WEEK ONE
STEP 1.
Homework:
Please create a list of your top 100 movies and/or TV shows.
STEP 2.
Then make a list of your favorite scenes in each film.
STEP 3.
Are you starting to see recurring emotional themes in the scenes you've chosen?
Start making notes in your journal next to each scene about what emotions struck you in the scene and why?
Those sets of recurring emotions are the beginnings of understanding what your four major emotional chords are
What is an emotional type?While each artist's looks change with each passing year, does that mean that their type changes? Sure, somewhat, but that's the whole story. The artist's emotional type is the guiding force behind what kind of acting choices they make, what kind of characters they intuitively understand and can play effortlessly.
What is an Archetype? The emotional type is essentially four major archetypal emotional chords that live deep with each person. Archetypal is defined as
"very typical of a certain kind of person or thing; recurrent as a symbol or motif in literature, art, or mythology.
Synonyms:quintessential, classic, representative, model, exemplary,consummate, textbook,
classic, definitive, exemplary, imitable,paradigmatic, quintessential, textbook
The key word is "recurrent themes" that are easily identifiable as keys to each actor's fundamental soul. These things are fundamental because they are created by a particular set of life struggles, triumphs and values that make a person care more about one issue than another. It's who we are inside and not only is it unique to each and every person, but it rarely changes.
It may become deeper, but unlike the physical type, our emotional types will be with us until the day we die. The emotional type is everything juicy and human about us. It lives beyond gender, color, race, sexual orientation, it is made up of the common thread of human emotions.
As a result, an actor can play many roles. Not just roles written for people who look like them. For example, a fighter for justice is everyone from a soldier, a mother fighting for her child, a police detective, a social worker to a farmer trying to keep his land and his family together. They are all justice fighters and when an actor goes after roles in this way, a whole new world of opportunity becomes available for the art of transformation....for completely stepping into someone's shoes and creating empathy for the actor and the audience.
Listen to How to Double Your Auditions webinar
STEP 1.
Homework:
Please create a list of your top 100 movies and/or TV shows.
STEP 2.
Then make a list of your favorite scenes in each film.
STEP 3.
Are you starting to see recurring emotional themes in the scenes you've chosen?
Start making notes in your journal next to each scene about what emotions struck you in the scene and why?
Those sets of recurring emotions are the beginnings of understanding what your four major emotional chords are
What is an emotional type?While each artist's looks change with each passing year, does that mean that their type changes? Sure, somewhat, but that's the whole story. The artist's emotional type is the guiding force behind what kind of acting choices they make, what kind of characters they intuitively understand and can play effortlessly.
What is an Archetype? The emotional type is essentially four major archetypal emotional chords that live deep with each person. Archetypal is defined as
"very typical of a certain kind of person or thing; recurrent as a symbol or motif in literature, art, or mythology.
Synonyms:quintessential, classic, representative, model, exemplary,consummate, textbook,
classic, definitive, exemplary, imitable,paradigmatic, quintessential, textbook
The key word is "recurrent themes" that are easily identifiable as keys to each actor's fundamental soul. These things are fundamental because they are created by a particular set of life struggles, triumphs and values that make a person care more about one issue than another. It's who we are inside and not only is it unique to each and every person, but it rarely changes.
It may become deeper, but unlike the physical type, our emotional types will be with us until the day we die. The emotional type is everything juicy and human about us. It lives beyond gender, color, race, sexual orientation, it is made up of the common thread of human emotions.
As a result, an actor can play many roles. Not just roles written for people who look like them. For example, a fighter for justice is everyone from a soldier, a mother fighting for her child, a police detective, a social worker to a farmer trying to keep his land and his family together. They are all justice fighters and when an actor goes after roles in this way, a whole new world of opportunity becomes available for the art of transformation....for completely stepping into someone's shoes and creating empathy for the actor and the audience.
Listen to How to Double Your Auditions webinar
How to Double Your Auditions webinar
Week 2
STEP 4.
Then move onto a list of your top 100 scenes and answer the following questions.
1. What happens in the scene?
2. Which character do you indentify with and why?
3. How is this character emotionally changed by the end of the scene?
You'll need a black and white composition book to keep track of this process. By the end of week two, the book should almost be full.
Then listen to the classes below:
STEP 5
Click the links below to listen to The Emotional Chords MasterClass about How to figure out what your major archetype is and how that affects the life lesson you're here to learn:
Emotional Chords MasterClass Recordings
1. What's an Emotional Chord
2. What is an archetype and how is it related to the Emotional Chords
3. The Archetype or relationship you're here to sort out contains The Life Lesson that you're here to learn in this lifetime.
4. The strategies you use to you sort out that life lesson and overcome it is the substance one of your four major Emotional chords
STEP 4.
Then move onto a list of your top 100 scenes and answer the following questions.
1. What happens in the scene?
2. Which character do you indentify with and why?
3. How is this character emotionally changed by the end of the scene?
You'll need a black and white composition book to keep track of this process. By the end of week two, the book should almost be full.
