A group of 11 people in black clothing are watching. Some are filming the fight with a video camera, others are holding a sound boom to record Cole's desperate grunts.

Daughtry finally stops, leaving Cole bloody, defeated and lying on the floor.  A woman with short hair and glasses stands up.

"OK, thank you," she says, calmly. "That's good."

The woman is Di Drew, head of screen at the National Institute of Dramatic Art, and Cole and Daughtry are acting students. The violence is a re-enactment of a scene from director Francis Ford Coppola's 1972 film The Godfather, and part of a pioneering screen program for the school's final-year acting students.

As Cole's fake blood is wiped away, she and Daughtry, their clothing and faces covered in sweat, muse on the accuracy of Daughtry's groin kick.

"You could go higher," Cole says as Daughtry mimes the kick again.

Learning how to navigate movie scenes that feature violence or sex is one of the first classes NIDA acting students tackle in their third year. The workshops cover an element of the film industry often neglected by acting classes, leaving aspiring actors unprepared for professional screen roles.

Drew, an award-winning director and NIDA's first head of screen, says the classes aim to assist actors in working for the camera and coping with roles that feature nudity, intimacy or violence.

"What we do is demystify the process so they absolutely understand that it's a technical skill," she says. "A sex scene is one of the most unromantic and practical things you can do as an actor because it's also about technique.

"In a scene of violence the student will know that they have to position themselves in such a way so that when the punch comes through, it's [realistic] for camera but the other actor is not in any danger."

Cole and Daughtry  chose to re-enact a scene featuring James Caan's character Sonny Corleone beating his brother-in-law Carlo Rizzi, played by Gianni Russo, to a pulp.

Caan allegedly broke two of Russo's ribs and an elbow when they acted the sequence for Coppola's cameras in East Harlem.

They adapted the scene by turning Sonny into a female character and spent weeks training for, and devising, the violent choreography, slowly building the scene's intensity from 50 per cent energy to "at pace" for Drew and her cameras. Both believe the workshops are vital for aspiring actors.

"None of us in any way were forced into it," Cole says. "We could have said we didn't want to do it at all. It's basically a very safe environment. The sex and violence scenes we have been filming, the images, they're not going anywhere.

"We can look at the scenes and edit them if we want, but we can't take them away from NIDA. With the sex scenes, some people chose to go the whole hog and do a really quite sexual scene. And others less so to get more comfortable with the idea."

Their fellow students have worked on sexual and violent scenes taken from films including Of Mice and Men, Black Swan, Romper Stomper, The Talented Mr Ripley, ">Raging Bull, Once Were Warriors, Game of Thrones and Head On.

Drew's teaching covers an actor's right to say no to sex scenes, understanding the implications of doing them and the nitty-gritty of acting in them.

"Even just the logistics of wearing a patch in sex scenes," Daughtry says. "If you're going completely naked you wear this patch thing over your pubic area. That's industry standard. But what if you're on a movie that isn't top of the range, with people who didn't know that. So we know that it's definitely something that we could ask for if it wasn't there."

When they have caught their breath and reassembled props, Daughtry and Cole prepare to run the scene again.

"If at any point you do not feel safe, you say, 'Stop', OK?," Drew says.

She sits at two TV monitors watching feeds from two cameras, one hand-held, the other on a dolly, both filming the action. The Godfather scene is rerun to check blocking and tweak camera positions. The camera operator, focus puller, boom operator and dolly puller, who are all Cole and Daughtry's acting peers in the course, find their original positions.

"The students are the crew for the scene, so they understand what is required from the technicians and then they're the actor for a scene," Drew says. Each filmed sequence is professionally edited, with music and sound effects added, for the students to analyse.

Just as important as knowing how to appear naked on screen, or negotiate a physical fight, is understanding ethics, morals and cultural and spiritual choices as an actor.

"One of the forums of discussion that I have is, what are you prepared to show? When are you prepared to show it? When is it going to occur in your career, if at all?," Drew says.

"So the actors are never compromised by arriving on set saying, 'I don't want to do full frontal nudity'. You won't have that conversation if I've prepared them properly. It's already decided. It's in the contract.

"And that, again, opens them out to just be creative on set and not worry about being compromised  or being exploited in any way."

Drew calls "Action" and Cole and Daughtry begin their choreographed battle once more, this time with full energy, faces angry and shouting.

"There's a trust in the room," Daughtry says later. "We're all working to handle these sorts of scenes, sex and violence, with great care and professionalism."

Afterwards, the class agrees that the scenes were so technically difficult that they almost forgot the graphic nature of the content. The experience was less intimidating than expected.

"What I've taken from this is how much of a voice you do have," Daughtry says. "It's so much more about your safety and your partner's safety than, 'Oh we must get the show on the road, gotta keep going, gotta keep going'."

She has learnt, she says, to speak up if she ever feels uncomfortable. "You should always call 'Stop' if it's not safe, or things feel wrong."

Students perform in a series of plays at the NIDA Theatres from October 14. See nida.edu.au.