walked in and pleaded with them to sign me up on the spot. They were stage oriented, but that didn’t bother me. If you can’t find a local theatre company that offers classes, then I’d recommend looking into your local community college. They offer acting classes as well. Overall these classes helped me understand acting a lot better than ever before. I didn’t become Johnny Depp or anything, but I did learn how actors took directions, how actors got into character, how actors stayed in character, and, something that’s very important, how actors warmed up.

In the course of a few months, I learned what I had been lacking as a technical director: The art of how to act. Acting is NOT easy! Anyone that thinks acting is easy has never tried it! Getting into character and staying in character is hard. Romantic scenes for an actor are extremely hard! So, please, if you want to be a good director that gets good performances out of your actors – go now and sign up for an acting class.

Btw, I want to stress this now: YOU CAN NOT LEARN ACTING BY READING A BOOK OR A WEBPAGE!!! You have to get your feet wet and act in front of people. It is truly the only way to understand acting.

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