Everyone has now completed their two minute films. The first five weeks of school are incredibly hectic. It feels almost like a hazing ritual to see whether we will get everything done. We all did, and that’s something. Now that the first five weeks are done, cinematography is over for this quarter, as well as the saturday workshops. This means we now have three day weekends, where before we had only Sunday, which was mainly reserved for casting, rehearsal and production.
My shoot went very smoothly on Saturday afternoon. My biggest concern was the performance that I got from my lead actor, which remains to be seen.
Everyone has a small chance to breathe before dailies on Wednesday. The group of people in Myrl Schreibman’s directing class now switch to Delia Salvi’s class. Myrl’s class focuses mainly on blocking as well as blocking for camera. Delia’s class focuses solely on performance. Her book Friendly Enemies is worth getting ahold of if you have the chance. Delia’s course feels like a very intense psychological breakdown of each actor and script. She believes in Freud.
In some ways it’s very old-school, which is good. One of my biggest concerns at this school is that we will not get enough writing or working with actors, though I am told this will improve as time goes on. The first quarter is very much about plunging you into making your own film. The hazing metaphor is apt, because after hazing you feel as though you belong to something. I have learned a tremendous amount about filmmaking, especially the technology, set protocol, and the relationships of people to one another on set.
If you are looking to apply to film school, the two things I strongly recommend are writing and acting classes. Make short films, make mistakes with your actors, and work hard to improve upon them. Same with the writing. We had very little time for the writing and workshopping of our two-minute scripts. The people with less writing experience suffered. Film school can teach you many things, but a lot of the work, especially the truly creative work, is you and your own background. As Mackendrick writes, plot can be taught, but character and theme cannot be taught. Fair enough. Learning how to write, be disciplined, take feedback, and rewrite is very important before you come to film school. You cannot get the best performances from actors who cannot understand your script.
My note for myself is that this school is about directing, not writing, although ideally they would go more hand in hand. The director is an interpretive artist, the writer a creative one. You will be directing your own scripts here, so take the time to write a lot, get them critiqued, and make them with actors. You will need all the experience you can before you get here, because there is so much more to learn once you do. It’s a great experience though.