Then listen to the classes below:
STEP 5
Click the links below to listen to The Emotional Chords MasterClass about How to figure out what your major archetype is and how that affects the life lesson you're here to learn:
Emotional Chords MasterClass Recordings
1. What's an Emotional Chord
2. What is an archetype and how is it related to the Emotional Chords
3. The Archetype or relationship you're here to sort out contains The Life Lesson that you're here to learn in this lifetime.
4. The strategies you use to you sort out that life lesson and overcome it is the substance one of your four major Emotional chords
Emotional Type MasterMind Class Recordings PLUS BONUS VIDEOS
WEEK 3
STEP 6.
Reading List & Resources to Clarify Your Emotional Type
This reading list is full of books about the psychology of human emotions and relationships. It's a great primer for learning about how we create the character of us and then infuse that into other characters.
Clearer Understanding of Where We Learn How to Get What We Want in Relationships and How We Resolve Conflict
Once you understand how you function based on behaviors you learned from your parents....how you use that to shape what's emotionally important to you and the strategies you employ to get love, care, safety, etc.
Learning what your emotional and psychological character is the key to understanding your strengths as an actor:
1. Joseph Campbell's The Hero's Journey and/or ThePower of Myth
- What heroes are you drawn to?
-What archetypal relationships do you find most prevalent in your life?
2. Harville Hendrix's Getting the Love I Want
- What's your first memory of being told you were less than?
- Which familial relationship has the most impact on your life, why?
- Who taught you your emotional language?
- What are your major emotional ways of resolving conflict?
3. Go to Astro.com and create a free account, then create your chart: you'll need day, time of birth, year and location
(Check back as more books are added)
- What recurring themes do you notice in your chart?
- What is your true node north? This is the most important lesson you need to learn in this life...it's generally a astrological sign that is the complete opposite of who you are?
- What traits of that true node sign do you have trouble identifying with?
- Generally the true node sign has an important life lesson that they have conquered that you need to conquer. This sign has something you need to resolve your heroe's journey.
4. Go to AstroArena and search for you true node in the upper right hand corner, download this as well.
What are the recurring themes in your true node
what are the lessons you need to learn, make a list, are these in line with the recurring life lessons you saw in your list of movies?
What did you learn?
You should be able to articulate your four major emotional chords now. What are they?
4. Julia Cameron's. The Artists Way
- Do the morning pages and all of the exercises
- In particular, focus on those exercises that teach you the first time you were told "no" or you weren't good enuf.
- Dissect that experience in your morning pages. What did you learn from that experience? What disempowering belief about yourself did you learn from that experience that you're still trying to dissect.
5. Pema Chodron's Things Fall Apart and/or The Places that Scare Us
- What's the juiciest part of you that you constantly try to hide?
- When is hard for you to just stay, even when you're feeling overwhelmed? What triggers the fight or flight impulse in you?
- Get specific about the nature of those triggers: What set of emotions do they produce? What fears do they bring up for you? - What strategies do you repeatedly use to solve problems and emotional conflicts? What are the strategies you use to get what you need in the world (look back your astro chart to the Sun, Moon, Rising and True Node signs.)
WEEK 4 Branding and Marketing
Now it's time to take all these chords and start creating titles and descriptions for them.
STEP 7
From your research
1. What are the four major emotional chords you're wrestling with? The explanation of the chord should be no more than 1 or 2 sentences.
If you're having trouble with this, go back to your scenes and look at the answers you wrote down from each scene during week
2.What life lesson has each chord forced you to understand and how has that chord changed you?
3. Under each chord, state 3 examples of movies and the actors name for each chord.
Use this emotional type page as your guide
WEEK 5 BONUS
STEP 8
Click here and listen to Part I of Get UnStuck: Move into Film/TV - Identify Your Emotional Chords
Homework: Create FREE weebly page using your name as the domain. Main page per the Get Unstuck class. Then add a second page, the emotional type page and add your first 2 chords and what movies they are from. Use http://www.chantaljean-pierre.com/, www.brittanymirabile.com, www.aprilyvettethompson.com
4. Recurring Themes
Now, look through your list of scenes and start to write down recurring emotional themes. Make a list of them.
Then choose the top 10 scenes (each scene should examine a different chord and begin to answer these questions about that scene and the main character).
When you're done, you should have a profile for each character that represents one of your recurring emotional chords. For example, if your one of your characters is Cinderella and another is Rocky, then you clearly love the underdog. Pick one of those characters and do an emotional profile on them based on the questions below in the Character Emotional Analysis Questions.
Read Joseph Campbell's The Power of Myth and either write down your heroe's journey or record yourself talking abt it and we'll watch it in next weeks class....
Emotional Character Analysis Questions
LAJOG EGRI “Every object has three dimensions: depth, height, width. Human beings have an additional three dimensions: physiology, sociology, psychology. Without a knowledge of these three dimensions we cannot appraise a human being.”
