A Venture for the Makers: Summer Art and Film Intensive 2012

«As a disclaimer, I don't know how efficiently or elegantly I can write about my experience during the Art and Film Intensive, so when the following feels disjointed, please feel free to add joints, and kindly bear with me.»

Anna (at left) listening to Charlotte Hale, conservator in the Department of Paintings Conservation, discuss Washington Crossing the Delaware during the Art and Film Intensive. Photograph by Eliana Alvarez

The Met is a fantastically sprawling and yet entirely self-contained biodome. Traipsing through its galleries, filming in its wings, and surrounding myself with the artistry that emanates from this space was—to use a blunt understatement—compelling.

I happily found everyone in the Art and Film Intensive, teachers and students alike, to be extremely warm, engaging, and, most of all, startlingly kind and informative. Overall, this whole experience served as a very good example that personable people are the best vessels for knowledge. Not only are they enjoyable to listen to, but they teach you how to use tripods and white balance and inform you about a whole world of levers and buttons of which you were previously unaware.

Anna (second from right) working with her group and a New York Film Academy teaching assistant to shoot their film

I really enjoyed participating in all the stages of the filmmaking process—the planning, writing, filming, and editing—all of which happened over a short, summer-sized timespan. But most of all, it was nice to be in an environment where the sole purpose was to be creative, have fun, and make stuff.

The whole Art and Film Intensive crew, including teen participants and staff from the New York Film Academy and Metropolitan Museum

Make sure to check back next week to read about TAG's first fall meeting and to get to know the new members (like me) for the 2012–13 school year.