FESTIVAL MASTERCLASSES

we went on a media trip to the ASFF short film festival in York on Friday the 9th of November.We went to two master classes, a talk from Danny Cohen the successful cinematographer, and a talk from the head of production at Warp films Barry Ryan.

Danny Cohen Master Class:

This master class was set up like a relaxed conversation between Danny Cohen and Mariayah Kaderbhai where she'd ask him interview styled questions. He started by talking about how he got into the industry and how initially he did a social science degree and then became a photographic technician which gradually led into him being the cinematographer he is today.

Throughout the master class Danny was asked on how he made numerous scenes and these scene would be shown to us and then he'd explain how he put them together, for example one of these was a scene from This is England (Shane Meadows, 2006) and he explained how it was difficult to find an area where everything was like how it should be set out in 1983 so he had to make make changes to the area, like changing the satellites on the houses, and the cars all had to be from the 1980's time period and he told us how some cars were used more than once in the scene as they were on a low budget and couldn't afford any more, he also gave useful tips to the camera angles he used during this film and why he used them.

He also gave more general tips not just about cinematography but he talked a lot about location and how directors like Shane Meadows got a lot of ideas and inspiration on location meaning that you have to react a lot to what you see when on location.  Also he mentioned about how natural light was great to work with and he always worked around natural light and he gave examples of how he was filming in winter where the days were shorter as it got darker sooner so he had to film quickly.

Warp Films Master Class:

Barry Ryan talked about the latest in film productions and a lot about Warp films and its achievements as this year it is celebrating its 10th year. He talked a lot about how to get ahead in the business and all about budgets and how much you truly make off box office intakes once all your financers and people who put money into the project have been paid.

He talked about what the future of film making was going to be in his opinion and how most of it will be over Internet rather than cinema releases, etc. For example he reckoned youtube will be a future hit for film makers.

He went into a lot of detail about how warp films have advertised and presented cover art for their films and how you need to get the attention of your target audience by showing them what they want.