Week Beginning 19/10

With the constant background pressure of the Golden Rule mounting fast, I have not had a moment of relaxation this week.

Monday was a class looking at Sound Design. Having arrived back from a crazy weekend in Arbroath at 3am that morning, I was struggling to stay awake, but I fully appreciate how vital Sound Design is to a movie in producing realism and a sense of immersion. It seems so natural to include it that earlier films which placed less importance on it now seem slightly odd and flat.

Monday afternoon was a class with Richard, looking at non-3-act structures. For myself, I find the concepts outwith the three act structure to be rather wacky - not territory I'd be keen to venture into except perhaps for a non-chronological story or a story with multiple protagonists.

Tuesday was a location recce for Golden Rule, followed by some auditions. I begin to realise just how much preparation must go into an audition from our point of view. When that organisation isn't there, the audition becomes either just a blether, or full of awkward silences.

Wednesday was a day which I had set aside for editing Dust. (It's so close to being finished, but I have no time to just get in there and finish it off.) This time, I had just got myself set up after some nasty incidents with the Editshare, the network, old files, my external Hard Disc and every other thing conceivable. And then I got chucked out of the DTU to make room for the first years... Typical!

Thursday was a full editing class all day. I still feel that our total editing classtime has been rather vestigial in first year, so I'm hoping we'll get a lot more chance this time round to really get to grips with the software. I have to say, however, that Avid is not for me. It seems to be designed in a deliberately obscure fashion to continue to preserve the myths surrounding the arcane art of professional editing. I have no doubt that for professional editors who are using editing software daily, such a program is very suitable, but for a mere dabbler, such as myself, it is far less intuitive than Final Cut.

Friday was a TV content class, where we watched Life on Mars (always a favourite of mine) and discussed themes prevalent in Shameless, Teachers and Life on Mars. I find it strange that we can attempt to condense the themes of these programs to one word cliches like "family". Surely the purest annotation of the theme would be a statement about family to show how that concept is dealt with in the program. It seemed that we talked about how Sex was used in different ways in different programs, but still just lumped Sex as an identical theme in both Teachers and Shameless.

The afternoon was a screening of "12 Angry Men" which I will post about in my other blog.