Week Beginning 5th October 2009

I managed to squeeze some preproduction for The Golden Rule into Monday morning before class. While this felt like a great achievement at the time, the major redraft that is continuing as I write this blog means that most of the work could potentially have been pointless.
Our class was on Production Design and the importance of that in making good films. While we spent some time looking at Metropolis and the influence that has had, we also looked at more modern movies. In particular, I noticed that when we were looking at the contenders for Oscar for Art Direction in one particular year, I had seen all the films mentioned except The Aviator, about which I have heard a lot. It’s a fluke, of course, but it makes me feel a little more confident about my film knowledge.

The afternoon was Screenwriting: a recap of what had being done last year, with a few extra little exercises thrown in to keep us amused. It all seemed to go OK.

Tuesday morning was our first TV content class, which I have to say was quite disappointing. Our brief for the term is to come up with two outlines for comedy soaps in the line of Teachers and Shameless. However, I fear it will be like Jane Austen trying to write a sequel to Trainspotting. The “lowest common denominator” humour of these programs and the obsession with sex as a punctuation to the narrative are both huge turn offs for me. Is it possible to write a comedy soap where the story points are not found from the characters getting drunk and having sex? It has been done many times and the only way to go (as the playwright Berthold Brecht pointed out a century ago) is to get more and more outrageous. But once we have kidnapped a goat and kept it in the cellar as a sex slave, once we have force-fed a toddler LSD and laughed ourselves silly at the tripping toddler, once we have caught the red-faced vicars wife handcuffed to the confession box, then we are back to the same problem. The same thing is no longer any use. We need to get more extreme. And then some. But then shows like Dad’s Army, Yes Minister and Father Ted are still just as funny today as when they first went out. Their humour doesn’t rely on being taboo-busting - it is based on character, dialogue and situations. I wait with caution to see how this pans out, but I am not expecting great things from my attempts.

Tuesday afternoon was a look at the internet as a research resource. I’m not sure I learnt anything in this class I didn’t know before, though it was the first time I had heard Wikipedia being (partially) ratified by an academic institution!

Wednesday was our second class with Zam and again was quite good. We watched the remaining scenes the class had brought in, and despite the lack of co-operation one expects from AV technology, we struggled through and it was very interesting to discuss all the films. We also watched Mashed, one of Zam’s shorts, and dissected it from the original material upwards to the finished cut. This was very helpful, as was getting a template treatment that a director would write to explain his vision to the HoDs.

Thursday was a Technical day. We had an exam in the morning. (Don’t call it a quiz… we know what it really is!) This was obviously intended to stretch us, but I’m fairly certain we were never taught some of that stuff. Other stuff I remember Ray mentioning casually, and me immediately thinking “Well there’s no possible need for me to know that!” and immediately discarding the information. Such as the length in mm of the CCD chip within the DSR570. The afternoon was a look at new tripods: much the same as the old ones but a bit more hard core. One has a little light on the spirit level which I liked. We also looked at changing bulbs. That will be a very useful thing to be able to do.

Friday was a screening of Strike (see other blog)

Also generally this week: “Dust” remains in limbo until Editshare is back up and running. “The Golden Rule” has been put in limbo until the script is redrafted. This is now taking Phil five times longer than I expected and I am getting increasingly worried about the rapidly approaching shooting dates. Meanwhile Phil is singing in the Mod…