2025

V. Acting for the Camera: Focus Your Acting Muscle

Level: COMMITTED ACTORS WHO HAVE COMPLETED CORE TECHNIQUE
FALL WORKSHOP: SUndays 12:00 - 16:00, October 5 & 12
location: welserstr. 5-7, Berlin-schöneberg
FEE: €200

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Refocus your skills for a different medium. On stage, an actor’s technical performance is sculpted 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 subtle glance or a breath. Storytelling shifts to the inner life of the character — their thoughts, desires, and intentions. The lens doesn’t lie: a performance must be rooted in the character’s given circumstances, objectives, and actions, but the camera demands a special degree of focus, precision, and honesty.

In this two-day workshop, you’ll refine your technical and emotional precision to craft compelling on-camera performances. The course is designed in collaboration with associate artist and author Peter Allen Stone, whose book Acting for the Camera: Back to One serves as a guiding framework. You’ll build an awareness of depth of field and practice using precise focal points to concentrate your presence on screen. You’ll learn to bring depth, imagination, and spontaneity to every take while fusing your creative choices with technical awareness, giving directors and editors the range they need to shape dynamic, truthful performances.

Hands-on work with the camera is central to this course. You’ll spend time both in front of and behind the lens, gaining a practical understanding of focus, lighting, camera movement, and how these elements shape a performance. By working directly with the tools of the medium, you’ll learn to act with the camera while contributing to the collective effort of a creative and technical team. Whether you’re preparing for film, television, or self-tapes, this course equips you with the skills to meet the camera with clarity, focus, and honesty, ensuring every performance fully captures your story.

This course is designed for students who have completed Core Technique. Advanced actors may enter by interview. (Photo: Mark Cornelison)

Instructor: Adam Ludwig

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