Wow! What a week it has been. My weekdays at BDFI have well exceeded what were already high expectations. I was surprisingly impressed when Patrick said the school is not necessarily technical, but a “Leadership” school. To be leaders in our industry. Now that is the right idea. I knew that I made the right choice to attend BDFI, and can’t wait for the second day.

When we watched clips from Se7en, I learned about negative and positive space, 180 degree rule (something that I need to work on), matching shots, framing correctly, and it was fantastic how it was all explained. Shifting the positive and negative space to reveal characters is something that I never realized until watching the clip. Keeping the more important characters larger in the shot, and having certain shots be calmer or more convoluted depending on the demeanor of the character seems very useful and artistic. The whole presentation really helped me visualize and understand the concepts, something that I had rarely seen in any other film class.

Going over the basics of screenplay and how we needed to “pitch” an idea made me nervous but excited. The area for me that I think I can learn the most in is effective storytelling and screenplays. I have many ideas always stirring in my head, but don’t really have a good way to get them down on paper, and in a way that tells a story. I’m very excited to learn how I can do this. Sharing embarrassing moments about ourselves seemed weird at first, but in the end made complete sense. It really made me think harder about what would make a good story and the potential themes that a filmmaker could explore when writing a movie.

I learned that working with the other people in my class is going to be a must. Just a few minutes after finishing class I was in one of the edit bays, helping out a classmate on FCP. I loaded up Motion and we worked for a bit on some footage and graphics. He even taught me a few things about Motion I didn’t know. I loved how on the first day of school I walked into an edit bay, fired up FCP and started editing.

In cinematography class, I got to brush up on my skills with my favorite camera, the HVX-200. Being able to just go and shoot, try out depth of field and play with the white balance settings was a great lab.

In editing, I refreshed my memory on capturing from tape (I’ve only worked with P2, XDCAM, and direct to disk digital workflow for 2 years). So being able to play around with FCP and help the others out in the class was a lot of fun.

One class that I was pretty nervous about was improv. I’ve never really been good at it, but our instructor made me very comfortable, and I ended up feeling very good about it all. I feel I’m going to learn a lot out of her class.

Not only did I get to watch clips from one of my favorite movies (Se7en), I learned a ton as well. Being able to interact and learn from industry professionals has already gotten my mind stirring for new, great projects, and I can’t wait to pitch them on Wednesday.