Today, was a very exciting one for me indeed, although completely exhausted now – I am full of energy knowing that I was at least of some importance in an exciting and interesting film project. One of my housemates, Alexandra Kirwood, in her fourth year of Fashion Design at RMIT, asked me to join her in the production of a ‘surreal YouTube tutorial’ with herself and talented film/photography practitioner, Will Duan (recently employed tutoring in his field of interest at RMIT).

Basically the premise of the surreal YouTube tutorial consisted of an acquaintance of Alex’s, Danny Fischer, in his dark, glow-in-the-dark-star covered, coloured light and blacklight illuminated, lava lamp accessorised and smoke filled (via smoke machine) bedroom. What’s captured is his attempt to teach himself and (partially) learning how to knit, getting drunk, smoking and attempting to make a tutorial for others to watch and ‘learn from’ in a very ineloquent manner.

Throughout the production process we endured (which was around 10 hours all up), I essentially played role of the 1st AD. I drove Alex and Will around, we picked up gear from RMIT, recorded sound on a Zoom microphone, captured some behind the scenes footage, voiced my opinion on possible production choices and generally, assisted where needed. It was a great learning experience and I got to see a monopod and a gimbal being used for the first time. The effect the gimbal has, cinematically, is really interesting and worked perfectly with the setting we created, for the surreal, almost creepy feel we were aiming to convey. I hope to sit in on some of the editing sessions with Alex and Will, when I have the time.

This is the monopod used.

Here is Will’s camera mounted and being levelled on to the gimbal.

These are images of the Zoom recorder we used, which had to be pointed directly at the subject making sound to capture it clearly.

Here is a first fashion film of Alex’s, which was produced last year. Although she managed to rustle up an impressive cast and crew (in relation to the task given in her course to create this fashion film); the concept, main organisation of team and costuming is hers as well as decisions of direction.