Filmmaking Course - What should it cover?

T

Thomas Theron Cooper

Member
I've been talking to an industry professional about conducting a film making workshop that will last for about 120 hours spread over 30 days, which may have a couple of students including me.

I have read several books on screenplay writing, cinematography, lighting, editing, acting and other aspects but have no practical experience making films. I have done a short acting course as well as written two full screenplays. The screenplays are close to professional standards even if I say so myself because writing screenplays is something I can do. The rest, well, I"m learning.

I'm learning editing right now with books and videos to help me.

I want to understand what I should try to get from this course. I'll expect the teacher to cover a lot of ground that is already familiar to me, for the sake of my other classmates. He has promised me that he will do some practical shoots; making short films etc. I don't want to waste time on my own account, making him go over things which I can get from a book.

The idea here is to be able to make short films and later, feature films. I hope to edit myself. The cinematography, sound, art direction etc will be entrusted to professionals. I think an overall knowledge of what goes on there should be essential.

Am I being realistic? What do you think and how can I make the most of this?

Thanks!
 
Thomas Theron Cooper said:
The screenplays are close to professional standards even if I say so myself because writing screenplays is something I can do. The rest, well, I"m learning!
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Knowing how to write a screenplay isn't enough. And by knowing how, do you mean per what you read in books, and you have followed those mechanical instructions to the T? To whose professional standards are you refering? Does a professional-standards screenplay by default translate into a good film?

How to write a screenplays in one thing. How to tell a story is another. Once you have a story in screenplay format, you need to market it, and have others see its value in coin, and its artistic merits. It is the foundation that sets the rest in motion. That needs to be drilled into every student's head.

You don't just go out and get a screenplay.

a
 
120 hours is not very long.

I would separate the technical hardware skill training from the soft skills training.

i.e. Hardware ( camera, lenses, audio, lighting, camera support, post production, etc... ) : Soft Skills ( Acting, Casting, Directing, Producing, etc... )

Given that you only have 120 hours to teach, I would pretty much gloss over screenwriting because you easily burn up 120 hours just trying to teach screenwriting all by itself.
 
Agree, you are not going to teach screenwriting in 120 hours, but I sure would not 'gloss over' it. I am suggesting you do teach the importance of the screenplay to the whole and some key elements to look for, not how to write one. Knowing how to turn on a camera, how to light a scene, direct or act, edit the film and so on are not going to fix a bad screenplay, or fix a poor understanding of them. Glossing over screenwriting will help no one.

I think the majority of filmmakers do not intend to write their own material, which means they need to find it. Why would you want to know how a camera works, but not be equally curious how a good screenplay works?


Why not just gloss over post-production for that matter? Certainly you can't learn that 120 hours.
 
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alex whitmer said:
Agree, you are not going to teach screenwriting in 120 hours, but I sure would not 'gloss over' it.
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When I say 'gloss over' it, I mean give your students a 2-3 hour overview of the key elements of a screenplay, but don't spend any more time than this as it won't change their understanding of screenplays and will simply eat into the limited 120 hour time budget.
 
Why not give the overview 10% of the course? 12 hours. If they are bored with it, then maybe they shouldn't be pursuing a career in film.


If you want to design cars, you cannot relegate the importance of the engine to just a few hours of glossing over. If you design clothes, you cannot relegate the imprtance of fabrics to a quickie seminar. 100% Cotton behaves differently than a 50/50 blend, and if you are making drapes, that matters a hell of a lot. Same goes with screenplays, and the 'behavior' of different genres, themes and so on. If you don't get a solid driling about it, you are more likely than not to pick a piece of crap for your first project, and then blame the camera.

I watch a lot of the 'first' films here, and the big thing that stands out is bad dialogue. There is no excuse for that.

10% of the course needs to be dedicated to understanding the purpose of the screenplay, and a rudimentary knowledge of how to know if you have a good one, or one that can probably be salvaged. A poor understanding of screenplays, and their funtion in the whole, also has folks thinking they can take a pretty good script and make it better, only to trash the s*%t out of it. I cannot stress enough the need for restraint when hankering to add one's own babies to the mix.


