London Film School, offer full-time MA Degree courses in both Film Making and Screewriting.

Unit 1 - Language

Image, Meaning, Style; leading to postgraduate certificate

FIRST TERM EXERCISE:
A three and a half minute, 16mm, black and white, mute film made on location. All students are expected to produce a script. From these a selection is made and the final script filmed by students working in units of three.

The first term gives students a thorough grounding in the basics of filmmaking. The centre of the term is the film exercise, which provides the platform for basic teaching in camera skills, exposure control, and editing. The assumption is that students all start from a similar background and all need a full fast introduction to professional procedures.

The term is dedicated to the principle of learning how to tell a story in pictures. Scripts are subject to detailed scrutiny and discussion. Students have to practise basic production management skills: organising location permissions, securing props and costumes. They have to cast and work with professional actors. In parallel, all through the term, courses run in film history and in the close analysis of directors’ strategies, showing and discussing work from Hitchcock to Lang via, say, Spike Lee.

There are classes on lenses, laboratories, directing syntax, producing, production management, production design, practicals on the Aaton XTR, use of light meters, lighting, editing and sound recording exercises.

MATERIALS FOR EACH UNIT:
16mm Aaton XTR + prime lenses, 400 feet of black and white Ilford FP4 or HP5; edit on picture synchroniser + Steenbeck.

SECOND TERM EXERCISE:
Each student scripts and directs their own film: 1-3 minutes long, super 16mm colour shot on location, with post-synchronised sound. They edit and design sound tracks for their film. They also light, operate camera, assist on camera and fulfil other roles on other films Re-recording/mixing of soundtracks is carried out at external studios.

The Second Term is intense and exciting. This term introduces students to lighting skills and to sound recording and editing. Students work in units of five or six , making their own films, operating, lighting and supporting their colleagues, so that they are intimately involved in all their unit’s projects.

MATERIALS FOR EACH STUDENT:
16mm Aaton XTR + prime lenses, 200 feet of S16mm Kodak EXR 7248 film; lighting kit; Nagra V recorder; edit on Final Cut Pro; outside dubbing theatre.

LFS is currently collaborating with The National Gallery during this term. Transcriptions: LFS Shorts is an innovative new project which involves 2nd term students producing films inspired by the Gallery’s collection. Students come to the Gallery for a talk in front of the paintings and a slide lecture where selections of paintings are discussed in terms of composition, colour, narrative and patronage. They then choose a painting from the National Gallery’s Collection to work from.

An exciting element of this collaboration is that the students may respond to any aspect of the painting, following in the tradition embraced by many directors, cinematographers and set designers (since early German cinema), who have been influenced by artists from Rembrandt, Vermeer and Caravaggio to Turner and Renoir.

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