Browse Items

Working replica of my 1877 phonograph. Speak into the horn, turn the crank, it records your voice on a tin foil cylinder. Then play it back. The first time I heard my own voice played back, I knew the world had changed. You will too.

Thomas Alva Edison

🇬🇧

Small group (max 4). The principles behind Morse code, Braille, semaphore, and other encoding systems. How do you represent complex information with simple signals? How do you optimize for speed and reliability? Shannon formalized it 100 years later. I figured it out by counting type.

Samuel Finley Breese Morse

🇬🇧 🇫🇷

I'll teach you to terrify an audience without showing them anything. We study the shower scene in Psycho (70 cuts, no knife-on-skin contact), the crop duster in North by Northwest (silence is scarier than music), and the dinner party in Rope (one continuous take). Tip: Always give the audience more information than the characters have. That's where suspense lives.

Alfred Hitchcock

🇬🇧

Twenty-five films on Blu-ray. Rashomon through Madadayo. Every film has commentary tracks and my own notes. Watch them in order and you'll see an artist evolve over fifty years. Start with Stray Dog if you want noir. Start with Ikiru if you want to cry.

Akira Kurosawa

🇯🇵

I hid my identity for twelve years among men who slept, ate, and fought beside me. This workshop covers physical camouflage, behavioral adaptation, gray man technique, and operating in environments where you do not belong. Tip: People see what they expect to see. Give them what they expect.

Hua Mulan

🇨🇳

Editing is where the film is truly made. I'll show you how a two-second cut changes everything -- mood, pace, meaning. We work with actual footage. I cut on a Moviola for forty years. Digital is faster but the principles are eternal: rhythm, contrast, surprise. Tip: The best cut is the one the audience doesn't notice.

Akira Kurosawa

🇯🇵

I painted full-color storyboards for every scene in my later films -- Kagemusha, Ran, Dreams. They're works of art on their own. You don't need to be a great painter. You need to THINK visually. We work with watercolors and ink. Bring your script and we'll draw your film.

Akira Kurosawa

🇯🇵

The dao -- single-edged, slightly curved, the workhorse of the Chinese military for a thousand years. Combined with crossbow marksmanship for both mounted and foot combat. I used these for twelve years in the field. Tip: Consistency beats brilliance. Practice the same cut ten thousand times until it is perfect, then practice it ten thousand more.

Hua Mulan

🇨🇳

How to choose, care for, and bond with a war horse. Hoof inspection, feeding on campaign, recognizing lameness, field veterinary basics. My horse carried me through twelve years of war. Your horse is your life. Treat it better than you treat yourself.

Hua Mulan

🇨🇳

I teach directing the way I learned painting -- through composition. Where is the eye drawn? What is the relationship between foreground and background? We use storyboards, not shot lists. Every frame should be a painting that moves. Tip: Use multiple cameras. Actors perform differently when they don't know which camera is live.

Akira Kurosawa

🇯🇵

We watch one of my films with Kurosawa -- Rashomon, Seven Samurai, Yojimbo, or Ikiru -- and I break down every choice. Camera placement, performance decisions, what was improvised, what was argued about. Small group, max 8. Bring sake or tea.

Toshiro Mifune

🇯🇵 🇨🇳

My improvement on the repeating crossbow -- a gravity-fed magazine holding 10 bolts, fired by pumping the lever. Less accurate than a standard crossbow but devastating in volley fire. A line of these could stop a cavalry charge. Working replica, safe bolts for target practice.

Zhuge Liang

🇨🇳