Some further thoughts on practice

This is the last step of the section on ‘practice’. We didn’t want to end by proposing some “formulas” but to offer some moments of reflection and methodology, inspired by our experience of Cinema, cent ans de jeunesse workshops which we hope are adaptable to different contexts. Then, you can find out about resources and experiences (for instance online) and imagine your own experiments.

Thoughts on practice
Home / Film making and Film Education /
In the beginning
Frames and rules
Watching and making
Thoughts on practice

Let us summarize what matters, to us, in film-making practice with students…

  • Go out of school and film the world: develop sensitivity and attention to familiar surroundings before storytelling;
  • Choose a point of view, like a cinema question (‘montrer/cacher; real/fiction; ‘long take’ etc), to lead your experiment in a precise, rigorous and at the same time unexpected, stimulating way, as much for students as for you;
  • Go and search in the film extracts for diversity of artistic expression; compare, make links and learn to talk simply about them in a back and forth between extracts and experiments;
  • Pay attention to the showing of the exercises and films made in the workshops: keep in mind the essential thing is the path, not the result. A process is successful if participants are able to witness it, above all;
  • Put the students work (and yours) as much as possible into perspective with other achievements of exercises or films;
  • Never forget that a collective workshop (and learning to do-together) should not inhibit the personal and sensitive dimension of the experience;
  • Don’t be afraid, as risk-taking is a major pedagogical virtue: ‘cinema initiation’, as a creative experience, questions the place of the teacher and requires a more personal commitment from adults; it’s not teaching, it’s an encounter, an experience

Task

Film-making is a personal experience that changes the people involved. Watch these testimonies (a former student of a workshop), and (some teachers and filmmakers involved in cinema education).

Testimony 1
Testimony 2

Do you have any similar experiences or comments regarding your, or your students’, film education experiences?

Write your thoughts in the box below and save them to your notepad when you've finished.

Save to notepad

My Notepad

Use this notepad feature to write down answers and your thoughts to questions posed throughout this resource.

Open Notepad

Use the Tag option to insert the name of this section as a reference before typing your notes.

You can Copy, Download or Email yourself these notes for future reference.

TAG COPY DOWNLOAD EMAIL

Watching and making