How to Be an Actor!

Hi my name is Jackson Forrest and I have experience in fields that I don’t think the everyday person would know how to do. I think a lot of people are successful in besting a lot of some of their fears. Whether that’s being afraid of heights or being afraid of snakes. But I think one thing a lot of people still can’t best, is being shy. And it’s a hard one to overcome. And to be frank I don’t think its possible to completely overcome it. I still get a little shy when I’m about to present something that I’m not to knowledgeable in. Which to me, is silly, because I have acted in multiple school plays. I still think that’s one of the best ways to work on over coming your shyness. So I’m going to show you how you can be an actor and/or and actress and overcome your shyness.

Paper, Pencil or computer. And then what ever props you want for your play.

What kind of act do you want to do, do you want to make a scripted video, with editing. Or is a stage play better. Whatever idea you can think for your script whether you need edits for your scripts, like cuts or silly edits or you just want to do a comedy skit with a friend. For this instructables, I will be doing a edited skit, just because it covers edited plays and non-edited plays. The editing software that I will be using, is Lightworks (https://lwks.com/). Because its free, and as long as you own a computer, you can use it. But if you have the money I would recommend you using premiere pro. I also put in an example of what a scripted video would look like.

To start you should have an idea for what your going to act out. Then you should write a script. It doesn’t have to be too long. Just think of a fun simple idea to for a little short play/skit. This is how I write my scripts. So that anyone can easily understand what they are reading. Don’t forget to write yourself notes on it as well. I use google docs to write my scripts because I find that it’s the easiest program to use, and you can work on it with others. But you can write on whatever software you want, or you can just use paper and pencil. Its up to you. For my skit the title of it is The Movie Marathon, there are only two characters. Frank, and Dill. Frank is a man who is your generic man, and Dill is a truth speaker. Its going to be a simple and silly video.

What are you good at the most? Are you really smart? Are you good with voices/accents? Or maybe you are best with funny faces? There are a lot of things that can help you with your act. Also when it comes to props, I comes do to what do you already own or need to own. For me, I just use the everyday items you can find around the house. For me, I’m not good at voices, but I think I can be a funny guy if I need to be.

When it comes to acting, it isn’t just standing in front of an audience or a camera. It’s about becoming your character. If you have a character in your play that has a broken arm, hates pizza, and has allergy’s, then you got to make it like that. When you are performing you should make sure you stand up straight and that even a deaf person can understand what you are saying. It's all about making the character real. By the time you are done with your play, you should know your character inside and out.

You should get a friend or a family member to help you. They can just look at the script and they can go with it. But if they are up to the task. They can memorize their lines. Thankfully my friend already has some practice in this department, so I think I should be good.

Practice your lines everyday at least twice, but if you wrote a lot, then you should practice even more. Just do what you’re comfortable with. That doesn’t mean read a line every two hours. I mean, just stop what you are doing and practice it.

Once you know the script, act it out. To try to keep it interesting, you should think about how the audience will view you and the play as a whole. If you think you are too slow or too quiet, chances are that you are that quiet and too slow. You never want to bore your audience, but you also don’t want to confuse them either by going to fast and not annunciating you words.

The time has come to act it out, when it comes to an edited skit, you should use your phone as the camera unless you already have a camera. The nice part about doing an edited skit is that you can cut whenever you want. So, you can make a lot of mistakes. But if you are doing an actual performance in front of people, just know that you don’t have that ability. When doing an actual performance, it may be hard to remember all of your lines, but that’s okay if you know the story. Because then you can just make up lines, as long as your character would actual say that, then your fine. And as performing a stage play goes, that is all you ready need to know to get started. But if you wanted to do an edited skit, I can show you how to do basic editing in Lightworks. Which I will show off in my next instructable How to edit.