Prep H writing students at ACI have been planning and producing a film for a competition to promote Gender Inequality Awareness. Over the semester break, they will get footage from all over the globe and collaborate through the cloud to finish the film. Bravo, fabulous filmmakers, we can’t wait to see the result!
Sometimes we don’t know what we are capable of until we’ve been presented with a challenge. Which is precisely why the 60 Second Film Challenge is a very good idea for aspiring filmmakers at ACI. Get your storyboards started and your cameras charged! Film submissions are due February 15, 2016.
L4 Film Assignment In many films, you’ll find the obligatory fight scene between the good guy and the bad guy. In this assignment, you will stage and shoot a simple fight scene betweentwo actors, using the 5 shot and block/light/rehearse/shoot process. View the following fight scenes from the film, Aris and the Art of Parkour […]
We all have to start somewhere! Before they conquered Hollywood, these famous directors made student films. My personal favorite is Christopher Nolan’s Doodlebug. What’s yours?
At the heart of the IB is the “learner profile”, a long- term, holistic vision of education that underpins all three programs and puts the student at the center of their education. After viewing the IB Learner profile video, rate how you think you measure up to the IB learner attributes here. Blog Response […]
Sometimes the best way to learn how to do something is to create a pastiche or copy of an original. Follow the directions in this reverse engineering assignment where you will recreate a scene shot by shot.
St. Clair Film Studies 
In this assignment instead of sharing roles, we all tried to learn about each of them. So both me and my friends were the cinematographer, script writer, director and editor at the same time. I was only not the actor, because in my opinion I couldn’t have been as good as Tuna as a runner. As we were all brainstorming about the possible scenes we may shoot, we thought that it was the hardest part of the whole filmmaking process. We were wrong, because we have not been introduced to the whole editing aspect of the process yet. We tried to use a variety of shots as we were shooting it. Personally, I thought that the point of view shot suited the chase theme very well, because we wanted to have the ‘non-stop running’ effect through the video. Long shot was one of the commonest shot type we used for the film, because we thought it was better to view Tuna running as a whole instead of seeing his body partially. As the cinematographer,(yes, my original role was this) it was very hard to decide on shot types while we were filming it because, I find it hard to imagine all the scenes combined as a whole and therefore,I had difficulty in linking those scenes to one another. Therefore, after we filmed most of the scenes we decided to reshoot some of the parts, because as we imagined them all as a whole, we had to smoothen and/or alter some scenes in order to reach a better storyline. As we all agreed on the shots and scenes we want to use, we had one more big step to take this time: learning editing. As we were introduced to the editing software program “Final Cut pro”, it was as complicated as rocket science for me. I was afraid of messing things up with a small mistake but I realised that Final Cut pro is actually the best software that can be used because it is very practical and everything can be unmade. As a result, I discovered to use this software to at least produce something. Now, I also have a wider perspective about editing and the whole filmmaking process. At the beginning I thought that we would stick to the script and the result would be something dull and boring but it turned out to be the opposite. We used some of the scenes we had earlier planned to shoot but their alignment was totally different. It was as if the scenes were presented to a total stranger in a mixed order and that stranger had picked those scenes randomly. To be honest, I enjoyed it somehow, because it was like seeing a child grow, you have no idea how it will end up being. Unpredictable.
I love how you used the analogies of a stranger and a growing child to illustrate the filmmaking process, and I enjoyed seeing your enthusiasm as you approached each aspect of this assignment. Your comments remind me of a quote from Robert Bresson, “My movie is born first in my head, dies on paper; is resuscitated by the living persons and real objects I use, which are killed on film but, placed in a certain order and projected onto a screen, come to life again like flowers in water.”
This chase scene assignment has the feature of being the very first film product for me and also for my friends. None of us had an idea about how to produce a film or how to edit it; hence instead of work sharing we all did each of the duties. What I am trying to say is that according to the roles sharing paper I am the director of this product however; actually apart from directing the film I also did screenwriting, cinematographing and editing. The only role that we did not share with my friends was being the actor because in the scene there was only one character and the most suitable one of us was Tuna. As a part of the assignment before we began shooting the scenes we did the pre-production process which includes planning (and brainstorm),screenwriting and creating storyboard for scenes. I thought this was the most challenging process of all production however after we shot the scenes and began editing it turned to be totally different! We, as the whole group, found out that editing is a whole new ball game and I can surely say that it is the most challenging part if you have never done it before. When we were shooting the scenes; we tried to stick to our storyboard because it was the easiest way to shoot our first film. We used as many shot types as we could; mostly we used point of view shot which made the film even more sincere. Other than this we also used bird’s eye view shot in the parts where the scene was filmed from a high perspective. In my opinion the variety of shot types we used took our film to a completely different and higher level. It made the scenes more effective and interesting. If I should talk about my ‘real’ role in the assignment I can surely say that I did not have a moment of difficulty because as I told before in this assignment everyone in our group has each one the role so there was no need to direct my friends:) The role that I had as director was telling my friends which scene we will shoot after and keep the record of scenes. The only problem that I had during filming was keeping the records because most of time we reshoot the scene to make adjustments and harmonise the scenes with others. It was sometimes hard to keep the record of those reshoot scenes. After we finished the whole filming process we continued with the editing process. It seemed to be a kid’s stuff because it seemed to be formed of only cutting and bringing the scenes in line. However it certainly is NOT! It is the hardest part of film production. You have to work with mili seconds; you cut them and sometimes add effects to them. During this challenging process , thank to Ms. St. Clair, we used the editing software called as “Final Cut Pro” which was the easiest and at the same time amazing editing software ever that does miracles. Now, after I did most of the processes for the first time I have an idea of how amazing and hard jobs do the directors, cinematographers and all the other film production team have. We spend this much time and endeavour for a thirty second film; those guys create three hours long films! Lastly, I can not say that I did not enjoy filming, editing and all other film production processes I did indeed. The idea of creating a brand new thing captivates me at all times film production is even more than just creating; you design it, create it and edit it!
You are right in that it is most captivating to create new things! There is so much to learn with all the technical aspects of filmmaking, and you handled it very well! I cannot wait to see your future film projects!