Acting

Giving a guest lecture at New York University some years ago, I stood before a class of 62 people and posited the question, “Who among you wants to begin their film careers as directors?” Sixty people raised their hands. The two that did not raise their hands drew my interest. Upon asking them what they had planned, one said that he wanted to edit films and the other said that he planned on becoming a screenwriter.

Let’s say after watching a particularly good or bad acting performance you say to yourself, “I could do that.” Well, maybe you could, but where and how would you start?

It’s kind of like Antiques Roadshow for your home movies.  Bring ‘em in, get a consultation on your film’s longevity, then see them on the big screen at the Harvard Film Archive, October 18th from 1-4 pm.  Welcome formats include 8mm, Super 8, 16mm, VHS, and DVD. It’s one of 50 locations celebrating the Sixth Annual Home Movie Day in an read more...

In 1893 on Ground Hog’s Day, Robert Harrill was born to a farming family in
the foothills of North Carolina.  He had a rough childhood, losing his
mother then enduring strict religious rule from a
stepmother.  Later, his son Alvin committed suicide and his wife, Katie, left
him for another man. Harrill started over on Carolina Beach, NC.  

The Axe in the Attic opens six months after Katrina hit and the levees breached and flooded New Orleans.  During their 60-day road trip down South, New England filmmakers Lucia Small and Ed Pincus interviewed evacuees living in FEMA trailers or with relatives in new cities.  No talking heads or experts appear in the film.  Each survivor simply looks at the camera and talks plainly about their losses.

You will be thinking of The Jesus Guy long after you see the documentary, not because of the questions it answers, but because of the questions it raises.  The film, directed and produced by Portsmouth, NH-based Sean Tracey, is creating a buzz on the festival circuit and will screen at Harvard Divinity School in February or March 2008. 

Andy Blood lives a somewhat nomadic life at various homes in central Connecticut.  There he has a tight circle of trusted collaborators: his editor Carol Dykas, his composer Christopher John Curcio, his producer Dennis Rollins, an actor -- Matt Sarno, and his brother Joe, an illustrator.   

At 13-years-old, William Erickson is already a seasoned actor. He started in commercials and other local productions at the age of 5.  His passion for performing has transformed into a career in all types of acting, from commercials to films.  Currently, he's featured in the film Entropy (which premiered June 22), a national Subway commercial (airing in the next month), and season II of PBS’s Fetch with Ruff Ruffman.  And all the while, he's still holding down the full-time gig of being a seventh grade kid.

Slowly, the customer service business had been draining my personality. I was no longer "Mike Messier, lovable unemployed eccentric." I was Mike Messier, a five-day-a-week laborer, a stooge under training -- in a night training class at MetLife insurance. With a real job, I would no longer have countless hours to stalk coffee waitresses and bookstore clerks.

Everything Ann Marie Fleming writes comes true. The award-winning filmmaker learned this unsettling fact about herself after making The French Guy, a farcical horror film, showing at the Boston Underground Film Festival this month. While penning the script, she believed that her story was all fiction, written purely on a whim. It was only when she’d finished filming that she realized the gruesome tale’s all-too-real foundation: "At the 2003 Toronto International Film Festival, I was presenting a documentary on my read more...

New England is renowned for its community of documentary filmmakers -- this area is a haven for award-winning educational and exploratory projects that have probed a broad spectrum of subjects. Terrific for grassroots productions and self-sustaining artists, the film scene here definitely thrives in some respects, but still leaves a lot to be desired for the growing population of local actors. 

I’ve spent the last seven months wisecracking and waitressing as a principal cast member in "Overserved," the all-Beantown independent comedy about tending bar that strives to help reestablish this r-less Hub as a film hub once again. But I have a confession to make that not even Joe Gatto -- the writer, director, and star of "Overserved" -- knows: I have underestimated this film since my first audition.

It sounds like the setup for a joke: What do you get when you cross a Winnebago, a Wal-Mart and a handful of retirees? The answer isn't a sidesplitting punchline, but rather the subject of filmmaker Doug Hawes-Davis's latest film, "This is Nowhere."

