This subject requires student to apply their first year studies to the production of a short documentary film testing visual storytelling and dramatising skills.
The localised topic of the project encourages students to better see the immediate world around them.
Students work in pairs to prepare project outlines consisting of: subject description and photos; likely dramatic narrative; visual treatment; and proposed production schedule and budget. If selected for production, teams are also to supply signed release forms for subjects and location agreements if required.
Students competitively pitch their outlines to class, with peers voting for the top two-thirds of projects to go to production.
There is no school budget for the productions, but students have normal access to school equipment if required.
The project has strict parameters to stimulate local situational awareness and creativity- Teacher: Guillym Davenport
- Teacher: Fraser Pemberton
This subject equips learners to plan and perform video interviews that convey meaning purposefully and succinctly.
Learners analyse news and documentary interview styles from foundation reportage techniques of “who, where, when, and why” using pyramid and inverted pyramid approaches appropriately.
Learners will also develop on-camera skills for simple field reporting, including basic screen make-up, hair and wardrobe, voice projection, and directed listening skills.
Learners also learn to record sound and use microphones to broadcastable standard in a range of studio and field environments.
Through a series of increasingly complex exercises, learners are challenged to successfully interview subjects exhibiting both friendly and hostile behaviors in situations ranging from high to low filmmaker control.
Cross-cultural interviewing skills are then developed in a range of multiple-language exercises. Students are tasked to develop management and interpretive strategies for family translators, and officially appointed translators.
Cultural etiquettes for cross cultural communications are defined in this subject. Students are tasked to specify explicit and implicit censorship protocols operational in their studied communities of choice.
Skills learned in this subject are applied in parallel production to FTV1004.10cp Project 1: Documentary.- Teacher: Guillym Davenport
- Teacher: Fraser Pemberton
Screenwriting 1 introduces fundamental skills in character and plot design for short fiction and non-fiction film.
Using both text and photographic media, the subject sets non-dialogue based film scripting tasks that encourage students to develop visual storytelling literacy.
Working in pairs to encourage personal communication skill development, students begin telling stories with the simplest of resources to produce self-explanatory sequences of still images.
Through this process, students are also introduced to the fundamentals of shot-size and framing, mise en scene, basic editing, and use of symbols for dramatic, comedic and factual communicative effect.
The subject uses a teaching methodology emphasising rapid cycles of creative praxis and group reflection to encourage experimentation and confidence in learners.
Assigned tasks for the subject encourage students to develop visual storytelling skills for a dialogue-free script that they will produce in next semesters subject Project 1 Silent Movie.
This subject also introduces elementary level scheduling, pre-production and production management requirements derived from script-generated information.- Teacher: Guillym Davenport
- Teacher: Fraser Pemberton
This subject provides students with an introduction to key 20th century European and Hollywood films that represent watershed moments in the way western nation’s have defined themselves to themselves, and to others.
Using a broadly chronological approach linked by thematic comparison, students explore the technological, aesthetic, and cultural impacts of Western cinema to question and affirm national values and concerns.
Most assigned films are available on You Tube free of charge to assist students ease in accessing study materials.
Through viewing and discussion, students are challenged to broaden their world view of cinema forms and innovations to inform their own filmmaking practice.
Assigned work focuses on thematic exploration of key cinematic modalities including development of mise en scene, development of sound, narrative construction techniques and editing, representation of ‘the other’’ from feminist and post-colonial perspectives, notions of genre’s impact on direction, and the development of independent and auteurist filmmaking from the Hollywood studio system.
Key films and directors studied in the subject range from France’s Lumiere Brothers and American D.W.Griffith, to Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane, Alfred Hitchcock’s North by Northwest.
Italian Neo-Realism of Vittorio De Sica’s BicycleThieves segues into British and Canadian social realists of the 1960s including Ken Loach and Mike Leigh.
New German Cinema examines Herzog’s Aguirre the Wrath of God, and Wim Wenders’ Paris Texas. Contemporary Latin American Film is seen through Alejandro Inarritu’s Amores Perros.
Existential post-war European film is examined through Swedish Ingmar Bergman’s Persona, French nouvelle vague director Francois Truffaut’s Les Quatre Cent Coups, and modernist satire through French director Jacque Tati’s Mon Oncle.
US post-studio auteurism and representation of Asia is explored through Apocalypse Now.- Teacher: Guillym Davenport
- Teacher: Fraser Pemberton