Yesterday we had our first complete get-together as a class. I had organized a previous meeting at an awful bar where about 10 people came, but this was the first time we were all together. We met at Myrl Schreibman’s house, one of the two professors (the other being Delia Salvi) for our directing class. Graduate advisor Cheri Smith, vice chair and head of cinematography Tom Denove, Barbara Boyle, chair of the film department, as well as two editing professors, Tim Good and Nancy Richardson from the editing department were also there.
We sat in a large circle explaining our lives like anonymous alcoholics. Looking back I am surprised at how apt the comparison is. Each of us had given up lives, some very secure, all of which were (with the cost of school) more financially secure than what we are about to embark on. If there had been any other option than filmmaking for us I’m sure most of use would have pursued it by now. There were a few famous filmmaking alcoholics, Cassavetes comes to mind, as does Ozu, who would measure his writing progress based on how many bottle of Sake he’d drunk.
Common themes emerged throughout people’s stories. A major one was the need to have a sense of purpose in life, to live creatively and be fulfilled in doing so. More than a few people considered law school as well, that great trough of graduated humanities students. The 18 directors and 3 cinematographers complete the same training for the first year before dividing off into our respective specialties. There are not so many international students, one Austrian (!) guy , a half-italian half-dutch girl, a Korean girl and a Welsh guy.
Among the other students I noticed that there was a great deal of international travel. One had been to 66 countries, others had lived in China, Korea, etc. The group is also diverse in terms of the United States, with people ranging from North Carolina to Hawaii, and only 5 or 6 students who were born and raised in California. All in all it’s difficult to make any basic comparisons among us.
Today we had our first official day of boot camp, which, energy providing, I will post on tomorrow.
