The second week of ‘Film 3’ began much like the first week – with a practical camera exercise. We again had to capture numerous 50 second shots using the Sony ex3’s, however this time we HAD to direct the actions of our subjects. This really took me back to the days of VCE Media.
In our group of 4, we decided to find appropriate and visually interesting locations for each of the actions we had planned out. It’s become clear to me that by finding interesting and visually pleasing locations one can strongly increase the quality and dynamic-ness of their compositions – in some ways it also makes it easier to get “cool” shots as there may be a large amount of impressive detail in a location OR a specific detail that is particularly compelling.
With this in mind I’ll have to begin to further explore the RMIT campus (and Melbourne) in order to find locations which I can keep in mind for future projects. I have limited experience filming in public/external locations (generally the projects I have worked on have taken place within someone’s home) and this is an area which I certainly wish to develop and strengthen. I used to think it’d be cool to be a location scout – while this career path seems to have been pushed aside by other aspirations, a greater knowledge of my hometown and its locales is certainly something that’ll come in handy for future projects & life in general.
Even during this basic exercise we had to begin practising our directorial abilities; finding clear and concise directions and descriptions of what each subject needed to do and how the 50 second scene needed to pan out. I think this was a good way to introduce us to the ‘directing process’ as in the production of drama (and even documentary) pieces, there is a large degree of direction involved and all cast and crew members need to understand precisely what the director’s aims are.
Based on my past experiences ‘directing’ there are a few things that I need to work on in particular. While I feel that I’m usually able to describe and explain what needs to be done in the short term, I’m often not able to explain precisely what the ‘long term goal’ is for the project and what I envision the final product to look like. This is probably due to a need for lengthier preproduction processes AND the need to think more deeply and realistically about what I want achieve through the completion of a project.
I also think that sometimes I can begin to rush production and this is certainly something that I’ll need to avoid doing in the future; while time is always a concern – rushing through anything will always yield results that are just ‘ok’. Obviously the best way to target this weakness is to better organise and structure my shoots and this has been something that I have been working on improving. Creating things like storyboards, shooting schedules and shot lists are some of the things I have introduced into my workflow to achieve heightened organisation.