Positive outcomes for student filmmakers in a pandemic

ABSTRACT

The Covid-19 pandemic has had significant impact on Film Production teaching in HE. This report details one HE’s changes to the production processes and deliverables for short fiction in response to lockdown. Despite confinement, students were enabled to develop their filmmaking skills in solo productions that also boosted their creative confidence. As measured by assessment outcomes and student feedback, these outcomes were noticeable amongst women students and can be attributed to the suspension of group working. Pandemic conditions have offered lessons for educators in film production.

KEYWORDS:

• Media education
• pandemic
• gender
• attainment
• creativity
• group work

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 (British Film Commission 2021; European Film Commissions Network 2021)

2 For a light-hearted perspective on this subject, see Redoutable / Le Redoutable (Michel Hazanavicius, France, 2017); a hilarious yet also disquieting commentary on a brief period in the work and life of JL Godard.

3 That an uneven gender binarism of power is also acknowledged in academia is mirrored in the widespread support for the Athena Swan Charter.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Stephen Connolly

Stephen Connolly is a Senior Lecturer in Film Production at the University for the Creative Arts, Farnham. Connolly’s spatial cinema work explores our surroundings through the projected moving image beyond landscape; his Machine Space project focusing on the racial spatiality of Detroit was awarded First Prize by BAFTSS in 2018. His current research is exploring the spatial imaginaries of long-haul travel.