Introduction

If you are going to be an actor on film, you need to know about the industry. Of course you don’t need to know all the technical details such as the complex issues of chroma colours and aspect ratios and all that, nor the complexities of “above the line” contracts between producers, but at the very least you do need to have a good idea about how a film is made.

As actors, we tend to come into the film making process about half way through. We stay for a bit and then leave. When we’re gone the film isn’t finished by any means; there’s still a huge amount of work to be done and in terms of time, we are there for perhaps 20% of the whole thing.

In other words, we miss most of the film making process.

But as actors it’s useful to see where we fit in. It helps us know where we are and work out what we’re doing… and how we got there!

So this section is about how films are made and how actors fit into it all.

And the curious thing is that all films are pretty much made the same.

There are exceptions, of course, but more often than not you’ll see the same process happening on both a multi-zillion dollar Hollywood blockbuster and your friend’s short movie filmed on their phone.

It’s usually nothing more than a matter of budget and scale when it comes to filmmaking!

Take a look now at The Screenplay.