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PRACTICE WHAT YOU PREACH

Writer's picture: IAN D FLEMING (PGcert 2021)IAN D FLEMING (PGcert 2021)

Updated: Jun 12, 2021

After a very illuminating and successful presentation of my pre-meditation scanner technique to my PGcert peers in my presentation on YOUR OBJECT (my prayer bell ... remember?), on the encouragement that day of peers, I brought it into a class I gave on campus today. I needed to ensure I had a contextual opportunity to employ the technique in a teaching session. As I explained when I did it in PGcert session, I first ever used it in HE at Uni of Chichester where I taught Screen acting. It was a great success there. I am this term running the BAFTV2 Specialisms Unit; my fourth year of this. Because of the pandemic and lockdowns forcing rethinking of teaching content in the shift to online, sessions I have usually taught on this term have already been delivered last term. I took that as a golden opportunity to finally create my directing specialism in the mode I longed to do from arriving here, but never got the chance to. Why? Because it was an inherited unit, originally created by key staff members who were still part of the unit even though I was running it as Unit Leader. Yes, I made changes, but was unable to shift the pedagogy to my aims too much. They have now retired, so taking full advantage of a clean slate I am now teaching a whole term in Performance Direction ... essentially training our directors in acting. An utterly essential prerequisite for any wannabe director. And ... something quite unusual in university film schools. So, we did the scanner technique in the context of training the mind to achieve focus, to achiever letting g of all distractions around us on set and immersing ourselves in the moment ...as an actor needs to do. I was nervous about trying this. I always am. But again ... it was a roaring (odd choice of word!) success. Students truly felt the effects! And when I explained where I got it from (Buddhist practice) and that it's a technique they can use in life to quell stress and the mental runaround of student life when the workload is constantly distracted ... for well-being as well as acting 'tool', they really bought into it. I'm delighted! Working with 20 director students all term. We will now use this technique in every live session and evaluate the usefulness.


Peace out!

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