Upon coming back from the much needed Easter break (which went by like a breeze), we were tasked to do planning on little A5 sheets of paper. One piece representing one part of a 3 part week schedule. I guess it’s good to pen down everything in order to see the bigger picture, and we’re not limited to the 13-15inch laptop screens we swear by using them.

Right from the get-go, it was a little hard coming up with plans and ideas. Not sure if it was the combination between the lack of sleep or not meeting my daily dose of caffeine, but I had trouble penning down ideas that contributes to the progress of the final assignment. I am definitely not one who has the capabilities of thinking on the spot and pouring out ideas onto pen and paper. Ideas usually come to me while I’m doing something completely unrelated, like walking from place to place, preparing dinner, taking a shower…(you get the idea). Hence, I would store these ideas in a memory bank somewhere in my brain, and churn them out into the little A5 paper that Paul was referring to.

Though ideas are stored in that internal memory bank, they still have to be put into hard copy in order to place them into context and a timeline so that they can be executed in a timely manner. And somehow when I think of an idea, it would lead me to thinking of another, that may or may not be related to the original spawning concept. These ideas then spark more research on the topic, which then leads to generating more ideas. Seems like a never ending loop of questions and answers, and more questions.

Therefore, I’ve decided to tame my loose control of thinking, and curating them into categories of “Who, What, Where, When, Why and How?” Once placing ideas into this “Bins” on those A5 sheets of paper, I realised that organising and scheduling seem much more simple. I decided to approach the weeks into 3 parts, A, B, and C, just as how Paul suggested.

Part A – would be proposing a “challenge” for that particular week, also reflecting on findings or shots or just basic research materials, to see how it can be incorporated to the following week’s challenge.

Part B – would be generating ideas on how to tackle the “challenge” posed in A.

Example, Challenge: Recce, and scout for locations for shooting experiments.

Equipment needed for shooting experiment? Generate shot list? Test shots? Location recce shots?

Part C – Post-production on test shots, editing, grading, possibly layering music.

And then back to part A where I reflect on the findings. Of course, along the way, there would be other challenges and questions popping up such as, how to operate a DSLR while tracking or following subject? Pulling focus on DSLR? Shooting in RAW instead of the heavily compressed h264 format… Little kinks and bumps that should be ironed out by the end of each week to improve as a filmmaker.