Newcastle University: Year 1
Hey!
This is the first instalment of my record of my time at University. It's going to be mostly about the practical and course-related aspects of my time at Uni rather than the fun & personal stuff. Though I am thinking of making a post all about my time with FILM-SOC because I just recently became President! Anyway, onto what my experience of year 1 studying Film Practices at Newcastle University was..
Semester 1
In Semester 1, Film Practices (my course) and Film & Media were very closely linked because we all had to learn the same filmmaking basics. As the course progressed, we were in less and less classes together as they got the option of doing more media/sociology-related subjects, where we in Film Practices were much more streamlined to a practical filmmaking degree with less optional modules. Now that I'm entering 3rd year I've got the option to do much more media/sociology-oriented modules, but they've had those options since 2nd year. Anyway, the modules in Semester 1 were:
MCH1011: Introduction to Film Technologies
MCH1025: Introduction to Research Methods
MCH1034: Introduction to World Cinema - Ideas, Art, Cultures
For the sake of keeping this blog more about filmmaking, I'm going to avoid talking about MCH1025 in too much detail because it was an entirely written/media-oriented subject where we didn't make or study any films. I think the only reason we did it was so that we had some idea of how to research an idea when our dissertation rolled around. I wasn't a huge fan of the module, but I understand why we had to do it. Also, I met one of my closest friends at Uni in the seminars for that class! But, I do want to talk about MCH1011 & MCH1034 because they were much more up my alley:
MCH1011: Introduction to Film Technologies
As you can guess, in this module we learned all about the basics of filmmaking. Each week we had a lecture and workshop teaching us how to effectively sound record, how to use basic Panasonic 4K cameras, tripods, basic cinematography and editing. After practicing it in the workshop, we'd usually have to go out and implement the techniques we'd been taught into our homework tasks.
One technique that sticks out in my mind is the 'Rosenblum 4-shot method,' which is where you do a close-up shot of the action the subject is performing, a close-up of their face, a wide shot of the subject in the space, and finally: an unusual shot of your choice. It's such a great rule to remember because you don't give away everything to the viewer straight away and it allows the audience to guess before they see what's happening. It also allows for interesting variations of shots at the end like canted angles, over-the-shoulders, extreme long/close-ups - whatever you're in the mood for! I've used this in pretty much every piece of documentary work I've done because I think it's such an effective way to tell a story with some easy-to-remember creativity.
The editing tips we learned were incredibly useful because it got us to grips with Adobe Premier Pro, an editing software that I've used ever since. Editing, for me, was probably the trickiest thing to get to grips with. So many times I accidentally moved shots out of folders I was editing them from and then couldn't find them again. Another thing was that I tried to heed lecturer's advice on naming every clip before you import it into Premier Pro, but it took so long and felt so tedious. Sound editing was so hard too, and colour correcting never felt tight. It's taken me to the end of 2nd year pretty much to actually feel like I can do any of these well, honestly.
To be honest, though - probably the hardest thing about year 1 semester 1 was figuring out how the focus worked! We had to use manual focus rather than automatic, and on that tiny screen it was incredibly hard to tell if something was in focus or not. But I just tried to do as much practice as I could with extreme close-ups mostly. As the weeks progressed, we were asked to make interview-based practice films where we had to interview a subject and then film b-roll of them doing whatever they were talking about. This part was really fun honestly because I just got to film a tonne of stuff with my friends
The assessment was to make a 3-minute interview film with 3 different participants. They all had to have something in common, and I chose to make one about 3 musicians. I was lucky because one of my good friends at Uni had been playing the flute since they were a kid, my friend from home who was a ukulele player had started learning a few years ago, and my mum had recently started trying to learn the piano. So, I had a really nice variation of skills to ask questions about and different types of instruments to film.
Some people in my class chose to give each participant 1 minute of screen-time back-to-back, and some chose to intersperse footage from each participant throughout the video without a clear ABC order. I chose to use the second method, and as much as I found it challenging, I liked the film much more than if I'd split it up so rigidly.
