Of all the studios I’ve done so far, Translating Observation has actually been the most similar to what I had pictured doing in this degree back when I applied. I applied for the degree because I wanted to learn practical skills and apply them in a creative environment. This studio has provided a host of useful practical film making skills, and allowed us to apply them to creative ideas of our own making. I enjoyed the process of translating my observations into film ideas and I feel that I have learned a lot from it. The final product that my group and I created is a realisation of these skills and ideas, and I’m proud of the outcome.

I’ve learned a lot of things in this studio, both practical and conceptual. On the practical side, we were given a ground up explanation of how to use various production equipment including cameras, tripods, sound mixers and lights. I found these explanations extremely valuable because in previous studios we had used cameras such as the Sony EX3 but had not been given the instruction required to get the best out of the camera. Also, working in a group on our final assessment was a rich learning experience in terms of effective collaboration. We learned vital communication and collaboration skills that we will be able to apply to future projects. On the more conceptual side, I was able to hone my skills in observational writing, and I learned to view my observations as potential film ideas. I learnt to extract film ideas from observations that would not have been immediately obvious. The process of ‘translation’ involved in this was key, and is reflected in the final film project I helped create. It is satisfying now to have a finished short film and view it alongside the observation that inspired it.

My experience of this studio was very positive, and I found the way it was taught to be logical, clear and easy to follow. The workload was not small, but not unreasonable. Perhaps what I liked about it the most was the focus on our own personal ideas, and the lack of focus on the ideas, theories and research of others. I’ve found in previous studios that we’re required to research and cite the works of film scholars, which can be valuable but also gets tiresome when you’re really interested in creating something of your own. I liked that this course centred on ideas we create ourselves (observations) and didn’t require us to back up our ideas through copious research. In terms of my own performance, I felt that the design of the studio allowed me to do everything I needed to do by breaking some sweat but not breaking my back. As always, time management was my worst enemy, but I found the work load manageable, and my level of interest was such that I didn’t need to force myself to engage with the course. I surprised myself by enjoying the collaboration aspect of the final assessment, because I have worked alone on the vast majority of my big assessments. In the past I have felt more comfortable working alone because the whole thing is under my control, but surprisingly it was not difficult for me to invite the contributions of others, even though the original idea was mine.

The final product of the studio, the short film called “Merlot with Mates”, is something that I’m happy with when all is said and done. There was a time during the process that I feared that my original idea had been lost in ‘translation’. It was probably when I watched the first rough cut, I started to worry that the substance of the film wasn’t coming across as I’d hoped. I felt that the continuity issues and occasionally jarring line delivery might get in the way of the audience actually getting in touch with the characters and understanding their relationship. My biggest object of anguish was the ending of the film.  I was dismayed to find that I didn’t like any of the takes we had of the final shot, so I had to settle for a cut to black on the last line. However, after we started to make some more refined drafts that included music and sound effects, I realised that the issues I had been so concerned about were not as prominent as I’d thought. From my own experience of watching the film, I like to think that the idea I came up with in the original observation does come across. I wanted to convey the concept of coming of age, and encountering the new and interesting possibilities of adulthood. I believe that the film achieves this, if not as smooth and seamlessly as I’d hoped. If the criterion for this studio was to successfully translate an observation into film form, then I view our film as a success. The film itself isn’t Scorsese, but i do believe that it achieves what we set out to do, and I’m proud of that.

Overall, I’m satisfied with my work in this studio, and of the work of my group. I have gained and honed a number of useful skills for future projects, and would recommend this studio to others for that reason alone. On top of that, the studio encouraged us to nurture our ideas and create something from them, which I enjoyed immensely.

My experience of collaboration in this studio has been the most intensive, demanding and probably the most successful collaboration I’ve had in my course so far. I’ve done several group projects, but the majority of them have been presentations, research reports and the like. The creative collaboration aspect of this project set it apart from the collaboration experiences I’ve had in the past.

One of the biggest differences that I noticed was that everyone in our group had a legitimate drive to contribute, and perform to the best of their ability in their roles. I’m not sure if this was a result of the creative nature of the project or its high percentage value for our overall mark, but I found that there was notably higher commitment and effort across the board. Another big difference was the specificity of the roles that we were assigned at the outset of the project. It helped immensely to allocate roles such as director, producer and sound recordist early on, because it allowed us to divide up the work in a way that was fair and logical. In previous group projects I’ve found that the division of the work is difficult and can often lead to conflicts, whereas in this case we had no issues at all.

