Although it was a little difficult to leave home, I managed to come back. It was definitely needed. I feel more motivated for the next semester and also for my thesis.

The classes I am taking this semester are Thesis Workshop, Cinema Studies 3, and Digital Cinema Mastering. Besides those, I am TA-ing for the World Cinema 1 class. I am enjoying my TA class along with the other classes. The professor Jeffrey Smith, who teaches World Cinema 1, is a great teacher. I am honored to be one of his TAs because, as he says, I get to put on a “show” every week. I also keep refreshing my knowledge about cinema history and also learn new things. The structure of the class is Smith gives the lecture and he shows a lot of clips and films from various directors and companies, and then in the second part we, the TAs, do our discussion session.

Besides my TA class, I am really happy about the elective that I chose, Digital Cinema Mastering. I am learning so much about post-production and it has just been 2 weeks. We are supposed to do 2 projects in the class. First one I’m doing is a creative edit (and also coloring a film that is already shot) and the second one is on-line editing of a project that we are supposed to find.

In our Thesis Workshop, we are developing our thesis ideas and the class also covers the whole production and post-production process if anyone is planning to shoot this semester. Speaking of thesis, I changed my mind about my film. As I was talking about in my previous blog posts, I was thinking of shooting my film in Turkey. But because of the current currency situation and also considering I will have free equipment from Columbia College Chicago (and also great talents that I can find), shooting in Chicago is a great opportunity and I want to make use of it as much as I can. I am working with my classmate Neva and my producer Urwa. Neva is the writer of my thesis and we are all trying to improve the script together. A great collaboration is one of the main things and I am so happy about my team. I reached out to some places and people that I can collect information from. I think to make it as realistic as possible and also as good as possible, it is my duty as a director to do my research on the subject that I want to shoot a film about. Hopefully the script gets better and better, and I can’t wait for the day we shoot it. I have already started getting excited about the shoot before even the script is done.

A part of the second draft of my thesis.

We are also trying to get things together for our production too, which includes foreseeing what our locations might/will be and thinking about funding ideas. I told all of my friends when I was in Turkey to save their money for my film—hopefully that works out. Maybe you might be interested in the film that I am planning to shoot, too!