Mr. K’Linh, a cinematographer, accepted to be part of the course on making short films at DTU after over a month of negotiations. Finding the young filming crew at DTU to be passionate and highly inquisitive and impressed at the university’s filming equipment, the talented cinematographer devoted a lot of guidance, teaching, and support to make the course, taking place from December the 1st to the 3rd, a success and opening a new road for development in film-making as well as supporting lecturers and students in their teaching and studying at DTU.
Cinematographer K’Linh (on the right)
Many film projects are being executed at DTU. As a showcase project one should mention the documentary film about the 1965-1972 North-Vietnamese air offensive during the Vietnam War, with historical 3D recreations for the opening episode “When the Silver Swallow Goes to War”. Leading the team for this project is French director Didierjean Vincent Raphael, who has many years of experience in cinema. In addition to footage built in 3D, “When the Silver Swallow Goes to War” contains stories told by the soldiers who fought to protect their homeland, through direct interviews of eyewitnesses.
A comprehensive and faithful picture of DTU has also been disseminated to organizations, agencies, parents and students through a wealth of footage realized by DTU’s “cameramen”. At
http://www.youtube.com/duytanuniversity, the newest information about education, international collaboration, teacher-student relationship, the trust of society in DTU, as well as about large national and international prizes won by DTU students, can all be found in film. For over the years, film-making has been playing an important supporting role in education, such as in the Online Bachelor program. There have been many breakthroughs in the ways materials are approached and provided, such as audio (lessons recorded in mp3/mp4), video (video-recorded lessons), and virtual internet classrooms, allowing lecturers and students to interact with each other from any place and allowing DTU to expand its Online Bachelor training to the entire country, giving 2,500 students the opportunity to increase their knowledge and to meet the actual requirements of Vietnamese socioeconomic development.
Cinematographer K’Linh with the DTU film crew
In this spirit, inviting filmmaker K’Linh to instruct the course for making short films helped professionalize the filmmaking activity at DTU. Famous for being demanding as a cinematographer, his successes has nonetheless drawn the admiration of his colleagues. He was the main cameraman for television films “G?u tr?ng”, “Tài t? Nghi?p du”, “M?m s?ng”, “D?c tình”, “L?c Vân Tiên”, etc. When “intruding” into film territory, he was honored as the Best Cameraman in “The Legend Is Alive” and “Blood Letter” at the 2008 and 2012 Golden Kite Awards. He worked with famous and successful directors with admirable filmmaking experience, such as Nguyen Nghiem Dang Tuan, Luu Huynh, and Victor Vu.
At the course, he introduced some details about cinematography, how to realize a scene, setting up lighting, stage, characters... to create vivid and faithful images. He has often felt desperate seeing young people ignore the accumulation phase important to become a skilled cinematographer, so he was very pleased at the true passion and dedication of the young filmmakers at DTU when teaching there. At the same time he was rather impressed at the investment that had gone into getting professional filming equipment. For K’Linh, creativity is vital to succeed, and in filming creativity is simply light. Therefore he spent a lot of time guiding the DTU “cameramen” in how to choose filming angle and lighting to create feeling and to impose feeling on the audience.
French director Didierjean Vincent Raphael said:
“The film ‘When the Silver Swallow Goes to War’, which is being making now at DTU, contains many scenes with interviews of eyewitnesses that took up arms to defend the Fatherland. Therefore we really need truthful and emotional scenes. This course helped the film crew improve their professional skills as well as boost their creativity in filmmaking. As filmmaking techniques are being developed ever more with the advent of many modern cameras, making a short film is becoming within reach of anybody. But making a film of quality is not that simple. I have watched many films by cinematographer K’Linh and I found real value in each and every scene. For the future, DTU will continue to invite international experts to instruct us about sound in filmmaking, optimally supporting filmmaking activities, and teaching and training for high effectiveness.”
(Media Center)