Then there's World Cinema 1 or 2, a history of world cinema.
This course introduces pre-World War II world cinema, focusing on the development of film history, particularly major directors, national cinemas, and movements that contributed to the development of narrative cinema. It will discuss the aesthetic, historical, technical, and ideological significance of film screenings. This aims to cultivate students' artistic appreciation, develop their aesthetic sense, and help them understand the art of film and the allure of world cinema.
Acting and Directing Workshop
This course explains how to be a good director and how to coordinate the cinematographer, screenwriter, prop master, makeup artist, and executive staff on set.
Screenwriting 1 (Screenwriter)
This course is a workshop that develops fundamental writing methods, further enhancing students' skills in expressing ideas in written form. Students will develop essential craft skills in film writing: research, story development, scene structure, dialogue, and character definition.
Simply put, it's about cultivating thinking, developing abilities, broadening horizons, and incidentally, developing some writing skills.
This is just the first-year coursework.
Your sophomore year is when you can truly learn real skills.
Courses like Directing teach you the foundational relationships between actors, text, and director, expanding to include lens occlusion, basic scene coverage, additional rehearsal techniques, and effective commentary skills. The focus is on developing directing skills in deconstruction, pre-visualization, set etiquette, and fundamental collaboration with key department heads. Scene work culminates in the segmentation and staging of the film's narrative scenes. This is where the specific shooting techniques come in.
Then there's the opportunity to cultivate a personal directorial style. This emphasizes pre-visualization, basic considerations for location shooting, and the use of editing and audio design in film narrative. This not only requires money to learn and academic credits, but more importantly, it requires purchasing equipment, practical courses, editing skills, music appreciation, and music design.
Good music design and good visuals can enrich the quality of a film. For example, Zhang Yimou's films have a very strong personal style and a very artistic visual style. This is not just about money, but also about aesthetics. You can tell at a glance that it is a masterpiece. All of this is achieved with money. Good film visuals require the use of the most advanced equipment, a suitable script, music, costumes, props and sets, and wonderful performances by the actors.
In the directing profession, you really can't learn without money. If you truly want to create unique and distinctive shots, you can't develop that skill without substantial funding. Why are American blockbusters so great? Because they spend real money. Filmmaking isn't a game; good films are works of art, and good works of art require money. And a lot of money at that.
Why do people with academic backgrounds have so many opportunities and attract more investors? It's because they are professionals. Being a director isn't something anyone can just do. To become a director without professional training? That's utter nonsense.
You jump straight into making movies, relying solely on your brain to figure out how to film, how to edit, music, techniques, script construction, and how actors should act—you don't understand any of that. And you're making movies? What a load of rubbish!
This isn't something you can just talk about; without professional training, you won't know anything.
Here, I'll name two famous young writers, one surnamed Han and the other surnamed Guo. They know nothing about making movies, yet they went and hired eight assistant directors. They even told the directors they hired, "To tell you the truth, I don't know anything about making movies. You can decide how to make them."
This film became a hit, ripping off a huge number of investors. It's utter bullshit. And there are fans idolizing it, the press releases are all so grandiose: a famous writer, a career change, self-directed and self-made, everyone come and see! Did you even make this yourself?
As a very special student, Shen Fang naturally received a lot of extra help. Several professors tutored him one-on-one, sharing their knowledge without reservation. Shen Fang also spent a lot of money, buying many cameras and tinkering with them. He filmed, learned, and practiced a lot.
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