This week our studio has been taught via a series of online lessons in the form of word documents and reference videos. Online learning is something I really struggle with, having a bad habit of being distracted easily, so we’ll see how this goes.
I found the online lessons this week quite engaging and was very appreciative of the bite-sized form they took. I also found the set readings very valuable and would like to highlight described importance of being decisive as a director. In the 23rd chapter of Tom Reilly’s reading, I took a lot of interest in his description of how a director should be blocking their scenes, that they should be making the decisions, instead of relying on what “feels right” to the actors. It seems an experienced director should be able to block scenes with stand ins, and when an actor questions one of their blocking choices, they should be able to say “trust me, it looks good to the camera”. Being assertive/decisive when directing is something I usually struggle with and would really like to work on developing more.
Another thing I found interesting from the reading, was the fact that “many directors don’t know how they will cover a scene until the day of shooting”. I found this statement quite surprising to be honest, I’d always assumed that it was ‘proper practice’ to show up to set with all of your shots planned out to a t, and have always felt guilty for not being quite that prepared. I definitely feel less guilty after this reading, and enjoyed hearing about some apparent benefits of making those on the spot decisions.
I also found the reading’s description of where the power lies in the construction of a scene very intriguing. It described a system where scenes with multiple shots are largely constructed in the edit, and scenes covered in a single shot are solely constructed on set. The idea being, that when you’re creating a scene out of many smaller parts, you have control over how those parts are pieced together, but when covering a scene with only one shot, you don’t have any ‘options’ in the edit suite, and have to rely on the performance and staging from one particular take. From this, could you say that between an editor and director, a good editor is more important when covering with many shots, and a good director is more important when covering with fewer shots? This week’s readings definitely provoked some interesting thought.
On a sidenote – unfortunately I wasn’t able to complete this week’s exercise due to the fact I am living alone and not in close proximity to anyone I could volunteer as actors. Sounds like fun though, and I will try to do it at a later date.