Eicar - new website

I'm receiving through this blog more and more questions about Eicar - International Film School. We have a new webiste, here is a link, check it out.

J.J.B.

Casablanca

It's been 2 months since we started with classes at Eicar. This year I teach production for bachelor 1st year and master 1st year. Those are mainly theoretical courses 2 hours a week.
"My class", where I teach directing, is 2nd year bachelor program. We have almost 40 students so we divided them into two groups and the other teacher is Adriano Valerio. We alternate classes so that both group can have lectures from both of us.
There are two premises in 2nd year program. First, how to tell a story in realistic way, stressing also the film structure, dramaturgy... Second, it's working with actors.
Last week we started with exercises with actors. The students get the given scene from films and then they have to direct with actors. Each year I choose the scene from Casablanca, where Ingrid Bergman comes to ask for transit letters from Humphrey Bogart, to be the first one because it's very easy to break it down into units and to find objectives and obstacles. In one class three students work with actors on the scene and then we analyse their work together, then the following week one of them shoot the scene.
So here is the picture from shooting, where actors Jon Russo and Heike try to do their best of Bogart-Bergman.

At one moment my student Madison took my photo and made some pictures. After, I found this one that I like a lot. D.O.P. August at work (not to forget, director was Brandon).

J.J.B.

Reflection

When I came to Paris in October 2003, I had a Russian plan: I will stay in Paris for 5 years no matter what happens and after that period I will draw a line and see if the things are working for me or not. The fifth year have just started and it's still a bit too early for final account, but here are some pluses and minuses in the last 4 years.

- After being in Paris for 2 months, in december 2003 I shot a short film-exercise on super16. I've already written about that here, now I finally uploaded the whole film.

in case of problems, try to open it directly from here

- first year in Paris was very tough for me, I was almost all the time without the money, I didn't understand the word of French and it didn't seem at the time that the things will change. I remember that I was crying out of frustration several times. However, through Balkan connections I got a job at Orly airport (I was "slapping" the luggage as we say in Bosnia) and somehow survived that first year.

- second year started much easier since I got a scholarship from Slovenian Ministry of culture. Suddenly I had a lot of free time since I didn't need to run around like crazy trying to earn few euros. Consequance will be described in next line

- I spoke with at the time my directing professor Ilka Jarvilaturi. I told him how frustrated I'm because I don't speak the language. He told me:"To learn a language you have to either shoot a feature in French or you have to find a french speaking girlfriend.". Just to be sure I did both :)

- third year, partial breakthrough, I got a job as a professor of film directing at the school where I was a student. Great international environment. Big plus.

- that same year passed by working on post-production of paris.love

- fourth year, continuation of teaching. Started a project with Brina Svit, travelled with her to Buenos Aires and spent a summer shooting in Slovenia

- voila, here we are, fifth year, not bad at all. The only big minus that's following me all this years is French breaucracy. Although Slovenia entered the European Union in 2005, the things for me haven't changed much; I still need to wait in queue to get my working papers and the fact that I'm from European Union doesn't make the things really easier

- anyhow, recently I started to work as a camera operator and editor with a swedish journalist shooting the news for swedish TV. Although I started my career back in 94 working the same things, I enjoy a lot rediscovering it now

- so, when I don't work at school or with swedish guy, I edit the documentary about Brina. So, here I'm am, doing my best of Rodin's Thinker.


J.J.B.

A bout de souffle - commercial

Voila, finally.
I helped Andrew Brooke, the friend of mine, who last year graduated at Eicar film school on his commercial assignement.
He didn't need to persuade me a lot, A bout de souffle is one of my favorite films and I had a lot of fun editing this. It took him another year to fix the music and sound but finally, here it is.


J.J.B.

