Prof. Melissa de Raaf

The International Women’s Film Festival Dortmund+Cologne (IFFF) is Germany’s largest forum for women in the film industry and presents outstanding films by women across all genres and styles. The festival takes place annually, alternating between Cologne and Dortmund; the 2026 edition runs 22–26 April 2026 in Cologne. As part of the excursion, there will also be a meeting between students and curators. www.frauenfilmfest.com We have 20 accreditations available.

Short film is still the most important source of film renewal, the experimental field on which future film languages are formed. Today, the diversity of forms, themes and approaches is greater than ever. Feature film or essay, installation, thesis film or artist's film, music video, animation, documentary and all conceivable hybrid forms are emerging all over the world and increasingly online on numerous platforms. The International Short Film Festival Oberhausen has been moving in this field of tension for over 60 years; it is a catalyst and showcase for current developments, a forum for often controversial discussions, a discoverer of new trends and talents and, last but not least, one of the most important short film institutions worldwide. Oberhausen is the oldest short film festival in the world and the largest festival in North Rhine-Westphalia, with around 7,000 films submitted each year, approximately 500 films in the festival programme and over 1,100 accredited professional visitors annually. www.kurzfilmtage.de On Monday, 20 April, we will meet online at 5:30 pm to plan and discuss the festival programme. We have 20 accreditations available. Priority will be given to diploma students who have not previously attended the festival.

Dies ist der zweite Teil des Seminars "Entwicklung von Stoffen anhand visueller Parameter - Diplom-Vorbereitung". Im Sommersemester 2026 haben wir Gäste und planen die „Layout-Drehs“. Wie entsteht ein filmischer Stoff? Was ist die „Keimzelle“ eines Films und welche Wege kann ihre Entwicklung nehmen? Wie weit reicht das Potential der „Idee“ und wo endet es? Welche Wechselwirkungen können zwischen Schreiben und Recherche - auch visueller Recherche - entstehen? Gibt es Möglichkeiten des Schreibens beim Drehen? Welches Potential bietet in dieser Hinsicht die Autoren-Kamera-Beziehung? Wir spekulieren anhand von Filmbeispielen über die möglichen Entstehungsweisen von Szenen oder ganzen Erzählungen. Gleichzeitig arbeiten wir an den konkreten Projekten und entwickeln im praktischen Teil (Sommersemester 2026) Stoffe für mögliche „Layout-Drehs“. Diese werden an Original Locations geprobt und gedreht. Gemeinsam analysieren wir die dramaturgischen und visuellen Potentiale und erarbeiten mögliche Herangehensweisen. Anhand der konkreten szenischen Arbeit werfen wir immer einen Blick zurück aufs „Buch“ und betrachten die verschiedenen Etappen filmischer Entstehung als wechselseitigen Prozess. Es sollten sich zu Seminar-Beginn Regie-Kamera-Paarungen gefunden haben (nicht notwendigerweise die Kombination, die später den Diplomfilm drehen). Zwischen den einzelnen Terminen wird es Recherche- und Schreibaufgaben geben.  This is the second part of the seminar Script development based on visual parameters - diploma preparation. This Summersemester 2025 we will have guests and plan the layout shoots. Under the term “visual writing”, we want to examine and try out various aspects of developing a film project. How is cinematic material created? What is the starting point of a film and which paths can its development take? How far does the potential of the “idea” extend? And where does it end? What interactions can arise between writing and research - including visual research? Are there possibilities for writing while filming? What potential does the author-camera relationship offer in this respect? With examples (screenplays, films, etc.), we speculate on how individual scenes as well as entire narratives were created. At the same time, we work on concrete projects and develop material for possible “layout shoots” which will be shot in the practical part (summer semester 2025). These will be rehearsed and filmed at original locations. Together, we analyze dramaturgical and visual potentials and develop possible approaches. Based on the concrete development and experiments, we always return to the screenplay and consider the various stages of cinematic creation as a reciprocal process. At the beginning of the seminar, we encourage director-camera pairs to form (these pairs do not necessarily have to shoot the graduation film together). During the semester we will work on, present and discuss research and writing exercises.

The workshop I propose aims to evaluate the cinematic potential of sound, rarely explored to the last consequences of the construct. With care to avoid generalizations, I can say that most of the time the soundtrack in cinema remains or is actually reduced to an explanatory function, from the family of confirmations of the statements made by the image editing. This comes from various reasons. One of them, at least in Romania, seems to be the not at all privileged situation of the audio construction stage. Generally, after filming, in which the emphasis is most often placed on the needs of the image, without additional preparation of the sound recording conditions reduced to those of an acceptable dialogue recording, the questions related to sound end. Just as the editing and colorization will have ended. And the energy and interest and finances. Another reason seems to be the invasiveness of sound capture equipment in general. It cannot be denied that in the field of accessibility and diversification of audio recording instruments, be they microphones, recorders or audio monitors, consistent progress has been made, but this comes with a vulnerability, namely that of visibility and the function of disrupting the systems to be researched in the case of documentary film. In the case of fiction film, the facility of multi-channel audio recordings most often comes with the absence of a philosophy or aesthetics of the soundtrack and implicitly with a simplification of the role that sound has in the film. A third reason comes from the lack of appetite for listening to the soundscape that we inhabit, visit, experience every day. With headphones on, modern man replaces the exploration of the space he travels with loud music, podcasts or audiobooks, refusing to understand the role and causes of acoustics that have such a decisive effect on the way the individual is emotionally shaped. If we can't talk about finances because we don't have the skills, we could talk about everything else. And we could also invent a sound exercise that would start from recording, continue with editing, adding pre-recorded elements, preferably by students, to arrive at an audio narrative closely related to a frame that they choose from one of the films they've made. It sounds like a plan. In this seminar, we will explore the concepts of the house and the home through sound, listening closely how one becomes the other and where they diverge.  Zusätzliche Termine/additional meetings: Montag, 29.06.2026, 10:00 - 13:00 Tonstudio 29.06-02.07.2026: one-on-one meetings, consultation on editing and sound design of individual projects.