10% and not a second less. Anything less is a joke.

a
 
Teacher hat on. First question is to do with level. You have to consider breadth of knowledge and depth of knowledge. Go too deep and the hours will creep up alarmingly, and they will need serious self-study time to do the reading and understanding, before actually doing it. If you need to cover all those areas of study, then perhaps you're better to do it as a project. That way you have a proper aim and an objective, and you do the learning as each area throws up it's problems.

If you are one of the students, why are you designing the course - surely the person delivering it does that, because they will do it their way, using their knowledge and skills. It sounds like you have already got many fixed ideas, making the teachers job tricky because they may have to get you to 'unlearn' bad habits or misconceptions.

My own experience is that knowledgeable students are very difficult to teach, a blank canvas is much easier. If you are more advanced, then hopefully the one other student will be at your level too - then you can progress. If the other person is above or below, then it's going to take much longer.

Books and internet research are good for background, but often integrates poorly. You can learn lighting from a book, but then when you do it for real, you learn so much more.
 
If it were me, I'd approach it completely differently - but then again, I'm a dreamer, so take it with a metric ton of salt. It seems 120 hours is just not going to be useful to actually teach you thoroughly any one area of filmmaking, so why not try to just use that time to give the students the tools for self-study, and use the bulk of the time to clue them in to what actual filmmaking demands, and giving them to tools to attempt to find their own strengths.

Here's what I'm talking about. Take the endless talk about how "the screenplay/story is #1" and how it all flows from there. Well, I don't find that useful at all. It's wrong, and there is not enough time to teach screenwriting in 120 hours anyway. Rather than rank story, acting, directing, sound, lighting, costumes etc., I'd concentrate on the overall concept: a film's duty is to engage the audience in sufficient numbers to make a profit - period. Hammer that in through a nuanced discussion taking a full 120 hours of just this one concept; along the line, you will point out things for self study, and provide detailed reading lists at the end of every session. If you say, f.ex., that clearly understood dialogue is more important than fancy lighting, because audiences forgive a poor visual but never poor sound, point them to self-study of sound by listing a couple of books on sound at the end of the day's lecture for self study - but don't waste time in trying to teach anybody in class to actually make good sound - explain the context, the importance and why, but leave the details to self study, with carefully chosen books/materials you will have performed a great service to the diligent student (rather than leaving them to search through random books on sound)... and the not-diligent student is not worth bothering about anyway, since they will never make it in the industry, only highly motivated self-starters can even get a ticket to play in the successful filmmaker lottery.

Let me illustrate the concept of "a film's duty is to engage the audience in sufficient numbers to make a profit" by debunking that old chestnut "it's all about the story". No, it is not all about the story. It is all about engagement. Engagement can be through story, but it doesn't have to be, and just from the fact that story flows downstream from engagement, you can understand what is ultimately controlling: engagement. Examples:

1) A film might engage purely because of cool sfx: take the Transformers Michael Bay movies. The story is really not important, since it functions purely as an excuse for the massive sfx, predictably, the story in Transformers is pretty lackluster from pretty much EVERY criterion you care to name; because the audience is not there for the story, but to watch the sfx. For that matter the close #2 in importance people mention in a film's success "acting", also takes a total back seat - make that "non-seat hanging onto the bumper as you're dragged along the street" - acting from those actors in Transformers is a joke of no importance, because people are there to see the sfx. But what is critical in the SUCCESS of the Transformers franchise? Engagement. Michael Bay got engagement of the audience through SFX, not story, not acting, not character arc, not social relevance, not spiritual upliftment, not aesthetic beauty, not lighting, not costumes or pretty much anything but SFX. No matter. He did get engagement. In sufficient numbers to make a profit. Yes, it's a massive success. So too for any number of sfx-driven tentpole films. "A film's duty is to engage the audience in sufficient numbers to make a profit".

