What Students are Saying
I enjoyed her workshop right from the start because it is sincere and very well organized with loads of notes and practical application. As a teacher for the last 11 years, I found it a pleasure to be on the receiving end of a very well prepared, intense and challenging series of lessons. Beyond the course, Randi's humour, energy, encouragement and years of experience on set make her a force to be reckoned with. Randi's course also covers so much more than pure script supervising and continuity, but also gave me an insight into all the departments I would be working with on set. Randi has also taken pains to make her course relevant to the changing face of the role of the script supervisor by bringing in a digital script supervisor to introduce students to the equipment and exciting challenges of "going digital".
Back in London, obviously we do things a little differently here, but I am grateful to Randi for the insights I have gained. As a Film and Media Studies teacher, I already tend to take a lot of interest in analyzing the construction of a film or TV show but, completely uncharacteristically, I now find myself looking for other things too. The other day I was watching an old re-run of a Remington Steele episode and found myself getting carried away with picking out "line of sight" inconsistencies and trying to track which sides characters exited or entered the frame; this was always my favourite show as a child and I found myself purposefully straying from the narrative and getting wrapped up in the continuity - really seeing certain things for the first time!
I don't mean I could no longer appreciate the story or the humour or that I was checking for errors, but rather that I could actually "see" how some of the on-set choices had been made. Contrary to what I'd anticipated, this new way of looking at a text has really enhanced my viewing of the text. It has also impacted on my own film work allowing me an insight into direction and enhancing my editing skills.
In my 9-5, I talk about the "construction" of films every day with my students and Randi's Script Supervisor course has enabled me to understand so much more about what I already love so much. British teenagers are not easy to please, but I have them eating out of my hands now when I take them through the pre-production stages of their short films for their A-Levels. I am able to equip students for their coursework from a position of far more insight. And students are beginning to see their end product from their on-set decision-making.
As they take on their respective roles of storyboarding, directing, filming and editing I am able to show them how their note-taking and preparation for a shoot can be far more methodical and insightful. I laughed when one of my students actually said, "Miss, I would have followed that shot up with a reverse close-up, but John wouldn't listen so now we are going to have to figure our way around that in the editing!" A Script Supervisor in the making, I thought!
I think one of the most beneficial skills I've gained from Randi's teaching is that she also challenged me to think like a director would. When she put her director's "hat" on we were really pushed to think beyond the script and see possible pit-falls ahead as would certainly be expected from us by a director on set - just keeping one step ahead and being able to support everyone on the set - Script Supervising is a real position of diplomacy. I believe it is also a lesser-known step towards directing, hence Randi's incredible insight into directing as well as Script Supervising.
All in all, this was an amazing and very worth-while course for prospective Script Supervisors, Directors and Film Editors. I cannot recommend Randi Feldman's course more highly!
Sandi Thompson
Deputy Head of Film and Media Studies,
Cardinal Wiseman School, Middlesex, UK
