Festival Masterclasses

On Friday the 9th of November we went on a media trip to the ASFF short film festival in York. We went to two master classes, a talk from the head of production at Warp films Barry Ryan, and listened to Danny Cohen the successful cinematographer talk about some of his work.

Warp Films Master Class

warp logo

Barry Ryan talked about the latest in film productions and a lot about Warp films and its achievements as this year it is celebrating its 10th year. He talked a lot about how to get ahead in the business and all about budgets and how much you truly make off box office intakes once all your financers and people who put money into the project have been paid.

It was really interesting to hear all about what his experiences have been working for Warp and he gave a lot of opinions on current issues and what the future looks like for film makers. He took some questions at the end of the session and this led into a discussion about how he got into the industry and he earlier also talked about how competitive it is and that the majority of aspiring young film makers are unlikely to become big and successful. Even though talking about this may come across quite negative, he spoke about how he originally wanted to be a director and he had realisation that there was better people than him at directing so he stuck to production which he knew he was good at, and now he is very successful at what he does.

He went into a lot of detail about how warp films have advertised and presented cover art for their films and how you need to get the attention of your target audience by showing them what they want. He gave example here of there cover art for dead man's shoes (Shane Meadows, 2004)


He talked about how here they showed a man holding an axe. Showing this would appeal to people who enjoy slasher and horror movies which are the kind of people who would also like this film. He mentioned about how they chose to simply use red, black and white as it is very striking and will bring attention in a simple way.

He spoke a lot about how they were celebrating 10 years and he mentioned all the achievements and what they have accomplished over that time, for example 18 films , 5 tv series and much more. He also mentioned a few future projects they are working on and it sounds like they are just going to continue to be more successful. He said that the 10 year celebrations are taking place all this year and in particular they are doing a special viewing of dead man's shoes but with the whole musical score being done by a live orchestra.

Danny Cohen Master Class

Danny Cohen

This master class was set up like a relaxed conversation between Danny Cohen and Mariayah Kaderbhai (asking him questions). He started by talking about how he got into the industry and how initially he did a social science degree and then became a photographic technician which gradually led into him being the cinematographer he is today.

Throughout the master class Danny gave useful tips to any aspiring cinematographers, for example he said that you have to be very resourceful, you're never going to have enough equipment or crew. He also said that you start small and make mistakes that then become something interesting. They then showed different clips from films that Danny had worked on and discussed what it was like and which were more of a challenge. Danny Cohen worked on This is England (Shane Meadows, 2006) which was made by Warp films. This linked very well with the Master class from earlier and both master classes will come in very handy when talking about British cinema in coursework and the exam. Danny continued to give useful tips saying that you need to make a good relationship with the director and learn how open they are to suggestions.

 He also gave more general tips not just about cinematography but he talked a lot about location and how directors like Shane Meadows got a lot of ideas and inspiration on location meaning that you have to react a lot to what you see when on location. He also spoke about some of the complications he comes across when working. For example, he was recently working on the film version of the musical Les Miserables. The director wanted all the actors to sing live and to preserve there voices this had to be done in as little takes as possible and with a few cameras on them at once so they then didn't have to reshoot from different angles. He then also talked a little bit about how by making them sing live this would  also make post filming harder as people would have had to edit out mic packs attached to them etc.

 The other films mentioned and talked about included, dead man's shoes (Shane Meadows,2004) another warp films production, Dive (a film for tv aired about 3 years ago), This is England 88 (the tv series) and Peer point (2005 another film for tv) and The Kings Speech (Tom Hooper, 2010).

In conclusion I found both master classes really interesting and I learnt a lot about the film industry and cinematography. I found the second one slightly more interesting as it was more about the actual making of the films in contrast to the first master class which was more about the industry and warp films as a company in general. Both I have found very helpful to understanding more about both subjects and I would definitely recommend anyone interested in media studies to go if they were to happen again.

cinematographer Danny Cohen talking about the lensing on The King's Speech