I also found that the amount of actual ‘collaboration’ that went on in this project was a lot higher than others I’ve worked on. We collaborated on almost every aspect of the film, including the script, shot listing and creative decisions while shooting and editing. We were lucky in that all of our group members were outspoken about their opinions and were not shy about contributing ideas.

I found the experience of collaboration in this project to be a very valuable learning experience. It was particularly helpful doing the editing in pairs/threes because it allowed us to view each others techniques/skills and learn from each other. I learned a lot from watching Dylan and Jenny and I’d like to think they learned a bit from me too. A number of our group members were quite experienced in this type of project from working on RMITV, and I feel that I picked up a lot of useful skills from working with them throughout the process.

I think we also learned to communicate a lot more effectively as a group, and hear everyone’s ideas. Particularly for me, who as the director found myself in a bit of a position of authority where the group looked to me for making certain decisions, I learned to hear out everyone’s ideas and make an informed decision based on that.

Despite the fact that the film stemmed from my observation, I did not feel weird or uncomfortable with people in the group contributing and adding to the idea. On the contrary, I welcomed everyone’s contributions and saw the film in the end as a collaboration.

The biggest challenge for me in the editing process was doing the audio. We left ourselves only one day for doing the audio, which I thought would be plenty but I ended up being wrong. Dylan and I did most of it, and Dylan insisted that we had to go through every single audio track (both channels) and do noise cancellation on them using adobe Audition (even the clean tracks). To be honest, I found a lot of it to be excessive, but we committed to doing the whole thing so it was out of my hands.

The sheer amount of time it took was the hardest part. I arrived at uni at 10am and left at 11pm, so the amount of time spent in the suite was bordering on ridiculous. It was good to get some more experience doing noise cancelling, but it did get a bit repetitive after a while.

One thing that we found was that it was near impossible to do effective noise cancelling in clips that did not have a sufficient amount of clean, uninterrupted background noise. The process of doing the audio would have been easier and more effective if we had ensured that we had recorded a sufficient amount of just background noise in each take.

Also, because of the amount of time we spent doing noise cancelling, we didn’t really have any time left for doing colour correction. Fortunately, I didn’t think we needed much colour correction but there were a few shots that could have used it. We had to settle for just doing a couple of brightness/contrast fixes and then calling it a day.

For future projects, I think I’ll try to get the audio work out of the way earlier and probably just focus on the tracks that need the correction instead of just doing them all. Also, I’ll remember to record background noise at the start of every take.

The editing stage for this film was very different to editing I have done for previous projects in a number of ways. The main difference was that all previous films/videos/sequences that I’ve made have been solo projects, so all the editing was done by me alone. For this film we had several people contributing and the vast majority of the editing was done in pairs. This was a new experience for me, and I found it to be a positive one overall. It helps having a second pair of eyes in the suite, so you can get a second opinion and for general moral support.

Another big difference from editing I’ve done in the past was the methodical process that we went through. I had not edited a film before that had so much dialogue, so I had not experienced the process of creating an assembly cut, going through every single take and selecting the best ones for a rough cut. The majority of these early stages of the editing were done by Dylan and Jenny, so I did not personally engage with it as much as them, but I was involved in some of the early process which was a good learning experience.

My key role in the early editing stages was to give my opinion on how certain sequences should be changed to flow better or convey the tone of the film more clearly. This usually involved sitting with Dylan in the edit suites and going through it together. I also sourced the music and sound effects for the film, which was quite a difficult process itself because of the sheer amount of royalty free music available online.

A big challenge of the editing was the continuity aspect, because straight off the bat we found a large amount of continuity blunders while sifting through the footage. Few of them were fatal, but there were certainly a number of unfortunate cuts that exposed discontinuous elements in the props, actors and blocking. We managed to find workarounds for the majority of these, but there were a couple that we really couldn’t do anything about. For future projects I’ll remember to be extra mindful of continuity, probably even have a dedicated continuity person.

