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Our students Professionals
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Oleg Valuyskov Ex-Commercial Director of INTER TV Channel Student at the Hollywood School in Ukraine Commercial director Commercial Department of Ukrainian Media Group |
“The first course provided me with detailed knowledge exactly in the area of directing. Before, there were a few gaps in my knowledge of it. I have managed to fill in those gaps and now I have an full understanding of the job of the director, so I know what kind of relationship I should develop with directors when I work on my creative projects in future.” |
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Alexader Gunkovsky |
“The Hollywood School has given me a lot. First, I’ve learnt new methods of working with actors. Second, I’ve learnt the rules for some things that I used to be intuitively aware of. I’ve seen a complete system of how a certain man works, it’s interesting and I can apply much of it in my own work. Moreover, doing the course from day to day, I came to realize I was moving in the direction of feature films, because I’m rather sick of making commercials. So sitting there eight hours every day I was thinking “My next project will be a feature film”. |
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Marina Gorbach
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“We need the Hollywood School in Ukraine because even though our national film school gives you very good education, but what you learn there can have very limited practical application compared to what we learn here. I personally have picked up a new method of working with actors and a new approach to shooting — it’s of a great use! Though I was skeptical about this project at first, Mark has done such a great job of helping people here to reveal their individual potential to the full and teaching them professional skills, that it’s absolutely superb!”. |
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Taras Ponomarenko |
“The Hollywood School in Ukraine is a very good educational tool and a well of experience. This tool is just a little simpler, more accurate and precise in other countries. The School is just the way to quickly get what you want.” |
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Arthur Artimenev |
“The first course has given me a lot. It appears that Stanislavski’s system is popular on the other side of the Atlantic. It’s very important that we gain some practical experience. Any practical experience is useful, it’s great, particularly when it comes from your environment. This is another type of experience, it comes from the outside, and this fact makes it twice interesting. I personally wanted to find out more about the moviemaking and I did! This is an additional experience. I didn’t know much about the processes of shooting or editing, etc., etc., etc., so it was fascinating to learn it.” |
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Elena Kanishevska |
“I liked the first course at the Hollywood School in Ukraine very much. Fascinating atmosphere. It was the first time in my life when I studied with genuine interest. Mark Travis is a fantastic teacher. Clear structure. Not only students listen to what he says but also he listens to them. In his lectures Travis gives vivid examples from films as well as from real life situations. It makes directing almost tangible. Mark Travis’s Master Classes and later on our own work at staging scenes under his supervision allowed us to look at the mechanics of making a film and to eventually become more self-confident. I hope to be on the next course and to see some familiar faces there.” |
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Igor Kupriy |
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“Mark Travis does his job honestly. I have nothing to complain of. He teaches what he knows. Moreover, he’s a theoretic. Such people are brilliant teachers, they can analyze any role to the minutest detail, they don’t have to make films at all, they just teach.” |
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Vladislav Inozemtsev |
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“Thanks to the Hollywood School in Ukraine, the Ukrainian Moviemaking has the chance to play its original solo in the world cinema symphony” |
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Yuri Radkovski Director at Adrenalin Brothers studio Student at the Hollywood School in Ukraine. |
“Mark Travis’s course has helped me to extend my scope of perception, has taught me to combine thorough preparation and improvisation.” |
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Oleg Malamuzh General Director of Avtoritet studio Student at the Hollywood School in Ukraine |
“The only education Ukrainians could get in how to develop a commercial animated or movie project was at film and animation schools abroad. If you want to get such education, you need to speak a foreign language and to have a lot of money to invest in your education. With the arrival of such schools as the Hollywood School in Ukraine, there are significantly more possibilities to develop the movie market. The tuition fee is small compared to the price of such a course in the US and the teachers are the same. I can give you real life examples of young graduates with good education whose works stood head and shoulders above the projects of the “big shots” in the movie world who released their product in the niche market that hailed them. Mark Travis also deserves special credit for his proficiency in teaching. It’s amazing how he managed to make his Master Classes accessible, although he had to teach through an interpreter and take into account the heterogeneity of the audience. I should also say something about him as an excellent psychologist, who treats both a character from the script and a student at his course with equal care and perception, and who tries to understand and reveal personality in a person. I would like to hope that our chances of entering the world movie market will be growing with every year and that the results will exceed all expectations.” |
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Aram Gevorkian |
“It was GREAT. For me the course was fantastic. It was a wonderful opportunity to learn so many useful things about this job in such a short period. We’ve been taught the marvelous craft of making movies, and that’s very important. |
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Alexei Viter |
“Mark Travis’s course has exceeded all my expectations. His unique method of teaching gave us an opportunity to apply Hollywood directing techniques to ours. The most amazing thing is that Hollywood ways can be adapted to local traditions of movie making, and we at least were shown how.” |
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Students of Karpenko-Kari National University of Cinema and Drama
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Irina Bogdan TV presenter Student at the Hollywood School in Ukraine |
“The course in directing has left me with very good impressions of its structure and approach to teaching. There are no unnecessary things on the program. I got all the answers to the questions I personally had about working on a screenplay, working with actors, and staging. This means that Directing Feature Films is a very well structured course which gives you some practical advice. This is exactly what a contemporary director needs.” |
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Natalia Skripka Television director Student at the Hollywood School in Ukraine |
