There were over 6,400 short films submitted this year. This is a new column looking at American film school student and alumni representation at major festivals. Sundance is the first major festival to start the year, so I’m going to take a look at the US Narrative feature and short film categ[...]
Archive for the ‘Film School’ Category
Mamet’s Three Questions
When I write, I have these three questions above my computer, which I initially found in David Mamet’s “Bambi Versus Godzilla.” He also kindly repeated these notes to his writing staff in his famous rant: QUESTION:WHAT IS DRAMA? DRAMA, AGAIN, IS THE QUEST OF THE HERO TO OVERCOME TH[...]
December 5th, 2010 - 11:34 pm § in Film School, Filmmaking
Sweat Equity
Recently I was in a discussion with some film students in the hallway. The conversation revolved around a recent graduate from the undergraduate program who had sold a feature screenplay and was directing another feature that he’d written. The jist of what was said is that some people just see[...]
November 3rd, 2010 - 6:37 pm § in Film School
There Is No Excuse Not To Make A Movie
Aaron from Germany writes: i applied to grad film school in 2005(nyu & afi), at the time i was 25 and living in paris. i had 2 interviews at AFI, directing and editing. i didn’t make it into the school or any wait list. i applied last year, with 4 more years of experience and [...][...]
October 24th, 2010 - 12:24 pm § in Film School, Filmmaking
8 Tips for Directing Actors
A few things I’ve learned over the years on how to effectively direct actors: 1. Don’t Overtalk The cardinal sin of student directors is overtalking to the actors. Find a simple emotional backstory for the scene and explain it to them. The same with the characters’ objectives in th[...]
Student Film Archetypes: The Magical Stranger
I have seen a lot of student shorts in the last few years. After a while you begin to see recurring storylines, styles and characters. This is about one of those characters. The Magical Stranger narrative proceeds as follows: We are introduced to a protagonist (hopefully) with a problem; be it their[...]
October 10th, 2010 - 7:35 pm § in Film School, Filmmaking
A Student Film Manifesto: What Are Your Thoughts?
This comes from fellow TFT Directing classmate Ben Arfmann. http://jdcopp.blogspot.com/2007/01/francois-truffaut-certain-tendency.html I’ll keep this short guys, but read (hopefully re-read) Truffaut’s attack on the “tradition of quality” in French cinema. We’re in a [...]
100 New Directors – Where They’re From – Where They Studied – What They Shot On
I recently had the opportunity to purchase the beautiful book pictured above. From the introduction: We asked the artistic directors of ten prestigious film festivals to nominate ten of the best emerging film directors working today. The participants are: Cameron Bailey and Piers Handling, Toronto I[...]
September 21st, 2010 - 4:33 pm § in Contemporary Short Films, Film School
Great UCLA Shorts: The Horse by Charles Burnett
The film has a meditative a quality not found as often in short films today. Winner of the grand prize at the Oberhausen Short Film Festival.[...]