Cutting Corners

Written and Directed by Elias Tsourdalakis

Starring Jake McCormack & Mathew Hasna

Ezra Levant is addicted to cocaine but through a series of bad decisions ends up unable to afford it – what he does next will change his life forever.

In this scene supposedly out of a feature Australian crime/drama film, Ezra is buying drugs from one of his trusted drug dealers and nightlife acquaintances where he is offered a job in the cocaine industry.

This piece all started with the actors, their mannerisms and acting abilities. Knowing the actors I had available to cast, helped plan the story and the script working around the resources available. This helped bring life to the script having the actors jump in on the creative process. Working with actors on set was relatively easy, there was a good mixture of collaborating and following the initial plan and script. Idea’s actors brought forward were logical and insightful and their improvisation was welcomed. This is what helped bring life in to this scene and transformed it to be a lot more realistic as this scenes execution makes it believable in the local drug scene. Overall, the actors are what made this scene pop. A casual improvisational approach helped bring out nuanced performances and made this scene more believable with a bit of polish post production to ensure events flowed smoothly.

This piece of work is the cornerstone which helped me bring my skills together that we learnt over the course of the semester. I learnt that making a scene is a challenging yet rewarding experience and learnt how to deal with obstacles in the production process. I honed my abilities in visualizing a scene, writing the script and bringing it to life with others through table readings and a laid-back directing approach. I bettered my editing skills and realized it was one of my favourite parts of production to see an initial mental image eventuating as the pieces all connected together.