So far it has all been a bit hectic trying to get a grasp on what we are doing exactly in our studio. The exercises that we have done in the first week were really interesting though so instead I shall focus on that. In Class we were given a character and an action that we had to write a short scene on. My character was Antonius, a retired engineer that is building a man sized rocket in the back shed; and the action that I was given too match with that was that he was enjoying a delicious sandwich. Like the exercise we did before that, I just started writing down whatever was coming to my head, getting as much down as I could. Turns out I was writing a Spy style movie with Antonius trying to make it to the moon in his rocket, the scene was set at a Diner where he happened to be enjoying his sandwich.

After this we got into groups and read each others story out and decided which one we should turn into a script, the group decided that my one was the best to convert to script which I was pretty excited about because I had already started visualising the shots of the scene. Unfortunately looking a bit too far ahead in this case. We each wrote a script separately and brought it to the next class where we would collaborate with the Creative writing students in filming the small scene.

When filming the biggest thing that I found was that everybody had fairly different opinions and views on how the scene looked in their head. I had something completely different in mind to the next person, which was interesting and problematic. I think the main problem here is that there were no assigned job titles so there wasn’t a director that had the power to control the shoot. Every one kept on throwing in individual ideas which, as a collaboration was good, but without a specific director in charge it took us a very long time to film with tall the contributions happening.

We got asked at the start of the class whether we thought the groups were too big. I think they were from what I had seen in my group as some people had no jobs and had to wait around which wasn’t the most productive use of time.

The main things I learnt from this first week’s exercise is that writing is a lot easier if you have some seed of an idea to start with, such as the character that I was given. Collaboration during the writing process was also really good because it critiqued and made a better script with everyone adding their best parts to the scene then what I could’ve had on my own. When it came to the filming however it was a little confusing it terms of the collaboration and who was able to call the shots. Doubling in size probably didn’t help and because we were restricted with the amount of equipment we had to use a few people didn’t get to have a job for the shoot which wasn’t the best. I think next time there should be a list of positions that we assign to everyone so we know who can give direction and who needs to take direction, which will just make the whole shoot more smoother and economical.