Curious, I asked one of last fall's students, Jamie Cabot, what his course in the beginning super-eight lab had been like.

"We had about fifteen people in our class," he said. "We started out by learning what the equipment was, how to use it, what effects different kinds of lighting has, some basic camera techniques and editing, by making a short film as a class. Then we broke up into groups of five people each and decided to do group projects. Ours was about a girl who discovers a chest of old clothes and fantasizes about them.

THE PEOPLE WHO STUCK IT OUT feel very favorably about the course. Our group is still meeting, even though the term is over. Some people, though, get bored with the drudgery of learning the technical stuff--since you aren't told you have to learn, some people don't. You really get out of this place what you want to put in."

A little later I talked to another student, David Halpern, who had recently completed the advanced 16 mm course. His class began by making a sound-synchronized film about a newcomer to Elsie's restaurant, then split up to work on individual and small group projects. Here, he said, the Production Company had offered a great deal of help. In many cases, it raised money to cover all or part of project expenses by approaching groups seeking publicity or educational films. In two cases this term, Halpern said, the Production Company had also arranged for WGBH to commission films made by students.

Most impressive of all, at least to me, was the consistent praise of students for the friendly and relaxed atmosphere of the School. Halpern said he had been given control of the School-sponsored Film Society, which offers a weekend program of inexpensive movies, even though he is a student. Others cited the accessibility of the professionals of the Production Company, the willingness of the school to allot film for individual projects, and its receptiveness to new ideas. "Film is just incredible fun," co-director Leeds said to me one Thursday afternoon. "We don't want to avoid anything now on any level." Future experiments, she said would probably include video courses and workshops on directing and production . And one of the most popular of the School--its policy of bringing directors as George Segal, Otto , and Paul Williams--will continue expand, she added.

to sit in one of the courses-- begun to look good.

II

T SEMINAR, the last of the term, began poorly. The instructor, a tall sort of guy, held eight inches of cigarette in his mouth, wrote unnecessary the blackboard, and spent most of time reading from a book. Midway his reading a 6'6" giant burst noisily room, looked around, and dropped chair. The tail of his coat caught on back of the chair as he sat down, above shoulder level when he finally a comfortable position. An aisle in front , a woman perched an unlit extralong cigarette in her as if to imitate the seminar smokers greeted the instructor's about Catholic laymen and the moralizing.

My initial appeared quickly, however. The , Deac Rossell, was engaging and the passages he read were well quite entertaining at the end. The introduced--Lolita--had a colorful his and he traced its nimble course bureaucracies of censorship while at time alerting the students to devices by Kubrick in the film.

The seminar got better once the film had ended. The discussed the movie, comparing it to work of Hitchcock and debating good bad points in technical terms. I notice things I'd never seen before, such the reasons for the film's geographical the need for ending and beginning with the same scene, and why the Kubrick chose for the score differed so from his previous works. An hour after had officially ended, a third of the still there.

I even had an Insight as the discussion progressed. character of the film. Humbert had composed a poem for arch-foe murdering him in the opening scene. The poem was choppy and repetitive. later learned, Humbert was an accomplished writer and a professor of literature. I need my hand to point out the mistake.

An embarrassed silence sad to say, welcomed my observation. dismissed the point as gracefully as could--it was inanely unrelated, I realized to the flow of the discussion--and my into film appreciation ground to a .

PLODDING BACK HOME, I remembered a project I'd undertaken in ninth grade. Some of my friends and I decided to make a movie God. We borrowed cameras, wrote the script, rounded up the players, but we failed to raise any money. My dream of becoming a movie director disappeared, going the way of other dreams of being a musician and an artist. The Film School had put brief flicker of life back into the dreams, but I'd been schooled and stifled to bring them back.

I promised to return nonetheless--at least to watch some serious films . After all, things might change. Some day might appreciate or understand the bubble I walked past as I left the Orson Welles.