For this semester in Film – TV 1 I would really like to apply myself to the course and all that it has to offer as I believe it will be very fulfilling and rewarding at the end. I would like to effectively work collaboratively with others in all aspects of the film making process whether it is screen writing or helping out other groups.

I would like to further explore my interest in cinematography by looking at other short films, (and feature film), (and TV Shows), to see how DOP’s use movement / stillness to evoke different feelings that help the progression of the idea. I way I thought i could begin to develop this interest is to start a journal with ideas and notes attained with all the films and TV that I watch on a regular basis. However, this may be my biggest passion in film making so looking into an area of film that I hadn’t really though about such as directing or lighting or set design may also be an area that I am definitely willing to try out.

By the end of the course I would like to have attained the skills and knowledge to be a competent film-maker, able to work collaborative with others to develop ideas in order to create rewarding work.

I learnt quite a few things from Jasmines Lecture on Monday. Most notably that film is not real life ‘because real life is boring’, which had me thinking for a while as I hadn’t really thought of it that way. Films definitely evoke ‘real’ emotions within you but thats not because the film is real life, it may be based on real events, although it is a tool for film makers to creatively use imagination as a tool to create certain feelings for the viewer. In the ‘Getting an Idea’ reading it had a circumstance of to script writers who had no real ideas of what to write about, so instead they thought of what they wanted to see on screen and based there script and ideas around that. This process may come in handy as sometime the scriptwriting process can become cluttered while constantly trying to envision it on screen.

From the (Mackendrick) ‘Slogans for the screenwriter’ reading for week two the first quote which stood out to me the most was “a true film is likely to be 60 – 80% comprehensible even if the dialogue is in a foreign language”. This made me think about the aspects of film that make up the 60 – 80% so that it is comprehensible. Which then made me think about the early silent films like  this one i found on youtube Cook, Papa, Cook (1928) and the parts of the film that made it successful without any dialogue. The music, cinematography, acting, directing all play substantial roles in a film in order for it to be fulfilled production. I think this aspect of the film making process excited me the most as it will require me to look past the dialogue to see how the cinematography or the expressions of an actors face can be used to convey meaning in a different way to how dialogue usually would.

Another quote from this reading stating ‘Students films come in three sizes, too long, much too long and very much too long’. After watching some short films on vimeo, I was looking to see what they all had in common which made me enjoy them. I found that the simpler, shorter scripts were the most effective and the successful ones simply tried to capture a small moment in time, whether its a sought after emotion in the film or a sense of realisation within a character. In class Paul made a good point that a large script can be a good backstory to help an actor get into character, however for the purpose of the short film and the limitations that it has, a small moment within the script (the journey from pet crabs to a pet cactus) can sometimes be the most fulfilling and effective.