Adventures of a Film Scholar

Adventures of a Film Scholar Web Series Episode #1

Welcome to “Adventures of a Film Scholar” video interview series. AFS is a discourse on independent filmmaking and film education. In each episode, Seth Jaret will have an international Skype chat with writer/director/film scholar, Darren Paul Fisher. Darren is an independent filmmaker (OXV: THe Manual, Popcorn, The Inbetweeners) and senior teaching fellow at Bond University, one of the premiere film programs in the world. Darren is also in post-production on his third feature. Join them as they discuss writing, directing, [...]

Adventures of a Film Scholar – Part III

OK, so OXV: The Manual. This is a project that I’ll be talking a lot about in future posts. It’s an independent feature that I like to refer to not so much as a “vanity” project as a “sanity” project. (And I’m being deliberately obscure as to what OXV means). Those who know me know that I’ve made no secret of the fact that for various reasons I’ve been unhappy with my first two features. I make no excuses. The mistakes [...]

Adventures of a Film Scholar – Part II

So what’s it about? This is a question that I pose to my students. A very short, but – in my opinion – the ultimate make-or-break question as to whether a script (or the resulting film) will actually work. I don’t mean make money, I don’t mean be a critical success (both of those outcomes have many other contributing factors), I mean work on the raw, unadulterated, nuts-and-bolts STORYTELLING level. Most of what I do in academia is to flag [...]

What is The Manual?

Darren Paul Fisher, film scholar and filmmaker, is currently editing THE MANUAL, an independent film he wrote and directed. Here’s a behind-the-scenes look at what the film is about. Darren writes about the trials and travails of his pursuit of a Doctorate in Film in his Adventures of a Film Scholar column on ContentEngine.tv. Check out The Manual’s Facebook page here.

Adventures of a Film Scholar

I’m currently sinking in a sea of paper and ideas. Not for the next screenplay, but for my PhD. Not that I have yet started or been accepted to a PhD program… there is so much to do before we get to that stage. Depending how you look at it, I am a filmmaker who is also an academic or an academic who is also a filmmaker. Part of the reality of existing in two worlds is that you must keep developing [...]

A Father’s Apology to his daughter, Scarlett

Hello Scarlett, I am your father. Not in a revelatory Empire Strikes Back kind of way (although I cannot wait to introduce you to Star Wars – I may even wait until you are 6 months old). It is January 5, 2012. You are 128 days old, I am thirty-eight years old and I am writing this to you, Scarlett, for the following three reasons… (1) The Small Reason: When you get older you’ll remember me as a forty-something/fifty-something, and never [...]