Director of photography Slawomir Idziak (Dekalog, Trois Couleurs: Blue, Black Hawk Down, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix): "There is no such industry (and cinema, besides being an art is created in an industrial system) which will govern such a strong, single-centred monopoly as there is in the domain of entertainment and film. We are, in a certain sense, culturally colonized. This process of cultural colonization which we witness when watching programmes of European cinemas, influences our collective subconscious. One could say that each one of us, wherever he or she was born, is a citizen of two cultures - our own, linked to our birthplace, and the American culture, which subjugates our minds through hundreds of thousands of American films, which we watch throughout our lives."

Juliette Binoche in Krzysztof Kieslowski's "Trois couleurs: Bleu" (cinematography: Slawomir Idziak)

Cinematographer Slawomir Idziak has created a very impressive body of work. His collaboration with Krzysztof Kieślowski has resulted in stunning visual storytelling. He eventually went on to Hollywood and worked with Ridley Scott, John Sayles, Michael Winterbottom and John Duigan. In 2002 he was nominated for an Academy Award as well as a BAFTA award for 'Best Cinematography' in the film "Black Hawk Down". He teaches at film schools in Berlin, London and Copenhagen, and also conducts seminars in cinematography in other countries. He was the director of photography for "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix".

Slawomir Idziak is currently working on a Virtual Film Studio Web site called Film Spring Open which gives users an opportunity to present work to global audiences and to make films online. Participants can share ideas, exchange equipment or write scripts together. The aim is to create an international community of filmmakers who will support each other, make films together and will care about the advertising and distribution of their films.

Exclusively on our site his essay about the changing filmlandscape.

During 40 years of my professional life a lot of things have changed in the Film Landscape. Some of them rapidly and others much slower. What is most visible is the new digital technology. The technological revolution is the first problem which strikes our eyes.

But we have to notice as well that in the era of colossal changes in film technique, the manner in which films are made remains the same. It appears as if the system in which films is produced were the same as if there were no changes. It is very typical as a human being. We adapt very quickly to novelties and at the same time we behave in such way as if nothing happened.

This extremely human instinct of attaching oneself to a certain tradition and the aversion to occurring changes is also very visible in the film education system.
When lecturing in various film schools and training centres in Europe, I often have the impression that they prepare the students "for yesterday". I remember exactly being taught "black and white photography" for five years at the film school in Lodz (then considered as one of the best European film schools). I do not have to add that my first film was in colour.
The necessity of thinking "forward" is usually absent from cineaste education.
The basic task before proceeding with any educational programme should be the analysis of what surrounds us, and the attempt to anticipate the nearest future.

There is no such industry (and cinema, besides being an art is created in an
industrial system) which will govern such a strong, single-centred monopoly as there is in the domain of entertainment and film. We are, in a certain sense, culturally colonized. This process of cultural colonization which we witness when watching programmes of European cinemas, influences our collective subconscious. One could say that each one of us, wherever he or she was born, is a citizen of two cultures - our own, linked to our birthplace, and the American culture, which subjugates our minds through hundreds of thousands of American films, which we watch throughout our lives. Already as a grown-up man, I surprised found that in the Polish justice system there is no such institution as the Jury.
When one watches films - school works by students (and I am not talking about exceptions here) one can clearly see the deep impact of this cinematography on their way of thinking.
When travelling through Europe, we will not see a German film in Finland or a Finnish film in Italy.
The question is whether this is going to change, and whether the education of
future directors can support those undoubtedly necessary and essential changes for Cinema in Europe.
I think it can.
First of all, we have to realize that American cinema has now reached a specific place in its history. The super-power has already achieved everything - 85-90% of the world market revenue, and a further development is simply impossible. Not to say their economical situation and danger of recession. Once, it was commonly stated in the USA that no American would drive a small European or Japanese car. Time has challenged this viewpoint with the first petrol crisis. And also today , facing a revolution in the system of digital media, the strength of American cinema can suddenly be shattered. There is no road up, if you hit the ceiling. The only possible way is down. It is nonsense to shoot films for 200 millions if in Europe the same film, speaking only about production value s, you my do for half of the money. It is craziness to build Hadrian's Wall for 17 millions (King Arthur) when you can generate the same wall in a computer for 100000. I have no doubt that the American system is very conservative and unproductive and they can afford to do the picture in such a way because they are owner of 90 % of the world market.

