Course of Direction and Videomaker

The Course of Direction and Videomaker is in Rome, is annual and aims to introduce students to film and television directing, placing them directly within the creative process, through a theoretical-practical path aimed at creating a series of short films.

Duration of the course: from January to December 2020.

Lessons start: January 28

Wim Wenders says that the camera not only reproduces what is in front of it, but also what is behind it. By analyzing a film you can understand how it was built, what path is behind it, what decisions were made to get there and the amount of work needed to achieve that result.

All these particular traces that remain on the screen are what we call ‘direction’. Each filmmaker, videomaker, filmmaker or director is responsible for the staging of the film, that is, the professional figure who acts as the glue for the collective work of an entire crew.

Each topic covered during the course of Direction will be supported by practical exercises that will involve every single student, and that will put it in direct relation with the director’s work: behind a camera or in comparison with a particular movement of camera, in front of a script to be understood and transposed into images or in the presence of a series of actors to try out.

The course aims to offer a theory at the service of practice, and to provide information on the real contemporary Italian cinema situation: production conditions and the possibility of starting a profession.
In its essence, making a film consists of filming, but cinema is not a simple photographic act. It is the overall, productive and artistic process, which consists of starting from a story (the course is in close relationship with that of the screenplay) and – through actions, emotional subtext, tone, colors, scenarios and atmospheres – making it visual.

Objective of the lessons: to provide the basics of grammar and techniques of film and television shooting and everything you need to become a full-fledged director. All by deepening, with a spiral movement, a basic concept: making a film is much more than expressing one’s creativity by telling a story in images, it is starting from the mind and heart of the narrator to involve the spectator’s heart and mind .

Direction course program
1. General part common to all students of the school

Who is and what a director does: the art of finding brilliant solutions to banal problems. The specificity of audiovisual direction.
The director’s diet. Feeding on the right ingredients. The director and the videomaker do not stop learning.
The strength of the project. Knowing how to handle every tiny aspect.
Elasticity, instinct and health. The qualities of a filmmaker.

What and how

Telling is a privilege. Learn to grab attention. Bringing the text to life.
Painting, light, action: the coordinates of the cinematographic form.
Delimit the picture. Cut the shot from the format.
Plans, fields and composition.
Point of view, distance and “tone of voice”. Where am I?
Thought moves, the m.d.p. you drive: the cars on which you move your gaze.
Hints to audiovisual grammar: field and counterfield; attribution of the gaze; description and participation; relativity of the p.d.v .; approach (physical and optical).
What if I want to get over the field? Coherence is fundamental.

Projections relating to the individual topics covered. Exercise 1.

Let’s go

From the script (own or others) to the planning of the action.
From decoupage to storyboard.
Working in a group is the rule of the game. Composition of a troupe. Staff figures (in Italy and abroad)
Learn to communicate what you want, but above all what you don’t want.
Casting and tests.
Think about the sound of the film. Direct connection or guide column. Additions or dubbing. Sound quality and microphones.
Set up the dialogue with set designer and costume designer. Imagine and know how to describe a space. Furniture, fabrics, props. Choices and options.
Scouting: looking for the right place, but finding something better.
Working with music or (better) with the composer of the music.
A set: who does what.

Film post-production

Scene montage. The experience as an editor.
Linear and non-linear assembly. From slow motion to compositing: the digital revolution.
Editing from the director’s chair. A dialectical question: director and editor.
Sound editing and mix: consistency of choices.
Color-correction and printing.

Projections relating to individual themes. Exercise 2.

2. Specific part for the students of Direction and Videomaking
The staging

Action, dialogue. Distances and times. Adaptations of the set to the action and vice versa.
Dramatize every element: nothing can be random. Never settle for the first idea.
Composition. “What to frame” and “why”. Then “how” and “where”.
Think of decoupage using elements and props.
Optimization of the video shooting plan (get the most from every angle of the frame). Do not chain yourself to a single film editing option.
Examples of planning the staging. Two examples from Il Richiamo
Plan the look of the film: light, color, materials, fabrics. The troupe meetings.
The preparation. Plan the smallest details, but stay open. Blessed are the unexpected.
Evidence of photographic performance on film or video.

Projections relating to individual themes. Staging exercise.
The actor

The choice. Organize an audition.
Building the character with the actor. The common language.
The involvement (“Don’t have the ship built if you haven’t talked about the sea”, Saint-Exupéry)
Guide the actor beyond the plot.

How to become a director or videomaker?

Start with this essential bibliography

What is cinema, by A. Bazin, Garzanti 1999
Aesthetics of the film, by J. Aumont, Lindau 1995
Practice of cinema, by Noel Burch, Practices Ed. 1980
Introduction to the rhetoric of cinema, by Sandro Bernardi, Le Lettere 1994
Kubrick and cinema as the art of the visible, by Sandro Bernardi, Pratiche Ed. 1990
The image-movement and the image-time, Gilles Deleuze, Ubulibri 1984
Semiotics of cinema, Jurij Lotman, Editions of the Prisma 1994
The voice in the cinema, Michel Chion, Practices Ed. 1991
The nature is not indifferent. by S. Ejzenstein, Marsilio 1992
The direction, by S. Ejzenstein, Marsilio 1989
S. Ejzenstein: beyond cinema, by Pietro Montani, Library of the Image 1991
Sculpting time, by A. Tarkovskij, Ubulibri 1988
The taste of beauty, E. Rohmer, Practices Ed. 1991
Cinema according to Hitchcock, F. Truffaut,
Me, Orson Welles, Orson Welles and Peter Bogdanovich, Baldini and Castoldi

Other compulsory subjects of the Videomaker course in Rome

Film script
First 3 parts of the Video Editing program
General part of the film photography program
History, analysis and criticism of the film
Audiovisual language

The number of hours reserved for individual subjects varies according to the phase of the academic year and the decisions taken from time to time by the teaching staff according to the achievement of the educational objectives.