/Workshop.01

01 ...05 August

Summer Workshop

Looking
and filming

Mercedes Álvarez
in collaboration with La Plantación - Encuentros y Conocimiento

Escola Secundária de Melgaço

Based on the filmmaker's experience, this workshop proposes to share the construction and study of the process of creating a documentary film, throughout all its phases.

The cinema of the real will be approached as a dialectic between the 3 fundamental phases of its creation: what one looks at to be filmed, the unique moment of shooting and the gaze at what is filmed.

The singularities of a cinematographic project will be analyzed and how the different stages of creation interact, how their order is changed and the implications of the different modes of production.


Contents:

1. Looking to Shoot

Before placing the camera. Observation and exploration.
Anticipation; the preventive gaze, dreaming the images.
The script as an instrument. Open script, previous script, investigation script.

2. Shooting to look

Capture, waiting and attention. Beyond the camera’s viewfinder.
Shooting to editing. In and out of shot.
The camera that looks: the look that shoots, the look of waiting, the look that provokes.

3. Editing as cinematographic writing

Filmed memory. Visualizing, reflecting, imagining.
The script rewritten. The hidden account of captured images.
The thinking shape; sketches and partial assemblies.
Rhythm, tempo and melody in editing. The echo, the resonance and the silence.
Reading and understanding of space; to hide and show, screen and off screen.
Captured time and ellipse; portrait, testimony, presence and absence.
The commentary image, the voice over, the inter-title.
Sound and ambient sound, dialogue and paragraph, rhythm, silence and breathing.

Mercedes Álvarez will go through all these contents from the analysis of selected examples of cinematographic fragments of her work, as well as examples from the past and recent histories of cinema.

Objectives

The functions, resources and possibilities of cinematographic editing will be addressed. The editing process as an authentic writing of images, words and sounds, as art and technique of the composition of time, space and the story within the work.
Editing is not just another phase, isolated and independent, within the process of carrying out a work. In this sense, this workshop will also analyze the editing work according to the investigation, observation and screenplay phases, which precede and accompany the shooting. Currently, this correlation of the different phases of the making of a cinematographic work gravitate towards the work of editing as the writing of the film, becoming particularly relevant in works of individual authorship, where digital techniques and materials simplify the production and capture of images.
The analysis of this cinematographic process on the real aims to provoke a revolving reflection around the look; a counterpoint to the flood and noise of images that currently make it difficult for us to gaze, think, imagine and understand.

Recipients

Directors, Video Artists, Film Students, Audiovisual Arts and Communication, Image and Sound, Screenwriters, Writers, Producers, Actors and anyone with a keen interest in auteur cinema.

Scheduling

August 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5, 2022

Program

Transportation

MDOC organization will ensure the following transportation for the participants in collaboration with LaPlantación - Encuentros y Conocimiento.

more details

Registration

Price: 625€ (with accomodation + full board) or 535€ (without accomodation + meals)

Online registration at la plantacion.

The number of entries is limited and will be accepted on a first-come, first-served basis.

• The organization will guarantee a Certificate of Participation.

• Languages used in the Summer Workshop "Looking and filming" with Mercedes Álvarez, will be Portuguese and Spanish.

Registration

Requirement

Notebook for taking notes. Personal works can be shared with Mercedes Álvarez for analysis.

mercedes álvarez

Tutor

Mercedes Alvarez

Mercedes Alvarez – Spanish filmmaker. Born in Castilla y Leon. In 1997, she directed a short fiction film El Viento Áfrican. Since 1998, she has focused her attention on documentary and participated in the Masters of Creative Documentary from la Universidad Pompeu Fabra of Barcelona. She worked on the film En Construccíon, by José Luis Guerin, as image editor. In 2004, Mercedes directed her first film, the documentary The Sky Turns, winning several awards at numerous festivals. Recently, she directed the film Mercado de Futuros, selected for some the most important festivals. Mercedes understands documentary cinema in an open way “it is a story linked to various associations, to exchanges between filmmakers from different countries, to minority circuits, to film clubs”. In her films, she finds the time to stop and think and look with new eyes, to separate the essential from the superfluous “Images are loaded with such an intention, in fiction and advertising, that it does not allow the spectator to imagine, to reach conclusions for himself. You have to trust the viewer's intelligence, it's a creative element that we have to respect”. “Militant cinema will always be necessary, but I trust more in militancy along a path, not in a single work with a social message. This implies the creation of an ethical code, a principle that mainly has to do with what you don't want to do, like not being rhetorical or using stereotypes. I think that when we expose a problem we should go deeper into it. It is a moral stance: when filmmakers understand the power of images, they will realize that it is necessary to tell things differently.