How to make a movie in sev­en sim­ple steps

Dead­lines are loom­ing for the Sep­tem­ber 2019 intake of the Lon­don Film School, a venue for those who want to learn top-to-tail film­mak­ing. If you har­bour a desire to be behind the scenes and above the line, LFS’s MAs in Film­mak­ing or Screen­writ­ing will allow you to learn not only what you need to be able to have your name sit at the top of the end cred­its, but all the oth­er vital aspects of the cin­e­mat­ic process that are essen­tial for bring­ing a film to life. To illus­trate the breadth of learn­ing, we’ve list­ed all the indi­vid­ual ele­ments below, along with an exam­ple of work by notable LFS alum­ni and vis­it­ing speak­ers. Don’t just learn film­mak­ing… walk in the foot­steps of these great cin­e­mat­ic artists.

It’s the clas­sic arc of the direc­tor – laud­ed stu­dent shorts, cel­e­brat­ed debut fea­ture, beloved doc-fic­tion debut then a gate­way to more for­mal exper­i­men­ta­tion. Car­ol Morley’s learn­ing curve has been mas­sive, and the spark was evi­dent from her con­fronta­tion­al grad­u­a­tion short, Sec­ond­hand Day­light, namecheck­ing a track by post-punks Mag­a­zine and col­lect­ing the thoughts of despon­dent twen­tysome­things in a fast food restau­rant. Her break­through arrived with the mourn­ful The Alco­hol Years, in which the direc­tor goes in search of time from her for­ma­tive years lost to booze.

As a direc­tor, the force of per­son­al­i­ty shines through her work and she proves to be adapt­able and clever when it comes to depict­ing peo­ple and space via the record­ed image. Dreams of a Life from 2011 pushed that fur­ther – an exam­ple of a film which tells a sto­ry while ques­tion­ing the nature of the medi­um itself. More recent­ly she has tak­en a turn into fic­tion, with titles such as The Falling and Out of Blue prov­ing that, as a direc­tor, she has an unstop­pably idio­syn­crat­ic vision when it comes to com­mu­ni­cat­ing through film.

Car­ol Mor­ley has been a guest speak­er at LFS

The art of cin­e­matog­ra­phy isn’t just about cre­at­ing images that func­tion as art­sy stills – it’s about cre­at­ing images that seam­less­ly fil­ter from one into the next. It’s also about select­ing the right tools for the job and using the mate­ri­als you have to the best of their abil­i­ty. 2017’s Lost in Vague­ness is a doc­u­men­tary about a long-run­ning bur­lesque extrav­a­gan­za that is an adjunct to the Glas­ton­bury fes­ti­val, and new­com­er Annette Rem­ler proves she has an eye for build­ing rich tex­ture into dig­i­tal cin­e­matog­ra­phy, work­ing won­ders with avail­able light, and also extract­ing the best from its more imme­di­ate, hand­held capabilities.

Annette Rem­ler is an alumna

What do the films Dog­tooth, The Lob­ster, Killing of a Sacred Deer and The Favourite have in com­mon? They were all edit­ed by Yor­gos Mavrop­saridis, who can be seen as a cre­ative lynch­pin for the so-called Greek new wave. His dev­as­tat­ing, sen­su­al edit­ing style has helped to coin a dis­tinc­tive tone for the films of Yor­gos Lan­thi­mos, Athi­na Rachel Tsan­gari and oth­ers – both harsh and flu­id, bleak­ly fun­ny and strange­ly ter­ri­fy­ing. In 2019 he was nom­i­nat­ed for an Oscar for his stel­lar work on The Favourite, and is already receiv­ing rave notices for Ale­jan­dro Landes’s forth­com­ing Monos.

