Devin Lewis

Blog Entry #3

Week:4

In week four we learned more about the training of the stars to be, not only how they came about but how they were trained and what were the purpose of the training that they received. Many actors had formal training which helped hone their skills in the acting department making it technically sound and fundamental. But not all had actors and actresses had the means and funds to get formally trained and go to school for acting but they started learning through informal methods in a sense by learning on their own or just jumping straight in and getting experience. This can be seen from the movie that we had to watch this week called All about Eve , and in this film it was about a shy women who started off by trying to get close to her favorite play actress and she started off by being her assistant. And as the movie goes on the young woman who followed the actress around started to take her ways and mimic her style so she can begin the informal process of trying to be like her mentor, she basically followed in their her foot steps and in more ways than other deceived her to become the best actress, and even after she backstabbed her mentor to get to where she still was able to strive to be great. But in the end she started to get a follower that resembled her from the beginning of the film. This shows how one can become great just by doing some things informally and that can go a long way for people. In this case it worked out for the best because she learned necessary skills for her job in a way that her gained her goals. Also during this week we were assigned to research other actors and actress and how they were trained to become a star and for my research I decided to look into Robert Downey Jr. and his stardom and how he became known.  Robert Downey Jr was  a star since he was a kid, his father was a film maker and he often put his kids and wife into his own movies. After that at such a young age during his schooling years he eventually went to an acting school and so he can hone his skills, but he left his school to go out west to Hollywood and started his career. After he took up many gigs but couldn’t keep stay out of the light because of his drug use. But this was just one of the many reasons why understanding a  stars formal and informal educational background in the world of cinema is important because you are able to see how it separates the stars and make each one of their experiences individual for each actor and actress. This is why the understand of a stars background helps us understand the jobs they do when they entertain because it helps make a good experience and helps them perfect their craft.