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Hi,

 

I was just going through old posts and came across this. As I had posted a few photos of the set build we did for our 'Studio Film Exercise' last year. I thought I would post a link to a montagy thing that I did at home to add to my website.

 

The budget for this was meant to be £1,500 (US$2,826) but we overspent and actually ended up spending £2,800 (US$5,273) because the set was so large - oops! This ended up being a 7 minute film shot on 3 rolls of Kodak Vision2 200T (7217). We shot over 2 days. We wanted to set the the story in mid 80s UK recession but also decided to use Gregory Credwson as reference to make the film slightly surreal. I ended up using 63K of light to light this. The chief reason being we don't have a fully functional lighting grid in the main studio at the school so I ended up bouncing four 12Ks with amber and peach gels, I think, if I remember rightly, off a 12x12 gold lastolite (that is Paul Wheeler BSC's prize possession!) hung from the ceiling to create the sunset effect. I also used three space lights to create ambient blue fill and four 2.5K HMIs to light the cyc because we didn't have cyc lights or sky pans or enough money to rent them.

 

On reflection I'm quite pleased with the look of the film, though of course I would change things if I had to do it again...you live and you learn, but then that is why I came to film school, to make mistakes, something I will not be allowed to do when I start to work professionally. I learned a load of stuff about studio lighting especially logistics. I have started to use the analogy of a large cruise ship to describe what studio lighting feels like. When you are in the cabin turning the wheel to steer the ship in a different direction to the one you are headed in, sometimes you don't realise how much of a time lag there is between turning the steering wheel and the ship actually changing course. Studio lighting takes a lot of time to implement!

 

Shooting this film gave me an opportunity to learn things about studio lighing that I probably would not have had the opportunity to learn, until much later in my career, had I never attended the National Film and Television School.

 

Goto:http://www.morganpeline.com

And enter by clicking on the main photo

Then go to the clip 'For The Record' and click on the blue photo

 

Hope you like what I did! However, I am the first person to say that I have still much to learn about my craft!

 

p.s. You need Quicktime 7 to run the clip.

 

p.p.s Sorry, I can't seem to get the system to not abbreviate the direct link.

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Nice to hear you've had a fullfiling experience. How do you find Brian Tufano, he helped me with an essay and was genuinly a great person to speak to, I think I owe him a bottle of wine or something.

 

The UK really needs to maintain its film schools, after all the UK not only has to train its own workers but the large number of people who choose to immigrate to other film industries.

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Hi,

 

Obviously, I've had my ups and downs as you would with any film school. But what I really appreciate is because you meet so many successful working DPs at this school you learn a lot about attitude. You might not necessarily learn a lot about specific techniques all the time, but what you do learn is a certain kind of attitude...which is quite interesting. What you learn is a certain kind of 'can-do' attitude. You might not know how to light something but you know that there is definitely a way to achieve what you want, if you think about it hard enough. You soon get rid of the idea that cinematography is some mystical art and realise that actually in reality it is a very practical, nuts and bolts craft, if you take the right approach in your problem-solving. Sometimes even, you come up with a very practical, simple solution that creates beautiful artistic images. Obviously all my classmates have learned different things to myself, but for me I have learned more about a way of thinking about lighting and composition, which I think will most likely stand me in a better position for the future. Something along lines of it's better to teach someone to fish for themselves than to actually give them fish, if they want to feed themselves...or something like that anyway! ;-)

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well...i join this discussion cause i'm a student at the london film school. being italian i don't know much about the other british film schools, even though i've seen many graduation films from the nfts and , for what i've seen,i don't think they're qualitatively better than our stuff.

 

however my experience is limited to the lfs, that's what i can talk about, since next term (the beginning of my second year) i'll be dp on 35 mm black &white. i guess many could argue: what's that for? b&w 35 mm...tou'll never do it again in your life, if you'll ever make it in the real industry. but the point for me is that school is not the real industry: if you decide to go to film school you must be aware of this.

 

in italy i've worked on real sets as assistant director, those were productions that by the standards of our fading out industry i would define big-medium size (9 weeks location shooting). i know how a real set look like, i was fairly decent in my job and that was my disgrace: getting stuck with it, as my real passion was cinematography. so i made the big move, which, as you can imagine, was not an easy choice...i mean going back to school, in a foreign country, after you've been used to work and earn your living it is not easy. not to mention the expenses (it is a very expensive school even though skillset recently stepped in and more and more scholarship are getting available).

 

from this very peculiar background i must say that i'm learning a lot and the money are worth. probably if i worked as clapper loader for 4-5 years instead of being an ad (however assistant director in italy is a job slightly different from the anglosaxon ad way) i would speak differently by now. but given my starting point, i'm quite happy of what i'm doing. of course it is not perfect, no scholl i think is.

 

but for what i want to get i think it is more that adequate. i shot and lit both black & white and colour 16mm (the new kodak vision 2) practiced a lot on the aaton camera and got some experience on minidv. in one year i've worked on 6 sets as dp/op and camera assistant, those were my main film exercises. during the short that i directed i took care of the lighting set up rather than the rest. now i'm directing a documentary in minidv, but i try to get very involved in the camera issues as well.

these were rather compact crews (6-7 people) while in the upper terms, when we shoot 35 mm in studio & location, we go up to 15 people working. besides that i was gaffer in a couple of graduation films and the kodak commercial awards.

