Developing your filmmaking - 5 things you might want to try in lockdown:
- Take part in a Future Learn Course
Future Learn provides hundreds of free courses in partnership with universities.
Some of the film ones include:
Explore Filmmaking: https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/explore-filmmaking
Introduction to Screenwriting: https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/screenwriting
- BFI Film Academy Labs
For next few months, the BFI Film Academy Labs events are going virtual! These free monthly online events are designed to support young, aspiring filmmakers and help develop skills and projects from home. There is also the opportunity to apply for individual mentoring and workshop sessions.
BBC 4 are running an excellent series on the conventions of different film genre.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0bbn5pt/episodes/player
- Read a book on film or by a filmmaker
There are lots of excellent and accessible film books. You may search to see if your favorite actor or director has written an autobiography, or look through the list of books about the production process.
https://bookauthority.org/books/best-filmmaking-books
- Plan and shoot a 1 minute film on your phone
There are a number of apps you can download to edit films on your phone like Adobe Rush or I movie, or you can shoot footage on your phone and move them to your computer. One exercise you can try is to plan 10 shots, each of a different length , try organising your clips in descending order 10, 9, 8, 7, 6 ,5 ,4 ,3 ,2 and 1 second or the other way round. What is the impact of these shooting and editing decisions?
- Write a script for a 5 minute lockdown film
This could be a documentary or a fiction script. Use Celtx Challenge yourself by only using the resources (locations, actors, props) available to you in lockdown. You could set it in one location or plan to film with a collaborator in more than one lockdown venue. Each page of script usually translates to about a minute of film - so aim to write five pages. Try to plan your narrative in three acts. ACT 1: set up and complication, ACT 2, chain of events and rising action, ACT 3: Falling action and resolution. Work out what you want to happen in each act before you start writing your script.