VES 50: Fundamentals of Filmmaking

Beneath the floorboards of Sever Hall, Robb Moss, lecturer in Visual and Environmental Studies (VES) and independent filmmaker, leads me into VES 50, “Fundamentals of Filmmaking,” and gallantly pulls out a chair. “This is the Crimson reporter I told you about,” he announces to the eight students chattering around a table. Then, turning to me: “Why don’t you tell us a little about yourself?”

Wow. Nobody has ever done that in my four years of high school and almost-semester of college journalism. But then, I have never experienced a class quite like Moss’. His friendly, easy-going yet businesslike attitude reflects the class’ atmosphere.

“I [like] the smallness and the closeness of [the class]. It becomes a very good experience for bonding with your classmates,” says Danielle M. O’Keefe ’08. “Generally, all my classes here have been like eight people, and when you’re there that much together, you develop friendships. And VES is really like an extracurricular, because you spend so much time at the studio together.”

The lights flicker off and a square of light pops up on a screen at the end of the table. Images appear and start moving across the screen. The 10-minute film follows a pregnant woman—the sister of one of the student filmmakers, Roberto C. Patino ’06—through her everyday life. She first appears on the screen, doing laundry and making breakfast. Later, the camera skims over a variety of inanimate objects in her life: a framed wedding picture, a Pilates pregnancy edition videocassette, a container of pregnancy nutrient supplements. The photographer follows her to work where she chats with a coworker, on a walk with her husband, in the car as she files her nails, and at the breakfast table.

Nobody is quiet during the screening. Everybody is talking. There is laughter when the woman chatters with her husband about a teenager who was elected mayor. And students are always intermittently offering remarks: “I like that. That’s a cool shot.” When the light flickers on, Moss comes out of the projector room and jumps into the discussion. He pushes the students, asking them what parts were clear, what parts they liked or didn’t, simultaneously offering his own praise of certain points in the film. He likes the vivid student discussion and participation; they offer good praise and constructive criticism—critique is an important aspect of the class.

“We’re just on a schedule where all of us have just finished filming,” says Jordan S. Fox, ’07, “and [now] we’re in the middle stages of finalizing the project and editing and stuff, so there’s a lot of critiquing.”

The film is Patino’s and partner Ben P. Gettinger’s ’08 project for the class’s second assignment: “Portrait of a Person.” The students pair up and choose one subject to follow around. The people that the pairs chose varied from housewives to barbers.

The class’s first project, “Light Journal,” was an individual project that used black-and-white film to capture the movement and play of natural light in everyday life. Starting next semester, the students will venture into their last project, in which they will produce a non-fiction film as a class. Patino, an English concentrator who will be attending film school following graduation, is convinced that Fundamentals of Filmmaking has been helpful to his goal of becoming a screenwriter and director.

“I think it is important to learn and internalize the concepts of filmmaking as opposed to video, even though it will be soon outdated,” Patino says, “because it runs on the basic principles that video is predicated upon. Learning filmmaking is like learning to drive stick shift.”

There are two different sections: one is taught on Mondays and Wednesdays by Moss; the other is taught on Tuesdays and Thursdays by Hooker Professor of the Visual Arts Alfred Guzzetti. All the classes are held in the basement of Sever and are three to four hours long.

“There’s a lot more interaction with the professor than there has been with any other professor I’ve had at Harvard,” says Fox, “and it’s really nice to be able to go one-on-one with the professor. It’s also fun to have something that’s hands-on—it’s a nice break from reading and writing papers, and I really like the subject.”

While filming and critiquing are essentials of the class, the syllabus holds a lot more in store for the students. Many of the classes involve watching and discussing professional films, mostly documentaries. There are also many technical classes where the students learn how to use the equipment as well as the several different cameras. Occasionally, directors visit the class and hold Q&A’s with the students. Still, a lot of the learning is gleaned from the students’ critiques of each other’s work.

“I like very much when a student shows work that the rest of the class understands is very good,” says Moss. “Good work begets even better work.”

An established independent filmmaker, Moss has produced a few films, including “The Same River Twice,” which premiered at the 2003 Sundance Film Festival a few years ago. He is currently working on another film, “Secrecy,” with Peter Galison, a history of science professor. As a professor, Moss is just as talented and efficient. His students say that he is always available for one-on-one conversation, relaxed and easygoing, but a strict taskmaster that keeps the class on schedule.

“All in all, this class is tremendously challenging—to your patience, to your time-managing, etc—but it really pays you off with a beautiful sense of accomplishment,” Patino says, “that you created a tangible roll of motion that, in working on it so much, carries a very distinct part of you in it.”