Program Outline for Practical Film Workshop “Film Spring”


Three or four musicians, even when they are meeting for the first time sit down
and play music, they improvise. Filmmakers start their meeting by arguing
which one of them will be the leader.


Having worked in the film business for over 35 years and having made films all over the world, I have noticed that in the era of colossal changes in film technique, the manner in which films are made remains the same. It appears as if the system in which films are produced were the same as if there were no changes. This extremely human instinct of attaching oneself to a certain tradition and the cecity to occurring changes is also very visible in the film education system. When lecturing in various film schools in Europe, I often have the impression that they prepare the students “for yesterday”. I remember being taught black and white photography for five years at the film school in Łódź (then considered as one of the best European film schools). I do not have to add that my first film was coloured.
The necessity of thinking “forward” is usually absent from artistic education.
The basic task before proceeding with any educational programme should be the analysis of what surrounds us, and the attempt to anticipate the nearest future.
There is no such industry (and cinema, besides being an art is created in the industrial system) in which would reign such a strong, single-centered monopoly as there is in the domain of entertainment and film. We are, in a certain sense, culturally colonized. This process of cultural colonization which we witness when watching programmes of European cinemas influences our collective subconscious. One could say that each one of us, wherever he or she was born, is a citizen of two cultures – our own, linked to our birthplace, and the American culture, which subjugates our minds through hundreds of thousands of US films, which we watch throughout our lives. Already as a grown-up man, I surprisingly found out that in the Polish justice system there is no such institution as the jury.
When travelling through Europe, we will not see a German film in Finland and a Finnish film in Italy. The question is whether this is going to change, and whether the education of future directors can support those undoubtedly essential changes for Europe. I think it can.
First of all, we have to realize that US cinema has now reached a specific place in its history. The super-power has already achieved everything – 95% of the world market revenue, and a further development is simply impossible.

Once, it was commonly thought in the USA that no American would drive a small European or Japanese car. Time has challenged this viewpoint with the first petrol crisis. And also today, facing a revolution in the system of media work creation, the strength of American cinema can suddenly be shattered. Undoubtedly, a competing media and film center shall be created somewhere in the world, and it also depends on us whether this will happen in Europe.
A very shortened history of cinema in Europe can be extremely explicit here. If we think of Italian neorealism we mostly think of directors’ names. Because that is how it was. It was a cinematography in which the first violin was played solely by the director. Rossellini was the only artistic and economic owner of cinema. Much later, this romantic idea submitted to market laws had to start crumbling. Directors tried to defend themselves, and like F. Trufaut with a group of directors regrouped around the “Cahiers du Cinema”, they tried to create something in the shape of a producer’s group. In Germany, “Film Verlag der Autoren” was an association of artists who tried to defend the originality of their films in the new economic reality. Director’s cinema came to an end. European cinema was a cinema of producers. What is it like now? When one observes the statistics of international cinematography there is no doubt that it is an industrial cinematography, in which the leading violin is played by big American (often with European financial contributions) studios.
On the one hand, we have big shows made for hundreds of millions of dollars, and on the other our local, small films, often called “cinema-auteur”.