Students very often keep asking how Studio production plans the coverage. My answer is stunning for them, but this very much true. On American (big budget) location shoot nobody bother to think about the question where to put the camera (vision of the scene). They simply shoot everything!
I have no doubt that, a competing media and film centre could and shall be created somewhere in the world , and it also depends on us whether this will happen in Europe. And we must be in hurry, others have the same plans and we may lose the race.

But to speak about the future we have first to depict our contemporary Landscape The short history of cinema in Europe can be extremely explicit here. If we think of Italian neorealism we mostly think of directors ' names. Because that is how it was. It was a cinematography in which the first violin was played solely by the director. Rossellini was tile only artistic and economic owner of cinema. We can call it Period of Director cinema
Much later, this romantic idea submitted to increasing competitions and market laws had to start crumbling. Directors tried to defend themselves, and like F. Truffaut with a group of directors regrouped around the "Cahiers du Cinema", they tried to create something in the shape of a producer's group. In Germany, "FilmVerlag der Autoren" was an association of artists who tried to defend the originality of their films in the new economic reality. Director's cinema came to an end. European cinema tum to cinema of producers.
What is it like now? When one observes the statistics and profits of international cinema business there is no doubt that it is an industrial cinematography, in which the leading violin is played by big American (often with European financial contributions) studios.
On the one hand, we have big shows made for hundreds of millions of dollars , and on the other our local, small films, often called "cinema-auteur" . Russell Crowe is a star in every European country, but Till Schweiger, German star, and Daniel Olbrychski, after crossing the bridge and the border on the Oder River is not a celebrity any longer. Nobody knows Daniel in Germany and nobody knows Till in Poland.

Let us go back to our European market. To make good films we believe we have to have good directors.
When one observes the definition of the profession of a film director in practice (taking into account those who have been successful in their profession) one notices quickly that the definition is a very wide one. Mostly, they are the authors of screenplays, people with literary talents . Not because others are not able to direct films based on somebody else's idea, but because someone who writes his own screenplays will much more easily find the producer and money for shooting them. Being a new fresh director, graduate of the film school (taking into account overproduction of the young talents) there is not much argument nowadays to persuade.producers to give the money for the production.
Money! As we all know, money necessary for filmmaking is not lying there on the streets. The future film director must really put a lot of effort into finding the financial means necessary for the creation of his work. Often, when talking or working with young directors I admire their economic knowledge, necessary for working in this profession. (It is very strange how profile of many schools has changed in last 20 years. The students nowadays are taught about economical aspects of film making but such subject like for example psychological aspects of creativity is absent from film education)
Promotion. I have been teaching in various film schools for many years, and I sadly notice that people with talents for PR find the money for making their films much faster than the quiet and sensitive types (should we be happy with such outcome?). It is no longer enough to produce a good film, one also has to be able to sell it, i.e. sell oneself.
Nowadays Dramaturgy starts before we even enter the cinema. Promotion, star system festivals all of this is the standard condition of potential success. Single individual will mostly lose against institutions.

And then remains the directing. The director is like an orchestra conductor, who whether he is using his own composition or someone else's score, has to turn it into a piece arousing emotions in the spectator.
I am afraid to say that the so called director is overburden by responsibilities. I just counted above four different professions.
And we should not to forget that in the middle of all this noise, thousands of responsibilities, and people shouting "action" and "cut" on the set, he has to bear in his mind the vision of something that later on, in a dark cinema room, has to touch, make people laugh or cry, awaken their emotions. The questions arise?
Is this an easy task? And do we prepare our students well to this purpose?
I really doubt it , because I often get to deal with educated professionals on the film set. And I see their helplessness.

