Directing for Performance 2-Day Workshop with Kate Phillips

Many developing filmmakers/directors may have a vision for their projects, but lack tools or experience with working with professional actors. They can thus feel substantial blocks, fear, nerves, anxiety or lack of self-confidence when working with actors which can create working environments that are not constructive and prevent directors from utilizing the full range of their talent's potential. If this sounds like anything you've felt or experienced as a filmmaker, this workshop is for you. Taught by experienced director and actor Kate Phillips, this 2-day workshop will provide you with a basic toolkit of exercises, terms, and best practices of working with actors. You'll learn about the actor's process and how to meaningfully work with actors on set, whether you have a lot of rehearsal time or none at all. Working with actors on camera is very different than working with them in other settings such as onstage, and we'll discuss those differences. You'll learn how to do proper director's prep work, what to look for in a performance, and what kinds of conversations and constructive notes you can offer

. Beginning with a day of training in acting exercises and directing tools, you'll proceed to a second day of actual hands-on work with a pair of actors. Each participant in the class will have the opportunity to prepare, rehearse, and workshop a scene with professional actors. Whether you're starting from scratch or hoping to improve your skills, this workshop will benefit your filmmaking practice.

Kate Phillips is a director, screenwriter and actor with an MFA in Film Directing from Columbia University. She is currently on the Filmmaking faculty at Houston Community College. As a director, writer, actor, producer and editor she has made more than 20 short film projects which have screened at various festivals around the world including Berlin, Slamdance, Toronto's Inside Out Festival, Austin Film Festival, and Cannes Court Metrage, and been licensed and distributed online through Gunpowder & Sky's DUST sci-fi channel, Short of the Week, and more. She also worked in film development at Heyday Films as a producer's assistant, notably on the films Gravity, directed by Alfonso Cuaron, and Paddington Bear. She has had over a decade of production experience in New York, Los Angeles, and Austin on a variety of projects from national commercials to internationally-recognized award-winning feature films. In addition to her ongoing filmmaking and teaching, she has worked with actors as an on-camera, audition and rehearsal coach and continues to develop her own projects as a director, writer, producer and actor.