Coming back to university for my third and final year of Media at RMIT I wanted to do a studio where I had the freedom to create something that I really wanted to make. That is why I chose ‘Ways of Making’: the studio at least sounds like it won’t limit me to working within only a fictional or non-fictional realm, nor will it dictate the methodology I use to create my films. My main goal this semester is to make something or be a part of something that I am proud of so that I can use the material in the future when I am trying to secure a job in the media industry. I want to be able to show my friends and family a film that I worked hard on and am entirely happy with.

In order to do this I will need to learn about filmmaking through practical and theoretical research. Some skills that I particularly want to learn or improve on are colour grading, setting up rigs for dollying/tracking (which I have never done before) and lighting (artificial setups). I also believe that I won’t be able to do everything in or for my film by myself. Thus I would like to collaborate with my fellow studio peers as well as people from outside my own course. For instance, I would like to work with (preferably trained) actors, sound designers and writers.

My expectation of this course is that it will teach me how to be a better filmmaker and prepare me for the ‘real’ world e.g. how to act on a film set. Hopefully we will also get to explore the blurred line between documentary and drama films. I find Waltz with Bashir (Ari Folman, 2008) a perfect, but extremely rare example of how subjectivity, objectivity, fact and fiction can blend into one film to create a kind of ‘hybrid’ form of cinema. It uses animation (a film form generally associated with fiction and fantasy) to present a true story about war, but from a subjective and possibly warped perspective of reality. I would love to investigate more films like this and maybe employ some of these techniques into my own work.