In our groups for the week we did some more filming, this time from scripts that the creative writing students had written. First thing I notice is that my scripts are nowhere near the creativity of the the writing students, the way that they write gives the script a lot more depth. However I would like to take this reflection to look at the actors side of things.

In this exercise I was acting for the other group of people who were practicing their technical skills behind the camera. The first thing I learnt as an actor: it can take a while before you’re actually needed. The crew take a while to talk through their idea and set up the camera and readjust minor details before they even think about involving the actors. So, acting can be a waiting game.

In terms of getting my character from a script: I can see how much easier it is to have it all written out in front of you. Not just your dialogue but the motivation behind actions as well. By knowing this it’s a lot easier to act in the way that the director wants you to. So, the key to a happy actor is a proper script.

Because I still had my director’s hat on from when I was filming my scenes, it was difficult not to throw in technical ideas into the mix when I heard the crew talk about their plans, not having much to do in between the takes also didn’t help. Although props to the director because he asked me and the other actor to rehearse our lines so that we’re confident enough in our performance, when we stopped he’d ask us to run through one more time; which did seem to make the time go faster and the repetition did actually make me more confident. So, a preoccupied actor is a good actor.

When the time did come to shooting our scenes the director took us through step by step what the camera was going to do and how we should react within the frame. Knowing this helped us streamline to the quick schedule as we didn’t have to go for that many takes. By giving me specific instructions like: wait a beat after his line, make your arms bigger, seem more crazy, all helped me deliver what the director was looking for. So, a well informed actor is a fast actor.

It was interesting to be on the other side of the lens for a change and it has given me a new found respect for professional actors and their craft.

In the past few weeks we have learnt certain skills and techniques in class about how to create and use a script on a film shoot. I decided to bring those skills and techniques to a small project of my own to see how it was working in a different environment.

The team that I worked with I have worked with on multiple occasions so already we know how each other works and we work well together. Generally though, we have an idea that we loosely all understand and then we work out everything else while we’re shooting. Obviously it’s not the most efficient way of working but its done well in the past. By changing things up and working more on the pre-production and the use of scripts and marking them up was different and difficult at first, mainly because it’s not the exciting bit and you just want to go out and film something, but nevertheless, I stuck at it and found a few revelations.

First off, it almost halves your production time something I couldn’t really learn from the small exercises that we do at school. By giving an actor a full script instead of saying “say something like . . .” the actor seems more confident in less takes and although I don’t like the way that it restricts a few creative freedoms it definitely helps to streamline the process. By giving your crew the mark up of a script and listing exactly what shots you want you can move quicker then when you’re trying to picture what shot should come next. So what would’ve taken a whole weekend to film actually only took us about 6 hours, which is such a great thing to know now that free time to film is dwindling in the midst of uni and work.

Another thing that surprised me was the amount of input I got from my crew when we were marking things up. I would’ve thought that me providing the finished script wouldn’t have aloud the others to add their creative input however I decided to have a read through with the actors and crew where we could mark up our individual scripts with what was needed like we had done in a few of the class exercises. Surprisingly, I would even go so far as to say there was more creative input when we were marking the script up than when ideas were just thrown around during the shoot.

Finally in post production, as I was learning in the class exercises, by having a marked up script to go to when editing together the shots made that process so much quicker as well.

I guess the main negative that I found is that even though you save time on the shoot you gain time in pre-production, which is good for the crew but bad for you when you’re up in the early hours of the morning trying to finish the script before your shoot! It does also take away those few strikes of brilliance that you get when you’re actually on location, things you can only really think of when you’re there.

In conclusion, its probably best to use the pro’s of each style and morph them together in order to create a successful shoot.

In Class for the past two weeks we have been working on the one project. Moving from writing and filming in week 2 to post production in week 3. I really enjoy post production but the main problem that I had is shifting from Final Cut Pro, my weapon of choice, to Premiere. Just having to get used to the different keyboard shortcuts tripped me up a little and made it stressful trying to work on an unfamiliar platform.

Everything else in class was straight forward enough, I will mention how important it was that I was there for the shoot, that way I knew what we were trying to get so when it came to post production there was no messing around about what shot goes where. In week 2 we were told to mark up our scripts with the different shots which made post super easy and not having to guess. We did, however, end up shooting different shots on the shoot as well just because we thought it looked better or interesting and hadn’t thought of it previously. I think that this is an important thought when thinking about the difference between the writer and the director, neither one knows exactly what the others thinking and once you actually put it on location and add the actors to the scene you can never really know what is going to work better than others. The main lesson here is to learn to be flexible.

