Media Production for the Actor program

Your Stage. Your Story. From Concept to Creation.

The Media Production for the Actor Program is where you’ll learn all the aspects of telling your own stories and producing your own content, executing your vision artistically with creative control throughout the entire process. You will be mentored by experienced industry professionals, meet casting directors, make important networking connections, and learn how to build a successful, sustainable career in the business of acting and creating your own content.

Program Pathways

The Media Production for the Actor Program is offered as:

Two-Year Degree

Plus-One Degree

Summer Intensive

Two-Year Degree

Plus-One Degree

Summer Intensive

Program Focus

Media Production for the Actor: For actors who want to tell their own stories and control their own careers.

The Media Production for the Actor Program aims to foster a creative environment for actors to generate their own material and content.

We give our students a working knowledge of Directing, Writing, Cinematography, Editing and more. We support each member in our community to find their own voice and vision.

You will be encouraged to ACT on that vision and generate material that can be shared with an audience.

You’ll be immersed in hands-on opportunities, working with engaged mentors to gain the know-how to produce and distribute content that shares your vision and promotes your brand. You’ll graduate with a portfolio of your work to use as demos and calling cards, and with all the tools you need to capture attention and support.

Two-Year Associate Degree Program Overview

In the first year, you’ll build solid acting technique through classes in acting, voice, movement, improvisation, and on-camera work. This part of your training focuses on creating a flexible, expressive storyteller and performer.

In the second year, you’ll learn to develop scripts from concept to final draft, direct yourself on camera, and produce professional quality video content. You’ll create full-scale video productions in classes taught by successful media entrepreneurs, and complete the second year with a screening of your unique work.

The Maker's Project

The Makers Project is the culmination of the Media Production for the Actor Program. Each student curates a project with their advisor and fosters that work from its conception on the page to the completed product on the screen. The work is shared in a full-size professional movie theater in NYC with fellow students, family and friends. Screenings consist of short films, music videos, visual effects experiments-each student highlighting their best and most original work. It serves as a celebration of the Media Production for the Actor Program and is truly representative of the diverse interests held throughout the program. It provides our students with a calling card with which to enter the professional world environment.

Business Class

A practical opportunity to develop a clear business strategy for your unique actor brand. Classes focus on preparation of materials: resumes, reels, websites and social media platforms, how to network, get an agent or manager and do your taxes.

The Media Production for the Actor Program is also available as a Plus-One Degree Program

Now, more than ever, it’s essential for professional actors to be multifaceted in their training: you’ll want to be ready to sing, dance, act, produce, create, promote, and more.

At the New York Conservatory, you can evolve your brand, diversify your training, build your actor’s toolbox and add on to your two-year Associate Degree.

We have designed the Plus One Degree Program to build upon the training in your first two years at The New York Conservatory. Once you complete an initial two-year Associate Degree in any of our programs, you can continue your education to earn a second Associate Degree by adding on one year of Film & Television Performance, Media Production for the Actor or Theatre Performance.

After having completed the full two-year degree program, the Media Production for the Actor Plus One Program is a wonderful way to take the skills you have acquired one step further. You will receive the full scale of the Media Production for the Actor program condensed into a single year. It is an intensive way to take your skills as an actor and transform them into a new creative self. Focusing on finding your voice as a creator, the Plus One Program will teach you essential film-making skills and guide you in generating original work, culminating in the Maker’s Project. It is a great way to take your experience at NYCDA one step further and establish yourself as a creator of your own original content.

Four-Week Summer Intensive Program Overview

The Media Production for the Actor Summer Intensive is a four-week journey that acts as a sort of boot camp for the creative process that lives behind creating a film, from script to screen. Students will be tasked with finding their artistic voice and given the tools to create work that will be shared at the end of the four weeks. With all the participants working as actors, the focus will also be on screenwriting, directing, cinematography and editing. Participants will spend time both behind and in front of the camera. The intensive aims to immerse the students in the heart of the generative process of creation and introduce them to the collaborative nature of filmmaking.

Hear from New York Conservatory Students

Learn a student’s perspective on the Media Production for the Actor Program and The Maker’s Project