2) Story is #1. No, not at all. It is about engagement... which need not (though it may) come from story at all. Example: Cabin Fever. People love to hate on Eli Roth and love to hate on Cabin Fever. But Cabin Fever was successful and it launched a career. Because Eli Roth is a better director than his critics give him credit for, and better than 99% of the wannabe directors or any number of obscure and less successful directors. The story of Cabin Fever - such as it is - is not the draw, nor is acting etc.. It is a triumph of directing. It'll take just 15 seconds to illustrate. Let us say that the story calls for a character walking through the woods, carrying a dead hare - that's all the screenplay says (the beginning of Cabin Fever). You can film a thousand such walks, and they will not engage psychologically. Take it from the moment you see the character for the next 15 seconds. It is riveting. On the page, it says the same simple thing - but a 1000 directors will film it a 1000 ways. But only very few will arrest your attention in those 15 seconds, because of the way it was shot; sure, the music is good too, but go ahead and turn off the sound altogether and watch it silently - it is gripping. The story describes a very simple, not noteworthy action - IT IS NOT THE STORY... it is the mood created by the way it was shot. It engaged, but not because of the story - there's not a story, merely an action for 15 seconds. The point is - take the same story and film it differently to utterly different results (all by competent directors) - so it can't be the story, but the way it was depicted... in other words, you got engagement, in those 15 seconds, whereas you got no particular engagement with other directors. And that is true for almost the whole genre of horror - and for that matter other genres - the story in horror is often paper thin, but the emotion, the horror, the engagement comes from the way it was shot. Great directors understand that, so even in cases where the story IS important - f.ex. Kubrick's The Shining, he took great care in how the Scatman Crothers character simply walked for a few seconds, and had him redo it for like 40 takes! It wasn't because of the "story" of that walk, but the direction. As a matter of fact, it was beautifully illustrated by the contrast between Kubrick's The Shining and the King's supervised The Shining. King got the story even more exact to his own satisfaction in the remake, and yet it fell FLAT, whereas Kubrick's is an acknowledged masterpiece... SAME STORY, utterly different outcome. So, you still claim "story is #1"? No, it is engagment. Kubrick's version - of the SAME story - had it, King's didn't. The point being not that story doesn't matter - it CAN matter, it might be the most important thing in a given film, but it always comes second to ENGAGEMENT - however you get engagement is the name of the game, whether through story or sfx, or characters, or acting or music or a thousand other elements in a film, any one or several of which might be the controlling element of the all-important ENGAGEMENT. Sometimes it is story is #1 in creating engagement, but as I showed in both point 1 and 2, hardly always. Often the story might be utterly subordinate, or indeed irrelevant, because engagement has been accomplished through other means.

Now you may discuss with the students how to create engagement. Look at examples and try to locate what creates most of the engagement, and then give your students the relevant reading materials for self-study. How was engagement created by "My Dinner With Andre"? Clearly not "story". How was engagement created by music and time lapse in Koyaanisqatsi? Obviously really is zero "acting" and it's not down to the "story" such as it is, so give the students a good reading list on music, editing, etc.. What about "Swimming To Cambodia"? How about "Reservoir Dogs"? "Enter the Dragon"? "Star Wars"? When you have a very simple or even muddled story and the film is a masterpiece because of the acting and mood (f.ex. The Maltese Falcon), discuss the importance of acting - then provide reading materials on acting. Explain how acting might be purely driven by screen presence (most of Humphrey Bogart) rather than technical acting chops, and how it can be the opposite, not much screen presence but huge acting chops (Sir Lawrence Olivier) - how does this actor vs that actor create engagement. How can the same story cast with different (and all competent) actors work, or not work - thus putting the lie to the "story is #1" yet again. SFX - provide reading material. Sound design made this horror engagement above all? Give reading materials for SFX. And so on.

The point being is that the best service you can give to your students is to place all the elements in context of creating engagement and analysing how to achieve that and for the technical nitty gritty providing carefully curated reading materials. Give 120 hours to understanding the most important thing: how to created engagement - because you won't have time to even scratch the surface of the actual technical means (including screenplay writing), for which you will provide a very valuable self-study materials list. The big picture, the right priorities, the correct analysis - that's what you can give in 120 hours, and if you do that, it's 90% of the most important lessons you can give an aspiring filmmaker - the remaining 10% of technical means they have to get on their own through extensive self-study (from self-help materials you carefully identified and endorsed). Gaining technical mastery of any aspect (including screenplay writing) is a years and years long process, not to be gotten in 120 hours - but all that technical prowess in the absence of the correct artistic priorities WILL BE WASTED - just look at most of the dvx user section... so much technical expertise, so little engagement - because it is ALL ABOUT ENGAGEMENT. Drilling that into the heads of your students will be the greatest benefit for your students - again, look at the dvxuser output... or a 1000 working directors, actors, writers and the even greater numbers of wannabes and pros-in-training. Set your students on the right path - 120 hours should just about do it, the rest is up to them, and only the capable ones will survive anyhow.
 
alex whitmer said:
What understanding are you talking about? If their understanding is poor, then that should be the first thing that gets sorted out.
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I guess we will just have to disagree on this. I personally think that everything other than screenplays/screenwriting needs to be dealt with first, as I see screenwriting as something that could easily take a year of study and even then you would only be scratching the surface ( much like someone trying to become a talented novelist within a short period of time ), where I think it's possible to get a functional understanding of the other aspects of filmmaking within his 120 hour schedule.
 
