Brehm Center

The Brehm Center invites you to join us each quarter as we explore these exciting art forms. Labs are open to everyone. Register for all labs with the Brehm Center at 626-304-3789 or .

Winter 2010 Labs

Brehm Lab: Basics of Cinematic Storytelling

Instructor: Martina Nagel
When: Thursdays, 6:30-8:30pm, February 11, 18, 25; March 3
Where: Brehm Center Media Lab
Cost: $40 student/staff/alumni, $50 all others (LIMITED ENROLLMENT)

From script to screen: Have you ever read a shooting script? Not the kind of polished screenplays available in film stores once the movie has been released. I’m talking about scripts of up to 140 pages that need to be pared down to 90-100 pages, and that get partially re-written on set. Unlike a novel, these raw scripts convey nothing beyond the dialogue and skeletal descriptions: absolutely no information regarding the main character, the story’s genre, or its dominating theme. It is entirely up to you - as it is to the director - to make those creative choices, to interpret the written material and bring to it your own cinematic vision.

In this film lab we’ll be analyzing four shooting scripts together, discovering their subtext, their emotional beats, and describing a montage of images that reflect our vision for a particular scene. We will then watch the movie and consider the director’s own creative choices, noting where he has diverted from the script, which scenes he has deleted, and the film language he has chosen to convey the story.

This lab is being taught by Martina Nagel. Martina has been a scriptwriter and cinematographer in the international film and television industry for 16 years.  She has worked on over a dozen BBC documentaries and MTV videos produced by Simon Cowell, and served as Director of Photography on five feature films, including Mike Figgis’ (Oscar nominee for ‘Leaving Las Vegas) movie Co/Ma. Along with Bart Gavigan, Martina founded script clinics in the UK that have been attended by Hollywood A-listers, including James V Hart (Writer of Contact), Stewart Stern (Writer of Rebel Without a Cause), Iain Smith (Producer of Fifth Element) and Hugh Hudson (Director of Chariots of Fire). Martina has lectured in scriptwriting on an MA course at the Northern Film School in Great Britain and is a frequent contributor for the leading European film magazine, ‘ScriptWriter’. Currently Martina works for Leslie Dixon’s company (writer of Mrs. Doubtfire, Pay it Forward, Thomas Crown Affair, Hairspray) in LA.

Brehm Lab: Sculpting the Human Form

Instructor: Christopher Slatoff
When: Tuesdays, 6:00-9:00pm Dates: February 2, 9, 16, 23
Where: Media Lab (Downstairs)
Cost: $40 student/staff/alumni, $50 all others (LIMITED ENROLLMENT)

Experience the act of creation in its purest form.  This is an opportunity to study natural forms and to think, shape, and communicate with your hands. This LAB will teach creative and classic approaches to sculpting. The fall quarter project will concentrate on the human form. Students will finish with one complete piece.

Christopher Slatoff was launched into the art world at an early age; his father was a painter and an art professor. Christopher studied both here and in France, ultimately obtaining his BFA in Sculpture from Cal State Long Beach. He has had several solo exhibitions, including one at the San Diego Art Institute, and participated in many group shows at galleries, museums and universities in Southern California, Arizona and New York. Christopher's San Diego work also includes working with the Ilan Lael Foundation and exhibiting in the "Sculpture San Diego" exhibitions. He was recently invited to join the California Art Club in Pasadena, and is showing in their annual juried show. Christopher has also completed international sculpture projects in Japan, Holland and the Canary Islands. Christopher has been very involved in bringing art into the community His public art commissions range from "Sheltering Wings" for the San Diego Port Commission at Shoreline Park in Coronado, to seven life-size commissions for churches in both California and Texas. In 1986 Christopher had a California Artist in Residence Grant to work with special needs children in the Vista School System. He has worked in his community to establish both expanded in-classroom and after-school art programs. Currently he is serving as a guest artist facilitator in sculpture for children at the Metropolitan State Hospital in Norwalk, a state mental institution. Since relocating from San Diego to Los Angeles in 1997, the artist has done a number of projects for the movie studios, including a featured angel grave marker for the Paramount film "Face-Off", and a mother and child sculpture for Disney's "Enemy of The State".

If you are interested in teaching a LAB, please send a resume, work samples, and a curriculum proposal to Nate Risdon at .

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