A Bittersweet End
This is a still from our short film Alesi, Hraj (Play, Ales).
11 more days in Prague, I can’t believe it. Our final screening for the professors is May 15th and then my flight leaves at 8:30AM on the 18th. I don’t want to leave Europe, it fits me so well. I do miss everyone at home though and I’m excited to possibly be working in Brooklyn this summer (fingers crossed). I have two interviews tomorrow, one for Rooftop Films as a festival intern and one for an editing internship at Crossborders. But I love it here! I love FAMU and this production has been more than I could have ever asked for, I’ve learned so much. I’m really proud to say I co-visualized the entire film as well as wrote it. We finished with sound today after 6 hours in the studio and Thursday is color grading so then it’ll be complete! I’m coming back to this place, I’ve never felt more sure about everything after this semester. Prague is an amazing city and seriously under-rated. I have my Visual Theory final in about an hour and then just one more paper due next week and we’re calling it a semester!
LOVE Beccah!
March Madness Ends in Prague
If you told me a month ago that I would be sitting outside in shorts and flip-flops, basking in the warmth of the sunlight, I would have laughed in your face. Coming from Dallas, the Prague winter was pure misery; snow, wind, and piercing cold made going outside almost intolerable. But this past week, Prague has decided to join the month of March and we have been blessed with beautiful 65 degree, sunny afternoons.
This past weekend I was, what I like to call, lazy. Saturday I slept in until noon, then met up with a few friends to walk through Letna Park, a large park near my apartment that overlooks central Prague and the Charles River. After relaxing for a bit we headed to Old Town to walk through the Spring Market where we got some refreshing zmrzlina (ice cream) and walked by all of the souvenir and craft stands while listening to the sound of the Czech children’s play that was going on at the top of the square. Although I tend to think that most children’s shows are simultaneously humorous and (mildly) creepy, these elements are both intensified when the play is being performed in a different language, specifically Czech. It was entertaining to say the least.
I spent even more time outside earlier this week, taking a walk along the Charles River between classes and sitting at a park across from FAMU with only the interactions of the dogs playing to entertain us. My friend and I were thoroughly amused for a solid 15 minutes when observing the dogs, and decided that we could probably spend hours watching them play in the park and never get bored. Dogs are actually hilarious.
Along with these lovely spring afternoons comes one of the greatest, most important spring traditions: March Madness. As I am not an avid college basketball fan, I actually have no idea how the tournament is going, but since a handful of my friends here are Syracuse University students we all gathered at a local sports bar to watch their game in the Sweet 16 round. Although they are now out of the tournament, their victory in the first game was exciting for all involved. Except maybe Wisconsin.
Surprisingly, this laziness has not filtered into my academics, and with shooting beginning in less than a month we will soon be kept occupied with location scouting, casting, storyboarding, and rehearsing, so that at 9 am April 28 we are ready to go! As a last weekend of recreation before the madness begins, a few friends and I are headed to Amsterdam tonight on an overnight (15 hour, probably uncomfortable) train to explore another infamous European city. I am excited for the weekend and the month ahead and am looking forward to beginning the process of making our short film. Should be an awesome experience.
First Time for Film
Part of the Film curriculum at CET is a lighting exercise conducted inside FAMU Studio. This is a three-day intensive workshop where students film different scenes and work with different lighting scenarios. It sounds rather daunting but it is actually a lot of fun. In our workshop we tended to get rather creative and silly with our scenes, utilizing a whole array of fun and interesting props. It is also a great way for the students to experience the richness and depth professional lighting can ad to a scene.
What is really special about the lighting exercise is that it is often the first time any of us ever really use a film camera. That’s right, in this program we shoot on actual 16mm film, grain, silver halides, gelatin and all. FAMU is old school and digital video devices are not tolerated.
For us beings of the twenty first century, the concept of shooting on film is rather daunting and nonsensical. After all, painters at art school do not start painting on caves because that is how it was once done. It is natural to be nervous and apprehensive, especially when considering all you have to be insecure about when using film.
Once you start to handle the camera, all the limitations become apparent. You cannot play back what you shot so you have no idea if it was good. You will find that it is incredibly easy to accidently overexpose your filmstock. A roll of film goes by very quickly so you are limited in the number of takes. Once it is processed the quality is not all that much better than what you get shooting on a DSLR.
Why bother using film then? Every person interested in making movies should be a filmmaker at least once. Working within the limitations of film makes you a better filmmaker. Not having a playback function forces you to trust yourself and build confidence. Only having to work with two-four rolls of film will force you to plan every scene meticulously because you know you will only get one or two takes. If you were filming digitally, where memory is cheap, you may be more lackadaisical with your directing style. With film you have to know exactly what you want. The equipment and the film itself is far more delicate, this forces you to take up good habits for taking care of equipment.
FAMU provides a unique opportunity to shoot on film that should not be squandered or taken for granted. By the end of the program after we have made our seven-minute film, we will look back think about how much harder it was simply by the nature of using film. How inefficient and limiting it is compared to digital. We will be proud that we have at least one movie under the belt that cannot be reduced to a series of zeros and ones. When we inevitably abandon film and move back to digital, the skills we picked up while learning to shoot on film will ultimately make us far better filmmakers in the long run.
A Whole Lot of Lighting
Within the past week, the photography students have experienced two completely different lighting studios.
Over the weekend, we photo students took a train out to Beroun, a small city about a half hour outside of Prague. FAMU has a facility here for weekend workshop excursions. This place was crazy. It was like being in the empty hotel from the Shining! Around every corner I expected to see little twin girls in dresses standing at the end of the hallway…it was quite the experience. Aside from exploring the haunted building, we were here to learn some studio lighting and large format printing and photography. We used an 8×10 camera to shoot a portrait, we learned how to properly light glass objects for advertisements and still lives, and also printed a group photograph of us using a giant enlarger on a 4 foot piece of paper! In the pictures I have included, you can see a gigantic black and white print in a water bath from the darkroom workshop and also some outtakes from our studio lighting experience.
Just yesterday we had another lighting workshop, this time in a rented studio in Prague. A young photographer named Honza showed us various lighting techniques using a model, Sonja. This workshop was informative and fun! We even ended the day with a pivo (Czech for beer) at a pub down the road.
CET Academic Programs