BFI Academy Day 1 - Selection Day!

The BFI Academy is an academy in which you attend several 'masterclasses' (lasting one day each week) on different aspects of film, resulting in a production week, where you make either a short film or a documentary, with a team of other filmmakers. I decided to apply for this after seeing it on Twitter, as I know it will help me massively gain the skills and knowledge that I need to not only get further into cinematography, but also learn about and develop my skills in other areas that I might not necessarily focus on in other places.

On the selection day, we learnt a lot about the Academy, what we would be doing if we got selected, and the Arts Award we would gain from it. Then, we did some ice-breakers, and played a game of Consequences. This set up our main activity of the day - using some of the characters and locations from the game, we had to create a short film based around those. We had free reign over what we wanted to do, but we were told we were only allowed to use still images. So, we made a stop motion. The mise-en-scene conditions we got given were:

- A cactus
- A clown

- A cupboard

- The line 'The sun is shining bright'

We were split off into groups of around 5 or 6, and each group was given the same mise-en-scene conditions, but a different genre. The genre we got was action, and we were also allowed to cross and combine genres. In the first stages, we decided to develop our characters a bit further. Instead of having the cactus as a prop, we decided to make it a character, and the antagonist in our story, and the clown was the protagonist. To incorporate the cupboard, we wanted to have it as one of the main focal points of the story - we decided to have a clown walking down the street, and then the cactus enters. As it enters, black clouds descend on the street, and when it touches the clown, a cupboard opens and black clouds pour out. Everything gets sucked into the cupboard apart from the cactus.

Making this was fairly easy - all we had to do was draw a backdrop consisting of a street, and then draw the characters. It was then just a case of placing everything on the paper, and taking a photo, then gradually moving it. You can watch the end product here - from 7:33 - 7:52.

A few days after selection day, I received an email from Culture Works East saying I got into the Academy - I will be documenting my journey through it on this blog, to record and show how it has helped me develop my skills/knowledge in film.