The Central Film School London Experience

If you follow my perjalanan hidup solely thru this blog (yes, all 2 of you -- stalkers!), let me just tell you that I have in fact returned from my one-month study sojourn in London. It's been one week plus, but I'm still re-adjusting to life in KL (kononlah).

But seriously, it was a wonderful and enriching experience for me. Doing a one-month course on film-making sounds rather impossible, but I did learn a lot, in and out of the classroom. You can read about my first day at the Central Film School London HERE

Of course it was also quite an experience just being on my own for a full month. Something that I only came to realise after I got there. I have to do my own laundry?? The horror! But no worries, I figured things out in due time. In fact, I did more than just laundry. Ta dah...

Canlah, scrambled eggs. But honestly, after a while, it just wasn't worth the effort, as Starbucks and Pret A Manger were on my route going to the school.

And that was the other thing that I enjoyed; the daily walk from my apartment to the school in Aldgate. It helped that the weather was near-perfect almost for the entire length of my stay. In fact, people were just puzzled by the abundance of sunshine and the lack of rain. Check out the views I get to enjoy every day : )

Of course the sunshine didn't mean it was hot and humid Malaysian-style; temperatures were always rather cool, which also meant it was perfect for running. I should know, I kept clocking in good times on my every-other-day runs, culminating in the Teach First 10k Challenge where I did a personal best.

As for the course itself, yes, there was so much to take in and digest in such a short period of time, but it was structured well, with maybe a few tweaks needed here and there. The school staff members were all very helpful and efficient, and the majority of the tutors were awesome too.

Personally, I wished that the screenwriting part was longer than the half-day that was given, but we also got three solid days of directing tutorials from a very competent teacher, Chris Thomas. It was really an eye-opener, especially his sessions on working with actors.

My classmates too were a bunch of interesting people from all over the world. We had everything; the talkative types, the silent types, the now-you-see-now-you-don't types... Hehe. But we had loads of fun, especially when we got down to the nitty gritty and started to shoot our short films.

Speaking of which, it was indeed cool that my script "Tweet" got chosen to be produced. And the experience of putting everything together was simply priceless. We were given the freedom and independence to do most of the crucial stuff on our own, while the tutors guided us through some vital stuff including sound and editing.

And it was a rush for me when screening time came. Wish I could share with everyone the final product, but I'm still waiting for the CD to arrive.

But I do want to take this opportunity to thank each and every one of my classmates, and all of you lot at the school. You guys rock!

Apart from the school stuff, I actually did my time there real justice : ) I caught quite a number of movies, especially those I felt would never be screened here, and went to a couple of musical theatres, "Thriller" and "We Will Rock You".

Weekends though meant exploring stuff beyond London. But instead of making proper plans, I basically winged it. My first trip out was to Brighton, the popular seaside town. I googled it for a bit, but basically didn't really know what to look out for there. But hey, I had a pretty good time there, and you can read it HERE

What influenced my decisions too was how easy was it to get to certain places by train. Brighton was just one hour and GBP10 away from the London Bridge railway station. So it was a real no-brainer. Next up was Oxford, which I chose simply because it was Oxford, although the travelling time was double of that Brighton's. What these places had in common was the Hop-On-Hop-Off bus service which made day-trips like these enjoyable.

And a day before I hopped on the flight to get back to Malaysia, I decided to make a trip to Cardiff, Wales! The weather was beautiful as well on that day and I just spent the 6,7 hours walking around the city, getting on the Hop-On-Hop-Off bus, visiting Cardiff Castle and did a bit of shopping as well. 

So yeah, overall a truly memorable month in the UK and a mission accomplished, I would say. Would have been perfect if I had the fam with me. And a couple more months there, really. Hehe.