Leçon de cinéma

Sometimes it happens; the atmosphere is right, there is something in the air. Several days ago, after we had lunch and we had discussed the school issues, we stayed sitting in a restaurant: Nenad, Adriano and myself. School year is over so we drank few glasses of wine. At one moment and I don't remember by what was it provoqued, Nenad started to analyse Adriano's last film. And one of those magic moments started. We call Nenad maestro, because his knowledge of cinema and art in general is huge. He shares that knowledge with his students and also with us, his collegues, on a daily basis. But just sometimes it seems that all his passion wakes up, and than he goes with all his heart deeply into the life and cinema. I hope I can bring you closer the moment of that day through some of these photographs. It started like this:

This is like the opening sequence; Leçon de cinéma was just about to start:

J.J.B.

Slovenia Strikes Again

After Buenos Aires I've rested for two days and then I was again on the shoot. Another Slovenian student Gregor Andolsek was selected to shoot a film on S16 mm. He wrote the script together with Spanish student Ivan Tobalina. Supervising this shoot was quite ok, they were doing a good job so I didn't interfere much. First day, on Monday, they were shooting in the bar.
While Gregor was rehearsing with the actors, Camille, the producer was preparing the food for the crew. I'm glad Gregor "got" his bar in Paris (once you shoot in it, you "owe" it, mine is this one). What I envied him is the name of the nearby street. I would kill to be able to shoot on that street in Paris :). Anyhow, next day we were on the street in Plaine Saint-Denis, shooting the sceene in front of the doors. We had access to the building because we took the electricity from there. However, we didn't have the key from the doors and by Murphy's law, at 2 in the morning someone by mistake closed the doors. Of course a lot of stuff got locked inside. But the window on the second floor was open. We tried with the highest ladder that we could find but of course it was not high enough. Luckily, that night we had a security guy with us (two weeks earlier the van full of equipment was stolen from our students not far away) and he called a friend of him, the fireman. So, he climbed up and opened the doors. That action was definitely the highlight of the day (pardon, of the night). Yesterday, we were again on streets of Paris, nothing really special happened. The shoot finished at around 5 in the morning. Here are more photos.
Apart from that, Brina called me today, she's just got from Buenos Aires and her book went into the print today. We will meet next week to organize next shoots. Tomorrow, me and Mirella will go to Slovenia for a screening of paris.love. Looking forward.

J.J.B.

Undisclosed

On Sunday we finished another student's shoot. It was the 2nd term awarded script by Adriana Calvo. The film was shot on S16 mm and the shoot was very well organised. Most of the days we were at Epinay-sur-Seine, 20 or something kilometers out of Paris.
Undisclosed


J.J.B.

Student's shoot - Andraz Sumrada

Today I started supervising second year Eicar – International Film School short film. At the end of each trimester we select several scripts to be shot on 35 mm, S 16 mm, 16 mm, HDV or DV. This is Andraz Sumrada's selected project Freezer from the 1st trimester. Here are some moments from the 1st shooting day.

student's shoot



J.J.B.

Eicar - international film school

This is the picture of Nenad Dizdarevic, Head of the Studies at International Film School Eicar, where I've worked since 2005. We have around 110 students from more than 50 countries from all around the world. This year I teach film directing for 1st and 2nd year. The first year program is based on introduction of the film language and basic film structure while the second year basises are how to tell the story in realistic way, dramaturgy and working with actors. After two weeks vacation, we'll start with lectures on Monday, 5th.

Short film exercise

This is a short exercise that we've made in the third year of international film school eicar. The first trimester was about making commercials, so this is 30 seconds exercise that we've shot during one morning in October 2004 in Ivry - Paris. As I can remember, Jack Wung was camera operator and editor, Luc Walpoth did some basic lighting, Mirella Habr was an assistant director and I wrote the script and directed it. Our directing teacher was Ilkka Jarvilaturi.
Just a note for young filmmakers; in the shot before last one, we used the split screen, but in this case not as an effect but to cheat the number of people in the shot. If you watch very carefully, you will see that most of the people appear twice, ones on the left side of the screen and the other time on the right side.