Filmmaking: Directing 2

Expand your directorial skills through hands-on work with actors, improvisation, advanced camera techniques, and visual storytelling.

Throughout this four-week course, you’ll learn how to communicate more effectively with actors, lead auditions and rehearsals with clarity, and draw out layered, emotionally resonant performances. You’ll explore the use of subtext, hidden motivations, and internal versus external acting methods to help actors connect more deeply with their roles and deliver compelling, nuanced scenes.

From lens choice and camera movement to costume, color, and art direction, you’ll learn to make deliberate visual decisions that support the emotional tone and meaning of a scene. Through creative practice and low-budget hacks, you’ll learn how to build immersive visual worlds and direct with both precision and artistic freedom.

The course teaches you how to use improvisation strategically—both in performance and blocking—to foster spontaneity, trust, and authentic rhythm in your work. You’ll experiment with managing controlled chaos on set, capturing “happy accidents,” and knowing when to guide and when to step back.

Whether you're directing your next film or building your directing reel, this course will help you shape performances and visuals to leave a lasting impression with audiences.

What you will learn:

✔ Lead auditions and rehearsals to bring out strong, emotionally connected performances
✔ Apply advanced camera techniques and lens choices to support emotional storytelling
✔ Use improvisation and rhythm to direct spontaneous, dynamic scenes
✔ Design cohesive visual environments through art direction, costume, and color

Prerequisite Skills:

• Completion of Filmmaking: Directing 1, or equivalent knowledge and/or experience