We will be away from our desks next week, so we thought we'd leave you with some highlights to remember the year that was.

We announced the regional and 35mm winners last month and wanted to showcase and congratulate all of the KODAK Film School Cinematography Competition country winners as well!

Comprised of student crews, films from more than 25 countries were selected to move on to the next round of judging by John Bailey, ASC (The Big Miracle, Ordinary People). Of those, three regional winners and one 35mm winner were selected.

Johanna Gravelle

As the manager of the Kodak Scholarship Program, I was fortunate enough this year to be able to screen the films of the top student nominations to the 2011 program, and to listen in on the judging session as the judges passionately debated who should be amongst the final five. All judges – a faculty member, a Kodaker and a veteran industry professional - had their favourites and it was a tough decision to come up with the ultimate winners.

Renowned Cinematographer Robbie Greenberg ASC stated; “The quality of work being done by these students is outstanding. The seriousness and poignancy of the subject matter the students explored was also impressive.” I had to agree with Robbie as I found the stories to be deeply personal and emotionally complex.

In July of this year, Kodak Italy held a three day cinematography workshop in Rome for industry professionals. As in-house cinematographer for Kodak, I was the instructor for the workshop. The immense pre-production for the event was handled by Giovanna Rimoldi and Riccardo Di Tizio from Kodak Italy. Invited to the workshop were cinematographers, directors, and producers currently working in Rome. Also, two film students joined the workshop to work as crew for the grip and lighting needs. The group was a comfortable size of nine participants which allowed them several opportunities to shoot and direct portions of a short story. Although many of the attendees were more familiar with video and digital formats than film, everyone has aspired to shoot on film. Generally speaking, participants have always appreciated the Kodak workshops because they offer a stress-free opportunity to experience shooting with 35mm film.

The workshop was held at the Casa Del Cinema situated in the idyllic Villa Borghese which is the largest public park in Rome. All of the shooting took place at the Casa del Cinema and a café situated within the building. Although the temperatures climbed to over 90 F every day, the enthusiasm of the group was not diminished. One goal of the workshop was to give the participants an opportunity to shoot 35mm film in a 2-perf format. Interestingly, the 2-perf Techniscope 2.40:1 format was introduced by Technicolor Italia in 1963 as a low cost alternative to the CinemaScope 4-perf system. Techniscope was popularized by the “Spaghetti Western” genre and, most notably, the Italian director, Sergio Leone, and his Clint Eastwood “Dollar” series of films. In a PowerPoint lecture on the first day of the workshop, the features of the 2-perf format were discussed.  Some of the benefits mentioned were longer shooting times per magazine, reduced costs of the format, new finer grain V3 stocks which improve the look of the smaller format, and digital intermediate which has made 2-perf format more viable than the optical process of the past. As the group was soon to discover, 2-perf 35mm retains many of the inherent qualities of the larger 4-perf origination format.

While attending the 2010 UFVA (University Film and Video Association) Conference, I noticed that the love of film amongst the association members was more apparent than ever.  Even the latest and greatest digital capture offerings cannot diminish the emotional connection that people have with film.  In fact, I dare say, that many people are becoming fonder of the organic quality of film even as digital technologies continue to gain popular acceptance.  Even in this 'digital age,' film remains the gold standard of the motion picture industry and no one argues this fact.

While shrinking budgets and the comparatively low cost of digital cameras have resulted in some schools shifting away from a film curriculum, many schools have found creative, affordable ways to ensure that their students continue to have a hands-on film experience.  They know that learning on film teaches the discipline required to be a successful filmmaker.  It provides the necessary building blocks of a filmmaking education that no other medium currently offers.  Here are examples of how some professors continue to ensure that their students aspire to shoot film: