Filmmaking Bootcamp

After last year’s lockdown impacted the practical aspects of the Macleans College Media Studies course, a filmmaking bootcamp was run to upskill students.

Groups of students had 10 hours to plan, design, film and edit a short film that had to contain certain elements. Each group was given a different genre - such as supernatural horror, heist film, an anti-rom-com - and all groups had to include a character called Bailey Smith who is an optimist, a leaf as a prop, the editing technique of a match cut, and the line of dialogue "just put that down nice and easy”.

The groups rose to the challenge using some guerrilla filmmaking strategies as they transformed the school into film sets. Classrooms became bedrooms, interrogation rooms and private eye detective agencies, while the nearby park featured chase scenes and supernatural events. The final hours of the day saw all teams racing to polish off the editing of their films to turn them in by the seven o’clock deadline.

This is the first filmmaking event of the year for the media studies department. The skills learnt from this day will now be used to enter short film competitions and make films for the media studies course. The best of these will be showcased later in the year at the Macademy Awards.