"If I were a milkshake..."

And so we returned. And to welcome us, we had a School of Drama [and Dance] assembly, in which people were typically enthusiastic about the year to come and the exciting creative lives we have ahead of us. Following this we had a full DFTV meeting, in which we would find out about the year to come. Adam's emphasis on keeping free from stress sounds good, if not entirely fictional at the Academy, but I will do my best to try and be a little more chilled this year. I've always been a little over-conscientious, which has had a tendency to make me worry about getting things done. Though Adam's suggestion that we might not be making many films this year wasn't the most inspiring news. I understand that things do get out of hand when too many shoots are going ahead - and I suppose to create a stress-free work environment for the lecturers, less shoots is better - but a lot of learning goes on on-set.

Following this re-introductory morning, we had a class with Andy, and were sent out on a mission to find out all we can about him. As other people have blogged, this personal touch was really clever to make us interested. What can we discover about Andy Dougan in half-an-hour? Quite a fun task, and I hope that nothing that was "reported" was too intrusive. Following the lesson, I had an interesting thought: Andy said that works of art are good primary sources. However, you can only draw conclusions from artwork by interpreting it, and that interpretation is a secondary source. If an artist used red-paint, then the statement "The red paint shows his anger at this stage in his life" is a secondary source interpretation, based on the art. The only primary source conclusion that can be made is "He used red paint".

On Wednesday we had our first class with Zam Salim, which was good fun. When watching clips from our most influential films, Zam was very good at articulating what he thought, and would often pin-point exactly what made the scene strong or what let it down. I think these lessons will prove really useful with the new emphasis on performance in our films, something which I agree could be stronger. I blame a mix of inexperience of the actors in working for screen, and our own inexperience in directing actors. Thankfully this class addresses the latter!

Thursday was a day off, and so that leaves Friday's screening of Metropolis. I found myself surprised at the strong narrative, which others have pointed out as being incredibly clear. This is particularly impressive given the missing reels. As Andy noted, some more footage has been discovered; apparently it was mislabelled on purpose to prevent people from destroying it during the Second World War. But I do wonder how much footage will be lost digitally over time. No one could ever back-up all the content on YouTube, but the problem doesn't end there. I read that 20% of the original Toy Story animation files were corrupted when they went to make the 10th Anniversary DVD. Obviously they restored them somehow, but it proves that digital storage isn't a viable option for preserving film. Anyway, I digress. Metropolis was a really good film, and it had a clear look for the future. The strong production design really has shaped our vision of the future, at least in media. To quote Charlotte, looking at the city-scape, "It's like Futurama!"

Yes, Charlotte. Yes it is.