–Lajos Egri, The Art of Dramatic Writing
As stated in the quote above, Egri’s method involves coming to an intimate knowledge of your fictional character’s physiology, sociology, and psychology in order to understand how they might behave in any given situation. Below are the questions he proposes you answer in order to do so.
Physiology
Week 4 - What are the 4 major chords?
Start adding colors to your emotional chords page that symbolize your chords by researching colors here:
http://www.empower-yourself-with-color-psychology.com/meaning-of-colors.html
What four major emotional types do you see recurring in your list.
List the four major emotional types and give 3 examples of each in your description. The examples should come from your list where you created emotional profiles for 10 different characters. For example, here on April's Emotional Type page, her first chord, "the warrior for love...the blind goddess." First she describes exactly what that emotional chord is. Then at the end of the description, she lists 3 or 4 examples of characters and films.
Begin to build your emotional type page this way. I'd do it in your journal first. Then transfer it to your website.
Then listen to part II of Get UnStuck: Move into Film/TV here to learn how to begin building your marketing materials using this strategy.
Now it's time to take all these chords and start creating titles and descriptions for them.
STEP 7
From your research
1. What are the four major emotional chords you're wrestling with? The explanation of the chord should be no more than 1 or 2 sentences.
If you're having trouble with this, go back to your scenes and look at the answers you wrote down from each scene during week
2.What life lesson has each chord forced you to understand and how has that chord changed you?
3. Under each chord, state 3 examples of movies and the actors name for each chord.
Use this emotional type page as your guide
WEEK 5 BONUS
STEP 8
Click here and listen to Part I of Get UnStuck: Move into Film/TV - Identify Your Emotional Chords
Homework: Create FREE weebly page using your name as the domain. Main page per the Get Unstuck class. Then add a second page, the emotional type page and add your first 2 chords and what movies they are from. Use http://www.chantaljean-pierre.com/, www.brittanymirabile.com, www.aprilyvettethompson.com
4. Recurring Themes
Now, look through your list of scenes and start to write down recurring emotional themes. Make a list of them.
Then choose the top 10 scenes (each scene should examine a different chord and begin to answer these questions about that scene and the main character).
When you're done, you should have a profile for each character that represents one of your recurring emotional chords. For example, if your one of your characters is Cinderella and another is Rocky, then you clearly love the underdog. Pick one of those characters and do an emotional profile on them based on the questions below in the Character Emotional Analysis Questions.
Read Joseph Campbell's The Power of Myth and either write down your heroe's journey or record yourself talking abt it and we'll watch it in next weeks class....
Emotional Character Analysis Questions
LAJOG EGRI “Every object has three dimensions: depth, height, width. Human beings have an additional three dimensions: physiology, sociology, psychology. Without a knowledge of these three dimensions we cannot appraise a human being.”
–Lajos Egri, The Art of Dramatic Writing
As stated in the quote above, Egri’s method involves coming to an intimate knowledge of your fictional character’s physiology, sociology, and psychology in order to understand how they might behave in any given situation. Below are the questions he proposes you answer in order to do so.
Physiology
- Sex
- Age
- Height and weight
- Color of hair, eyes, skin
- Posture
- Appearance: good-looking, over-or-underweight, clean, neat, pleasant, untidy. Shape of head, face, limbs.
- Defects: deformities, abnormalities, birthmarks. Diseases.
- Heredity
- Class: lower, middle, upper.
- Occupation: type of work, hours of work, income, condition of work, union or nonunion, attitude toward organization, suitability for work.
- Education: amount, kind of school, marks, favorite subjects, poorest subjects, aptitudes.
- Home life: parents living, earning power, orphan, parents separated or divorced, parents’ habits, parents’ mental development, parents’ vices, neglect. Character’s marital status.
- Religion
- Race, nationality
- Place of community: leader among friends, clubs, sports.
- Political affiliation
- Amusements, hobbies: books, newspapers, magazines, he reads.
- Sex life, moral standards
- Personal premise, ambition
- Frustrations, chief disappointments
- Temperament: choleric, easygoing, pessimistic, optimistic
- Attitude toward life: resigned, militant, defeatist.
- Complexes: obsessions, inhibitions, superstitions, phobias.
- Extrovert, introvert, ambivert
- Abilities: languages, talents.
- Qualities: imagination, judgement, taste, poise.
- I.Q.
Week 4 - What are the 4 major chords?
Start adding colors to your emotional chords page that symbolize your chords by researching colors here:
http://www.empower-yourself-with-color-psychology.com/meaning-of-colors.html
What four major emotional types do you see recurring in your list.
List the four major emotional types and give 3 examples of each in your description. The examples should come from your list where you created emotional profiles for 10 different characters. For example, here on April's Emotional Type page, her first chord, "the warrior for love...the blind goddess." First she describes exactly what that emotional chord is. Then at the end of the description, she lists 3 or 4 examples of characters and films.
Begin to build your emotional type page this way. I'd do it in your journal first. Then transfer it to your website.
Then listen to part II of Get UnStuck: Move into Film/TV here to learn how to begin building your marketing materials using this strategy.