Archives for October 2015

Days 4 and 5 of film making workshop

12/10/2015 By christina Leave a Comment

Thursday was the day of shooting for all the participants based on the story ideas they had worked on. I had also made up my mind to make a short movie too but unfortunately, that was not possible as I had to stay home with my sick daughter. The idea was to make a short film using only 5 shots with no discernible dialogue but including sound design (music and/or contextual noise).

The organisers of the film festival Île Courts, Porteurs d’Images, brought over 4 very able actors (2 men and 2 women). Students on campus were also spontaneously asked to be the extras when needed. The scenes were all shot on campus using Tim Skousen’s DSLR and one from Porteurs d’Images (one participant used his iPhone too). They also used tripods from our Mediacom Studio.

On Day 5 (final day), I was able to come back to the workshop and we all moved to our Mediacom Studio to use the iMacs for editing the rushes and turning these into proper visual stories. I assisted participants in their editing process where possible and we discussed the different ways of making the most of the images which were shot.

After a very typical Mauritian lunch at a snack serving chinese noodles (where we discussed Raiders, the state of Mauritian cinema and the history of government policy for cinema inter alia), we spent some 3 more hours in the Mediacom Studio to polish the edits. We then moved to LT2 where we viewed the 5 products together with some of the festival organisers and guests. I have to say that the participants all did a great creative job in just two days work.

Ketan was of tremendous help throughout the day.

He gave some practical tips on how to use iMovie for quickly editing the rushes.

Sunveek, who has studied storyboarding in the UK and has also collaborated with Azim Moollan for Zegwi dan Pikan, was clearly well prepared and he was also very conversant with iMovie tricks.

His film, Diversion, is a nice funny sketch which shows two friends who have to decide who gets the last chocolate from a box they’ve been sharing. The scenes were shot in the green area near the cafeteria.

Olivier was very secretive about the ending of his film called The Last Words, which shows a young guy who is figuring out how to invite a girl.

Only Ketan was allowed to see the ending before the screening, and we all really felt it was a clever one too when we finally saw it (with a nice ‘mise en abyme’ effect). The scenes were shot near RBLT and the famous blue caravan.

Cédric’s film, Eye Opener, tells the story of a couple. The husband, who is blind, has some doubts about his wife’s love. The film is a poetic and semi-mystical romance, nicely performed in a transformed NAC classroom and in the small woods near the administrative block.

Ryan’s film, Smile, depicts a depressed guy who meets a seemingly depressed girl. A dark atmosphere is cleverly achieved for the first part of this allegoric rendition within the corridors of the Faculty of Engineering, while the sunnier part is shot near the former School of Agriculture stone building.

Naresh produced I am both a story about a confused young girl, an interesting incursion into duality and ambivalence.
He used his iPhone and edited on his own MacBook. He shot near POWA and in the university washrooms in just half an hour.

Hopefully, they will all post their short films online very soon so that they can be viewed!

Day 3 of film making workshop and screenings

08/10/2015 By christina Leave a Comment

Discussing the Mauritian short films
On Wednesday, we started by discussing the Mauritian short films which we saw at the official launch of the film festival, namely Phone Connection by Sophie Robert, Boutik by Damien Dittberner and Rod Zegwi dan Pikan by Azim Moollan.

We were all pretty impressed by the aesthetic style of Moollan and the technical feat of taking over 700 celluloid photos, processing them, chemically and physically degrading them to obtain an eerie/dreamy effect, the painstaking task of detourage and compositing to achieve the parallax effect as well as the sound design.

Viewing Safety First
We also watched the black and white comedy Safety Last (1923) by Harold Lloyd from the silent era.

Unfortunately, I was unable to watch until the end as I had to meet up with another workshop facilitator for our students. But I could see that Lloyd was an excellent director and actor with brilliant mise en scène and the use of incredible stunts. Lloyd is less known than Chaplin and Keaton as he jealously guarded copyright over all his movies and would never cede rights below his asking price.

Participants were later asked to present their story ideas for an assignment to be completed by Friday: a very short film made up of only 5 shots with a maximum of two actors to be shot on the campus. There were some very interesting ideas, which I will not reveal until the films are actually made…

Screening of Eco-Clips
At lunchtime, I ran to the Eco-Clip session being hosted by the Indian Ocean Commission. We saw short films made on mobile phones on the theme of sustainable development.

