Week Beginning 16/2

Monday was a break from classes, and I was involved in directing Fire and Ice (or is it Ice and Fire...) a 90 second film that allows us to experiment with lights as well as giving us practice in production logistics and editing. With three different camera kits booked out by the class, there was a real feeling of productivity this weekend, and hopefully we are now turning a significant corner in the course and are slowly beginning to produce one film after another.

What did I learn from this shoot?

• Lights take a huge amount of time to set up.
• It is almost impossible to book a room in the Academy
• It is a bit of a challenge to light someone standing in a corner.
• Back focus has to be rigorously checked and rechecked.
• Polaroids do not catch fire unless you have a small incendiary bomb or equivalent.
• It is important before moving location to triple check that you have everything you need.
• Log sheets are invaluable: a lot more so than a clapper board.
• Getting eye lines right is very important.
• Using "proper" actors is a huge advantage

Tuesday was an early start when the kit had to be booked back in for 8.30, and Paul and myself went off to edit our various projects. It is great to have our own footage to be able to experiment with in the DTU.

Also at lunch, I went to Gaelic class with Phil. I quite enjoyed it. So if you hear Phil and myself talking in "Dwarvish" as John referred to it, we are practising saying "Does Charlotte have a cat?" and such like in Gaelic.

Tuesday afternoon was Screenwriting. We all were reading out our screenplays and getting feedback from all the class immediately. This would definitely have been better broken up by a break, as we were really beginning to wilt by the end of it. It was very useful, though to hear feedback on our scripts and see the way different people had tackled the premise.

Wednesday morning was a Technical class, getting more practise in the 3-point lighting set up. Useful and helpful class.

Wednesday afternoon was our first class in TV and Society, developing on from the old TV class. We watched a documentary on the waning moral standards of TV upon which I have commented more extensively in a Moodle forum.

Thursday morning was a lecture on the transition from silent to sound. I'm fairly sure we watched a documentary and had some sort of discussion afterwards, but the details are slipping my mind. We certainly noted that by 1930 sound design had been born with All Quiet on the Western Front.

Friday was a screening of That's Entertainment, a documentary charting the rise of the MGM musical. I have to confess I still have an aversion to the "classical" musical, with vast numbers of people bouncing about singing rather irritating songs on a giant stage, usually with an enormous staircase to be seen. I appreciate the pull they have for some people, but I think that for myself a black and white musical would have to be something very outstanding before I would appreciate it. The generic, indeed formulaic, production line treatment which they often received means that little stands out from them except the vast numbers of extras and the - admittedly often mega-charismatic - stars. With the colour revolution, it seems to me the musical finally came of age, but even here I would not be interested in the stage-bound "show-stopping number". In Singing in the Rain, the part I liked least was the Broadway Melody, which is closest in form to the traditional musical form. There are musicals like The Wizard of Oz, Show Boat and Singing in the Rain which rise above the rest, and stars like Judy Garland and Gene Kelly are incredibly watchable, but the classic musical is not a genre in which I have any great interest.
Having said that, I am quite fond of some of the more recent musicals, such as Phantom of the Opera and Moulin Rouge.

The afternoon was a dreary Production class with Abigail's unfeasible number of PowerPoint slides. I have yet to learn anything in this strand of the course, and I fear that this module is being aimed a little too low. We watched a remarkably boring low-budget feature film called Big Things. We were asked to hand in a three-hundred word summary of all the elements that went into making this production. I shall save my biting comments on the artistic merits of this film for that report.

In addition to all that this week, I have been continuing to edit Fire and Ice and have also managed to watch my way through three quarters of an episode of Generation Kill. It's not my thing, but I can certainly appreciate the high production values. I have also had a minor cold, and hopefully I am over that. Oranges are truly marvellous creations.