Whether you’re completely new to acting or a veteran of the stage, there is plenty to be learned about acting on camera. While you may have mastered capturing the audience from the confines of the stage, these skills won’t necessarily translate to on-camera success as it’s unlike any other form of the craft.
Now, without further ado, here are our top tips for acting on camera.
1. Identify Your Non-Verbal Skills
There are 3 channels for non-verbal communication used during on-camera acting: the body, the voice, and the face. Some people are hardwired to internalise emotions, while others can only display their emotions with the use of plenty of external stimuli.
For example, if you’re wondering why all your headshots look the same, you may need to work on the 3 non-verbal communication channels.
2. Relax Into Your Body
Before acting on-camera, you need to get out of your head and into your body. It’s important that you allow your organic life energy and subconscious reactions to come through by loosening your body and setting your mind free.
A relaxation technique with involves breathing by count will help your brain “shut down” so you can be present in the moment.
3. Don’t Try Too Hard
Many actors feel as if they need to entertain their audience and put on a good show. While this may be true for on-stage acting, acting for the camera is entirely different. Slow down and stop trying so hard! Strangely enough, this advice could also be applied to online betting.
Stop trying to make your face look good, just relax every one of its muscles and do more of nothing. There’s a lot to be said for finding the ‘something’ in ‘nothing’.
4. Get Into Character Quickly
If you’re used to acting on stage, you’re probably used to hours of rehearsals, but you won’t have this privilege when acting on camera.
Of course take the time to rehearse your lines and explore your character ahead of the time, but you’ll need to be able to get into character as soon as “action” is called.
You need to be ready to perform at a moment’s notice and get back into character over and over with plenty of interruptions.
5. The Camera Isn’t Your Audience
Acting on camera is best described as acting without an audience and while you may have a crew of people around you at all times, you have no audience whatsoever.
Many actors in this instance will then try to make the camera their audience and ‘send’ their performance to the camera, but you need to remember that the camera is only there to capture what is happening.
6. Don’t Over-Enunciate
Particularly prevalent amongst stage actors is the need to enunciate every word and project the voice, but this is not necessary when acting on-camera. All you need to do when acting on camera is speak naturally and clearly, but do not fall into the trap of over-enunciating.
You’ll be surrounding by powerful microphones at all times which will capture every sound – take advantage of this fact and just be natural.
