STUDENTS CHALLENGE KUBRICK
 

During his time as lecturer in "Film Directing" at TUT Film School, Gerhard Uys assigned, to the 1st Year Students, an exercise, the objective of which was to assess whether they were ready to tackle their first short drama later in the year. Uys told the students that a friend, Gustav Hasford, a professional scriptwriter from Malta, had agreed to write a script-scene titled "Born to Kill" for them for their project. The truth was that the script was extracted from the suicide scene in Stanley Kubrick's "A Full Metal Jacket". This the students only learnt after they had completed their project and was shown Kubrick's scene followed by their projects to judge for themselves how well they had performed against one of the best film directors in the world.

The students organized themselves into groups of six, received a budget of R10,000 and was instructed to employ three professional actors for their project. All the groups had to film in the studio, using green screen technique to create the location. Keeping in mind that Kubrick had a budget of around R20 million, for his scene, the lecturers who trained the students in the various aspects of filmmaking, did not expect too much from the project. It was after all simply an exercise to prepare them for the real thing. Three of the groups failed the project while the following group obtained a distinction.

Newspaper Article on the Project