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Life in a Mid-Shot: A premier acting coach's tools for auditions and self-tapes
Demystify the audition process and land your dream role with this revolutionary book on acting!
Actor, Director, and world-renowned acting coach Les Chantery lays out an approach for the auditioning actor that has been heralded as “a revelation and unlike anything I’ve ever read on the topic of acting.” (Matt Skrobalak, Former Senior Vice President of Casting CBS PARAMOUNT). A sure asset for any actor looking to land the part of their dreams.
Life…In A Mid-Shot is the first book of its kind to blend acting with Neuroscience, Psychology and Behavioural Economics. Les Chantery’s approach has helped actors book work on platforms including NETFLIX, HBO MAX, HULU, DISNEY+, MARVEL, AMAZON PRIME VIDEO, PARAMOUNT + and more !
Foreword is written by one of Les Chantery’s students, Jacob Elordi, described by GQ Magazine as “Gen Z’s Leading Man” one of Hollywood’s newest and brightest young stars after his performance on HBO’s hit show EUPHORIA.
A Professor of Acting at the prestigious National Institute of Dramatic Art, and former actor featured alongside multiple high-profile actors, including Vin Diesel, Al Pacino, and Robert De Niro. Les Chantery’s “Life…In A Mid-Shot” is a principle manual for mastering the screen audition :
Practical Hacks to Crack the Audition RoomHow to Own the RoomThe Science of Acting to CameraTools to Fill Your Acting ToolboxBrain Hacks to Step Up Your Game
Anecdotes and Insights from Two Decades of Working with Hollywood A-List Actors!
Actors can now source privileged content tried & tested by the Top 2% of Actors in Hollywood. Landing that Film or TV role is only one book away.
Actor, Director, and world-renowned acting coach Les Chantery lays out an approach for the auditioning actor that has been heralded as “a revelation and unlike anything I’ve ever read on the topic of acting.” (Matt Skrobalak, Former Senior Vice President of Casting CBS PARAMOUNT). A sure asset for any actor looking to land the part of their dreams.
Life…In A Mid-Shot is the first book of its kind to blend acting with Neuroscience, Psychology and Behavioural Economics. Les Chantery’s approach has helped actors book work on platforms including NETFLIX, HBO MAX, HULU, DISNEY+, MARVEL, AMAZON PRIME VIDEO, PARAMOUNT + and more !
Foreword is written by one of Les Chantery’s students, Jacob Elordi, described by GQ Magazine as “Gen Z’s Leading Man” one of Hollywood’s newest and brightest young stars after his performance on HBO’s hit show EUPHORIA.
A Professor of Acting at the prestigious National Institute of Dramatic Art, and former actor featured alongside multiple high-profile actors, including Vin Diesel, Al Pacino, and Robert De Niro. Les Chantery’s “Life…In A Mid-Shot” is a principle manual for mastering the screen audition :
Practical Hacks to Crack the Audition RoomHow to Own the RoomThe Science of Acting to CameraTools to Fill Your Acting ToolboxBrain Hacks to Step Up Your Game
Anecdotes and Insights from Two Decades of Working with Hollywood A-List Actors!
Actors can now source privileged content tried & tested by the Top 2% of Actors in Hollywood. Landing that Film or TV role is only one book away.
342 pages, Kindle Edition
Published October 4, 2022
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
September 9, 2026
Les Chantery’s Life in a Mid-Shot is less about teaching you how to act than teaching you how to stop getting in your own way when somebody points a camera at you.
I’m still relatively early in my acting career, which means auditions and self-tapes can carry more weight than they probably should. You prepare the material, set the lights, frame the shot, do take after take, and somewhere along the way it becomes very easy to stop acting and start trying to demonstrate that you can act.
Chantery is particularly good at dismantling that mindset.
Much of the value in this book comes from reframing the audition itself. It isn’t an examination you need to pass. You aren’t there to guess what casting wants, manufacture the “correct” performance, or prove that you deserve the job. You’re there to make choices, listen, respond, play, and bring something alive into the room—or, increasingly, into the little rectangle of a self-tape.
That sounds obvious until you’ve recorded the same thirty seconds twelve times because you’ve convinced yourself the eighth take had a slightly more authentic eyebrow.
One of the strongest ideas running through the book is the importance of confidence without preciousness. Prepare seriously, then loosen your grip on the result. Know the material well enough that you can actually play with it instead of protecting whatever interpretation you rehearsed in advance.
I’ve already found that useful in my own auditions. The tapes I tend to prefer afterward aren’t necessarily the cleanest ones. They’re usually the ones where I stopped monitoring myself and started responding to whatever was happening in the scene.
