Discovering secret Hollywood on English Plus Film

Luiza Spreafico from Brazil completed the three-week English Plus Film course this summer at Kings Los Angeles. Here, she gives us an insight into the course, and shares the highlights of her time with us.

Since the first day inside the English Plus Film class at Kings, I was immersed into the Hollywood world and its secrets. All the other students were there either because they wanted to discover if they liked this industry or if they were already in and there is nothing better than learning English doing the thing you love! Every day in class, our teacher Martha Cotton tried to instigate us to go after news and information, because it is always logical to know about the topic before you discuss it. But other than that, our research lead the way to more information and even to things that we can’t find on the internet.

From the first day, Martha gave us two options, we could make a movie with the whole entire class (about 15 people making a movie) or we could separate in tiny groups and do a short film. Don’t get me wrong, doing a movie with the whole class seemed like an adventure! But not many people would be able to put their hands in it as much as others. So it seemed like the small groups would be a better option. That way everybody in the group would do something in every part of the process.

As the days went by, we did half the class work on our movies and the other half we learned about the equipment or even the aspects of acting, filming, coloring, writing and so on. Our teacher Martha always gave us the opportunity to express what we wanted to put more effort on and thanks to her assistant, Pichy, we always had some help and full attention at all times.

We passed through all the phases of a movie production: the idea, the firsts sketches, learning how to write a script and officially writing it, doing the storyboard, selecting the equipment and finally starting to shoot. During that time, everyone in the class knew how to share the time into the set. Some time one group was shooting and in other time was the other. When any question or doubt about the process came to mind, we only had to ask Martha or Pichy, and they were more than welcome to give us a hand.

Editing is the most complicated part in my opinion because it always causes some trouble. Not all people think the same, that’s a fact. But I think everyone managed to pass through that phase without ruining any friendships!

But, as we all know, the days go by very fast, and when we came to our senses it was already the day we were going to present our work! For some of us, our first work ever in the movie industry. The school programmed a screening of our movies, and it was so good because some people showed up to see our creations.

The students who were in any way undecided about whether they liked making movies or not in some way found their passion for the matter. And even people who already had this passion, discovered themselves even more into it. Three weeks were enough to make me wish for more!