Quiet on the set! Scene 12, take two. Okay, lights, camera, action!

Deb Copeland, of Copeland Creative and Actors Workshop in Des Moines, has built her business around these words. She can help you get your foot in the door of the film and video industry.

Training is essential to a successful acting career, and Copeland offers Actors Workshops as an invaluable experience for interested people who want to break into “the biz.” The enhancement of self-esteem and confidence is also a plus to the workshop for those who just need that extra boost.

The classes are offered under the direction of experienced professionals in the industry. “An actor not only needs to know how to act with everybody else on the crew, [but he or she should know how] to really be a professional about it,” Copeland said. “They need to be aware of what the process is.”

The Actors Workshop classes are not all about acting. It’s about acting in front of a camera two feet from your face, a microphone above your head and somebody reflecting light up in your face.

Concentration is the key to “the biz.” The classes cover the vocabulary that one would hear on the set (like knowing what the audio person means when she says, “Give me a level”). “Finding your light” and knowing who the people on the crew are and what they do is important, and all of this is covered in the Actors Workshop classes.

The contents of a 10-week class cover the whole realm of acting. The first week starts off with vocabulary, character development and cold reading, then it’s on to working with the crew and scene study. The third week involves head shots, auditioning and scene study, and the fifth week entails camera, light and sound specifics.

A visit to the audio studio is in the sixth week with wardrobe and makeup following in the seventh. A visit to the production studio with cold reading training scripts is the eighth week of class, ending with the ninth and 10th having a continuity exercise, scene study and a wrap-up to the session.

Copeland started her agency last April, and business has been booming ever since. She is based in Des Moines, but her “talent” find jobs all over the Midwest. “I probably have over 200 in talent right now, and I’m working with companies out of Kansas City, Omaha, the Des Moines area and Waterloo,” Copeland said.

Her acting students have auditioned for and received parts in Twister, a movie coming out this summer, Harvest of Fire, a Hallmark Hall of Fame movie set for release this month, and in radio, commercials and corporate videos.

Some people from the West Coast might think that we in the central U.S. can’t tell a clapboard from a key grip. Copeland is proving that that just isn’t true. “Part of my motivation in doing this is knowing that there is talent in Iowa,” she explained.

“All we have to do is get them connected with the production campaign or the ad agency and get them trained so that they can deliver.”

Call Deb Copeland at 271-5970 to sign up for Actors Workshop classes, all of which are held in Des Moines.