the week 6 reading was about developing a crew. while the primary idea of the article, picking and choosing your own crew, was not entirely relevant because for this project we have been placed into groups without being able to choose people, there were many other parts of the reading that had really interesting points.

while this point was about picking the crew, it is also important to consider when dealing with your crew on set; having the right people. mood is very important on set. the mood of the crew will influence the mood of the cast which will in turn influence how the film itself turns out. when ever i have made films in the past, i had really only considered the cast that i was picking, but never considered the importance of picking a good crew. without a good, well working crew, a film won’t happen. the reading said we need to make sure everyone knows what they want to get out of the film, that they all have the same idea and a positive outlook. we don’t want people who will be late or unenthusiastic or dismissive or rude or act as if they’re doing you a favour by being there. and especially don’t want people with negative energy. because that won’t just bring the other crew down. it will bring the cast down and the whole quality of the film.

the second point that i found really interesting and useful was the classification of the different roles, what they include and what kind of traits they need to be. most eye opening for me that i never knew before was the role of the assistant director as more of a producer/business role than  a creative one. the reading said that assistant directors almost never become directors but are more prone to becoming production managers or producers. i had never thought about it like that because i had always considered the role of the AD to assist the director (which they still do). but this job is more of an organisational role, managing time and budgets and locations and the crew in order to allow the director to have creative flexibility on set.

hopefully when we get on set everyone can work cohesively together and keep up a great work environment to get our film done well!

week 7 was all about lighting. many different things about lighting were covered including:

-different lighting techniques (three point lighting, hard vs. soft lighting, natural vs. artificial lighting),

-ways of utilising lighting to communicate themes,

-moods or character’s emotions or personalities,

-how important lighting is for cinematography,

-in terms of setting up and framing a scene,

-what equipment is needed to light a scene and what the different types of equipment can add

-exposure levels and the importance of maintaing them.

these points covered were all very important, useful and relevant to our own projects. lighting is a major part of any film as without light, you can’t see anything. as director, i hope to be working very closely with our DOP to create the right lighting not only in every scene of our film but in ever shot. one very crucial part that was mentioned in the lecture was about practice shoots. making sure that we have our story board and shot list ready so that we can get the gear and practice using it and learn how to set up the lighting which will give us an idea not only of what lights we want to be using for our shoot to get the right mood and feel but also of how we want our lighting set up on the day of the shoot. this is vital because on the day of the shoot, timing will be crucial so if we know exactly how we want our lighting set up for every shot we will not waste any unnecessary time moving lighting around the room. as the saying goes, practice makes perfect.