Liza is one of the participants on our BFI Film Academy. Here she shares her experience of the course:
The BFI Film Academy is undoubtedly one of the best experiences for someone like myself, a young person who is looking to go into the film and television industry later in life. Not only does it teach you the skills and training needed to start you off, but it gives you the opportunity to meet other people who have the same passions and interests as you. This, I found, has been most important to me during the BFI Film Academy because I have been able to share my ideas and opinions with the rest of the group, who I hope to stay in touch with long after our project is finished and make some great films together.
We began our time at BFI like this: We met for our first session and were introduced to each other right away. Everyone was so comfortable and sociable, it made a change to not be in a room full of shy strangers, as we were all willing to team up from the beginning. We had our first session with Maggie, who came in every week to teach us about the history of film, foreign cinema and different genres, something which I didn’t know much about at the start. Maggie was great, she showed us clips from famous movies and gave us recommendations on what to watch to help us get clued up on the world of film. We even had a screening of a classic film noir, The Third Man, which was such a great experience because we got to see it in high quality on a large screen, a one off opportunity!
Next came the big film project, our task was to make a short film of under 5 minutes to showcase at the end of our course and show off what we have learnt. For this we worked with John and Mark, our professional filmmakers who were with us every step of the way, guiding us through planning, story-boarding, filming and editing and giving us all the tips and tricks which they’d learned from experience. Between us, we came up with the concept of a group of young men on their way to a comic convention in which they encounter a weird hitchhiker and some very intimidating secret agents. The whole thing finishing off with a Back to the Future-esque spaceship/car leaving them stranded in the middle of the road.
Complete with atrocious superhero costumes and some animation, we worked tirelessly for a week to finish our film. We had freezing weather, factory delivery distractions and a dog that would just not stop pooing in the middle of the scene. Finally, we finished up and took our footage back to Cornerhouse’s Media Education Suit to put it all together.
The next few weekends were spent locked up in the editing room, going through the rough cut with a fine comb to try and refine and improve it. One of our biggest issues was with time; although our film was supposed to be under 5 minutes, we had well over 6 and a half minutes in our first edit! Another interesting experience was creating the soundtrack. Although I had no input into this, it was really cool to see it develop and how it corresponded with the film itself, making it look more professional and adding in some humour, especially during the title sequence (I’m not giving anything else away!) With only a week and a half before our showcase, we have been busy making the final adjustments to the edit, it will be a real reward to see the full, finished product for the first time with the rest of my group in one of Cornerhouse’s cinemas. I hope that this is just the start of my filmmaking endeavours!