To many of us, the world of filmmaking may seem as unfathomable as life forms on Mars and the profession's jargon undecipherable. Now, there is an opportunity for even the uninitiated to show off their creativity through the camera lens. The Film Arts Institute (影藝學苑, FAI) in Ximending (西門町) has held a broad selection of evening and weekend courses covering scriptwriting, filmmaking, acting, marketing and film festival management, for the past three years. The fall session begins tomorrow night with eight hands-on training courses.
Past guest instructors include filmmaker Chang Tso-chi (張作驥), film critic Wen Tien-hsiang (聞天祥), Golden Horse winning cinematographer Liao Pen-jung (廖本榕) and veteran film buyer Patrick Huang (黃茂昌) to name a few. Many more are scheduled to participate in the institute's upcoming schedule, which aims to expand the local film industry's talent pool.
The fall program's topics include storyboards, cinematography, film editing and sound recording will be covered to enable students to complete films by themselves. The behind-the-scenes reality of independent filmmaking will be revealed by producers of recent box-office hits such as The Heirloom (宅變), Do Over (一年之初) and Exit No. 6 (六號出口) .
Photo: courtesy of The Film Arts Institute
Tian Kai-leong (田開良), the scriptwriter of award-winning After This Our Exile (父子), will deliver a lecture on how to translate creative ideas into a filmable script. Taking students into the distribution side of the industry, managers from Group Power Workshop (群體娛樂), Swallow Wings Film (海鵬影業) and 20th Century Fox, Taiwan will share their marketing strategies with students, while directors Chen Huai-en (陳懷恩), Cheng Wen-tang (鄭文堂) and Chu Yu-ning (瞿友寧) will discus how to tell a good story through the lens.
FAI is located at 3F, 89, Wuchang St Sec 2, Taipei (台北市武昌街二段89號3樓). All classes are in Mandarin. For more information, visit the institute's Web site at www.filmarts.org.tw or call (02) 2370-9474.
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