I don't have too many screenshots from this because they're on University computers, but when I get a hold of them I'll upload the video to my Vimeo and screenshots here!
MCH1034: Introduction to World Cinema - Ideas, Art, Cultures
This was such a cool module and the place where I met some of my course-mates who I'm still close friends with! We would have a lecture on a country and it's films, and a seminar where we'd watch the film and then discuss it as a group, mostly discussing questions that the lecturers had thought of before the class started. These were:
Battleship Potemkin
M
Rashomon
Panther Panchali
Weekend
Peeping Tom
Where is my Friend's Home
Guelwaar
Farewell my Concubine
Strawberry and Chocolate
Devdas
We didn't make any films at the end of this module, but we did have to write the longest essay I've ever written to date: 4000 words. It's still funny to me that they set us such a huge piece of work right at the beginning of Uni and I've never had do do a piece of written work quite so big ever again. But, I really loved this module because the essay was all about analysing the way the films were constructed to tell a story and message and I just had so much fun writing the essay. I can't remember exactly but I think we had a set of questions to choose from, and films that corresponded to that question that you needed to discuss in relation to it. I chose the one where you had to talk about 'Rashomon,' 'Peeping Tom,' 'Battleship Potemkin' and I think 'M,' and I really really enjoyed it.
Also, I know a few students who some of these movies they watched ended up on their top 10 films of all-time, including mine. My favourites were 'Farewell my Concubine,' 'M,' 'Peeping Tom' and my all-time favourite was 'Rashomon.' I have to give 'Devdas' an honourable mention though because that film was absolutely insanely hilarious.
Semester 2
Right off the bat, there's a lot more of the word 'introduction' these than I realised. Semester 2 of first year contained:
MCH1035: Starting out in Filmmaking
MCH1038: Introduction to the Documentary - From Documentation to Non-Fiction Film
MCH1039: Introduction to the Film Industry
MCH1035: Starting out in Filmmaking
I'm going to start again with the module that included the most practical work: MCH1035. In this module we had to make 3 observational sequences:
Sense of Place
Dialogue
Day in the Life
Links to all these videos are on the photos, so any you'd like to watch feel free to click the photo and check it out!
Senses of places
Once I started to practice these as assignments, I started up my Vimeo. The first video I uploaded was my first go at a 'Sense of Place,' which I filmed during one of the workshops. It was of Luther's Bar, the student union's pub. It was a very dark location so I tried to use this to my advantage in the way I shot it, but this sometimes led to shots that were very hard to see and took away from the feel I was trying to create. It was also quite nerve-wracking to ask for permission from everyone if they didn't mind being filmed. Hopefully I get better with that in time. It was a great practice, though.
The next Sense of Place I made was at Catpawchino, a cat cafe in Newcastle. This was such a a lovely project and I had so much fun making it. Every time I'd ever been in there it was always packed out, but I had some friends who wanted to go anyway and realised: I can use these guys as subjects! At this point I realised that subjects are generally more engaging for most people if a person is interacting with them, even if the subject itself is interesting (cats, in this case). So it was great to be able to just film them with their consent already given while they could have some fun at the cafe! We booked the earliest slot we could to get into the cafe, and for the first time in the couple of times I'd been in the past, it was empty! It was just me, my two friends, the worker and this nice middle-aged lady who let me film her.
I much preferred this Sense of Place as a film because I think it captured more of the feeling of that place at that time. It was just sweet and gentle and we all had a great time there! If you would like to visit them sometime, here's the link to their site: https://catpawcinocatcafe.com/
The final Sense of Place I made was the one I submitted as my assessment, and it was of the Tyne Bridge. This is absolutely the best example out of the lot because it had a lot more variety of shot types and I actually tried to tell a story. With the Catpawchino Sense of Place, I showed us entering, enjoying, and then leaving the cafe - so I did tell a story, but it was a fairly simple one. What I liked about the Tyne Bridge was that it was a much more dark and gloomy place to film at, so I could explore some much more dark themes in a way that Catpawchino didn't allow for.
