V. Acting for the Camera: Focus Your Acting Muscle

Level: COMMITTED ACTORS WHO HAVE COMPLETED CORE TECHNIQUE
Summer Intensive: tuesdays 19:30 - 22:30, June 16 - 30
location: welserstr. 5-7, Berlin-schöneberg
FEE: €300

Refocus your skills for a different medium. On stage, an actor's performance is shaped through movement, gesture, and vocal energy that reaches the back row. On camera, the frame tightens. The canvas shrinks to a close-up, revealing meaning through a glance, a breath, or a shift of attention. Storytelling moves inward, toward the character's inner life — their thoughts, desires, and contradictions. As the saying goes, the camera doesn't lie.

An actor's work must always be rooted in given circumstances, objectives, and actions. But the lens demands a special degree of focus, precision, and honesty. In this workshop, actors are introduced to the fundamentals of on-camera performance — learning how to feel the camera, develop emotional preparation alongside essential technical skills, and make small, truthful choices that register on screen.

Through short monologues and scenes, we work on focal points, physical continuity, and working within the frame. The work then builds to preparing, rehearsing, and filming a full-length scene: sustaining a performance across multiple beats and takes, managing continuity, and offering clear, playable choices that serve both the story and the edit. Actors work hands-on with the camera, deepening their understanding of framing, coverage, and technical collaboration.

This course includes the collaboration of Marcus Stotz, a Berlin-based cinematographer (DOP) with extensive credits across film, television, and streaming — including Alarm für Cobra 11, Blutiger Anfänger, and a range of international productions. Marcus joins as a technical and creative collaborator, bringing a working camera professional's perspective into the room: how a DP reads a performance, how the lens captures an actor's choices, and the practical vocabulary of working with a director and technical team on set.

Every participant leaves the course with their own video files: scenes shot in standard coverage, over-the-shoulder, and close-up. These files are not a finished reel scene — assembling a polished reel requires additional editing work beyond what the workshop provides. What you leave with is something more immediately valuable: honest footage of your performance under real camera conditions, at multiple distances, in a professional working environment. Yours to keep and use however is useful to you.

Whether you are preparing for film, television, or self-tape work, this course equips you with the tools to meet the camera with clarity, imagination, and honesty — so it can capture your story with precision and depth.

This course is designed for students who have completed Core Technique. Advanced actors may enter by interview.

Instructor: Adam Ludwig

The is conducted in English. Copies of readings, assigned scenes, and plays will be provided.