Become a Christian actor: 3 days to welcome a character

From August 18 to 20, 2022, Daniel Rabourdin and his team sign their return to the diocese with a Christian film actor training course. A great first in France for those who wish to experience an initiation into the profession of actor or those who feel called to speak of their faith through a particular vocation in the cinema. This course allows you to discover several techniques including the “Method Acting” which will be refocused from a Christian angle.

For several years, director and producer Daniel Rabourdin has felt this call growing within him: “Go on the roads, evangelize with what you are. Share your faith with the talents received. Make disciples of all nations”. At a time when the digital world takes on a more important place every day and changes the approach to the world, the call is clear for him. He knows that a short film on the digital web can reach millions of souls in less than 90 minutes. His experience with the television channel EWTN gave him the proof several times. The nations to which we are sent today are on Tik-Tok and other social networks; our roads are now digital, made up of IP addresses, algorithms… but to exist, this virtual world needs, at one time or another, a real experience or sensitive experiences to share. This is to prevent the virtuality of the new world from making our lives superficial and our experiences artificial. We are called to make films which transmit strong and concrete values, which speak of the faith, which help to overcome the gaze of the world and its customs on our mission as Christians. In short, we need films that reconnect us to our true nature as children of God predisposed to be prophets. We must embody what we are.

©Film_Promise

Know-how to train

Since the age of 24, Daniel Rabourdin has felt called to do acting coaching. His experience of coaching priests within the chain EWTN confirmed him in this vocation and encourages him today to develop this work for a wider audience. With this internship, he wants to offer an alternative to methods that go against the dignity of the person. He wants to awaken consciences to faith and remind us that it is possible to practice a profession without going against one’s deep nature. For this, the producer-director proposes to discover, from a Catholic angle, the “Method Acting”. The latter consists of using personal experiences to understand and live what their character feels. One uses one’s own memories to connect one’s emotions to one’s portrayal of the character and thus provide a natural and realistic performance in one’s acting. Actors like Leonardo Di Caprio or Robert de Niro have gone through this method. The trainees will be able to discover and familiarize themselves with this technique among others which will be developed over 3 days through multiple small games. They will also learn to memorize a flat text without intonation and then give it real depth by combining the work with the exercises carried out. The course will end with the filming and recording of a short scene that they can take home. On a professional level, this training allows you to play your character without being bothered by the camera, working on a shoot, etc. On a personal level, one learns to speak a text spontaneously, to express oneself without shyness in public, to capture an audience, to make professional presentations. But the most important part of this course is played out on the spiritual level. Indeed, the exercises call upon a complex, subtle and intimate mechanism to his person. They come very close to the spiritual exercises of Saint Ignatius of Loyola and to the prayer technique that he left as a heritage for discerning. To live the formation course with an Ignatian dimension is not only to make one’s character Christian. Through the latter, it is to rediscover our spirituality in depth, to question our faith in order to better embody it; it’s also taking the character out of a written script to give him a real life story. It is to give birth to an intelligent sensitivity to reconnect the listener to the reality of our world and help him to pass the digital subterfuges to discover himself, overcome his fears, find answers to his questions, stop looking for what it could be for simply actually becoming one.

written by Maxime Bentz


To discover the course and register: Internship – Learning to be a Christian film actor

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Become a Christian actor: 3 days to welcome a character – Diocese of Fréjus-Toulon