 

is this anything like the real world out there? probably not, apart for the great commitment students usually have in achieving the best out of the exercises (being 12 hours on a set, if nothing else). when i'll dp for the b&w 35 mm i won't get anything fancier than kinos and fresnels, even though graduation films tends to be bigger. but the real experience is being on a dark and empty set and taking the rmain lighting esponsability in your hand. it is not the real world, but it is a quite solid simulation. how long should i wait, if i were a clapper loader in the industry now, to do that? nobody can say it, it depends, i think, on many different factors, it is not just cause you can get the aperture right.

 

thus i think both choices are ok, either film school or getting in the industry, in the end it depends of what you do out of your choice. personally i think that this school, with all its limitations and costs, gives me the opportunity to get a decent showreel in both 16mm and 35mm, the school exercises and the graduation films. i'll dp b&w 35 mm and in the following term i'll be operating a gold panaflex. in the worst case, considering the graduation films as well, i'd get to dp on 35mm 5-6 times. not bad for what i need.

 

finally, is this ma in filmmaking going to get me a job as soon as i graduate? who knows! nothing is for granted in this industry. tak fujimoto, a former lfs alumnus, got to dp malick's feature because the previous two dp were both fired during the shooting aso he ended up being the first on line (at the beginning he was the camera assistant). for what my experience is, back in italy, this is a people business. in the end it depends on you, there are many different weays of trying out, none is better of the others, it depends what you want.

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Bournemouth Film school has a good rep, as does Newport

 

Backtracking a bit here but can anyone tell me what has happened to Bournemouth Film School? I was from the last year where they ran a two year practical course and witnessed the horror of the new degree replacement (1st yrs refused to be trainee because they had essays to write, shudder). I know they renamed the college and got a lot of DV in but are they still a good college to attend? Just wondering, thats all.

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Backtracking a bit here but can anyone tell me what has happened to Bournemouth Film School? I was from the last year where they ran a two year practical course and witnessed the horror of the new degree replacement (1st yrs refused to be trainee because they had essays to write, shudder). I know they renamed the college and got a lot of DV in but are they still a good college to attend? Just wondering, thats all.

 

Looks like some of the 'older' institutions or courses start falling apart when they start trying to operate in the academic system. I would certainly say that from my disastrous MA at Bristol, where its previous Postgraduate Diploma course in Film and TV production had apparently been a golden flagship of UK practical film education. By the time I was there it had been an MA course for several years, and was considered as a joke by some of my classmates and nightmare by others.

Edited by Andy_Alderslade
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Looks like some of the 'older' institutions or courses start falling apart when they start trying to operate in the academic system. I would certainly say that from my disastrous MA at Bristol, where its previous Postgraduate Diploma course in Film and TV production had apparently been a golden flagship of UK practical film education. By the time I was there it had been an MA course for several years, and was considered as a joke by some of my classmates and nightmare by others.

 

Getting a lot of DV in is always a bad sign. While the whole thing of trying to make the courses a part of the corporate academic system is probably a severe problem too, I think one of the big problems with the U.K is the accent on digital generally. Theres a lot of baggage that comes with the whole digital thing and the accent is often on things like post production rather than on stuff like lighting skills.

 

I think learning about Film as opposed to video is a really useful skill, and Condor's experiences sound really positive. There may not be a lot of people making black and white films but those skills are still useful when you make colour films because it is still film.

 

I used to help out on shoots for a film school. I never once saw a c-stand when I was working and when I once expressed an interest in learning about lighting I was very shocked when a director told me that "lighting was easy". Which it probably was the way they lit everything.

 

I very much get the impression that it's hard to find places offering good courses in film production. The film school in Beaconsfield seeming to often be the one exception. It sounds like Condor had a great experience but I would be careful out there and I would ask film schools, even ones that formerly had a good reputation, about what potential there is on the course to shoot films as opposed to video.

 

love

 

Freya

Edited by Freya
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It sounds like Condor had a great experience but I would be careful out there and I would ask film schools, even ones that formerly had a good reputation, about what potential there is on the course to shoot films as opposed to video.

 

I guess the strategy is, the only good reputation is the reputation you see with your eyes, when you visit and research these places, i.e. are the equipment and facilities good? do the staff seem energetic and up-to-date? what is the current standard of the students work, are their shorts good and well recieved in festivals?

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Of course many students go on these courses to get into the filming scene, they dont always know to check specific websites/festivals and just go on the stuff handed out by the college on open day.

 

Case in point: Stoke TV and Media course.

 

OCT 96

Students: 276

Lecturers: 10 (inc 2 tecs)

Studios: 2 with Radio studio and plans for 2nd media center

Course: 2yr practical

 

APR 97

Students: 19

Lecturers: 4 (last tec leaving when I went)

Studios: all being scrapped with main studio to be used on the next year by the brickwork(!!) course

Course: College bankrupt so students "sold" to nearby Uni's 3yr degree

 

I dont know what was worse, the head running off with his secretary, the media equipment having "sold" stickers on it, according to whom had taken it over or the fact that there were some passionate tutors who fought hard for the students, only to be failed by the system.

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