Film study club

The idea

Watching a lot of films doesn't teach directing on its own. An audience follows the story and forgets how it was told. A director watches for the choices: where the camera stands, when the cut comes, what we hear before we see it. Film schools and film clubs train that second way of watching, and it lasts best in a group, where a fixed evening and other people's eyes keep it going.

The club's year is a run of seasons. A Season is four to eight weeks on one director, movement or craft, built around one question. Each week the club discusses one Film that members watch at home with one Focus, the craft everyone watches for: staging (where people stand and move), camera, editing, sound, performance, light and color, or story. Before the meeting, every member sends a Note: one moment, one question. One member prepares a Breakdown, one scene taken apart shot by shot. At the meeting the group names what it saw, and every Technique it names goes into a toolkit the club keeps for good.

In any work tool, this becomes six kinds of linked records: seasons, films whose workflow runs from Proposed through Programmed to Discussed, the notes members send, scene breakdowns, techniques and members. Members never need to open the tool: they join, suggest films, send notes and hand in breakdowns through forms, and two or three organizers run the rest. The meeting runs from a list of the week's notes in film order, a reminder chases a missing breakdown before each meeting, and a formula turns each breakdown's shot count into the scene's average shot length. It's a curriculum the club writes as it watches, not a film diary.

How it runs

Follow one film, The Last Tram, from a member's suggestion to the club's toolkit.

1. Someone joins, someone suggests. People join through the Join the club form and become Member records, Active from the start; most never open the tool. One member suggests The Last Tram through the Suggest a film form, with its director, its year and one line on Why watch it: "a tram stop at night, four minutes, and nothing happens". It lands on the Watchlist in Proposed.
2. The programmer plans a season. The Programmer, the organizer who plans the club's seasons (in a class, the teacher), sets up Suspense with its Big question, "How do directors make us wait?", and its Dates, six weeks starting next month. The season is Planned until its first meeting. The programmer picks six films from the Watchlist and links each to the season; the Added to season rule moves each to Programmed, off the watchlist. The programmer gives each a Meeting date, the evening the club discusses it. Suggestions are where the choice starts, not a vote: a film the programmer won't show moves to Passed, with a line why in its description, so whoever suggested it hears back.
3. The host prepares the evening. Each film has a Host, the organizer who runs its meeting; often one person hosts a whole season. Two weeks ahead, the host gives The Last Tram its focus, Sound, and asks a member to be its Presenter, the one who will break down a scene. To choose, the host opens Members: every active member with their Times presented and Days since note, so presenting goes round and nobody drifts off unnoticed. Then the host sends members the Program, every season not yet done with its films, meeting dates, focuses and presenters, and Where to watch each film.
4. Everyone watches for the focus. In the week before the meeting, members watch the film, twice if they can: once as an audience, once for the focus alone. Each sends a note through the Send a note form: the Minute of one moment, what they noticed there in one sentence, which becomes the note's name, and one Question for the group. One note on The Last Tram, at minute 41: "The bell rings a full shot before we see the tram." Its question: "Would it be as tense if we saw the tram first?"
5. The presenter takes one scene apart. The presenter picks the tram stop and breaks it down shot by shot: one line per shot with its size, how much of the frame a person fills, from extreme long shot to extreme close-up; its angle; its movement; its length in seconds; and what it shows. A paragraph follows on what the director chose and what else they could have done. The presenter hands it in through the Submit a breakdown form with its Scene start, the minute it begins, its Scene length in seconds and its number of Shots. The breakdown's Average shot length, the scene's seconds divided by its shots, says how fast it's cut: 252 seconds in 9 shots is 28 seconds a shot, slow for a thriller, and that's the point.
6. Three days out, if no breakdown has come in, the Breakdown check rule reminds the host, who checks in with the presenter. A film is Not ready, red on the Program, when it's a week out with no focus or no presenter, three days out with no breakdown, or past its meeting date and still Programmed.
7. The meeting. The host opens Next meeting: every note for the coming meeting, in film order. The presenter plays the scene and walks the group through it shot by shot, the breakdown on screen. Then the group goes through the notes from the earliest minute to the latest; each member says what they saw and asks their question. When the group agrees it has seen a move worth stealing, the host names it on the Toolkit, the club's techniques by Craft, and links it to the film. Sound before picture goes in under Sound, new; Empty frame first, already seen in two films, now counts three in its Times seen.
8. After the meeting, the host writes the evening's takeaways in the film's description and moves it to Discussed. A meeting that can't happen gets a new date from the host. When a breakdown never comes, the meeting runs on the notes alone, and the film stays without one for good.
9. The season ends. The programmer moved Suspense to Running at its first meeting; after its last, they move it to Done and write the club's answer to its big question in its description. The Season ends rule sends every film of it still Programmed back to Proposed and off the season, to wait on the Watchlist for another one. The Cutting pace report puts the average shot length of every scene the club has broken down side by side, colored by season: the difference between the patient films and the restless ones, in seconds.
10. Members come and go. When a member stops coming, the host moves them to Left and never deletes them, so their notes and breakdowns keep their name.

