Our Director Writes:
Diary of a Mature Student, Semester Two, Week Twelve
What would be nice right now would be a fully-functional online environment.
Deadline week(s) are approaching, script kiddies, and the essays are growing fat; so naturally, on the last week possible for the weekly assignments to be submitted, the Online Coursework Service (OCS) pitches a fit on a Sunday morning, rolls over, and plays dead.
In some ways, one can see it as one's own fault for wanting to catch up on their work; if one had done it previously, this would be much, much less stressful. But currently the site is alternating between not working at all, working then stopping working, then working very slowly. Hence I have the time to blog, although given that this blog is basically a person in the middle of a forest, talking to themselves, even that becomes slightly inconsequential.
If a blogger posts and nobody reads it, does the blogger post at all?
In fact, the entire internet service in my area appears to be going, slowly but gently, up the pole.
Such, as they say, is life.
Here's an interesting point. (Your milage may vary on the key word, 'interesting', of course.)
Video Camera hire, for an average, entry-level camera, costs, on average - i.e. the websites I've just been checking out - around £100 a day, +/- £20 for the quality differential.
Hiring an edit suite costs, conservatively, around £50 a day for just the suite, i.e. Do It Yourself editing.
Let's say as a conscientious student, who wants to get the most out of their degree, that you make four short films over the course of a year. Each film requires at least five days shooting. For each day shooting, you need at least - at least! - three days editing.
If you weren't a student, therefore, you would end up paying approximately £650 for camera and suite hire, before you even add on travelling and catering costs and anything else involved.
If you make four short films - and let's hope you do - you would be looking at, again approximately, £2600 in hire costs assuming nothing goes wrong.
The tuition fees for universities currently run at around £3,400 per year for two or three semesters of full-time courses.
It is slowly becoming my way of thinking - and this is kind of heretical thinking, granted - that the 'degree' part of a film degree is actually an ancilliary benefit; if you spend your three years making short films, as long as you pass the other course units to the best of your ability and are respectful to the technical workshop so they let you use the cameras often, you have access to materials that would cost as much in The Real World without the benefit of doing the degree in the first place, i.e. the fancy letters after your name and owing the government thousands of pounds in student loans.
I didn't arrive at this conclusion independently. Third year students I have spoken to have said that they realised they could pass their courses and make short film after short film after short film of gently increasing quality and treat the actual Degree side as a kind of necessary neutral evil.
Don't misunderstand me; I love the degree part. I'm a closet academic (which has made for some awkward admissions in the past), and I love writing essays, even though at some points this year I've had to phone them in a little. And don't forget that our student year includes some other academic types who shy away from actual filmmaking and prefer to study film theory and methodology, and the best of luck to them, for they are the future.
But put me behind a camera, and I'm happy. And that's why even though the coursework is looming, the tests are coming up and there isn't even a technical module this semester, that I've spent at least a day a week this semester filming.
Like I say; happy.
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