State your Unstated
Anyone who’s ever studied with Annie knows that there are three ways an actor can tell the story: The stated, the unstated, and the physical life. And, as anyone who’s ever watched an actor preparing to go into an audition room can tell you, they’re usually putting all of their focus on the stated. On […]
Be Like Water
“What technique do you guys teach?” That’s a question I get asked all the time from people who are interested in learning about Annie’s studio. And, depending on my mood, I may give a variety of answers. But most commonly, I like to paraphrase Bruce Lee, and say that we teach the style of acting […]
Stop Sabotaging Your Self Tapes!
I don’t know about you, but I have a bit of a love/hate relationship with self tapes. On the one hand, I miss walking onto a studio lot, or bumping into a friend I haven’t seen in a while. And I definitely miss the opportunity to have a face to face with a casting director! […]
The Comedy Pass
Comedy or drama? Which do you prefer? Would you rather play a parent who just lost a child in a car accident, or pretend you didn’t forget the name of the person you hooked up with last night? You more one hour drama or half hour sitcom? Extreme close-up or multi-cam? If you had to […]
Auditioning: What To Do When Working Comedy
What to do when working comedy? First, you obviously have to find the jokes, the comedic beats within the experience. However, it is important to remember to develop the appropriate life behind. Comedy, as much if not more than drama requires a rich discussion of “Why’s” which helps with whole high stakes mantra of comedy […]
Auditioning: Be a Human Not an Actor
So, every actor wants to make every conversation as strong and emotional as possible. Right? Well, saying every actor may be a bit over dramatic but that over dramatic inclination is exactly what I am talking about. The inclination when an actor reads a conversation, is to make choices and find their side slashes which […]
A Little on the Life of an Antagonist
There is nothing like getting to play a bad guy or the antagonist of the film. Most of us, most, are generally well adjusted and mannered people… to a degree. So, when the opportunity presents itself to be someone totally different and generally terrible we jump at it. The inherent issue with this is we […]
Acting technique: How much should my body talk?
It’s an interesting thing the body. So much of the time as actors come into this business, whether trained or not, one of the first things that they has to learn is how to simplify the work focusing on the river, aka. Story, and letting the words sit on top while using the power of […]
Dramatic Rythmn in Your Acting Technique
You are probably going to say, “What dramatic rhythm?” In general, it is important as you work on your acting technique, to ground yourself in the experience – aka your river – then identify the rhythm. For drama, there are two main expressions of rhythm. The first is the right back-and-forth rhythm and the second […]
