This Brief and Essential Acting for Camera Tip Will Help Every Performance

When people dream of becoming an actor these days, far more imagine Hollywood blockbusters than treading the boards as Falstaff, Othello, or Rosalind at the Royal Shakespeare Company.

While some of the basic principles of acting should remain the same from stage to screen, the specifics are very different.

In film, the director and director of photography (DP) decide which shots will be taken. Usually, the shots start out wide, with the actor smaller in the frame, and then get closer and closer as we come to the most intense parts of the scene.

The trouble with this is that as the camera gets closer and closer to the actor, and the scene gets more intense, and the actors face fills more and more of the frame, then the actor must moderate their expression to suit it.

In other words, the camera gets closer, the scene gets more intense, but because we are now very close, the actor should do LESS rather than more.

It is too easy in this moment for the actor to over-act, bringing a size of performance that does not suit the closeness of the frame.

So, as we move from the wide shot to the close up, we must adjust our performance, remembering that by the time we reach a close up, we only have to think something for it to appear on the screen.