**TRIGGER WARNING: SUICIDE MENTIONED ON THIS PARAGRAPH**
I went in the morning so there was fog and it was still dark, which created a really cool monochrome effect that ended up giving the whole film these really melancholic feel even before I started showing shots of the anti-suicide posters. I used very busy & claustrophobic shots because I wanted to emulate this feeling of being trapped and stressed out by an industrial environment, and tried to give a sense of being overcome by this stress through showing the massive scale of Tyne Bridge. I spend 2/3rds of the film building up this feeling of dread until the anti-suicide posters were shown, after which I wanted to kind of breathe a sigh of relief through the photography I used, with shots of a guy cheering on his friends while jogging or the cars chugging along.
**END OF TW PARAGRAPH**
Before I got to Tyne Bridge, I knew I wanted to make something gloomy because it was the perfect time of year for it with the dark/cold environment, and that was genuinely my impression of it upon seeing it a few times. It was only when I walked on it and looked at it more closely that I saw this very sad aspect of it as a place, and how people had tried to give a little bit of hope to a place that just seemed to represent so much melancholy. I filmed there for about 3 hours in the very cold weather, but it was so worth it because I love this piece!
Dialogues
These were by far, for me, the trickiest sequences to film. The task was usually go go out and film for 40+ minutes, and edit the footage down to 3 minutes. The first sequence I did was called 'Pickles,' where my good friend offered to let me film her and her friend chatting/long-boarding as my fist go at the sequence. I can't 100% remember the feedback I got for this but one distinct thing I can see from re-watching it is the sound issues.
We filmed by the Queyside (right near Tyne bridge actually), which was an incredibly open space and very windy, which even with a dead cat on my microphone couldn't really fix. The second thing was the colouring: we filmed in the afternoon in early November, meaning the sun was starting to set around this time. This made our faces have an orange glow which was near impossible to colour correct in post. This isn't as big of a deal as the sound issue since it indicates the time of day, even if it doesn't look great aesthetically.
The next dialogue sequence I shot was 'Plant-pot Painting,' which my friend made another appearance in! I wanted to prioritise capturing speaking & edit together a flowing conversation, so I didn't want to risk filming outside again. Instead, two of my friends and I went to one of their flats and painted plant pots!
The difficulty with this one was that I decided to keep the music that my subjects had on in the background of the conversation because I thought it gave a better impression of the environment.. But, this made it really hard to edit in a naturalistic way because every cut I made cut into the music and jumped around. This really restricted my ability to cut their dialogue because I had to a) choose moments to cut together where the music wasn't too drastically different and b) where they both had responses that fit their comments. Because of this, a lot of the film ended up being shots of them painting rather than talking, which didn't really fit the "capture speaking and dialogue" aspect!
What I learned from the both of these is that, when filming Dialogue sequences, I need to have quiet spaces where sound recording won't be a difficulty - and I can just focus on making the conversation makes sense. Also, a thing I noted from filming these is that: conversations really do not last as long as you think they do! When the occasion you're filming doesn't have a distinct beginning, middle & end, often the comments are one-offs with an anecdotes, which are hard to piece together in a flowing way when you're editing. For the next film, I need to make sure I'm filming my subjects doing a thing that has a shorter and more distinct time-limit.
The final sequence I made was called 'The Lost Expedition,' and it was of my parents playing a game. I did this because I knew I should pick something that had a beginning, middle and end - and my parents don't often listen to music while they play so I knew it wouldn't dilute the feeling of the film to have it be silent.
Recording a game being played actually meant that I didn't have to make every single comment flow back-to-back, because it was mostly game-specific talk like "so what we gonna do here, shoot it or move on?" And I distinctly remember that my dad's follow-up comment ("we can't shoot it, we've run out of bullets") was actually from much later in the game, but it worked so well in that moment! Not only did I not have to worry about the lighting with shooting at mid-day indoors, or the sound for the same reason, I could focus just on the subjects!
