Acting for the Camera: A Teacher's Guide

Acting for the Camera: A Teacher’s Guide is designed to help acting teachers create a hands-on course at their institution.

The book provides a framework for setting up an engaging course where students can develop on-camera skills by practicing from both sides of the camera. It offers instructors a specific acting-for-the-camera technique to facilitate an experiential course and achieve dynamic on-screen performances with their students. Actors will develop their skills by demonstrating the technical aspects of filmmaking that influence the final post-production performance, including cinematography (lenses, camera angles, lighting), sound recording, and editing. Acting for the Camera: A Teacher’s Guide details individual crew duties and the basic grammar of filmmaking, guiding the instructor through a full semester of teaching the subject. It is organized into four key sections:

• Part I―Equipment
• Part II―Filmmaking and Crew Positions
• Part III―Shooting Scenes
• Part IV―Course Curriculum

Rich with practical resources such as exercises, diagrams, photo examples, and a glossary of film terms, this book is ideal for instructors teaching acting for the camera at a university, a high school, or a private studio workshop.

Peter Allen Stone is an actor, teacher, and award-winning filmmaker. He is Head of Acting at the University of Kentucky, former chair of Acting for Film at the New York Film Academy in New York City, and the author of Acting for the Camera: Back to One (Routledge, 2021). His students have found success in Hollywood and Bollywood films, on Broadway, and on popular television shows. He regularly shares his unique on-camera acting approach through workshops worldwide.