Shooting a feature film - with five students

A former (21 year old) student of Ruurd, asked him if he wanted to shoot his first feature. 
Ruurd shot the film, used his own camera (Canon 5D Mark II), lighting, grip, audio equipment
and did the colour grading, and used the HP DreamColor Z27 monitor.

The film won the Tiliander, Den Boogaard Cultuurprijs 2014 Award.

After completing the feature film, Ruurd stated;
"It was one of the most wonderful and fun projects I have ever worked on!"

SAE Amsterdam

The students had to make a test - putting a special stocking in front of the lens and try to simulate the lighting that was used in the 1930's.
Music by Rudy Vallee, "A Kiss to Remember" and titles in the shape of the swirling swimmers of "Footlight Parade", 1933.

Re-creating a Screenshot

The SAE students of 2023, received the assignment to bring in their favourite screenshot of a movie and re-create this in the studio.
Each lighting class I teach, I inform the students that, when they re-create their favourite screenshot, to think of (creating) layers of light, as you would do in Photoshop.

One of the students, Giulia, took the creation of layers very seriously.

Re-creating the screenshot on the left she tried lighting both actors with one light. 
Which did not work. First of all because the faces are different then the original actors of the movie.
So, she created one layer of lighting of the man and another layer for the woman, this way she had total control over the amount of light hitting the actors faces.
She got rid of the spill-light on the rest of their bodies by using flags.

She did an excellent job on re-creating this screenshot!

SintLucas Eindhoven

The students received an assignment - creating a product-shot. They could pick any of five products and light it accordingly.

Student Experiences

 Film Books - Recommendations

A few quotes from this wonderful book:

"If the scene is uninteresting in cinematic terms, then layer upon layer of dialogue will only make it more so.
One of the tasks of the director as (s)he transfers a screenplay to the medium of the moving-image-with-sound is almost to forget what his characters are saying and re-imagine their behaviour as being mute, so that all thoughts, feelings and impulses are conveyed to the audience through - sound and vision - without speech.

"Hitchcock is suggesting that a good film should be ninety percent understandable even if dubbed into a language no one sitting in the auditorium understands.
Why?
Because a well-written, acted and directed film should be able to convey its emotional meaning through the inventive use of film grammar, not words.
And it is of course, the emotional and dramatic content of any scene that really counts".

Movie - Recommendations 

Directors - Recommendations

Film Noir Films - Recommendations