Introduction to Film Production

I have been teaching "Intro to Film Production" at LMU for a few years now, and I've mostly done it for undergrads. This semester, it's grads, which should be really fun. The goal of the class is to make three films while learning filmmaking basics such as editing, shooting, lighting, etc. We watch a lot of shorts and discuss story structure, etc. My emphasis in the class is really for students to push the envelope conceptually--come up with visuals and ideas that are fresh, which is no easy task, but of course, if you want to be a filmmaker, that's sort of the point. In lieu of this, I have a rule in my class--no "alarm clock" / "being late to class" films, only because the first two semesters I taught this class, there were too many of these types of films. Different iterations, of course, like, girl spends too much time putting on makeup, and is late for class, guy jumps out of bed and gets to class, and no one is there, girl runs and runs and can't find class... You get the idea. My students are always a little surprised by my rule, but what I tell them is that making films in the beginning isn't about technical things, etc, it's really about one thing and one thing only--imagination and ideas. You can shoot your film on the most jank camera, but if you've got an idea/concept that's interesting, you will somehow touch people. There is evidence of this everywhere, I love it when small movies that were shot for nothing do really well, beating out large scale Hollywood films. Or, even when some little Net video goes viral, and catches on. In order to avoid first-time filmmaker cliches, I have them read this great website: http://www.filmmaker.com/dumps