Week Beginning 12th September

I thought I had posted up this week previously, but obviously I was mistaken and now shall seek to rectify that unfortunate lapse!

We started off with a look at Editing in Andy's class. We looked at the relationship between a cut and a blink, and saw that a cut must replicate the same psychological effect in the mind of the audience that a blink does in the mind of an individual. One info-bite is over, another is coming.

The afternoon was a tutorial with Richard, looking at the two outlines I'd provided him with. One is getting scrapped. The other is getting shunted sideways for the Enter the Pitch competition coming up very soon. This means I'm back to square one and am hunting around for premises.

Tuesday was a full day looking at directing. This was quite intense, but very helpful at the same time. We each read out our neighbours treatment, which highlighted especially the difference in language styles that there are from person to person in the class. Altogether I found that a particularly helpful assignment to work on. I had been looking again and again at the same scene from "Hero" by Zhang Yimou, looking at different aspects each time: the sound design, the camera movements and angles, the composition of the shots, the colours used and the special effects. Each time I watched it I discovered new stuff about it - this has only increased my love of the film. We continued with some work on storytelling, a lot of which was previously covered by Richard, but it was helpful to hear it again from another point of view.

Wednesday was a different kettle of fish, where I was called in to be an extra on low budget feature Day of the Flowers. There was a lot of good banter amongst the extras, but it was altogether a lesson in what not to do. The whole system was chaotic. We were filming just off Buchanan Street along a wide section of road. However, the road was not blocked off, and the two runners were utterly swamped with crowd control, cueing the extras and traffic control plus the usual duties of tea and coffee, etc. The problem were not helped by the fact that the 1st AD seemed very ineffective. Certainly he was not running the set with a rod of iron, leaving the main drive of the day coming from the 3rd AD. This left the 3rd unable to work with the extras more closely. So lesson: always have enough runners to cope with the extras and the public!

Thursday was a full day on Sound. Again, it was a very intense day. I took reams of notes. Cammy has a completely different - I might say better - style of teaching to Simon (and has the added bonus that he has not taken my flat keys home in his pocket. Not yet anyway...) I have yet to work through all my notes and type them up, but generally I found this day very helpful. In contradistinction to many in my class, I quite like Sound Recording.

Friday was a screening of the Conversation. Having already seen this film - it got a three star review in my blog last year - I will not blog on it specifically again. Suffice to say I was very glad when it was finished, and I hope not to have to watch it again. An influential film is not the same as a good film, as Strike demonstrated rather more clearly.

The Weekend was a crazy weekend away in Arbroath, returning at 3am on Monday morning, ready for another round of classes. Great fun though.