Hot Set: Directing Actors and Camera Under Pressure
With Adamska Elizaveta Rakhilkina
HOT SET is a creative gym where three things learn to move as one: the actor, the director and the camera. This workshop is for BOTH directors and actors who want to practice working with each other. Every week a director is paired with an actor and handed a single room, two pages and twenty-five minutes to build a scene. No theory, no waiting for a green light, you commit choices fast and put them on their feet. Then the part that sets this apart: the director doesn't only talk to the actor, they direct the camera too. Where does the lens sit? What does an angle confess that a line can't? How does the choreography of bodies and the choreography of the camera infect one another? One participant shoots. We gather and watch the playback together. The director adjusts and we roll again. Actors sharpen their instrument in front of the lens and take fuller control of their own process. Directors who can go years between films without ever touching an actor learn to speak any actor's language and to think with the camera, not after it. A warm, low-stakes room to try new material and fail usefully. Everyone works every session. On request, you keep the footage. (add application link to bio)
- Dates
- Tue 13 Oct, Tue 20 Oct, Tue 27 Oct, Tue 3 Nov, Tue 10 Nov, Tue 17 Nov
- Time
- 18:30–21:30
- Cost
- €250-350 (+ €5 membership fee for new members)
- Attendance type
- You should attend the full course
- Class type
- Audiovisual & Writing, Film, Acting, Directing
- Space
- Theatre
- Desired audience
- Working and emerging film directors and actors in Berlin who learn by doing, not by lecture. Directors who go stretches between projects without ever putting their hands on a scene and actors hungry for real on-camera reps outside the audition room. You don't need a CV full of credits, you need to be serious about the work and willing to be watched, directed and re-directed in front of other people. Cinephiles who want to stop talking about scenes and start building them.
- What should I bring?
- Directors: bring a scene of two pages or less (something you're itching to crack) or pull one from the library I'll bring. Come ready to commit choices fast and direct the camera as well as the actor. Zero technical background required; you'll be walked through the lens side. Actors: come off-book on your assigned scene, in clothes you can actually move in and open to having a note thrown at you and trying it different ways. Everyone: no camera knowledge needed, just appetite. This is for working and seriously committed people, but the room is built to catch you, not expose you. Bring water and something to take notes with.
About the artist
Adamska Elizaveta Rakhilkina is a Russian-American award-winning filmmaker, film educator, visual artist, and essayist. They are currently based in Berlin. Currently, a DFFB student in Film Directing, they hold a BFA from the Tisch School of the Arts, New York University, and an MFA from the School of Art + Art History + Design, University of Washington. Adamska's work has been exhibited throughout the USA with such highlights as Allouche Gallery (NYC, USA) and Henry Art Gallery (Seattle, USA), as well as Academy Award, BAFTA, and Canadian Award-qualifying film festivals. They have won the Best Narrative Short Film Audience Award at Reeling! Chicago Queer Film Festival for their short film New Flesh for the Old Ceremony and screened it at top-tier global festivals such as NewFest, Vancouver Queer Film Festival and Wicked Queer. Their upcoming short film No Refunds has been screened at Sinema Transtopia (Berlin) and is represented by RAINA Films film festival distribution company. Adamska's art practice is a speculative history of queer utopian world-building where empathy and anarchy meet, and then make out. Adamska merges body horror with overtly political messaging, expanding the audience's political imagination through the delightful mutations of the flesh on screen. Deeply interested in state-sanctioned surveillance, reactive conformity and topographic portraiture, they have collaborated with artificial intelligence, textile artists, dancers and adult performers.
Instagram: @___adamskahttps://adamskaelizavetarakhilkina.com/
Accessibility
One solidarity spot is available for this course at no cost. Please write to 90milartschool@gmail.com to book. 90mil is wheelchair accessible. Please see the yellow section below for more on accessibility.
Sliding scale
We use a sliding scale to make courses as affordable as possible. Here’s how to use it: Lower end: You don’t have a stable income. Mid range: You have a less stable financial situation and are more selective about where you spend your money. Higher end: You experience relative financial stability. Solidarity spot: You’re experiencing financial precarity and wouldn’t otherwise be able to afford to come to a workshop.