Film school goes to film school

UPV at Łódź. Plus: Achieving maximum meaning with a limited wardrobe

Apr 05, 2021

Dear Students, Alumni, Faculty, and Trespassers,

The Polish National Film School in Łódź is home to the Film Essay Studio, within the school’s vnLab (laboratory of visual narratives.) Isn’t that interesting?

This semester, I will participate in a special group within the 2021 cohort. The special (my word) group will have priority access to the archive of the Wytwórnia Filmów Oświatowych (WFO) archive. The idea is to use this archive to make a video essay.

If I’m going to film school, the whole Unfound Peoples Videotechnic (UPV) is going to film school. This is an opportunity to see how the prestigious Polish film school works from the inside. (Virtually, at least). To learn from, with, and against the Studio’s faculty and ‘21 cohort.

To bring it home and deliver weird excellence in film education to the extended UPV community.

High Art Amateurs

The next module of the UPV curriculum will be available later this year. The new module will be named Advanced Amateury (How to be better at being worse: clumsy loving in the age of competent content).

I will use the archive of the WFO to develop this new module. The theme is amateurism in filmmaking. However, the WFO describes its archived films as “characterised by a high artistic level and workshop professionalism.”

Do you think this is a problem?

Meanwhile, there is some new instruction on the UPV blog. The new instruction is about film costume. You can preview it below. Two pieces of instruction about sharing costume between your characters.

And, deep down at the bottom, I will sign off with a new set of inspiring web links.

New instruction: Sharing Clothes

Regular visitors to the UPV website enjoy the regular addition of instructional texts. Here follows a copy of the latest.

In human life, most clothing is not shared. Each item of clothing finds its owner, and usually lives out its use-life with that same owner. On occasion, a garment may be “passed down” or acquired “second-hand.” These phrases illustrate the linear nature of the sharing of clothes in most cases.

In some micro-cultures, the sharing of clothes is more chaotic. People borrow and return, with no set pattern. This chaotic sharing culture sometimes leads to tension.

In other micro-cultures a more complex substructure of rules and conventions may apply. A pattern for the sharing, returning, and re-sharing of clothes.

Consider:

The factory.
The bowling alley.
A young father and his teenage son in the 1960s.
Twin sisters conducting a single life.
A woman with bed-hair in a commercial, wearing her lover’s business shirt.

How about the micro-culture of your movie? The filmmaker’s resources are limited. How might you achieve maximum meaning and feeling with a limited wardrobe?

Interclipping

Interclipping is a system for achieving maximum meaning and feeling in a film production with a limited wardrobe.

The filmmaker creates a single unique costume for each main character. For example, eight costumes for eight main characters. Archetypal clothing is most effective. Archetypal clothing is effective because the meaning of each garment is clear and discrete.

A strong archetypal outfit makes a statement about each main character up-front. “The clothes make the man,” as they say. Indeed, you might assemble the clothes first and fill them with a man (or other) at your leisure.

‘Clear and discrete garment meanings’ facilitate modular sharing. ‘Modular sharing’ means taking garments from different outfits and putting then together to make new outfits. The filmmaker creates new outfits, with new meanings, from the (eight) outfits at her disposal.

Who gets to wear these new combinations? The film’s secondary characters - your subtypes. The filmmaker interclips elements of her eight archetypal characters to create an array of subtypes. Each interclipping produces a new subtype. And each new subtype comes with their costume ready-made.

However, if a subtype wears a main character’s shoes, the main character can hardly be expected to appear barefoot. So, sharing in this way often requires the shots of a scene to be filmed separately for each character.

Filming actors in separation carries the risk of alienating them from each other. Don’t worry about that in this context. They are sharing each other’s clothes, which is quite intimate enough.

Instruction ends.

Tell me something

Do you have any recommendations for the study of amateurism in filmmaking? A picture to watch, an essay to read, a book to ogle, a notion to air? Do share it with me by replying to this email, or at us on Twitter.

Signing off,

~Graeme Cole.

(Principal)

Link Coaster

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