I think the approach in terms of shooting my film was a fairly conventional one, I wrote a script and shot it word for word. At the time I thought it was the best way to go about approaching my idea, especially because I wanted to shoot a narrative. Because the focus for my film was getting smaller as I worked on it, at the start it was ‘a western’ at the end it was ‘exploring loneliness within a contemporary outback in environment’ it was hard to know exactly how to approach my narrowing idea, however now in retrospect I think I would have approached my idea in a similar to how Mitch approached his idea- by creating a series of vignettes, some drama, some documentary* style that all examine in different ways my central idea. This approach is pragmatic because it  would have granted me an opportunity to shoot drama, as well as doing interviews combined with more abstract, experimental footage that would concern itself with setting and the idea of place. If I was to say shoot 1-2 minutes (or potentially more) every week for say 3-4 weeks it would have given me additional structure and more footage to work with in regards to the last 6 weeks of class.  However, retrospect is a lovely thing, and I know at the time I really wanted to shoot just one longer piece of drama, which I ultimately did.

*I had this idea of interviewing farmers who live on wide open spaces, and then asking people who live in the city similar questions. I would then, in editing, juxtapose, compare and contrast there answers.

Now when watching my footage, and I know that in a previous blog post I praised this, but I think the pace of the drama is far to slow and at times feels awkward, boring and uninteresting-there are moments that worked really well and exceeded my expectations, but in saying that there are other moments when the piece falls flat. I feel as though if I had focused on a smaller section of the script and covered it with more shots that I could cut between I would have been able to make a quicker, more focused piece that would still retain the interesting moments that have been created in the film I’ve already shot (for example Man 2 narrating her feelings, the final ‘unable to drive a car’ line would still be included).