Actors ready for their close-ups

By Berlyn James Wieland
Contributor

Every Monday and Wednesday at 11:10 a.m., 16 actors gather to improve their arts in the film and TV class.

San Diego actor Spike Sorrentino has been teaching this small group of 16 traits to perfecting the art of acting for film over the past 13 weeks.

The class had featured projects throughout the semester, varying from monologues to improvisation and also, two person scenes.

Highlighted scenes and monologues came from acclaimed movies such as, “Reservoir Dogs,” “Garden State” and “Heathers.” To mention a few.

As the class proceeded toward the later parts of the semester, Sorrentino expressed the importance of a solid final project.

“Their final projects are their ideas, and I sit down with them and talk about ideas they are having for their project,” Sorrentino said.

On average the class is able to shoot 1.5 scenes per day. The reason it is so time consuming is that Sorrentino makes the atmosphere as professional as possible, running multiple cameras, and multiple angles, as well as different lighting aspects and the usage of “extras” in each scene.

Many students said they feel blessed by the techniques that are getting incorporated into their projects.

Many of them feel that Spike enables them to a get a sense of what the next level of acting is. Mostly because he has been there.

“I mean, he was the president of the Screen Actors Guild chapter in San Diego for like 20 years,” Anderson said.

All film projects will reach their completion date by May 30, when Sorrentino said the whole class will spend those two hours having a party and watching each other’s projects that all the hopeful actors spent so much time on.

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Actors ready for their close-ups