Resources for watching and making films: Film clips, film analysis, texts, practical exercises, films made by groups. A specific question of cinema which allows the discovery of the different parameters of cinema on every encounter: mise en scène, sound, light, acting, editing…
Sensation comes from the presence of our body in the world, a world that we perceive through our senses, in an individual and personal way. If visual and auditory sensations are the very essence of cinema, it can also indirectly make us taste, smell and feel touch and synesthetic sensations. How do we go about making the spectator experience them, too?
A scenario is the series of events which happen in the space between the first and last situations of a film. A film progresses from one situation to the next, sometimes the situations are returned to, sometimes the situations completely flip and change direction. The viewer identifies differently with the characters according to his own subjective state, the stakes of the situations and their staging.
Since its inception, cinema oscillates between the places it shows us and the stories it tells us: in films, some stories arise from places they were inspired by, or, on the contrary, they come to life in the mind of the filmmaker, and truly take flesh in a final form at the place chosen for the shooting.
In life, as in a film, playing opens up a free space between fantasy and reality. Playing means selecting objects, determining a space dedicated to the play, inventing rules and sometimes breaking the pre-established ones. Filmmakers, like their characters – of all ages – grasp the play to feel this freedom.
Weather and climate are an essential question of cinema: far from being a simple element of a shot, they are very a much part of the writing of the story we see, and the landscape we behold. It’s a core part of cinema itself, with the colours, light and atmosphere that each weather event proposes.
Scenes with both professional and non-professional actors, climatic hazards, fictional characters thrown in an everyday world: on purpose or in an unexpected way, fiction and reality get mixed inside a film. Improvised or desired and developed, how does this balance work?
Enigmas, ellipses, secrets, mysteries and revelations: how - and why - are shown and hidden central concepts in cinema? This question speaks to all the stages of filmmaking: the creation of the scenario - with its jumps through time; in the choice of setting; when the film is shot and then edited; it also concerns the actors' craft – to show or hide the characters’ emotions, to hold or show their interior life.
Musicals’ sparkling environment, sudden irruption of colours in a cold and stylized world, patient arrangements all through the film, studio or natural sets, how does colour in cinema become an essential element of narration and aesthetic?
