This course offers a hands-on exploration of the aesthetic and technical challenges behind cinematic storytelling. Students are encouraged to reflect on filmmakers’ creative strategies and pursue their own choices in relation to camera, sound and lighting. This limited-entry course involves a blend of lectures and studio-based workshops, and emphasises the links between cinematic ideas and the practical techniques used to realise them.
The course is comprised of lectures, discussions, screenings, exercises and three key creative projects demonstrating lessons learned. Assessment is based on participation, in-class quizzes and three practical assignments utilising the techniques learnt in lectures and workshops.
The course is broken into four major areas corresponding to the four aspects of production, camera, sound, lighting and post-production. Each week will feature a two-hour workshop where students investigate with filmmaking equipment the concepts discussed in the one-hour lecture that precedes it.
The first six weeks of the course focus on the conventions of image in film, the visual language of film, camera movement, continuity and coverage, editing and how we realise a script in the visual medium. The second half will cover the various aspects of production and post-production sound and lighting for film.