One thing that we didn’t do, which we should’ve, was mark down the footage that was usable on a list so that when we went into post production we could easily choose which clips were usable and which ones weren’t. It would’ve just made the process a lot smoother than having to go through all the clips one at a time, often revisiting some, to choose the best.

For a bit of extra work I decided to find a script of one of my favourite movies and compare that to the final product and see what kind of things I can pick up from that. I decided to look at Animal Kingdom by David Michod as I have analysed this film very closely.

One of the first things that I noticed is how much of the story is lacking in the script. Not that this is a bad thing, it just goes to show how much you can actually do with a script, and it doesn’t necessarily tie you down too much. It’s interesting how much story I could pick up from the movie that wasn’t exactly defined in the script.

Having said that, the script’s dialogue is extremely similar to how the actors performed them, in the way and mood that was set by the script. When I was reading the main character J’s dialogue it came with the exact same performance that was given in the final film. Not to say that the performance wasn’t anything but incredible, but you could really feel what the character was like during the dialogue of the script.

Obviously the big problem with this is I know the movie and I know it well. It’s a benefit to see the difference however having already seen it I was always drawn back to the visuals when reading the script. If I were to read a script of a movie that I haven’t seen before it might be a different story and I might find out a few different things from this experiment.

I shall therefore endeavour to find a movie that I haven’t seen before, find the script and read it first before I watch the movie, hopefully I will have some more revelations!

So far it has all been a bit hectic trying to get a grasp on what we are doing exactly in our studio. The exercises that we have done in the first week were really interesting though so instead I shall focus on that. In Class we were given a character and an action that we had to write a short scene on. My character was Antonius, a retired engineer that is building a man sized rocket in the back shed; and the action that I was given too match with that was that he was enjoying a delicious sandwich. Like the exercise we did before that, I just started writing down whatever was coming to my head, getting as much down as I could. Turns out I was writing a Spy style movie with Antonius trying to make it to the moon in his rocket, the scene was set at a Diner where he happened to be enjoying his sandwich.

After this we got into groups and read each others story out and decided which one we should turn into a script, the group decided that my one was the best to convert to script which I was pretty excited about because I had already started visualising the shots of the scene. Unfortunately looking a bit too far ahead in this case. We each wrote a script separately and brought it to the next class where we would collaborate with the Creative writing students in filming the small scene.

When filming the biggest thing that I found was that everybody had fairly different opinions and views on how the scene looked in their head. I had something completely different in mind to the next person, which was interesting and problematic. I think the main problem here is that there were no assigned job titles so there wasn’t a director that had the power to control the shoot. Every one kept on throwing in individual ideas which, as a collaboration was good, but without a specific director in charge it took us a very long time to film with tall the contributions happening.

We got asked at the start of the class whether we thought the groups were too big. I think they were from what I had seen in my group as some people had no jobs and had to wait around which wasn’t the most productive use of time.

The main things I learnt from this first week’s exercise is that writing is a lot easier if you have some seed of an idea to start with, such as the character that I was given. Collaboration during the writing process was also really good because it critiqued and made a better script with everyone adding their best parts to the scene then what I could’ve had on my own. When it came to the filming however it was a little confusing it terms of the collaboration and who was able to call the shots. Doubling in size probably didn’t help and because we were restricted with the amount of equipment we had to use a few people didn’t get to have a job for the shoot which wasn’t the best. I think next time there should be a list of positions that we assign to everyone so we know who can give direction and who needs to take direction, which will just make the whole shoot more smoother and economical.

This Course is called Writing for Film and Filming for Writing so I don’t think it is to far out their to believe that this course will include writing and filming, that much is for sure. I would think that we’d be looking into the industry and how it has been done as well as research and try new techniques of writing for film, and possibly even creating our own techniques.

What do I want out of the Studio? I would really like a lot of hands on experience in both writing and filming, especially doing the two together from start to finish. I would like to learn a lot more about the techniques and the styles that writers use to convey ideas for the film maker to interpret. As my background is in film I would like to focus more on learning about the writing and then just honing in on my skills as a film maker as I’m a lot more confident in that.

One of my main problems at the moment is writing down my ideas for films that I want to create in a way that people understand them and can see my vision. This is one thing that I hope to become better within this studio.

Something else I’m excited to do is to work with the creative writers that we’re going to be collaborating with. It will be a great experience looking through their work as well as showcasing my own to them. The thing that I’m most excited about is when the two groups can work to each others strengths to create something worth being proud of.

Hopefully some, if not all, of these expectations become a reality.