A scene from Ulrich Seidl's "Import/Export"It's in the air, the sun, the sky, the sharp angles, the crisp wind, the deep, deep blue in these last coupla days. Everything suddenly feels different. Better. More vibrant. More real.
And so, we are hopeful. For the first time in a long time. And it makes me a little dizzy to think about. Dizzy, but anxious. It all somehow seems appropriate that I am now teaching again.
Much to my surprise, one of my production classes had 23 students. That's a rather large amount to teach the fundamentals of videomaking to. But after my first class, when they so patiently and politely sat through 3o minutes of silent Lumiere films narrated to an incomprehensible French accent, I knew there was potential building. When I showed them a random assortment of more contemporary short films, cries of holy shit!, and is that real? with a handful of that's crazy! thrown in, all let me know that we were on to something. As we reviewed the films a second time now with the sound off, and talked about the choice of shots the director chose, I literally heard a few gears clicking. Earlier, I had asked them all why they were here, and only one or two really seemed to have consciously chosen the class. In fact, I overheard one guy talking on his cell phone during the break relay the message that he didn't really realize he had signed up for the class. He thought it was going to be web design.
Slowly, however, we were winning them over: me, the Lumiere brothers, and the collection of shorts. I handed out the first assignment and was bombarded with questions at the first break. Questions about things I was sure I had not only clearly explained, but were also plainly written down on the assignment sheet. Nonetheless, their sheer eagerness, or perhaps it was more their maleability, that permitted me to overlook those small facts. They were alert, I had gotten their attention, and even if they had no idea what the hell they were doing there, at least they seemed game.
We shall see.
