So last week everyone got to play director and basically become boss for the production of one shot.

We discussed the experience in our tute today and I think my group was pretty unanimous with our thoughts. We found it was difficult to delegate roles and really stick to them. Being a director, we still had a habit of asking others for their opinions and physically moving the camera or acting out how a performer should behave. We were still concerned with how we were doing time-wise, and I think we did rush our shots slightly because at the back of our mind we calculated, “There are x number of people who have to do their shots after me; I have to leave enough time for everyone else”. That’s how I personally thought anyway.

Also, I found it hard to articulate what I was seeing in my head since the one shot we had to do was so singular. I felt that there was not enough time to go through the backstory, the movements, dialogue, rehearse, and shoot so I just decided to skip the synopsis. In hindsight, I’m not sure if that was such a good idea. It probably wouldn’t have taken that long either, though when I became director I just became pressured not to use up so much time I guess. An interesting exercise would be to work from the same scenario, and become director of one shot from that same scenario. That way, the whole crew at least have an overall idea of the ‘feel’ of a particular scene. However that might restrict the types of shots people can experiment with..

Ultimately, even though we were instructed to be a director, and be only concerned with directing, I found it was easy to be distracted by other things. If this is so for such a small production, I can only imagine how it is for directors of larger productions.