Week Beginning 4/5

Monday was a holiday, so therefore was a particularly busy day. I was working as a runner on Shrink-Wrapped, one of the grad shoots. I have not the foggiest notion what was going on in the film, as I was mainly involved in lifting and carrying items (including a pleasingly large amount of food) and in rigging and derigging lights.
The afternoon was spent feverishly writing a three minute script for Richard. (Is that my sixth for him?) The idea had struck me on Sunday when my minister had been preaching on the verse "What is your life? It is a breath on a cold day that appears for a little time and vanishes away"(It's the Bible's equivalent of "Out out brief candle") So I spent Monday afternoon putting something together for that. Due to the rush to get it in for five, I had no time to redraft or even reread it, but I hope it has some spark of something in it which can be properly developed.

Tuesday was compiling an edit of Love Mugs and Stickmen. I hope I will not be misunderstood when I say that the acting talent on display was truly unique. Editing for continuity was particularly difficult, but I enjoyed the challenge of taking shots from widely different parts of the film and seeing if they could help to bridge a gap in the narrative. I do not claim to be a particularly sharp editor, but (certainly at this level) its something I find very enjoyable.

Wednesday was a morning screening of Paradise Lost, which I found very engaging, followed by a short talk by a rep of Film G. It is certainly a competition I hope to enter, if for no other reason than the shameless mercenary view that Gaelic films are showered with money!
Between the screening and the talk, I was involved in the first proper shoot for Dust. It was a simple set up. A single shot, three point lighting, a painted backdrop courtesy of Luisa and Karen of TPA and a rather remarkable actor from 2nd Year. We took the shoot fairly easy, but with Ray running 20 minutes late, we were late getting into the Film G talk.

Thursday was a class on the representation of Muslims. I have no doubt representation is an very important issue, and deliberate or careless misrepresentation is an example of irresponsible film-making. But equally every minority group (and in case anyone accuses me of bigotry, I'm including evangelical Christians in this assesment) believes itself to be better than it actually is. A true representation of a group by an objective outsider may well be viewed as a hostile misrepresentation by someone from within the group. Of course then we come to the issue of whether an outsider is ever neutral and objective, and I suppose they are not. Everyone has their open prejudices and bias with which they approach a situation. The best we can hope for is to be able to admit our preconceptions to ourselves and not fool ourselves than we are seeing things exactly as they are.
Thursday afternoon was a look at some webseries. These are obviously trying to break new ground, but with the micro budgets attached to them and the lack of any financial gain for the producers, there is nothing worth watching that I've found yet.

Friday was a class on TV as a force for political change. I found this quite inspiring, until I realised that programs like this had died out when Tony Blair had come to power. The populace aren't concerned any more with politics - and with all the main parties looking like clones of each other it is no wonder. Even my Granny, who has voted in every election since she was 18, has said she will not vote this time. What I think is that if a party has a vision and a worldview, then people can support that or disagree with it, and the party will succeed or fail depending on what people think of their way of doing things. But when the parties have no overriding themes, beliefs or visions which motivate their policies, and when their main concern is to be seen to be planning policies which will be vote-winners, the argument stops being about ideologies and instead is about personalities, about individuals in the Cabinet messing things up now and again, about who has got the most TV charisma, and about who is most "progressive". For all that can be said about Democrats and Republicans, at least there seems to be a fairly clearly defined core to both their beliefs, and they stick to these beliefs even when they appear a little unpopular. (Maybe that is just my UK perception, and I realise I'm beginning to ramble so I'll stop.)