“I don’t think a 10-day course can teach you how to make movies even if you take professional advice from such an expert as Travis. But it’s very important for an active director to attend Master Classes. Before, I’ve learnt from the experience of Ukrainian professionals; Travis, though, gives you another perspective and lets you look at the tricks of the profession from a different angle. These are different standards. By the way, you don’t need years to complete a course in acting or directing in the US, like it’s here. There are lots of schools that offer full training within several months. And look at the high class professionals they graduate!” |
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Future Directors
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Yuliana Paksyutkina Singer and producer without formal training in directing Student at the Hollywood School in Ukraine |
“People say you can’t pay too much for experience. I got my money’s worth on the very first day. The benefits I got from communicating with this man have exceeded all my expectations. It’s worth more. Many people believe one can’t learn the director’s job at all. Travis gave his answer to it on the very first day of the course. He came with a toy bumblebee and said, “Can you see this bumblebee? One day researchers decided to calculate whether it was possible for such a big bumblebee to fly on such small wings. And it turned out to be against all the laws of aerodynamics. But the bumblebee doesn’t know it and just flies. The same is true about the job of the director: it can’t be learnt, but we don’t know it. We will just learn. Learn from the experience of different schools.” By the way, I think Travis should get acquainted with our filmmaking. I asked him once what Ukrainian films he knew. None. So I’m going to give him SHADOWS OF FORGOTTEN ANCESTORS.” |
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Alexander Zherebko |
“I am very grateful to Mark Travis for his high professionalism, conscientious and creative teaching, individual approach to every student, and, naturally, for all his knowledge he shared with me and skills he taught me. Surely I was familiar with much of what Mark told us (I’m in my third year at University, doing a course in filmmaking and television + I have some experience of directing on TV), but at the same time there were many things that I heard of for the first time. For instance, I learnt the difference between American and Ukrainian filmmaking. Particularly when it comes to methods of working with actors. I would also like to mention “special exercises”, developed by Mark, which are really unique and produce good results. That’s why I would like to thank Mark Travis again and to say “thank you” to the Hollywood School in Ukraine administration. Thanks to them there is the Hollywood School in Ukraine. It means that the best 50 directors (out of 200) could attend the course of one of the best teaching directors in the world.” |
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Larisa Konstantinova |
“I enjoyed Mark Travis’s course immensely. I’d like to say that Mark is a terrific man and a true professional. He’s a rare kind. He was very attentive both to the whole group and to every student. We were surprised that he wrote comments to each student, analyzing strong and weak points of everyone. It’s important that all comments were different. It shows his respect to and care of his students. I liked EVERYTHING.” |
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Anna Shevchuk |
“Mark is a remarkable man! He does everything with such ease, such flair, that you get an impression that as soon as he finishes his talk, you can go and make your film and you will pull it off effortlessly. And you make an attempt to put what you’ve learnt to the test of practice – and you’ve learnt a lot – and suddenly realize that you can’t do this because you don’t fully understand something, you can’t do that because you lack experience, and you can’t do another because you don’t have some qualities at all. And you begin to feel downhearted, and tears start to well up in your eyes, and life turns grey. Yet Mark goes on and on – explaining, going into every difficult aspect of directing, beaming at students, with his sunny smile radiating light. And you begin to believe in miracles again. You understand that it was not easy for him when he started either, that experience gives confidence and whatever else the Great Master has! And you feel grateful.” |
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Kaia Glushenko |
“10 days – it’s too short a period to really learn something, but it’s enough to get carried away by the idea, to start to understand a person a little better, to drastically change your life’s direction. 10 days – it’s too short a period to start singing songs of praise but long enough to feel the atmosphere of another dimension unobtrusively interwoven with reality. It’s something you can miss, quietly and privately, but it speaks volumes.” |
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Olga Pavliuk |
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“I’m quite satisfied, on the whole. I study economics. I’m a total stranger in directing, but it was very interesting. I would like to say, though, that there was little time for camera practice. It’s very interesting and I wish could have had more of that.” |
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Anastasia Mironova |
“I liked Mark Travis as a teacher very much. I’m satisfied. I think this course is very useful both for a complete novice and a professional. I can say I’ve learnt a lot of new things from this course.” |
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Alexandra Fedorets |
“I liked Mark Travis’s course very much. Mark Travis is a wonderful man, teacher, and true professional.” |
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Andrei Kirillov |
“Charts and graphs that are so much hated by “our” people, who rely mostly on good luck, proved to be of much use and value in the hands of a professional. They – the charts – turned out to be very important for time management and unfailing help. As a result, the time needed to solve some artistic problem could be calculated. It all created a wonderful atmosphere in a strange environment. Complete strangers, in ten days…Maybe, the reason was the intensity of classes, which didn’t leave the “classmates” the time to discuss each other. Everybody had a concrete problem to solve, all other things being equal, and one could feel her/himself a student again. And the enormous amount of information that was poured on us seemed even more amazing, when you realized it after just ten days which at the start of the course had seemed nothing to speak of. In ten days we received directions to follow to reach our aims. It’s not enough for someone who doesn’t intend to pursue this career, but for an “insider” it gives some guidelines, which can always help to find a way out. I‘d like to thank the Hollywood School in Ukraine for the opportunity to work with an expert of such competence. My special thanks to that very expert, Mark Travis.” |
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Valentina Pogorilets |
The time I spent at Mark Travis’s course was both pleasant and useful. Very interesting and useful information, very well structured and delivered. Class work and home assignments enable you to put Mark Travis’s methods of working on a film to practice. Everything is clear. You get all the answers to your questions. Mark is a professional. It was extremely interesting to communicate with him and other students. These two weeks were like a holiday! And what’s more, after the classes you feel the urge to improve. I was inspired! |
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