What people look at

• Every week, before the meeting — Next meeting: who has sent a note, and what the evening will cover. The Program: what each coming film still needs, red when it isn't ready.
• At the meeting — Next meeting again, walked from the first minute to the last, with the breakdown on screen; and the Toolkit, every technique by craft, to find a name before adding one.
• When planning a season — the Watchlist: what members have suggested and why, oldest first. Members: who presents next, and who has gone quiet.
• Any time — the four forms members use: Join the club, Suggest a film, Send a note and Submit a breakdown. The Cutting pace report: how fast each scene the club studied is cut, season by season. And How to run the film study club, this process on one screen.

The rules

These are all the automations; everything else in the story is done by people.

• Added to season: when a Proposed film is linked to a season, it moves to Programmed. The watchlist holds only films no season has claimed.
• Breakdown check: every day at 09:00, the host of every Programmed film whose meeting date is three days away and that has no breakdown yet is notified, to check in with its presenter.
• Season ends: when a season moves to Done, every film of it still Programmed moves back to Proposed and is unlinked from it. A film the club never got to waits on the watchlist, not in a finished season.

No automations in your tool? Then a person does each of these at the same moment, and the promises they keep below become practices.

What must stay true

Whatever anyone edits, adapts or corrects, these hold; each says what keeps it so.

• ★ Every film is watched for one thing. A programmed film has one focus, known to members a week before its meeting, and the notes and the talk stay on it. Shown by Not ready, red on the Program for a film a week out with no focus or no presenter; keeping the talk on the focus is a practice, the host's.
• ★ Every meeting takes one scene apart, shot by shot, with its shot list, its scene length and its shots. Kept by Breakdown check, which reminds the host three days ahead; shown by Not ready, red until the breakdown is in. A meeting held without one leaves its film with none.
• ★ The toolkit holds what the club has seen, not what it has read about: every technique links to the films where the group saw it. Shown on the Toolkit, where a technique seen in no film is red.
• One move, one name. Before adding a technique, the host looks for it on the Toolkit; a second name for the same move is merged into the first, its films moved over. A practice.
• The programmer chooses, and every suggestion gets an answer: programmed, or Passed with a line why. A practice; the Watchlist lists the oldest suggestions first.
• A finished season holds only films the club discussed. Kept by Season ends, which sends the rest back to the watchlist; a film discussed but never moved to Discussed is red on the Program once its date has passed, shown by Not ready, so the host moves it on before the season ends.
• People leave; their work stays. A member who leaves moves to Left and is never deleted, so their notes and breakdowns keep their name. A practice.

Making it yours

Decide these before you set it up; each has a default if you shrug.

• Other words: "Screening", "Class" or "Seminar" for meeting; "Term" or "Module" for season; "Lens" for focus; "Scene study" for breakdown. Rename freely; the mechanics stay.
• Watching together: a club that screens films at its meetings screens each one the week before it's discussed, so notes still come before the talk.
• Everyone presents: in a class, every student can break down a scene each week. Nothing in the model changes; Times presented then counts the work handed in.
• Sound off, picture off: a common trick. A staging focus works best with one scene watched again without sound; a sound focus, with eyes closed. It's a way of watching, not a field.
• Directors as records, when seasons keep returning to the same names: a Director database linked from Film, each director with their films beneath them.
• Shot by shot as data, when the club wants numbers across films, such as how often a director cuts to a close-up: a Shot database under Breakdown, one record per shot with its size, angle, movement and length. Past a few films a season, it's a research project, not a club.
• Shooting what you named: clubs that want to try their techniques add an Exercise database linked to Technique: one technique, one short scene shot on a phone, shown at the next meeting. This recipe stops at watching on purpose.
• Public screenings usually need a license from the rights holder; a License field on Film keeps it with the film.
• Too far: two focuses at once and nobody watches for either; two breakdowns in one evening and the notes never get their turn.

Sources

• Film Analysis, Yale University: the words for a shot list, from shot scale to angle and camera movement, and the crafts a focus can take.
• Picking a Program, chapter 10 of the Film Society Handbook, Australian Council of Film Societies, 2010: a programmer who chooses from members' suggestions rather than by vote, and a program set well ahead.
• Cinemetrics quantifies creativity in film, Susie Allen, University of Chicago News, 2015, on Yuri Tsivian's Cinemetrics: average shot length as a measure of a film's cutting pace.