Anyway, the first day, (Monday/Pondeli in Czech) pretty much everyone in my program decided to check out Practical Analysis: Directing. Alli and I actually arrived late, because we had lunch with Jesse at Bohemian Bagel and lost track of time. Anyhow, after arriving fashionably late to class (we were exactly 15 minutes late) we waited to find out what everyone was doing. The teacher had asked everyone to recreate the scene from Blade Runner in which Harrison Ford (Decker) tries to find the snake maker and to recreate this scene with just eight shots.
After giving everyone adaquate time to finish, she asked someone to draw their scenes on the whiteboard. The guy she picked turned out to be a guy from USC by the name of Cesar, who I ended up meeting the next day before another elective. Anyway, this one guy from Estonia (sp?) who can barely speak English, got extremely vocal about how wrong Cesar's rendition of the scene was. It got fairly ridiculous, most of us were snickering behind his back because he was taking this exercise so seriously. I was half tempted to tell him to "Chill out, it's not like any of us are going out and remaking Blade Runner for our FAMU finals." With the exception of Antwon's outburst, the class was informative. The teacher, Blazevic, asked excellent questions to really get us to consider why scenes are shot a certain way and how the audience subconcious interprets specific shots.Tuesday or Utery in Czech, almost all of us attended History of American Avantgarde, one of the few 3 hour courses that fits into our schedule. As interesting as the class could be, the teacher is a complete baffoon, and really has no place at the front of a classroom. Given the class is 3 hours straight and the content, it is almost unbearable to sit through since the teacher doesn't really give any context to what we're watching.
He doesn't point out anything, he basically just says, okay, let's watch! Which is horrible, because the class could be SO INTERESTING! For instance, the first day we watched one of Warhol's films called "Blow Job." I had heard of this film through a friend, Matt Agnello, who had to watch it for his cinematography class, because of the lighting. The funniest part of the class was the stirring of anticipation for this film. Once everyone heard "Blow Job" they thought that's exactly what they were going to see. I couldn't help but chuck to myself, because it's a static shot of the guy on the recieving end, meaning, you aren't going to see anything good. Aside from Warhol, we watched films made by Thomas Edison and a series of films made in NYC in the twenties. Again, all would have been far more interesting if the dude "teaching" the class would provide some context. Given the class is on a Tuesday, and it's 3 credits, I may end up taking it, just because it's on a day where I can handle 3 hour classes and we only have to keep a journal in response to what we see. Simple, yes?Wednesday or Streda in Czech, most of decided to attend Pavel Jech's class: Script Analysis. Pavel essentially reconted the basic three act structure of a story which he had covered in his screenwriting classes. Once again, the Estonian held up class with a series of questions he took too seriously.
After about an hour, Pavel screened a film called: Kolya. This film was essentially Big Daddy minus Adam Sandler. An older bachelor winds up with a five year old boy, who he gets stuck with and grows to care for. The conflict is the boy is Russian and the man is Czech and it was supposed to represent tension between the two nations. One of the more interesting conversations between the boy and the man has to do with the Czech flag and the Russian flag. Kolya (the boy) proclaims the Russian flag to be more beautiful than the Czech flag. His caregiver argues the point, but the boy is persistant. This film is usually refered to as Coca Kolya (Kolya sounds like Cola) because of how "American" the storytelling is.Aside from the elective on Wednesday, we also had Henry Hill's Directing and Editing for the first time. He's the dude that teaches American Avantgarde, so you can imagine how enthusiastic I was for his class. Basically, we watched an 11 minute long scene from an Eisenstein film without any music. Then, he played it again where he "brilliantly" added 2 seconds of black between each cut within this scene. Seriously, isn't that just fucking BRILLIANT!?! I want to get out my thesaurus just to see how many different ways I can convey the notion of brilliance...I wanted to kill somebody. Then, in an even more brilliant selection on his "reel" he sped up Citizen Kane to 10 times the speed. So, we then watched Citizen Kane (on speed) in about 12 minutes. Seriously though, why doesn't this guy have his own tv show, he's so smaaart? Like I said, his biggest problem is that he doesn't provide any context. He doesn't fully explain why he put 2 seconds of black between each cut or why he put Kane on speed. He just shows it and expects us to come to our own hairbrained conclusions. Mine is that Hill's still does drugs and has half a brain.
That's the long and short of it, because I missed visual theory on Thursday. Next time!
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