19 Scripts in Four (Half) Days

It’s great that the stars have aligned and a creative partnership between DSL and the Met School has begun! Despite training at DSL across the road for 2 years, I had never before ventured into Ealing Studios! It was super cool!

It was a joy to be in the first cohort of actors from DSL to work with the BA directing students at the Met Film School.

I was booked for 4 half day sessions with the students and their tutor. Prior to the first session, myself and my scene partner Lewis Jenkins, 3Yr BA 2020 Grad, were sent a script.

Working with 18 students across 4.5 hours was intense, but it was brilliant seeing how different the scenes were. I got to be everything from a doting mother to a spy! It was fun.

Then the hard work began… each student had written their own script for us to work on during the last 3 days of the block. Which means we had to “try” to learn 18 different scripts over the weekend to perform the following week.

18 scripts across 3 mornings was… EPIC!

In all honesty, this was as much of a learning exercise for me as it was for the students! Since I’ve graduated, I’ve worked with a number of directors who all have very different directing styles.

I found this to be a very useful exercise in quickly figuring out how each of the students worked and leaning into that so that I could understand and deliver what they wanted whilst still doing my job as an actor and bringing my thoughts and ideas to a character.

Filming with actual equipment and hearing the queuing system for shooting (turnover, camera speed, sound speed etc.) put a huge smile on my face. And getting to be in a room with other people being creative brought me so much joy!

Even though these students were still learning about their craft, I could sense their focus and passion for the work. I look forward to seeing them develop as directors and filmmakers and feel honoured to be a small part of their journey.

I also look forward to working with more students at the Met Film School over the coming years. I think this is the start of a very beautiful and fruitful partnership between DSL and the Met Film School!

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