Andrew Garrson teaches classes at UP, in Porto

As part of the advanced digital media program, UT Filmmaker and professor Andrew Garrison spent time in Porto in March, and reports on his co-teaching experiences there.

Two Porto classes, two realities of sight and sound. In one, a course on documentary, film-makers shoot people at work an old couple making shoes by hand, a woman setting up her little butcher shop at the market, another woman taking a break from work behind the lunch counter to talk to the crew-she knows everyone of her customers. The students’ challenge, from U.T. Professor and filmmaker Andrew Garrison working with Porto instructor and filmmaker Soraia Ferreira, is to tell these stories in three minutes each, the first assignment in their new documentary class.

Across town in the afternoon, Garrison works with Dr. Carlos Guedes in a class where eight graduate students listen and watch rough cuts of grad student films from the University of Texas Dept. RTF. The class in Sound Design at the University of Porto will edit and design sound for these four films. They have just completed a first assignment in three days—a two-minute “sound portrait” of another member of the class. The finished pieces are fun, complex, impressive, weaving between the speakers, making use of effects, atmospheres, and spoken word.

Both courses are part of a unique, combined PhD and Masters program that is working across disciplines in Porto, and, in the case of the Sound Design class, collaborating across the waters with Texas student filmmakers. Garrison returns to Austin after the week but will continue to listen and view work and advise students in collaboration with Ferreira, Guedes, and Dr. Jose Alves, in real time and time-shifted on-line