Interestingly, during the editing process we cut a few lines out, which was something I had not expected to do. For a few of the lines we found that the delivery was off or the cut was discontinuous or it just didn’t feel right so we got rid of them. In most of these cases, I think that getting rid of the lines actually added humour and enhanced the tone, rather than reducing it as I might have thought.

I experienced the second shoot day to be a little bit messier and slightly more stressful than the first, but I still mark it as a success because we did everything we needed to do and avoided any actual disasters. I would put the slightly heightened stress and mess levels down to the group being tired from shooting the night before and being aware that this was our last chance to get everything we needed (we had left only a week for editing). Also, particularly towards the end of the night, there was a definite desire amongst the group to just get it done.

We shot the flashback scenes, the final scene and all the shots in the doorway/hallway, so we had a lot to get through. During the shoot, I learned the hard way that it’s important to take breaks. We were probably about 2 thirds of the way through the shoot and I noticed that the group was starting to get a little bit restless. On reflection, as soon as I noticed this I should have suggested that we take a break, but unfortunately my reaction was to get a bit frustrated. I tried to get the group to pull themselves together and keep shooting, but it wasn’t really working so I started to get more frustrated. Fortunately, before I lashed out in frustration, I realised that not only did the group need a break, but I really needed a break. I’d been standing for hours and hadn’t given my brain a rest. In that situation, calling for a break was exactly what the group needed. In future, I’ll push for breaks earlier and more often.

An unfortunate result of the messier nature of the second shoot was that we didn’t have time to shoot an alternate ending as Robin had suggested. Looking back now, I think an alternate ending would have been valuable, so for future projects I’ll endeavour to make time for shooting everything we want, even if it might not get used.

The first day of shooting was definitely a success overall, but also definitely had its ups and downs. Owing to our lack of preparation in regards to shot scheduling, we got off to a very slow start. We ended up having to write up the majority of the schedule actually on the day which was far from ideal. After we set up the lights we realised we would need to rethink some of our camera positioning which also took some time. On top of that, we were just generally slow to start, and I can’t quite put my finger on why. It seemed like the group had a kind of reluctance to actually start shooting, or maybe it was a lack of leadership from the myself and Hannah (first AD). Personally, I had started to get anxious because we didn’t start shooting until well after our planned start time, and I was worried that if we continued at that rate we would run out of time before we had shot everything we wanted to shoot. This anxiety lasted for the first few shots, and then gradually died down as we started being more efficient. After the first hour, my feelings of anxiety had completely dissipated and it had turned into quite a relaxing, enjoyable experience.

The group came together very well in the end. The actors were great, everyone performed their roles well, and I felt like I was getting along very well in my role as director. The majority of the experience was very positive, and we shot everything we had planned to shoot on the first day.

Seeing as this was my first experience of being the director, I learned a lot from this first day, particularly in relation to communicating with the group. There was an occasional bumping of heads between some of us, usually to do with disagreements about the shooting order, continuity issues and lighting. When I found myself involved in these little disagreements, I realised it would be easy to get too emotionally involved in the argument which would be detrimental to the task at hand. I found that it was much better to set emotions aside, and be as understanding and reasonable as I possibly could, and reach a resolution quickly. It was a small apartment with a fair few people in it, and I knew there was no room for resentment in there.

As Robin had warned, lighting was a constant battle. The group handled it very well though, and no one was shy about giving their suggestions on how we should light a shot. Jenny was particularly helpful in this. Audio was handled very well by Alaine, the only issue was the occasional tram that would go by and ruin the take.

The first shoot day was a big learning experience, and its success prepared us well for the following day.

In the week of the shoot, we got our actors together at uni to do a read-through of the script. This was an interesting experience for me, because it was my first taste of one of my key roles as the director; coaching the actors.

Once again, I was struck by how differently people interpret lines of a script. I found that the actors were performing many of the lines quite differently to how I had imagined/intended them when writing them. So, it was up to me to explain to the actors how I wanted the lines delivered, and encourage them to do different variations of their deliveries to see which worked the best. I found that I was quite comfortable doing this, and I think it helped the actors to better understand the script and the characters as I explained the desired tone of the film. Occasionally I felt a bit awkward telling them to deliver a line differently because there was a risk of offending or embarrassing them, but the actors were very receptive to the advice I gave them which was helpful.

