Director, Writer, Photographer, Teacher,
and Public Speaker
Emmy Award Winning Director
Winner of Honored Artist of the Year
Directing
John has taught stage and film directing at The University of Washington, UCLA, TheFilmSchool, Cornish College, Freehold Studios and many other fine institutions. John is able to break down the director's job into simple but thorough steps, showing directors how to interpret text and how to work with actors so they give stellar perfomances that are subtle, honest, and powerful. He teaches how to expertly stage scenes, how to understand the language of film and select the perfect camera angle, how to edit to tell the story and maximize performance, and how to lead and inspire your set to make the best possible production. In the end, he strives to enrich the communication between actors and directors, to make them collaborating artists, subtle and honest, believable, imaginative and brave.
Directing Courses
John's stage and film directing courses are awesome. He has spent his life directing and imparts his knowledge of his craft extremely well, with confidence, inspiration, and humor.
He teaches a variety of directing classes: Understanding Subtext, Working with Actors, Blocking and Business 101, Planning for the Shoot, The Language of Film, Shoot a Short in 10 Days, plus many others.
Directing Lectures and Demonstrations
John lectures at schools across the country on the role of the director, presenting demonstrations with top notch professional actors doing scene work with John directing. He'll also incorporate student directors into the process, watching them direct and guiding them, working on estanblished successful text as well as new scenes that the students, perhaps, have written.
Directing Consulting
Many directors have hired John to work with them in private one on one sessions and sometimes consulting on the set. John walks his charges through the importance of understanding story and its structure. 90% of stories are rejected because of structure issues, so it is imparative that directors know structure and how to solve young script issues.
So it all starts with story, and directors must know the fundamentals of story inside and out. Then directors must know how to work with actors and how to translate and mine the text, and finally, they must have a working knowledge of the language of film and how to shoot and edit.
For more information, please contact John at johnjacobsendirect@gmail.com