Instead of our typical Monday morning class this week, we were each asked to select a twenty minute period to consult with Paul and discuss our ideas heading into the second half of the semester. I took in the notes I had combined into a rough jumble of thoughts from Week 6’s brainstorm session, feeling still slightly lost about what exactly I’d like to explore. By the end of the consult, I was significantly less stressed over my indecisiveness, as Paul said it was okay to create a series of exercises for all three of my categories of ideas (Places, Moments and Feelings) instead of focusing specifically on just one.
Paul also mentioned the importance of the decision to use actors or non actors in my final products, something that I hadn’t given much thought to before. I thought that perhaps using actors from the Starnow callout would make for a better product as they would have a better screen presence, but I’m not sure what kind of role I would want a potential actor to play as of yet. Seeing as Paul thought this was a big thing to talk about in my pitch, I will have more of a think about this later in the week.
From the notes I jot down, I created a rough plan of possible exercises to progress through to the final product:
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Write down a list of “magical” ordinary moments that can be captured on film
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Browse casting call applicant list to find potential actors (pick more than you need)
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Find music that could possibly layer in with scenes
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Exercise – walk around city with phone and film or take photos of different locations
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Exercise – film some moments that were brainstormed and make a short film
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Exercise – take SLR around and experiment with camera techniques and framing to capture places and moments
- Final – create a series of vignettes exploring places and/or moments and/or feelings, and achieving this by thinking about cinematography, music, sound, aesthetics, colours, editing etc.
