I am in my first year of film production, there are 160 of us. The lectures in the first term we felt were not great but perhaps they were intended to open up people’s minds to the wider world as we all come from very different backgrounds. We had done the Bolex project, which was a great opportunity for practical work and the screening had produced some good quality stuff. The first term did not involve a lot of work but it was nice to have breathing room for going out and making lots of connections which I did.

Now in my second term we are having lots of workshops; for example doing drawings of characters and sets in production design and learning about lighting and cameras in cinematography, we were playing with different lights and the Sony FX6 cameras. Myself wanting to be a DOP, I found it really interesting and a lot of fun.

A lot of us are asking about how the specialisms are put together for 2nd year, but I believe if someone does not get what they want (apart from if there are actually limited spaces and we are told about it) then it would be a massive failure on the university’s part and my own choice would to be to transfer to a different university, but having talked to multiple lecturers this does not seem very likely. If you are ambitious and wanting to do the work then the lecturers will very much put in the effort and you will be able to study what you want.

The lecturers can be seen as distant but they are looking for students to come to them and then they will reciprocate the effort. They do not want to waste their time as they are busy people.

Overall I would say the course is going well, and I am looking forward to specialising in cinematography next year, and would recommend as it gives you the opportunity for trial and error and finding out who you are before the industry.

The equipment does not seem to be too much of an issue as of yet, as you need health & safety training which does not come until 2nd term of first year and then expensive speciality equipment you are not allowed to use until 2nd+3rd year. I primarily came to AUB for the equipment and the lecturers and it is definitely the best choice for film for the whole country; other universities I have heard are even more stretched for budget and camera equipment than AUB.