When actress Victoria Rowell speaks about the benefits of fine arts training to the lives of foster children, she speaks from experience. Rowell grew up in a foster home in Portland, Maine. She began studying ballet at age eight, receiving a Ford Foundation scholarship to the Cambridge School of Ballet in Massachusetts. She trained for eight years, before moving on to dance professionally with the American Ballet Theatre II Company, Ballet Hispanico of New York, Contemporary Ballet, Twyla Tharp Workshop and The Julliard School of read more...

Words like "tilling, unearthing bones" and "humus" are not normally words associated with film production. But filmmaker Nicolle Littrell hopes that Film Farm, the production company she founded in Belfast, Maine, will become a nexus of support for other grassroots producers desiring to create Maine-based work. Meanwhile, Littrell turns the soil for local stories, sifts through the rich earth of forgotten lore and pulls up the bones that she hopes will speak to us.

Risking her life to bring the horrifying tales of Southeast Asian prostitutes to Western audiences, documentary filmmaker Gayle Ferraro discovered the biggest challenge of producing her latest creation, "Anonymously Yours," wasn’t getting it made, but getting it seen.

So you think your kid ought to be in pictures. Maybe you dream of raising the next Macaulay Culkin. Or maybe you just think it would be a good experience for your child to model and act.

Find an Agent

Sure, you can do without an agent, but you’ll miss out on a lot of opportunities that never make it to public notice boards.

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What do you get when you combine a male student nurse from England, an eight-time Emmy Award winning comedian/actor/writer/director, and a story about spousal abuse? You get "Black & Blue," starring Paul Wagner -- a unique short film out of Boston. "Black & Blue," a surreal dark comedy dealing with a successful young businessman driven towards suicide in order to escape his wife’s emotional and physical abuse, was written by 23-year-old Brit, and professional psychiatric nurse, Paul Mitchell.

With hundreds of cable channels and an ever-growing number of independent films, regional and community theater productions, commercials and industrials, there are more acting opportunities today than you could snap a clapboard at. But don’t forget, acting is a tough business. It may take years of perseverance and sacrifice to become a "stah" in your own right. But if you love acting and you’re willing, you can be part of a tight-knit community, find fulfillment, and earn a living as an actor.

Dear Friends and Colleagues,

Since May 1, 2000 SAG and AFTRA have been on strike over the terms for new commercial contracts. We’re writing to you because we are aware that our present work stoppage affects not only actors, but everyone in the creative community involved in producing commercial in New England. We want to take this opportunity to share a few facts with you that we hope will explain why we had no choice but to take this course of action.

What do you do when you have more great ideas than you know what to do with? You act. You direct. You perform comedy routines. You write stage plays, commercials, and TV scripts. Basically, you do what Paul Wagner does, and that's just about everything.
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Kids and animals, W.C. Fields warned us a half a century ago, will upstage you every time. How prophetic his words turned out to be. Mr. Fields could not have imagined the impact of television, the global reach of Hollywood, the proliferation of the Internet, or the power of the almighty advertising dollar, but he was right about the power of children in entertainment. Advertisers, producers, agents, recognize the power of a child's face to sell us anything. Children in the business today have head shots, portfolios, agents, and read more...

NARRATIVE FEATURES

MUD SEASON
Drama, 35mm, Color, 1999, 102 min.

For 20 years, Kevin Fennessey has amassed knowledge of the craft through acting and directing. He studied at the Boston Conservatory of Music and at York University in Toronto, Canada. Later, he worked at Collinge/Pickman Casting, where projects included "Good Will Hunting" and "The Spanish Prisoner." This past year, Fennessey joined forces with Christy Scott’s Saint-Aire Productions to open Kevin Fennessey Casting. He worked as the local principal and extras casting director for the read more...

ACT
I:
1. SET-UP: Who's the Hero? Initial development. Where are we? What's the story about?
THE HERO IS INTRODUCED IN HIS ORDINARY WORLD (before the adventure begins.)

Over the course of six days and nights on the island of Nantucket, through screenings, staged readings and panel discussions, the Nantucket Film Festival celebrates original voices in cinema and explores the art of screenwriting.