Faloe Foundry  ·  Workshop

Faloe Foundry  ·  Early 2027

Beyond Do It Again

A directing actors workshop

“Do it again” is not a note. It is the absence of one. It means you do not yet know what you want, or you do not know how to ask for it.

This workshop is about changing that.

The Work

Directing a performance is a specific skill. It has a language, a logic, and a set of tools that can be learned, but most filmmakers never learn them, so they rely on instinct, charm, and the hope that a good actor will figure it out.

Sometimes that works. When it doesn’t, they say: do it again.

The workshop runs over five two-hour sessions with a group of twelve filmmakers who want to be clearer and more useful in the room with an actor.

Who This Is For

Directors who have been on set and know the feeling of not knowing what to say. Writers directing their own work for the first time. Filmmakers who want to stop hoping for a good take and start knowing how to get one.

You should have some experience directing live action. If working with actors is the part that’s new, this was built for you.

The Curriculum

[ I ]

The Director’s Toolkit

What you’re actually doing when you direct a performance: working with intention, objective, and obstacle, and finding language that opens an actor up instead of shutting them down.

[ II ]

Text and Beats

Reading a script as a director: what the scene is about underneath the words, and how to find the moment it turns.

[ III ]

Blocking and Rehearsal

How to use space, how to run a rehearsal that gets somewhere, and how to give a note that moves the scene forward.

[ IV + V ]

Practicum

Each participant directs two others in a prepared scene while the group watches, and then we work through it together. This is where everything from the first three sessions gets put to use.

What You Leave With

A clear way of talking to actors that works on any project. Recordings of all five sessions, including your own practicum scene, so you can study it at your own pace. And eleven other filmmakers who went through it with you.

The Details

Schedule

Dates to be announced

Time

Noon to 2pm ET

9am Los Angeles

5pm London

Format

Virtual

Twelve participants maximum

Two hours per session

Tuition

$450 First six spots
$575 Remaining spots

The Teacher

Jonathan Whittaker has spent more than twenty years teaching directors how to work with actors. At the New York Film Academy, he was Chair of Film Arts, Short Term, and a professor of Directing, Production Workshop, and Writing. He built and taught the Director’s Craft curriculum to filmmakers from more than twenty countries.

He has directed on set as well as in the classroom: broadcast work with on camera talent including Chrissy Teigen and Clint Dempsey, and narrative films including The Silence Between and Emilia, which played the Big Apple Film Festival at Film Forum. He produced Train Baby, with Keith Powell and Judy Reyes, now available to rent or buy on Amazon Prime Video.

What he teaches here is the method he uses himself on set.

Jonathan Whittaker
IMDb jrwhittaker.co Vimeo

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