005: Personal Journey: Part 1

From Aspiring Filmmaker to Game Design Lecturer & Mentor

Today, I was planning to talk about playing, making, and selling games, but I found myself reflecting on my own journey. Perhaps it’s better to share this background information about me before diving into other topics. Here we go! 🙂

In 2017, I graduated from the Game Design Master’s Program at Bahçeşehir University’s Game Design Department (BUG Lab), which was the first university-level education program in Türkiye at the time. My thesis focused on designing an educational VR game for film and animation students. Before pursuing my master’s degree, I served as the Head Instructor of the Digital Film & Animation Department at SAE Institute in Istanbul. As the head of the department, I was responsible for delivering lectures on cinematography, VFX, editing, and film history, as well as managing a wide range of tasks. These included coordinating other instructors to align with the curriculum, organizing promotional events, and leading commercial video productions with my students for music bands and museums.

After completing my master’s program, I expanded my teaching portfolio to include new topics such as game design, XR development, motion capture, and virtual production at various universities. Over the past few years, I have also worked as one of the executives at BUG Lab Tekmer, a game startup incubation center authorized to help startups benefit from government incentives such as tax reductions. I continue to provide mentorship to gaming startups and contribute to BUG Lab Tekmer by developing new incubation programs. These programs aim to help gaming startups grow into sustainable and profitable companies.

My journey as a lecturer began back when I was a high school student at the German High School of Istanbul, one of the most prestigious and challenging high schools in Türkiye. At some point during my education, I decided that the best way to spend the rest of my life would be to become a filmmaker and tell my own stories. I started taking film seminars in Istanbul from the TÜRSAK Foundation and shared my knowledge with my peers in my high school cinema club, rather than focusing on improving my grades. I truly enjoyed learning and sharing about filmmaking, though I wasn’t planning to become a lecturer at the time.

In the summer of 2001, I spent six weeks in Los Angeles, USA, as a participant in New York Film Academy’s summer film directing program at Universal Studios. During this program, we worked with analog 16mm black-and-white film and edited on Steenbeck tables. This was just before the digital filmmaking revolution made filmmaking much more accessible to indie filmmakers.

Before attending the NYFA summer school, I had the opportunity to visit the set of renowned yet controversial Roman Polanski’s WWII-themed movie The Pianist at Babelsberg Studios during a class trip to Berlin, Germany. (At the time, it was much easier and more affordable for Turkish citizens to obtain visas and travel abroad.) When I say "visit," it was more like sneaking in—I jumped over a fence, mesmerized by the incredible sight of the film set, which featured buildings that appeared freshly bombed. Thankfully, I wasn’t caught and managed to get away, even grabbing a ride on a miniature train from the Babelsberg Studios’ theme park, which was next to the set.

I eventually decided to study filmmaking in Berlin, as it was more affordable for my parents. However, the journey wasn’t as smooth as I had hoped. Still, I don’t regret a single moment of those six years I spent in Berlin with good friends and many passionate, eccentric filmmakers. During my time in Germany, I had the chance to study Digital Film & Animation at SAE Institute Berlin and gain valuable experience working on numerous short and feature-length film productions in various roles.

Let me continue the story tomorrow—stay tuned for some fun anecdotes!

Thanks for reading this far. Feel free to share your thoughts, and take care.