In the winter of 2013-14, I presented this three-session seminar in Randolph and Marshfield, and I will present it again this fall and winter in Montpelier, Calais, and Stowe. The Montpelier sessions will be on three Monday evenings, November 10, 17, and 24 at the Vermont College of Fine Arts. The Calais sessions will be on three Saturday afternoons, December 13, January 10, and February 14. The Stowe sessions will be on three Sunday afternoons, February 1, March 1, and April 5. Contact me (see Contact page) for price and registration details.

See below for the Randolph and Marshfield seminars.

 

 

Using the work of American, European and Asian directors as examples, I will present an inside view of the film-making process and an introduction to basic film vocabulary (shots, cuts, pans, tracks and other technical/artistic terms) that will help sharpen our understanding of what is happening when we experience a film.

Each of the three sessions will explore how directors use the many resources at their disposal to create one of the modern age’s most vibrant art forms. What are the choices a director makes before the first day of shooting? What choices do directors make minute-by-minute as they prepare and craft a film? What are the ingredients of their directing “signatures”? What aesthetic and technical risks do they take? What compromises do they have to make?

Where does the producer’s role end and the director’s begin? Where does the director’s end and the actor’s begin? What are the roles of the various collaborators – actors and actresses, cinematographers, editors, art directors – that can contribute so much to a film’s success? These and many more questions will be asked and answered over the course of three sessions, each of which will focus on the directors of a different period of filmmaking:

Session 1: The Silent Era and the evolution of cinematic form (Melies, Griffith, Chaplin, Keaton, Eisenstein and others)

Session 2: Hollywood’s “Golden Age” (Wilder, Wyler, Ford, Huston, Welles and others) and some foreign film directors (Lang, Renoir, Carne, etc.)

Session 3: Foreign directors of the 50s and 60s (Kurosawa, Bergman, Fellini and Truffaut).

 

In the winter of 2014-15, I will present another three-session seminar in Randolph (November 16, December 7, and January 18) and Marshfield (January 11, Fewbruary 8, and March 8), all using clips from several films. Attendance at the first season’s seminars is not a requirement! Contact me for price and registration details.

Session 1: Cinematography: What choices does a cinematographer make? Who were some of the best? How does a cinematographer work with a director?

Session 2: Editing “The foundation of film art is editing” said the Russian director and theoretician V.I. Pudovkin. How does editing create film meaning?

 

Session 3: Music. We’ll see and hear how musical scores – whether original or using existing music –  enhanced the effect of certain films, and we’ll learn about famous director/composer collaborations, such as Alfred Hitchcock and Bernard Herrmann.