Participants came from Madagascar, Reunion, Seychelles, Zanzibar, Comoros and Mauritius.

Workshop with Mohamed Said Ouma
In the afternoon, Journalism Yr 3 and Communication Yr 4 students listened to the very wise words of Mohamed Said Ouma, a seasoned journalist, film director and festival organiser.

Mohamed explained that he considers himself to be a child of the Indian Ocean as he was born in Reunion to Comorian parents who came from Madagascar. He has studied and worked as a journalist in London. The key advice he gave to aspiring journalists is to be multi-skilled (in terms of technical tools) but to have a specialisation (in terms of area/beats) in order to demarcate themselves.

Screening of Tim Skousen’s documentary
The day ended with a screening of Tim Skousen’s documentary film: Raiders!: The Story of the Greatest Fan Film Ever Made which tells the story of three 11 year old kids who decided in 1982 to remake shot for shot the Indiana Jones film Raiders of the Lost Ark. It took 7 summers of their life to do that except for one last scene which they shot after 25 years in 2014.

Tim’s film documents their passionate re-enactment of the Spielberg movie, an adventure rife with all sorts of funny events as well as major difficulties. Avinash, Anya and Kyan were also present and we all thoroughly enjoyed the film and liked Tim’s advice to ABC (Always Be Creative) and finish what you start and show it to the public.

Yet another long and eventful day at the film festival Île Courts 2015 on the university campus!

Day 2 of film making workshop

07/10/2015 By christina Leave a Comment

Day 2 of the film making workshop by Tim Skousen followed the same pace as Day 1. We discussed text (plot/story) and sub-text (message/moral) and watched extracts of Peter Berg’s Hancock and Mike Nichol’s The Graduate as well as the complete movie The Nightcrawlers by Dan Gilroy. The latter is a very interesting critique of the media world and the society of spectacle.

Participants were asked to brainstorm on the key things which they thought are relevant to Mauritius. As you can see from the picture, the whiteboard was quickly covered with words which expressed the perceptions, feelings, worries and aspirations of the five young Mauritians.

They then had to draw connections between ideas which they thought were related and explain why. This led to the inevitable explanations about the Mauritian setup: our ethno-religious groups (what we call ‘communities’), our struggle to define a national identity as well as other more universal social issues such as inequality, corruption, power struggles, drugs, politics, etc.

Tim advised the aspiring film makers to use their insights about the society they live to find story ideas. Based on the idea board, he quickly came up with two stories as you can see on the board.

In the afternoon, Tim used a long scene from The Graduate to talk about dramatic structure in a screenplay. Typically, the screenplay should show that characters have goals they want to attain, use particular strategies to attain these goals and, if they cannot, will change their strategies in case they are unsuccessful (indicated by beats, i.e. new information, dramatic action or element).

We finished by working on a commercial Tim is currently making for a big brand name in the US. We analysed the script and had to propose a list of shots and edits using a storyboard to help visualise what the shooting and final edit should look like.

It was a quite intensive day but well worth it!

Day 1 of workshop on film making

05/10/2015 By christina 1 Comment

Today was a very interesting day at the workshop on film making with Tim Skousen, an American director who has made award-winning films and commercials.

There are 5 aspiring Mauritian film makers from very varied backgrounds who are attending, all of them young but whose passion for telling a story with images is very much alive.

Tim Skousen presented the different facets of film making in a very structured way, from directing actors, cinematography (including shots, POVs, gaze, camera movement, lighting), editing, sound design and music to production design.

All the while, he was showing extracts of a wide range of movies starting from the Lumière Bros’ L’Arroseur Arrosé, Georges Méliès’ Voyage sur la Lune, and Edwin Porter’s The Great Train Robbery. We also watched closely extracts from Steven Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Steven Soderbergh’s The Limey, John Hugues’ The Breakfast Club and Nicolas Winding Refn’s Drive.

Quite a feast for the eyes and the mind as he proceeded to provide some very insightful analysis of key scenes!

We were also asked to work in teams of 3 to make a short film with only 3 still shots. And here’s what our team did in under 30 minutes (to find the right idea, find a girl in the classrooms around to act the role, and finally shoot the scenes):