Day in the life
Annoyingly, I didn't upload my 'Day in the Life' I made of my mum onto Vimeo, and I didn't fully edit any practices I did because it was such a big project. Basically we had to edit someone's whole day into 3-minutes, and although that sounds like a more daunting task than the others, I just kinda split it up into morning/afternoon/night and took the key moments from any of those to edit.
In the case of the one I filmed with my mum, I picked a day where I knew she'd be doing some interesting things to film. She goes to a knitting group on the morning of the day I filmed her, so I could film the journey there/back, as well as her chatting & knitting. Then I filmed her doing household jobs in the afternoon like washing up.. And then in the evening spending time with my dad.
It defiantly wasn't an exciting film, but I found the task not too difficult once I had a method in my head before I started filming, like with the dialogue sequence.
MCH1038: Introduction to the Documentary - From Documentation to Non-Fiction
This module was similar to MCH1034 in that we had seminars/lectures discussing the films and then, at the end of the module, we did a 1500-word essay analysing a few of your choice. I chose to compare 'Fire at Sea' with 'Titicut Follies' on their approach to the representation of vulnerable people.
'Titicut Follies' is one of my favourite documentaries I've seen, I highly highly recommend it. It's got a completely observational film that captures a 1960s mental institution. The 'treatment' these people had to endure was abhorrent and the way it's so violently and matter-of-factly presented in Wiseman's film packs so much punch.
'Fire at Sea' was all about people who were migrating to Italy, alongside the local Italian's personal struggles which acted as an anchor for perspective. No struggles were demeaned by Rosi or presented as less-than, but the story of the migrants was such a devastatingly tragic one that you couldn't help but see a comparison with the patients of 'Titicut Follies.'
The other assessment we had to do for this piece was a 5-minute solo presentation about one of the 5 modes of documentary:
Poetic
Expository
Participatory
Observational
Performative
Reflexive
We had to use at least one of the films we'd seen on the course and we could use any other examples that supported our analysis/argument. I chose the poetic mode and discussed 'Koyaanisqatsi,' 'Handsworth Songs' and 'Night Mail' - the latter two we'd studied in class. After we presented it, we had to do a 200-word reflection on the segment we presented, too. You were put in a group of 5 and each one of you did a presentation on a different mode, and you all watched each other's alongside the lecturers while they timed you. I slipped up on mine kinda badly and had to re-start one section, and rush the end because I went a little over-time. But I still did okay on it! Just goes to show they cared more about the content and your engagement with it at the time.
MCH1039: Introduction to the Film Industry
This module was made up of 2-hour lectures that taught us about a different aspect of the administrative side of filmmaking each week. These were mostly things that producers might do: like location scouting, catering, financing.. Or were about the marketing side of things: surveys, distribution, artwork.
We had some guest speakers come in to talk. For example, Art Historian Professor Richard Clay presented 'How to go Viral: The Art of the Meme' a few months ahead of it being aired on BBC 4. He told us a little but about the filmmaking process from his perspective as Talent, and some of us went for a drink with him afterwards too. Another guest speaker presented a lecture called 'Sofa Glue: Seven ways to make telly that sticks' which gave us some tips on what sort of content sells, BBC 1's audience, and their 3 successful genres (drama, science, history). We had was not explicitly from this module, but we were encouraged to attend it because of our interest in the subject.
The assessment was comprised of: a 3-minute group-marked tutorial video in collaboration with Newcastle's Music department, at 1000-word create written response on an industry-related research task, a 1,500-word essay response to one of the optional questions, and a 500-word reflection on our 3-minute tutorial video. This was one of the few times at uni where I had to do lots of small essays rather than 1/2 big ones in a module, and I found it much more taxing than the larger essays.
The module had good content, but was structured in a way that made it quite hard to focus in the seminars because we had the 2-hour lecture and then 2-hour seminar back-to-back. It was really great though to have a module all about how the industry worked because I imagine a lot of us that do end up in the industry will be a part of the massive administrative team thats needed for filmmaking, I just wish it had been structured a little differently.
Well, that was year 1! I hope you enjoyed reading about this, but I do imagine it's probably just future me reading this! I'll be making one about second year soon.
Kat
