In our studio we are moving pretty fast and its very exciting!

We did an exercise in class where we mapped out and choreographed a scene. Our subject came towards us and had 4 marked points to stop. I got to be the focus puller for the first round. This activity helped me understand the attention to detail and FOCUS needed to successfully PULL off this kind of scene. Not only was I watching our subject move, but I was checking the facial expressions and monitoring the level of anxiety of my camera operator.

One thing I have take out of this is that before ACTION we should check in with each other. If we had have done this, we would have realised that the tripod was locked in position, which was the reason why our camera man had such a difficult time tracking Ayu.

After our first class activity of creating a full film crew, I’ve been excited to learn more about the complexities of how everyone with such different roles fit together.  In our “role play” our task was to recreate a scene from the red shoes with 3 actors. At the last second I was thrown in as the “director” and my stomach flipped. I frantically tried to figure out what to do. Should I just yell at everyone? But then I realized that everyone was pretty much running themselves. So I strolled over to the table of actors and had a chat about how they felt about their lines.

Normally id think “well obviously the director’s role is to run the whole show!” But how can that be when everyone already knows what they’re doing? To me, the director’s job is to take a holistic approach and make difficult decisions based off the whole crew and the first AD is the one who makes it technically possible.

At the end of the class Robin explained the roles much better. One distinctive difference of the
directors role is that they are the only ones who should be communicating with the actors. If the cinematographer tried to tell Tom Cruise to lighten up they’d probably be fired.

Afterthought:

The beauty of it is that in film making everything is linked. Like focus pulling is linked to acting style. If an actor is well known for method acting, their position on set would be impossible to predict. This affects the whole job of the focus puller as they would be seriously sweating to keep them in focus.