Blog
•
Built for Industry: Alexander Hill
Publication date:
In this edition of Built for Industry, Ravensbourne University London film student Alexander Hill recounts his experiences of working with Academy Award-winning producer Lord David Puttnam.
Unique and longstanding industry links are a hallmark of a Ravensbourne education, meaning students have the opportunity to learn within the creative, technology and business sectors from day one. This immersive teaching ensures that students graduate from Ravensbourne as industry-ready professionals capable of transforming and innovating in their chosen fields.
Lord Puttnam worked with Ravensbourne students over a number of sessions, which then culminated in a special evening lecture for the wider community.
Here’s what Alexander had to say about his experience:
“When I initially joined the workshop, I didn’t really know much about David Puttnam. I had heard of some of his films, but other than that I wasn’t really familiar with his entire body of work. I wanted to learn new things and gain experience that I otherwise wouldn’t have, getting insight from someone with a wealth of experience in the film industry. After attending a few lectures, I found myself really enjoying it!
Alex quote
David has an excellent way of teaching. He’s both detailed with the way he explains things and extremely concise, not dwelling too long on one thing. ”
"David recommended watching The Killing Fields along with a few other films and I decided to watch it so I could get a taste of some of his work, and I loved it. It’s based on a true story; the film follows Sydney Schanberg, a New York Times journalist documenting his time in 1970s Cambodia during the Khmer Rouge regime. I didn’t really know much about the events that it was based but I was absolutely engrossed with what I was watching! The film really made me want to look more into the real-life events that the film was based on.
"During the project, I wanted to get some thoughts from David regarding up-and-coming filmmakers using webpages like YouTube and Vimeo to garner attention for future projects. I asked this because it was something I was considering myself. My idea was to create some short films as a platform to get future projects into film festivals. I thought this would be an interesting question to ask someone like David since he’s been working in the industry for decades and has seen the practices change overtime. His advice was that it would be good in the beginning but that I could submit a short film to a film festival by uploading the full film online, posting trailers and snippets of scenes on YouTube or Vimeo.
"While I was attending this workshop, I was also working on my Final Major Project (FMP). This involved joining a group and planning for the creation of a short film that would be made next term. I was the cinematographer for the project so I needed to think about how I would plan out the cinematography and shoot a key scene in our short film. The script I was working with was The Elevator Pitch, a comedy about a man trying to pitch his film script to an executive at the company he works at. There were a variety of issues while working on this project. For example, I didn’t get the script until later in the module.
Alex quote
However, one thing I learned from my time with David Puttnam is that you need to constantly stay moving with what you’re doing. Throughout my time working on the project, I was almost constantly trying to organise things and makes sure we were all on the same page.”
"To conclude, I very much enjoyed being a part of David’s Atticus Education project. It’s given me a lot to reflect on and taught me a lot of new things. Thank you so much to David and to the Ravensbourne film team for this opportunity!”
To find out more about studying Media, Film, TV or Music at Ravensbourne, you can visit our designated section of the website.
