On a rainy Saturday morning, I watched the self-proclaimed Greatest Film instructor in the world dazzle a packed meeting room of wanna-be film-makers with an almost endless stream of film tips and information. This guy rocks.
His name is Dov Simens and the class I took from him seemed more like a film bootcamp. He doesn't take excuses and his no-nonsense approach is gruff, rough but with a sense of loving kindness. You want to be a screen-writer? Just write! he barks. "Nothing gets written, it gets rewritten," he espouses.
The man is no slouch. He talks incessantly about film-making and he does it all with a few overhead slides and no powerpoint presentation.
To have the priviledge of hearing him talk takes no less than $400 US. But that doesn't count the scores of books he pushes at a recent Sept 11-12 presentation in Vancouver. And for those too busy to attend his two lectures, all you had to do is purchase it from his website, or even buy his book on film-making which I walked away with for under $30 Cdn and another expensive CD. And attendees could even purchase his DVD classes for a much better price than on his web site www.webfilmschool.com/affiliates/jrox.php?uid=happy33.
Could I have better spent $400 US in Las Vegas or a quick weekend jaunt in New York? Maybe. But knowledge is valuable and there is a greater chance that I would have spent more money vacationing than learning for profit.
Making a movie is like climbing Mount Everest and there is no guarantee that one will ever get there. That was my initial assumption and many others probaby think this way. But after talking Dov's class, I believe I got my Mojo back. And if knowledge is power, then that's how I feel -powerful and committed.
And those short films I committed myself to making?. A thing of the past. Ok, maybe not quite yet. I do have to use them somehow, now that they are done. Cannes just got more closer. God Bless Mr.Film BootCamp Instructor. And God Bless Dov Simens.
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