In Europe, we cultivate the myth of a “cinema-auteur” that has a local range, but also that which has a wider range. Such artists as Fellini, Antonioni, Wajda, Kieslowski, or Fassbinder have a global influence. The mind of a young person entering film school is full of these remarkable masters, and film education often confirms his opinion.
I sometimes have the feeling that this European author’s theory is used for suspicious interests. It is in someone’s interest for original, yet commercially attractive films not to be made. Again, it is enough to look at the revenues, to see how much money films by great directors (“cinema-auteur”) have made in comparison with great American shows.
The individual always loses the fight with a well-organised institution.
I believe that the promotion of the concept of “cinema-auteur” is abusive, and is often an excuse for an unequal – from the market division point of view – status quo in the world and in Europe. Why does this happen? When one observes the definition of the profession of a film director in practice (taking into account those who have been successful in their profession) one notices quickly that the definition is a very wide one. Most of all, they are the authors of screenplays, people with literary talents. Not because others are not able to direct films based on somebody else’s idea, but because someone who writes his own screenplays will much more easily find the money for shooting them if there are too many candidates to direct his works.
Money! As we all know, that money necessary for filmmaking is not lying on the streets. The future film director must really put a lot of effort into finding the financial means necessary for the creation of his work. Often, when talking or working with young directors I admire their economic knowledge necessary for working in this profession.
Promotion. I have been teaching in various film schools for many years and I sadly notice that people with talents for PR find the means for making their films much faster than the quiet and sensitive types. It is no longer enough to produce a good film, one also has to be able to sell it, i.e. sell oneself. And then remains the directing. The director is like an orchestra conductor, who whether he is using his own composition or someone else’s score, has to turn it into a piece arousing emotions in the spectator. In the middle of all this noise, thousands of responsibilities, and people shouting „action” and „cut” on the set, he has to bear in his mind the vision of something that later on, in a dark cinema room, has to touch, make people laugh or cry, awaken their emotions.
Is this an easy task and does film school prepare its students well to this purpose? I really doubt it, because I often get to deal with educated professionals on the film set. And I see their helplessness. There are a thousand reasons for this. Bigger or smaller. I shall only discuss those I consider important. The model of film education is oriented towards the ego of the individual artist who is to execute his artistic visions in the future.
An example of this are schools in which directors, but also specialists in other areas (cinematography, editing, set designing) learn their profession.
The future directors feel immediately that they are better than their colleagues in other departments. They have not achieved anything yet and they are already taking care of their leader’s ego. Meanwhile, the work on a film set is a team work. No man is able, in the tense system of filmmaking, to grasp the whole. This is simply not possible. A good film is made on the set as a collective creative activity.
The future director can be the performing force in the process of filmmaking, as long as he does not treat the concept of “cinema-auteur” too literally. In the shadow of those great directors, which I have mentioned above, there is always a group of artists, specialists, composers, designers, cinematographers, not to forget the actors. They (and I know this from my own experience with Wajda, Scott, Kieslowski) did or do their films in a creative group, always using the invention of others.
Furthermore, why do we shoot films in the director’s system at all? (it is obviously a local phenomenon, because in the US they are already making films more in a producer’s than director’s system). This occurs because such is the tradition and furthermore a tradition very simple to explain. The beginnings of film required a very complex technique, for each carbon lamp two electricians were permanently necessary; in order to put the dolly on the tracks 12 people were needed. A film had to be made by an army of people. To control such an army one had to use a military system. A general who gives orders was necessary and that is how the vision of “cinema-auteur” was born.
Among such a number of people it would be hard to imagine any sensible creative discussion. In the meantime, the whole world has changed, but nobody thought that we would have small cameras, sensitive negatives and that feature films can be made by a handful of people, in a creative team. Somehow, nobody thought that maybe four young students with different professional skills might assemble a creative group that will write screenplays and shoot films together under the shared name, let’s say, “The Rolling Stones”.
Yes, of course this is possible. I have no doubt that films can be made just like chamber music, sharing the efforts, the success, and the failures together. Educating one another.
Let me repeat it again.

Three or four musicians, even when they are meeting for the first time sit down and play music, they improvise. Filmmakers start their meeting by arguing which one of them will be the leader.

I propose to organize practical film workshops during which a group of filmmakers will make a 30-45 minute film. Contrary to the traditional model of filmmaking, the author of the film will be a group of filmmakers and not a single director. A creative group will write a screenplay on a specially created website, in order to later shoot it during practical workshops.
This is what it will look like in detail.
On a specially created website, potential participants of the workshops will write a screenplay together. This will be the phase during which future camp participants will get to meet one another, to discuss, and to argue the future common project.
The internet will be a place, which will give participants the chance to exchange ideas concerning other elements of the shooting preparation, such as casting ideas, or the choice of locations. Potential cinematographers can here start a discussion on how they would like to photograph the future film. They can provide iconographic materials as a visual reference. In other words, the website will comprise a page concerning the work on the screenplay, a page concerning the casting, a page concerning the visual side of the proposed project, and a page devoted to organization matters.
I think that in this part of the work the interference of tutors should be minimal and practically limited to solving conflicts and reducing inspired ambitions, which we will simply not be able to afford. During the writing of successive screenplay versions there will be a natural selection of the group participants in order to single out the team, which will work on the project.
The recruiting of potential participants and their consecutive selection is here the most delicate matter, but I assume that the proposed workshops will not end in only one “Spring Camp”, and that the idea of practical workshops will continue, and hence the rejected participants (or their rejected ideas) will be able to further develop on our website, simultaneously gathering another group ready to work on a new project in the following year.