There are a thousand reasons for this. Bigger or smaller. I will try to mention those I personally consider important. The model of film education is oriented towards the ego of the individual artist who is to execute his artistic visions in the future. An example of this are schools in which directors, but also specialists in other areas (cinematography, editing, and set designing) learn their profession.
The students, would to be future directors, feel immediately that they are better than their colleagues in other departments. They have not achieved anything yet, and they are already taking care (exposing) their leader' s ego.
Why is it so?
In Europe we love, we cultivate the myth of a "cinema-auteur". We are in praise of our local auteur, but we are extremely proud of those who have a wider international range. Such artists as Fellini, Antonioni, Wajda, Wenders,
Kieslowski, Fassbinder, Tykwer and Lars von Trier have a global influence,
The mind of a young person entering film school is full of these remarkable
masters, and film education often confirms his / her opinion, I sometimes have the feeling that this European auteur theory is used for suspicious interests. It is in someone's interest for the original, yet still commercially attractive films not to be made, Again, it is enough to look at the
numbers (profits) to see how much money films by great directors ("cinemaauteur") have made in comparison with great Studio shows.
Paradoxically we may say. Studio heads knows how to make the money doing films and we Europeans learn only how to lose them. Such exaggerated a bit and provocative sentence underlines only disparity between these two different philosophies of making the movies.

Why is it so?
As I wrote above - the individual always looses the fight with a well-organised institution.
Craftsmen have no chance against international industrial approach I believe that the promotion of the concept of "cinema-auteur" is abusive, and is
often an excuse for an unequal- from the market division point of view - status quo in the world and in Europe.
Do we still have a chance and what to do to change the status quo in Europe?
We cannot forget that the work on a film set is team work. (And I am not talking here about US hundreds of people on the set I shot nonsense). No man is able, in the tense system of filmmaking, to grasp the whole. This is simply not possible. A good film is made on the set as a collective creative activity. "A Conductor", someone who eventually makes the decision is necessary, but he needs his solo performers - great artists who play many instruments. And they shall play the same piece as the director. For this to happen, they must share or understand the director's idea. They must have the possibility of common creation. They must have the opportunity, already at the groundwork stage, to jointly participate in the process of "translating" the screenplay into an audiovisual work.
In my opinion the future director can be the Leading Force in the process of
filmmaking, as long as he/she do not treat the concept of "cinema-auteur" too literally . In the shadow of those great directors, which I have mentioned above, there is always a group of artists, specialists, composers, designers,
cinematographers, not to forget the actors. They (and I know this from my own experience with Wajda, Scott, Kieslowski) did or do their films in a creative group, always using the invention of others.
Such definition commonly and universally recognized idea of the director cinema we may try to put under question mark.

Why do we shoot films in the director's system at all (it is obviously a local phenomenon, because in the US they are already making films more in a producer's than director ' s system)? Why are we stubbornly stuck to such unproductive idea.
This occurs because such is the tradition, and furthermore a tradition very simple to explain. The beginnings of film required a very complex technique, for each carbon lamp two electricians were permanently necessary; in order to put the dolly on the tracks, 12 people were needed. A film had to be made by an army of people. To control such an army one had to use a military system. A general who gives orders was necessary, and that is how the vision of "cinema-auteur" was born.
Among such a number of people it would be hard to imagine any sensible creative discussion.
But as I mention at the beginning of my essay in the meantime, the whole world has changed.
We have small HD cameras, laptops with modern cut offline software and our films could be made by a handful of people, and that we can also built them as - and here is my point - as a creative team . Somehow, nobody thought that maybe four young students with different professional skills might assemble a creative group that will write screenplays and shoot films together under the shared name, let's say, "The Rolling Stones"," Beatles"

Impossible?

Of course this is possible. I have no doubt that films can be made just like chamber music, sharing the efforts, the success, and the failures together. Such groups can educate one another. It would be easer for them to collect the money to promote their films to control their ideas.
Of course a school educating future directors should speak about the chemistry of the creation process in a modem way, not trying to provide any ready-made solution, but should and must to take a more thinking "forward" approach pointing to young people potential new paths.

One of the reasons I will promote for cineaste education to add camera education is very obvious. It will help and should teach future directors humility.
I know of course that our creative engine is our Ego. Our project would be
successful only if we filter ideas through our sensitivity and experience. But our ego is our greatest enemy and it blinds us very often. On the location we need a creative partners to help us overcame our blocks and mistakes. We have to guard our ego and still be able to open to include the ideas of others . The success of such film schools like the National Film School in Copenhagen, the National Film School in London or the Film School in Lodz are based on student's cooperation from many departments. One has to tamper own ego to face so many talented individuals.
Whatever we say about the director's profession and its complexity, we must
remember that the process of translating words into images and sound is a process with only one aim. To get emotional response from would to be future audience.
The artificial world we built on our screens exists so long as long we manage to hold a decent level of emotion in front of the screens.

