Term 2: week 1: I forgot to pack my regular sleeping patterns

Here begins a new chapter of personal reflection!

Monday

It felt very good to be back at the Academy after the holidays and we kicked off with a chat about the history of cinema, from Thomas Edison to James Cameron. There's got to be an amazing biopic in there but I expect Mr Edison patented the story of his own life already. I liked learning about the crazy, and sometimes cutthroat, world of early cinema and the comparisons between it's novelty value and that of Avatar (which I still need to see!).

I also began instituting what I want to make my notemaking method. It's the closest I've made to a New Years resolution. Basically, I'll take note of everything we talk about no included in the slides, download the slideshow and then make extra notes of the extras on that. The very process of repetition will help.

Tuesday

Still, technical class makes me feel like a particularly dim - and weak - idiot. It's just a matter of learning it, I know, but I feel silly when I can't even get the right battery for the monitor.

Still, I'm excited about lighting, since even this session's demonstrations, which were primarily introducing us to all the million different pieces of kit, showed the first spark of what we'll be able to achieve. Posing Chris and then Ada under some soft lighting they were both suddenly transformed - there is just something beautiful about a well lit subject and even on the little CRT I got a sense of the potential in the kit which, so far, has mainly been a source of confusion and sore shoulders. Maybe not a breakthrough moment, but a nudge, anyway.

Wednesday

I have to ask myself: why on earth didn't I watch The Street before? Because it is, without a doubt, one of the best pieces of television I've seen; TV as art, on a par with the best theatre or film has to offer. I've rarely been so relieved by an ending, and heartbroken atthe same time.

The question of authorship seems to me to be an interesting one, but always necessarily dependent on the individual project. It's something I've been a little familiar with thanks to the likes of Russell T Davies and Joss Whedon. I have definitely been attracted to series becuase they were "made by Joss Whedon" and to a certain extent you know what you're getting. (My bitter inner fan says that you know there'll be character deaths, upsetting plot twists and that Fox will cancel it.)

Friday

I was looking forward to this: I do love a bit of silent Russian cinema! And no, I'm not being sarcastic, I really do. I ended up crying in a history lesson once because of my stirrings of love for the Motherland and my Comrades after watching one. (Can't remember the name, but there were peasants pulling a church down.) They're propaganda, sure, but they're excellent examples of it.

Sergei Eisenstein in phenomenally influential: pretty much every area of 20th century culture I've studied has been somewhat affected, and as for cinema, well, he shaped the way films would be made afterwards. It's lovely that even something like the Kellog's Crunchy Nut Cornflakes still references something like Battleship Potemkin.

And that sequence on the Odessa Steps is remarkable. The climax with the assault on the Opera House was a thing of beauty: the fast cut shots of the lion's expressions gave me shivers - such a brilliant and effective idea. And the cutting is fast, but in a way which differs from badly fast cut montage: it uses a build up of intensity to create effects, much like poetry, rather than just cutting every second for the sake of it.

I won't deny that it gets dull and preachy at times - it's a propaganda film after all - but overall it was still an amazing experience. A better soundtrack would be most welcome - the Pet Shop Boys sounds very interesting, as would assembling a compilation from our own tastes. I wonder how Dark Side Of The Moon would sync up with it?




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