As we head in to the second and third exercises of Understanding Cinema we will be asking some of our participants to act. Acting is an extraordinary thing. You pretend to be someone else, when it’s in fact clear that you are you and not that other person. You have to invite the audience to…
Writing Short Films This is a condensed version of a screenwriting presentation I do for children and young people. It’s based on my screenwriting training, research and there are a few quotes and ideas from the 22 rules of storytelling by Pixar storyboard artist Emma Coats. What makes a good short film? A short film…
This post looks at working with story, providing exercises and context for storytelling, and indicating texts that may be of use to you in the development of your projects. There are a million different ways at looking at story and story creation. This is just one way to approach it. Please feel free to disagree…
As an artistic medium, cinema is like a musical instrument: it allows us access to some modes of expression, but not all. A violin allows us to play with the bow, to play pizzicato without the bow, to play with vibrato, to play spiccato, col legno etc. However, a violin can never truly play like…
One of the big issues facing participants in the Understanding Cinema project is the question of achievability. Faced with some of the most astounding feats in cinema – the opening of Touch of Evil, the dizzying thrills of Cuaron, the fluid cinema of Bela Tarr, the Altman-inspired bravado of Paul Thomas Anderson – how can…
A great video essay that touches upon the long take, but also points out the differences between a Hollywood made film and its original European version. As the final words state: “to ask ‘what is neorealism?’ is to ask, ‘what is cinema?’”
The history of the long take in documentary goes all the way back to the beginning of cinema. As we see in the first films from the Lumiere Brothers, all of early cinema involved the filming of ‘real life’. And for the most part, the scenes that were being filmed were shot using a whole…
The focus of this year’s Understanding Cinema project is ‘the long take’ and the long take is perfect for dance on film. By ‘dance on film’ I mean creating dance specifically for the camera rather than simply filming a performance of dance on a stage. I first became interested in dance on film when I…
Understanding Cinema 