Our selected group will be composed of 7 writer - directors and 7 cinematographers. 14 total.
The group should meet before the actual shooting (perhaps not necessarily all its participants) in order to specify the last details - the shooting locations, the cast and organization matters.
The actual camp, i.e. the making of the film will take place on a single location, and the whole technical and artistic production will be organized by the camp participants. The organizers of the undertaking provide only the shooting equipment (including lights and grip), the sound and the editing (off line) equipment. Everything else, including set design, costumes and props will be organized by workshop participants.
The actual shooting period of about 16 days should be concluded by a first editing of the film that has been shot.
The workshops will start with purely theatrical rehearsals with actors. We wouldn’t devote more than 3 days to this. This initial phase will be an important element of settling upon a joint vision of the would be future film. It will specify the premise (main idea) and the style of the film.
The rest of the workshops is devoted to the making of the film. Compared to a normal film production our actions will only differ in the following stages.
All the shot scenes will be initially edited on the same day, so as to have a joint control over our future project.
The tutor will supervise a harmonious and planned progress of the work, and will simultaneously have the right to comment upon the way, in which specific scenes have been shot. His interference will not influence essential artistic decisions.
The participants should by turns help in all phases of production, including technical help, such as setting the light or travelings.
After the completion of the shooting, the participants part, and each of them has at his or her disposal an initial edited version of the film, and all the dailies. Within two weeks, everyone gets to show his or her own edited version of the shot material. The exchange of discs containing different versions and the final decision as to the final shape of the film, made either on the internet or during the subsequent meeting ends the workshops.
Postproduction will take place in the producers’ headquarters (Focal, Filmhaus).

I suggest a certain initial limitation of the projects. The imposed subject will be a melodrama. A love story of representatives of two countries.
In our case it would be the love of a Swiss man and a German girl (or a Norwegian man and a Finnish girl). The group will thus have a restricted perspective from the very beginning of its work on the screenplay (we will thus avoid lengthy initial arrangements), but simultaneously this simple subject will be the connection, but also the creative conflict in the group. The connection will be what attracts our two heroes, and the conflict what separates them. Their nationality, their language, their political opinions, their religion, their social roots on the one hand, and on the other the common generation they belong to in a uniting Europe, their common cultural fascinations, the same fear of the future, etc. This imposed subject will, and should simplify the creation of team work rules. The screenplay is only a music score, a half-product, which in typical film-making is turned into a film by the director-conductor. He carries out his vision, interprets the written screenplay in his own way. Our group will and should act similarly. They must define the manner of shooting and interpreting the screenplay together, but the difference will not consist in that.
I will use an example to make myself clear. We have a scene in the screenplay, e.g. the first meeting of our heroes. It contains dialogues, locations and actions – everything that is typical for a screenplay. In typical filmmaking, the director analyzes (interprets) the scene when talking with the actors; he suggests to the actors and the cinematographer his own vision of the scene. Our system of team work could and should enrich this method. After the first acting rehearsal, the girls from the director’s group will discuss their female strategy of the heroine’s behaviour together with the actress, they will improve the dialogues, discuss her methods of seduction; and the same will be done by the boys in the other room with the hero of the film.
The next rehearsal is thus enriched by plenty new, more surprising details, or funnier dialogues, unexpected reactions or incidents caused by the different strategies of each group, also conditioned by their different backgrounds. Every new session will be a “fight” (duel) between our actors-heroes. In other words, a duel between two groups of filmmakers responsible for those characters. Groups of directors who think for them, complete them, and add new elements considerably developing the existing conflict. The participants of the camp will be staying together and eating their meals together. They will live through and enjoy the making of the film for 16 hours a day. Nobody will dominate. It is a common undertaking and enjoyment.

A love story of representatives of two countries, our imposed subject will also facilitate, giving the whole project a clear European perspective. I believe that our enterprise will not end in a single film. I count on the fact that our subject – love, which unites people from different European countries, will facilitate successive workshops, and that film institutions from other European countries will join the project; that more films will be made on the same subject, and that it will be possible to combine them as a television series or edit as a feature film. A film, which will also be about common Europe. I believe that this will also be an occasion to create a platform of discussion about new models (systems) of filmmaking. About the need to think ahead.

Slawomir Idziak