The Seminar / Master Class

Every year, we organise one annual Master Class within. The Master Class is primarily a workshop which brings together professionals in Uganda’s film industry together with experts from the Danish Film Industry. The class includes a presentation of Danish experience in the field of (primarily) production of films for children and youth. Another focus is the distribution and film education for the young audiences.

The Master Class and Seminar in 2011 was on the theme “How to tell stories for the youth.” It was aimed at addressing appropriate media content for young people Considering that over 52% of Ugandans are under the age of 25 and to date, the film and Television industry in Uganda caters very little to this population bracket. There’s still a big gap in youth appropriate films and Television Programs, as most children in Uganda are being exposed to a lot of adult content.

Specific objective of the Seminar and Master Class were to:
– Gain and share experiences within the professional film industry about producing films for and about youth,
– Expose the targeted audience to the current potential of youth targeted films and the lack of youth targeted films in Uganda.

The Master Class was given by RumleHammerichwho is a Director and Teacher at the National Film School of Denmark. Mr.Hammerich presented his view upon good story telling and offered glimpses into his method of directing films for youth: how to structure a story, how to cast and direct young people, the importance of optimizing genre qualities when working in film and television. He also shared his personal opinions and experiences with the Master Class audience and showed clips from his film and television productions.

This year 2012, the Master Class will focus mainly on Writing Quality Scripts for Youth Films. The event will run from Friday 2nd November to Saturday 3rd November 2012 at Makerere University Main Hall – SENIOR COMMON ROOM. In this Master Class, Professor Rumle Hammerich, who is teaching at the national film schools in Denmark and Norway, will lead the Lab, but also involve all the participants along the way. The first day Rumle will lecture about dramaturgy and how to create a good structure in a script. He will introduce the 8 sequence structure for feature films and the 5 ½ sequence structure for short films. He will also approach the subject of character-development, themes and plots. A feature film will be screened and analyzed by the end of the first day. We will ask participants to send in proposals. We will then select 3 of the synopses as cases to be analysed and improved during the workshop, while involving the participants in the process. On the second day we will go through 3 synopses. The storyline must be (only) one page long, and the story must – in one way or the other – address a youth issue and a youth character/young characters. If you are a Film Maker, Director, Editor or Producer and would like to benefit from this two days program, please register with us now by sending an email to dpato@youthandfilm.org or call +256774643443 to find out more.

Fill in the form to join MASTER CLASS