This week, first up, we have a guest talk from Media lecturer, Paul Ritchard, on getting prepared to go out on a shoot and some of the many things to consider and do as part of getting ready. Here is a video version of his presentation on ‘Being a Media Operator‘ (approx. 13 min).
Particularly for anyone not there – Paul had some vital things to say about permissions, ethics and things you can and can’t do on a shoot as part of your studies (e.g. no toy guns in public/visible privately owned spaces!). Some relevant forms (e.g. a participant release) for PB3 can be found here.
As Paul mentioned, it is important for to know that RMIT has a number of potentially relevant insurance policies that cover you while out filming or on work attachments etc. Employers or authorities responsible for places you might want to film in may ask you about this. Insurance includes:
- Public and products liability insurance (here is the certificate of currency if someone asks)
- Professional indemnity insurance
- Host employers liability insurance
- Student personal accident insurance
For the second part of the class we looked at some past examples of student work in the course for an interview portrait assignment similar to the one you are doing. There is an important difference though – that past version also required the creative use of ‘found footage’ (i.e. copyright-free materials, often historical). This is NOT a requirement for students this year.
So some inspiring work by previous M1 students:
Some more general inspiration in terms of other kinds of short interview-oriented films – this, this and this. These are not templates and they do things you can’t do within the constraints of the Project Brief. But they do suggest ways of going about the process creatively and/or what is important in an interview film in engaging a viewer.
And then, finally, in the last part of the class we turned to broader issues of privacy in relation to ‘new’ technologies like the internet. You can stream the episode, ‘The Cost of the Free’ from the BBC series, The Virtual Revolution (2010) from here via the RMIT Library. Unfortunately we didn’t get to see the last twenty minutes which makes some really good points about the reconfiguration of ideas of the public and private but you can catch up at your leisure. These offer a helpful historical context for the danah boyd reading about teen attitudes to privacy online.