And we’ve begun. I was happy to see that term 1 started with a bang and that my fellow classmates and I are expected to dive right in. To start off Producing/Directing, our Monday class, we introduced ourselves to each other. I was pleasantly surprised by the level of commitment my classmates seemed to already have to movie-making. Many had already at least a few terms of formal instruction in film studies or filmmaking. Everyone was keen to get started on learning.

We used an asset that Patrick had made to get a primer in good directing. Using the film “Seven,” we watched scenes closely for headroom, postive and negative space, and movement and direction. We reviewed a scene in the film that is a conversation in a booth between Morgan Friedman and Gwyneth Paltrow. We knew that the goal of our first project would be to recreate a conversation in a booth between two characters, so we watched the cinematography and directing intently. Patrick has promised us that the topics we overviewed in this first class will be comfortably in our filmic vocabulary by the end of the term. In fact, he says they will even put us to sleep. I don’t know about that, but I’ll aim for being able to direct great pieces in my sleep by the end of this term.

Allen, our cinematography teacher, ran us through the basics of the Panasonic HVX200, the camera we will be using while at BDFI. Thankfully for me, I am very familiar with the Panasonic DVX 100B, which is a step down from the HVX200, but has essentially the same set up. He talked about colour balance, f-stops, the setup of a camera department on a typical film set, and the nomenclature of different shot types, all of which I’m sure we will spend more time on over the next few weeks.

We split into groups to get a feel for the camera, practicing proper headroom and framing with our fellow group members. We’ll be reviewing our footage next week with Allen to learn about better technique and the strengths and weaknesses of the camera that we will be spending a lot of time with over the next term.

Scriptwriting was a class I had been very much looking forward to, and I was happy to meet Fred, our teacher. After some introductions and some basic scriptwriting instruction, we took turns pitching our ideas for the first project. Fred was impressed that everyone had already put some thought into it and seemed to be well on their ways to developing interesting scenes and scripts. Time was short at the end of the three hours and so there was not much critical instruction or discussion about the pitches. Presumably more critical exchanges will be possible next week when we have actual first drafts of the scripts prepared.

I was glad to be once again impressed by my classmates in our editing class. Again, they exceeded my hopes. Everyone seemed to show a lot of potential for editing and many were already quite advanced. It made a fast pace through editing basics towards more advanced editing techniques seem likely for our class.

The editing rooms at BDFI are a welcome change from some of the computers and set-ups that I’ve used to edit video in the past and I’m excited to spend some long days and nights editing there. There are lots of students at the school who I’m sure will prove invaluable in helping to solve the editing “challenges” that we may come up against in the future and I’ll be thrilled to have more experienced eyes helping me with my projects

The roster of impressive teaching staff continued with Melissa, our acting teacher. What a character! She cracked lots of jokes and was fun to listen to. I had been so nervous about the improv part of our class. I have never had the desire to be an actor and was intimidated by the improvisational part. Melissa made sure we understood that we were in a supportive environment and that we should put away “the man in the yellow hat” as she calls the part of ourselves responsible for self-censorship and feel free to express anything. We had a good time improvising and while most fell flat, there were some good lines by some of my classmates that had us laughing.

At the end of week 1, I can report that my classmates, our teachers, and our first week at school far exceeded my expectations.