Yor­gos Mavrop­saridis is an alumnus

Woe betide the film­mak­er who dis­miss­es the record­ing of audio as sec­ondary to the cap­tur­ing of images. Many a fea­ture has been scup­pered by poor sound qual­i­ty or ambi­ent inter­fer­ence. Albert Bai­ley grad­u­at­ed from LFS in the late ​’70s and has held pret­ty much every job avail­able in the sound depart­ment, from the boom oper­a­tor on mod clas­sic Quadrophe­nia (direct­ed by
fel­low LFS alum­nus Franc Rod­dam), to recordist on Paul Greengrass’s har­row­ing piece of fic­tion­al reportage, Bloody Sun­day. In a video he made for the 50^th anniver­sary for the school, Bai­ley espous­es grab­bing what’s in front of you in the ear­ly days – take the expe­ri­ence when it comes and allow fate to lead the way.

Albert Bai­ley is an alumnus

It’s hard to think of a high­er met­ric of achieve­ment than becom­ing Christo­pher Nolan’s go-to art direc­tor, but Su Whitak­er is liv­ing that par­tic­u­lar dream. Kick­ing off her career in the mid 1980s, she rose up through the ranks of tele­vi­sion, main­ly work­ing in the art depart­ment, before tak­ing the leap to art direc­tor in the ear­ly ​’00s and work­ing on giant-sized goth­ic super­hero block­busters such as Bat­man Begins, X‑Men: First Class and The Dark Knight Rises.

Yet she’s some­one who is able to quick­ly adapt to dif­fer­ent types of mate­r­i­al and dif­fer­ent styles of sto­ry­telling, hav­ing plied her trade on domes­tic dra­mas (The Children’s Act), knock­about com­e­dy (Holmes and Wat­son) and live action/​animation hybrid films (Padding­ton). Her job is com­ple­men­tary to that of the cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er, in that she is cre­at­ing the visu­al feel to the film, albeit from the oth­er side of the lens.

Su Whitak­er is a Vis­it­ing Pro­duc­tion Design­er at LFS

Glanc­ing over his CV, you’d be inclined to refer to Boaz David­son as a one-man film indus­try, as he’d pret­ty much worked every job you can have, from the down-and-dirty larks of being on set, to hit­ting the phones in the back rooms and mak­ing sure the mon­ey comes through for oth­er peo­ple to make movies.

His cult break­through came in 1975 with the hit teen movie Lemon Pop­si­cle, the Hebrew com­ing-of-age movie which fol­lowed five boys look­ing for love in 1950s Tel Aviv. David­son is an exam­ple of some­one who can write to a for­mu­la, punch­ing out scripts for sex come­dies, action epics and Z‑grade TV movie quick­ies such as Snake­man, Shark­Man and Mega Snake. LFS stu­dents ded­i­cate a full year to learn­ing the craft of screen­writ­ing, with a focus on shorts, fea­tures and series.

Boaz David­son is an alumnus

It’s some­thing of a cliché that, to the lay observ­er, it’s hard to know exact­ly what the producer’s func­tion is on a movie. If the direc­tor is the engine, then the pro­duc­er is the petrol which allows that engine to purr. And the more way­ward and excit­ing the direc­tor, the more inge­nious and intu­itive the pro­duc­er needs to be. The late Derek Jar­man gift­ed us with a cor­pus of work unim­peach­able in its orig­i­nal­i­ty and pas­sion, and for three of his sub­lime lat­er works – Aria, The Last of Eng­land and War Requiem – the pup­pet mas­ter was one Don Boyd.

He had worked as a pro­duc­er and direc­tor since the mid ​’70s, and has described him­self as ​“a direc­tor-ori­en­tat­ed audi­ence-con­scious film-mar­ket­ing edi­tor”. But his main line of work includes secur­ing fund­ing for mav­er­ick film­mak­ers to do their thing, as well as act­ing as a cre­ative sound­ing board for cin­e­mat­ic experimentation.

Don Boyd is an alumnus

For more infor­ma­tion about LFS’ Mas­ters Degrees, head to lfs​.org​.uk and apply now.