Eli didn't just walk out into the woods and shoot the scene for laughs. There was a story (screenplay) to set it up. He also likely chatted with his DoP about varios options. An actor may have had input as well. There is always a collaboration.

As a screenwriter I would not put in a blow-by-blow walking through the woods. Why? I do not know what location they will eventually find, and what opportunites or limits that location might have. Decisions will be made on set. An outdoor shot will need to factor in what kind of light any particular weather du jour offers. A screenwriter cannot fortell that, so we use general instructions. If a scene calls for something more specific, we go that route.

I agree with you on Engagement. What you want is a story beautifully crafted in screenplay format that engages production to bring their very best to the set. They will be interpreting the script, the roles, the purpose of the scenes, and making snap adjustments based on numerous factors, including who might be cast to play the roles. Are they good at improv? Can the director count on them to bring their own best to the role, or do they need teeth pulled to get eh needed shot? The screenwriter can only craft a story that allows and encourages creative interpretation of what is on the page.

Once Eli, et all, got that shot, then editing, sound, color correction and score would do their part to deliver what the audience will see. Eli did not do it alone, though his vision of how it might best be shot would have played a part in the finished effect. It is likely his vision remains consistent through each film, and it becomes his signature as a director.

Seeing as he is also a writer for Cabin Fever, he may have already seen this shot through his Director's eyes, and had no need to elaborate in the screenplay.


I don't know Eli's work habits, but he may have a favority DoP he likes to work with because of their communication, or the DoP is familiar with his way of seeing things.


He starts with an engaging story.
 
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TheDingo said:
I guess we will just have to disagree on this. I personally think that everything other than screenplays/screenwriting needs to be dealt with first, as I see screenwriting as something that could easily take a year of study and even then you would only be scratching the surface ( much like someone trying to become a talented novelist within a short period of time ), where I think it's possible to get a functional understanding of the other aspects of filmmaking within his 120 hour schedule.
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A fair rebuttal. :)

I guess it comes down to who the students will be, their experience in film, if any, and the course objective.
 
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paulears said:
Teacher hat on. First question is to do with level. You have to consider breadth of knowledge and depth of knowledge. Go too deep and the hours will creep up alarmingly, and they will need serious self-study time to do the reading and understanding, before actually doing it. If you need to cover all those areas of study, then perhaps you're better to do it as a project. That way you have a proper aim and an objective, and you do the learning as each area throws up it's problems.

If you are one of the students, why are you designing the course - surely the person delivering it does that, because they will do it their way, using their knowledge and skills. It sounds like you have already got many fixed ideas, making the teachers job tricky because they may have to get you to 'unlearn' bad habits or misconceptions.

My own experience is that knowledgeable students are very difficult to teach, a blank canvas is much easier. If you are more advanced, then hopefully the one other student will be at your level too - then you can progress. If the other person is above or below, then it's going to take much longer.

Books and internet research are good for background, but often integrates poorly. You can learn lighting from a book, but then when you do it for real, you learn so much more.
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Good post / perspective.
 
Thank you Alex Whitner, TheDingo and OldCorpse. I appreciate all your input. I realize most people would be cynical about someone who says he can write but I have my own convictions. Some of your advice has helped in shaping the course. Thanks again.
 
Some adhere to the Auteur theory of filmmaking, but a screenplay will still set the process in motion, regardless. I'm not saying it is the most important piece of the whole, just the beginning. What happenes after that is the beauty (and frustrations) of making films.

The most important piece of the whole can happen anywhere along the way, be it a director's distinct vision and interpretation of the script, an outstanding performance that just fricken' nails it, genius camera work, or some commensal combination. Or it could be the script !

a
 
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