There’s a larger lesson there that I recognize from writing and Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu as well. You drill, study, repeat, and prepare precisely so that when it matters you can stop consciously performing the mechanics. Preparation gives you permission to improvise.
Chantery also understands the strange psychological reality of an acting career: rejection is built into the profession. If every audition becomes a referendum on whether you’re talented enough to continue, you’re going to make yourself miserable very quickly. The healthier—and probably more productive—approach is to regard the audition itself as the work.
Do the scene.
Make choices.
Have some fun with it.
Send the bastard away.
Then get on with your life.
Life in a Mid-Shot didn’t radically reinvent acting for me, but it gave me several useful ways of thinking about auditions, confidence, preparation, and play that I expect I’ll carry into future self-tapes.
And at this stage of my acting career, that makes it a pretty worthwhile book.
I’m still relatively early in my acting career, which means auditions and self-tapes can carry more weight than they probably should. You prepare the material, set the lights, frame the shot, do take after take, and somewhere along the way it becomes very easy to stop acting and start trying to demonstrate that you can act.
Chantery is particularly good at dismantling that mindset.
Much of the value in this book comes from reframing the audition itself. It isn’t an examination you need to pass. You aren’t there to guess what casting wants, manufacture the “correct” performance, or prove that you deserve the job. You’re there to make choices, listen, respond, play, and bring something alive into the room—or, increasingly, into the little rectangle of a self-tape.
That sounds obvious until you’ve recorded the same thirty seconds twelve times because you’ve convinced yourself the eighth take had a slightly more authentic eyebrow.
One of the strongest ideas running through the book is the importance of confidence without preciousness. Prepare seriously, then loosen your grip on the result. Know the material well enough that you can actually play with it instead of protecting whatever interpretation you rehearsed in advance.
I’ve already found that useful in my own auditions. The tapes I tend to prefer afterward aren’t necessarily the cleanest ones. They’re usually the ones where I stopped monitoring myself and started responding to whatever was happening in the scene.
There’s a larger lesson there that I recognize from writing and Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu as well. You drill, study, repeat, and prepare precisely so that when it matters you can stop consciously performing the mechanics. Preparation gives you permission to improvise.
Chantery also understands the strange psychological reality of an acting career: rejection is built into the profession. If every audition becomes a referendum on whether you’re talented enough to continue, you’re going to make yourself miserable very quickly. The healthier—and probably more productive—approach is to regard the audition itself as the work.
Do the scene.
Make choices.
Have some fun with it.
Send the bastard away.
Then get on with your life.
Life in a Mid-Shot didn’t radically reinvent acting for me, but it gave me several useful ways of thinking about auditions, confidence, preparation, and play that I expect I’ll carry into future self-tapes.
And at this stage of my acting career, that makes it a pretty worthwhile book.
June 25, 2025
I cringe at my old ways before this book.
It’s a must read ‼️ Profound yet simple word switches that completely has changed the way I’ll look at scenes and characters moving forward.
The academic scientific and art mixture really tickled and itched both parts of my brain in a most satisfying way.
This book made me realise how much words and labels influence how we think & feel and therefore how the actor will behave going into auditions.
It’s a must read ‼️ Profound yet simple word switches that completely has changed the way I’ll look at scenes and characters moving forward.
The academic scientific and art mixture really tickled and itched both parts of my brain in a most satisfying way.
This book made me realise how much words and labels influence how we think & feel and therefore how the actor will behave going into auditions.
August 27, 2025
Very smart. Well written, easy read. Directed toward self-tape/auditioning but applies to performance as well. Falls more into the "actor's homework/approach to the work" area of discussion. Nice touches in the "updates to terminology" many acting coaches provide their own "modernizations" of terms but it's great to see someone push the envelope on the "holy grail of terms" and actually publish it. Overall strong work and advised for every level of actor.
January 7, 2023
Fantastic!!
I would recommend this book to all actors. So many great techniques to choose from to help the actor embody the character and the story.
I would recommend this book to all actors. So many great techniques to choose from to help the actor embody the character and the story.
June 28, 2025
Great practical advice on the technicalities of self-taping and how to make your audition stand out. Highly recommended.
June 16, 2026
Amazing!
March 31, 2024
This is such an incredible book with many tools to help you connect with your character, make strong choices, and create a dynamic performance. I've spent well over 800 hours in acting class, and the two days I spent reading this helped everything finally make sense. It has already changed the way that I look at my sides. I could not recommend it enough!
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews