Blog #1
Hello everyone! My name is Will and I am currently participating in the Cinema Program’s 2022 summer intensive course. In this blog post I wanted to share, not only what our cinema scholars have learned and accomplished so far with this intensive, but also give insight into what students can expect in the upcoming weeks. This program gives students the ability to participate in the creation of short films with professional actors and faculty to ground them in what filmmaking is all about. Some things to expect from this program include: first hand experience with high quality camera, sound and light equipment, direction from industry professionals, challenges designed to enhance the film experience and much, much more.
Without skipping a beat, I want to share some of my favorite experiences with the intensive so far and some of the biggest challenges my group has faced in our first week here. I think one thing that really stuck with me and my group for this past week was the absolute professionalism of the mentors that helped us at the Depot while shooting Changes.
Changes is a script that was written specifically for the Cinema Program’s summer intensive to be shot on a brand new soundstage created in the Depot. A department my fellow scholars and I have struggled with in the past was Sound. Jake Weeks, a professional sound engineer, taught us the ins and outs of sound mixing and boom operating.
One challenge that was extremely present and fun to overcome came during a class taught by Sheree Chen, the person in charge of our sketches class. In that class, our group’s objective was to shoot a short film with the knowledge that we would have to utilize parallel editing. In a short amount of time, my group members had to come up with an idea, write a script and shoot a short film in the matter of one day. This brought our group together and allowed everyone to excel as filmmakers.
With more equipment being available to us than ever before, having a workshop all about building and disassembling a camera felt imperative and extremely useful for us future filmmakers. Being taught and shown the intricacies of the camera, allowed our group to become more comfortable and confident with the equipment we shoot with. Colin Earner, our workshop instructor, set a challenge at the end of our session to see who can build and take apart the camera the fastest.
With all of this just being the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the Cinema Program’s summer intensive, I can’t wait to show more of what we are doing during this amazing experience. This is truly a once in a lifetime opportunity and I am so happy to share as many stories as possible with this blog.
Booth set design.
The camera used on the set of “Changes.”
Blue Team workshopping script ideas. From left to right: Bobby Holman, Abigail Arthur, Camryn Osborn, Bryce Woll, Will Lange, Jacob Duke, Cody Saunders and Kaitlyn Hackett.
Phoenix Keil operating the boom pole on set.
Lead Image: Set Design on the set of “Changes.” All photos by Will Lange.