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Title: The Lesson
Duration: 00:05:25

This was my first semester film from my first year in film school at S.V.A. I shot this in the fall of 1991 with a Bolex 16-mm movie camera with 300 ft. of B&W reversal film and an Arri lighting kit in Mammoth Billiards on 26th street NYC. The pool shark is played by my father and the kid was my classmate Neil Collogan. I had just recently got a telecine transfer and had not viewed it in about 14 years since I had lost a VHS tape that was of poor quality to begin with. Also I put it to the track “What is Soul” by Funkidelic. It is the same track that I played from a CD as I presented it to my class.

The titles and credits I recently added. I cleaned up a couple of the edits but left most of it untouched to preserve the RAW film school quality. Working with reversal, one has to remember that it’s the only print that you have that is being spliced up. And all is cut with a hand operated reel to reel and a plug in viewer to light up and magnify the film so you can see it. Avids and nonlinear digital off line editing were only available in the state of the art professional arena.

In classic DK style I did not get a grade for it cause I refused to follow the assignment and cut it in 10 edits which did have the coverage for. My money, my cut is the way I thought. I was allowed to present it to the class and although I did not get the grade the professor shook his head and said, “wow great story!”