Overall, the read through was definitely valuable because it gave me a chance to start preparing the actors for their roles, and also gave me a bit of early experience in working with them. Reading through the script with actors is definitely something I will do in future projects.

We organised to do a test shoot one week before our actual shoot in order to ensure that the lighting and equipment we had planned to use was going to be practical. While I knew that doing a test shoot would be a good idea, because it would allow us to properly scout out the location and ensure that it was going to be appropriate to shoot in, I did not initially think that it was necessary to borrow all the equipment to accomplish this.

I learned through the experience of doing the test shoot, that borrowing the majority of the equipment that we planned to use for the shoot was extremely valuable. We had planned to light the dining room table where the two actor’s would be seated with an LED light suspended high above the table using a C-stand. We tried this out on the day of the test shoot, and found that while it lit the table quite nicely, it was not practical for certain shots, in particular the wide shot of the table. We couldn’t get the c-stand into a position where it was effectively lighting the table and not in frame. This was an important discovery, because it encouraged us to go back to the drawing board and come up with a better solution for our needs.

We ended up going back to the techs and explaining the problem we were having. They suggested that we suspend the light/lights on a long horizontal poll, held up by two C-stands. The distance between the c-stands would ensure that we had enough space around the table to get a wide shot with no equipment in frame.

You can bet that i’ll be doing test shoots for all future projects that require this kind of focus on lighting, and I’ll be borrowing all the equipment we plan to use.

With the benefit of hindsight, I feel that shot listing was left later than it should have been in our group. We spent a fair bit of our time in advance of the shoot refining the script, organising shoot dates and preparing equipment, all of which were important, but the shot listing did end up being put on the back burner for a while. It wasn’t until the week of the shoot that we had a finished shot list.

The actual process of creating the shot list ended up being a kind of two sessions affair. First, Jenny and I went through the entire script and made notes about which shots we thought should be used for each piece of dialogue/action, which took a couple of hours. Then, Jenny and Dylan went through the notes the following day and wrote all the shots into a spread sheet, taking into account camera positioning, props etc. As the director, I would have liked to have been there for this second process, just to ensure that all my desired shots were being included in the shot list. Having said that, Dylan and Jenny did a really god job.

The only reason I’m reflecting that we would have benefited from doing the shot list earlier, is because it would have given us more time to get our shooting schedule together. We ended up doing much of the shooting schedule on the day of the shoot, which was not ideal. For future projects I’ll try to ensure that the shot list is finished well in advance of the shoot date, to allow for more time to complete the shooting schedule.

My first real taste of collaboration with in this project came during the editing process of the script. I came up with the first draft on my own, and then showed it to Dylan, Hannah, Jess and Jenny to get their advice.

It was a strange feeling submitting my script to the rest of the group for their approval, but it proved to be a positive one. One of the first things I learned was that people can have very different readings of the same script. When people read through your script in their head, chances are that they’ll imagine the lines with very different inflections to how you imagined it yourself. We discovered that half the group had interpreted the script as quite a serious drama, whereas the other half had read it as a comedy (it was intended to be somewhere between the two). After this realisation, we went through and changed a number of the lines, in order to make the tone come across more strongly.

One of the biggest alterations of my original idea, was abandoning the voice over, which I had intended to have throughout the film but had not written yet. It was the opinion of the group and myself that the script conveyed the essence of the idea very well, so we wouldn’t need a voice over. However, Robin pointed out that using voice over should be a stylistic choice rather than one made out of necessity, so we considered the possibility of using the voice for stylistic reasons. In the end, we decided to abandon it in the interest of focussing more on the dialogue and the relationship between the characters.

I found that having different peoples’ input for the second and third drafts of the script was completely invaluable. I think i had started to get tunnel vision when writing and could only see the script from my own perspective. For this reason, it helped immensely to hear an outside perspective. Also, the group contributed a number of new ideas/variations that tightened up the script and made it much more succinct, clearer and overall better than the first draft.

I learned through this process of editing that collaboration is vital for creating a finished script. It is essential to have a outside perspective/opinion on the writing to ensure that you are conveying the desired ideas effectively. For our group, this was a very helpful and mercifully painless process.