Festival Masterclasses

Warp Films 
Masterclass

We had the pleasure of going to York to the ASFF Short Film Festival including a Warp Films masterclass featuring Barry Ryan. Barry Ryan is a producer for Warp Films, the company is celebrating there 10th year anniversary this year.  Danny Cohen  on the other hand is a cinematographer for Working Title and is a member of the British Society Of Cinematographers, He has worked on a number of films and TV projects for the past 12 years and is very successful.




Danny Cohen Masterclass

Danny Cohen

This masterclass was the second one we viewed, it was set up as a relaxed conversation between himself and Mariayah Kaderbhai. Danny Cohen began explaining his road to a cinematographer and surprisingly a cinematographer is not what he imagined himself doing. Initially he took a social science degree and then therefore became a photographic technician which is how he got into the filming industry.

Danny Cohen gave inspiring and general tips to the audience for any aspiring directors, producers and mainly cinematographers. An example of an inspiring tip would be when he said that "you have to be very resourceful, you're never going to have enough equipment or crew". He also said that you "start small and make mistakes that then becomes something interesting". 

The masterclass also included alot of footage in which Cohen had been a part of which gave the audience the scale of how many projects he had worked on well known films such as This Is England and The Kings Speech.

Barry Ryan Masterclass

Barry Ryan

This masterclass was the first of our viewings, this was set up in a much different way to Danny Cohens, Ryan had a presentation on screen which he used to address the audience and offer useful information. Ryan was keen to tell us that it was Warp Films 10th year anniversary. He elaborated on many different things including, marketing and distributing a film. He spoke a lot about how they were celebrating 10 years and he mentioned all the achievements and what they have accomplished over that time, for example 18 films and 5 TV series which i see as a valuable achievement.