In order not to forget this aim in the complex and time-consuming machinery of film production, one requires the skill of control. We artists always have the vision of what we want to do, but we often forget that a real piece of art has its own life.
That what we create always differs more or less from our initial idea. At the very moment of film creation - our "baby" film developing the life of its own.
And clever directors just like good parents educating a child, should follow its divergence, and help it develop its best qualities. I shall always remember Andrzej Wajda's reaction after the projection of the materials from the film "Dyrygent" ("The Orchestra Conductor"): "Why, this is not a film about him, but about her!" The point was that the screenplay had been written from the point of view of a young, ambitious conductor. Wajda suddenly noticed that a far stronger character was the wife of the conductor, who played in the same orchestra. From that moment on, based on the same screenplay, we focused more on the character of Agnieszka, about whom Ingmar Bergman said later on that she is the most profound female character in Andrzej Wajda's films.

Young director ego and false understanding of nature of directing leads very often here to live a disaster. They behave on the set as blind and deaf individuals directing something that sits in their heads, not to see that their baby film took another direction. That their vision is already dead. Creative partners behind their back could help them to put under question mark their ill founded vision.
Let me repeat it again - we should teach would to be future director's humility. We should help them to work in the creative group. To open up for the other artist suggestion.

I have seen it too many times and believe me; it is always painful to watch how a failure in the young director's profession is life failure as well. A mediocre first film often means an exclusion from the profession for years, if not for ever.
Yes, film schools do prepare directors for working in their profession, educating them in various domains. They have seminars and classes concerning work with actors. They are taught staging. Editing (in my opinion weak spot in cineaste education), working with the camera. However no one (or very seldom) teaches them how to apply this knowledge on the set / location. What is more important and what less on professional set where in front of young insecure directors are technicians waiting for orders to fulfil. They fill lonely and don't know how to move the complex film machinery forward. I often have the feeling, when observing those young adepts working on the set that they are doing something that simply cannot be done. They come on the set with a vision of an American action film, as if they were forgetting that those films cost hundreds of millions of dollars, that the shooting time can reach 20 weeks, and that the attempt to pursue this goal when one only has 8 weeks and 4 million dollars is doomed to failure in advance. They forget, or they just do not know that the making of a professional feature is something entirely different from shooting a student film. Not to mention dramaturgy. The difference between a short film and a two-hour feature show is the same as between running 100 meters and a marathon . In school , they are trained for four years how to run 100 meters. And nearly all ,dreams to shoot marathon-full length feature. I remember the Hollywood parlance about three conditions to do the good movie

I. good script
2. good script
3. and one more- good script

Let me add my two cents to this very important stage of education. Our films with the exemption of the fully storyboarded Studio big shows are based on the typically formatted scripts.
Many years ago it was a technological must, only one way to produce the movie.
First stage literature translated to form of movie script and then straight to stage or location with complicated technique being operated by hundreds of people.
But existing script format is only a literary record and a very poor one.

Many of its most important components are not at all written. Let me mention here the visual side. Visual dramaturgy is governed by different rules than the
dramaturgy of the word. A conflict often arises here .
Today thanks to digital cameras we can and should easily imagine additional
platform between these two stages. Would to be Director after completing the
script can shoot with the help of digital cameras sort of would to be outline for his future film. Thanks to such technique we would save a lot of money being wasted on the sets of ill founded projects. Producers before "to green" lighting money for the film would have a much better idea of what kind of project they are about to invest in, when they could have a chance to see such outline . Digital cameras should be a must; a tool number one in hands of students would to be cinema director. In my opinion process of modern film education should include digital outlining would to be students films.
But apart from that we should discuss new multimedia format ofthe scripts. Not to say interactive dramaturgy for would to be internet as a new distribution platform.
With the help of some participants of filmspring workshops I have created
websites devoted to European collaboration having in mind internet as a future www.filmspringopen.eu and www.filmspringagency.com : Have a look at it and please feel free to comment. The site is still under construction and we are eager to include any creative ideas for the future ofthe film making.

A lot of people are sceptical when one mentions the possibility to build here in new Europe a strong and competitive cinema centre .
Let me remind you of only one name and country .
New Zealand before and after Peter Jackson. He had a vision. Let us try to find one for the future of cinema in Europe.

Slawornir Idziak, Warsaw 30/10/2008

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