Students' creative abilities are mobilised and developed by multiple approaches:
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They are taught to look at film history, and a great range of contemporary and classic work, in varying critical contexts, but most importantly as the outcome of practical strategies that they can use for framing, criticising and developing their own take on screen storytelling. |
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They develop their own work, and then get the opportunity to test it out freely with colleagues, teachers and professional practitioners in workshops designed to connect ideas and outcomes and in which their work is critiqued without applying any further restriction than their own growing judgement and consciousness of effect and context. |
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In the film exercises students shoot their own scripts, directed in their own way. The content of all films is fully discussed and critiqued, but ultimately the students have complete freedom of expression. This is an opportunity to exercise their creative abilities, for them to see their ideas brought to life, with professional actors, on film, and under production conditions appropriate to the developing skills of the crew, culminating in the Alexa studio film of the standard industry production. |
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The film exercises are programmed by the School, and are tightly scheduled, requiring the students to learn to work under time discipline. Crews are compact, and consequently there is always need for student assistants from across cohorts. Up to 180 films are made each year, which means that whenever students are not busy with their own projects, their services are in demand on many others. This creates a constant sense of excitement, a constant presence of filmmaking, which becomes the atmosphere and life of the School, a tremendous motivating force. |
| Students are continually learning from each other and from the immense range of practical and aesthetic problems the different films offer. This process continues all day, often through the evening, and flows between the sets and locations, the viewing theatres, editing suites, the student hub and back again, all year. |
Updated 19 December 2022