I am now in my second week in a film program that is the result of a partnership between the NYC Department of Education and the Tribeca Film Festival. It’s a part of the “Summer Arts” program that encompasses programs focusing on all sorts of specialty arts (photography, dancing, film, etc.)
So every day for the past week and a half I’ve woken up kind of early and gone to Stuyvesant high school (where it’s being held) from 9 to 3. Kind of like school - only I want to be there and the things we’re being taught I actually want to learn about.
So far it’s been a lot of fun, and not nearly as boring as these film programs sometimes end up being. Well - the lesson about how a Mac is different from a PC and the basics of Final Cut Pro was boring but beyond that I’ve actually been learning some very interesting and exciting things.
Until now we’ve only been working on small practice films, but starting this week we’re beginning work on our major project for the summer: A 5-7 minute movie that takes place in a specific neighborhood of New York City and focuses on a certain sub-topic, assigned randomly. There are 5 groups and about 20 kids so groups of 3 and 4 are each making this movie together. My group’s sub-topic is music.
We had two “pitches” - A documentary idea and a narrative idea. The staff would choose whichever one they thought was better. Our documentary idea was about street musicians in Central Park (which the staff allowed us to consider a neighborhood) and why they do what they do and what their effect is on the park.
Our narrative idea (which we like a billion times more) is about a young man living in Brighton Beach. He never pays any notice to the violin player who plays music every day on the boardwalk, which is on the main character’s way to work. But one day the musician is gone and the main character sees Brighton Beach in a completely different way. What used to seem like an exciting and vibrant neighborhood now seems dark and ugly.
I don’t want to give away the ending because - guess what - we got the narrative idea (yay!) So I guess that you’ll just have to wait and see the movie yourself then.
