ADVANCED IMMERSION CERTIFICATE

Colorado Film School now offers anAdvanced Certificate in an eleven month immersion program. Students take a full 60 credits of Film and Video courses in an intensive eleven month program. In each of five, seven and a half week "pentamesters" students complete four three-credit courses, attending class from 9:00 AM to 6:00 PM Monday through Thursday with evenings and three day weekends to work on their projects.

The Advanced Immersion Program is a skillsbased practical program that focuses on story and character development and the filmic means to express them in a way that engages and stimulates audiences. The program is currently focused on Writing/Directing majors.

Prospective students are cautioned that the pace of the program and expectations of student commitment are very high. CFS Director Frederic Lahey asks prospective students to be able to find financial support for "a full year commitment to nothing but mastery of the storytelling crafts of film and video. There will be no time for holding down an outside job."

Pentamester I

The first Pentamester has Video Production I/Video Post I, getting your hands on equipment, shooting and editing videos right away. You’ll make a silent and a sync dialogue High Definition (HD) videos while gaining mastery of production considerations and Final Cut Pro editing software.

This course sequence is about the establishment of a personal baseline standard of instinctual storytelling through the film/video medium. As you build skills, experience, and confidence, you will rise above the work you do here. It is in Production I and Post I that you will be encountering professional standards of storytelling for the first time.

Short Script Analysis is to help you understand the structure of the short form film to prepare you to build your own short scripts. As you analyze short films and scripts you will gain an understanding of the structure needed to tell your own stories in ways that make them come alive to an audience.

Development of Film Expression is an analysis of film language course, designed to help directors and filmmakers enter the medium by analyzing scenes, sequences and films, looking at the structure of film expression (lighting, composition, graphics, movement, editing, the use of time, etc.) in classic and contemporary films.

Pentamester II

The second pentamester brings in acting, with students learning how to break down scenes into beats, develop characters, and become familiar with acting itself and the vocabulary of an actor. At CFS we use the Stanislavski system, the foundation of American Method acting. Our faculty, Galina Bulgakova, was trained at Moscow Theater Arts, founded by Stanislavski.

Students, working from what they learned through analyzing scripts in the previous pentamester, use the Writing the Short Script class to develop their own original scripts for their Production classes. Here the focus is on creating believable, shoot-able stories with compelling characters in a workshop environment. Production Management is also taught second Pentamester, including film management software. Students breakdown a film or TV show and schedule and budget it, while working on their own student production projects. Real world production budgets are used for student productions through our custom software program, so that students know what costs they will have to justify when they get into the real world, where equipment access doesn’t come with the program, like it does at CFS.

Video Production II is shot in HD using techniques and scripts that have significantly advanced from their first outing in Production I. Now your original stories are gaining the seasoning of structure and experience. Your final project is preceded by a series of short scene exercises intended to open your imagination to new means of audio/visual expression.

Pentamester III

Video Post Production II allows students to edit their Production II piece after completing principal photography in the previous Pentamester. In this class, software lessons in FCP are reinforced, Motion, and Color and introduced, and sound design is explored in Sound Track. Beyond the software, editing aesthetics is explored in the post phase of your Production II final project and methods for accentuating and revealing story and character are underlined.

As students are learning what they missed in their Production II project by editing the footage in Post II, they begin breaking down scenes and short scripts in Directing Workshop. The emphasis in this class will be on script interpretation, directing, and especially directing actors. Student directors choose a project that they have not written, so that they approach the material with a fresh and clear perspective, rather than from the more internal approach of a writer/director. This is to emphasize the importance of translating scripts into performance and scenes and story, with believable through lines and conception.

Students also begin an intensive hands-on Film/Video Lighting course, learning how to better evoke character, mood and emotion with light. You will gain familiarity with industry standard equipment for studio and location shooting with our impressive inventory of equipment and our highly skilled faculty.

Production Preparation is for scripting, script polishing, casting, securing locations, budgeting, and pre-producing a project for the final Production III film which will be your highest quality piece for the one-year program. In this preparation class, you will put together what you have learned about screenwriting, production management, acting, directing, and lighting to set up your graduation production.

Pentamester IV

You’ll take an intensive hands-on Film/Video Camera course, finding the best ways to squeeze expression out of a camera and a lens whether shooting on film or HD video. You’ll focus on depth of field, composition, and ways to move the camera that engages an audience in the worlds you create.

A Sound course which works with sound recording, the physics of sound, and an introduction to industry standard audio post production including building music and effects tracks. Clean dialogue recording is the first requirement, but it is the soundtrack that develops the feeling of the missing third dimension in film.

Film/Video Business introduces students to the basic principles of business and how they apply to the motion picture industry. The class covers a variety of topics from new venture creation to intellectual property to accounting and finance.

Film/Video Production III engages in the production that was developed in Production Preparation the previous pentamester. Performances are developed, the look is refined, the crew is engaged, and your graduation project is lensed.

Pentamester V

Pentamester V: Film/Video Post III is where you edit your final work, build your music and effects tracks, and polish your final production. All that you have learned will be summed up in this production that should be of professional quality. It is your entrée into the professional world.

At the same time you will take a course on Producing the Independent Film, that builds on the lessons and business plans generated in the Film/Video Business class. You should leave this two course sequence with a polished business plan for your first feature including market analysis and return on investment (ROI) tables for potential investors.

Graduation!

Upon completion of your Advanced Immersion Program you receive a Certificate and head out into the industry with a DVD reel of your work, a business plan for your first feature, and a solid Treatment for a feature film or TV series.

In eleven months you will have learned and accomplished more than most graduate 3-year MFA students in the best film schools. You will have earned 60 undergraduate credits (the same number of credits as an MFA program) that have accreditation from the Higher Learning Commission of the North Central Association of Colleges and Schools, that should be transferable to any University. (Most well known intensive programs only have vocational accreditation and cannot be transferred to a University.) Now you are ready for business!

Students must register for all eight courses (four courses in two 7.5 week pentamesters) offered each semester. Contact the Program Coordinator for more information.