Last weekend Film Training Manitoba brought in William B. Davis, aka The Cigarette Smoking Man from the X-Files, to conduct a 5 day workshop with Winnipeg actors. There were 2 classes, an AM and a PM, that had a total of 13 participants.

MediaCircus.TV was hired to provide HD video recording and playback for the sessions, and create DVD’s for the actors of all of their takes. I was using the Sony XDCAM EX1 camera, which shoots on SxS memory cards, which is a perfect way of working for a project like this.

After a take was completed, I would switch the camera over to “media mode” where the material on the SxS cards would be accessed and  Mr. Davis would review the take with the class on a HD LCD TV, having instant HD playback of the scene that was just completed. It was a very efficient way to work.

Each participant did 3 scenes over the length of the course, with the rest of the time spent observing the others and taking part in the discussion. Myself as a non-actor, watching the process they went through in order to make their performances as real as possible was quite an education. I’ve worked with actors before on commercial and promotion shoots, but rarely in any sort of scripted dramatic venue, which is what most of the performances in this course were focused on.

The classes participants ranged from people new to the industry to folks that have been in it for quite some time. Some people were getting back into acting after taking a hiatus to raise their family, and some of the participants I recognized from from other Film Training Manitoba workshops that I have either attended or been hired to provide video services for.

I’ll admit that I was somewhat intimidated at first working with William B. Davis (or ”Bill” as he suggested I call him)  having been quite an X-Files fan during it’s original run. I rarely get star-struck when working with well known people, and I wasn’t here either, though Bill carried a certain demeanor with him that left me in awe for the fist few days.   

As we would get ready for a scene I would do some basic lighting to flood the area with a lot of light, there wasn’t enough time to do proper dramatic lighting custom for each scene, and that wasn’t the point of the workshop.  Lighting is one of those things that makes a huge difference in the quality of a shot, so even just having flood lighting made a difference.

Between the lighting, the HD playback and the speed with which we were switching scenes (the workshop participants often would help move things in changing scenes) we moved along at an efficient pace and Bill remarked that this was a “high-end” workshop. That felt good to hear. He has been on numerous film and TV sets (including 9 years on the X-Files) , and has been in theatre for many years, and he called our little workshop production high-end. He wasn’t comparing to those big productions of course, but to most workshops that might have a small handycam with a TV set to playback material on, while we had proper lighting, mics, instant HD playback and DVD production and duplication on site. Film Training Manitoba is raising the bar when it comes to bringing in people to train Winnipeg Actors and putting on workshops that will help the participants improve in their skills, and I’m glad to be a part of it. 

 The Winnipeg Actors involved were;

Shannon Jacques, Dana Horrox, Dean Harder, Ashley Hirt, Cindy Marie Small, Sherry Coffey, Krysia Andrzejczak, Dan Augusta, Janet Shum, Jason Malloy, Tyhr Trubiak, Yvette Jones and Ali Tataryn.

This entry was posted on Monday, November 9th, 2009 at 9:33 am and is filed under Production Blog.You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.