DIRECTIONS - CRITICAL REFLECTIONS

At the start of the directors unit I was a little confused as to what the brief was about in the respect that I knew we had to pick a director, a film they had directed and a scene or scenes, but it was the 'making it our own' that was confusing for me, because I thought surely we would pick a director from a film that we loved then re-create it exactly the same?

What I later understood was that we needed to approach the scene from our own directorial vision. Throughout the unit we would learn the different approaches to directing and research various styles from different directors, how to work with actors, camera approaches, lighting, sound editing, how colours can convey a different meaning, how to pace a scene and get in and out of a scene without it being to fast or too slow, how sound design in the edit is a major part of the final film and without it can make a great film that looks visually good into a film that is unrealistic and disengaging.

At the start of the unit I had some time off, but I use no excuses for falling behind, if anything I wanted to push myself harder to catch up and hopefully produce some good work, however, I had never really looked at films from a directors view before but I never looked at films from a screenwriters point of view before the 'script to screen' unit, so it was going to be another exciting Journey.

Picking my director to research was seen to be a challenge at first because I wanted to choose a film that focused around my actor's style as I had already cast, so I needed to choose a film first that I liked, then see who the actor was, this was not the correct approach I should have had on this unit because the film that I thought was fitting was 'Rise of the footsoldier' (2007. Gilbey. J.) a film about the Rangrover murders in Essex in 1988, the director; Julian Gilbey hadn't really had an extensive directing background and after talking to Simon, I knew that my usual work ethic of 'Thinking outside the box' wasn't really being shown so far and I wasn't challenging myself enough.

Simon suggest I look at Andrea Arnold, who directed a film that we watched the last term called 'Fish Tank', I followed this up, yet there wasn't a lot of inspiration flowing to me when I started to look at her previous work, yes she was from the same area as me and 'Fish Tank' was filmed in Dartford, where I used to live and I like the language and dialogue she uses in her films but I wanted to challenge myself more, I wanted to pick a female director who had directed masculine roles, so I looked online for British female directors who had directed a masculine cast - I don't know why I searched for Bristh female directors, but thinking back I was searching for a role model director to whom I could aspire to - anyway - I found nobody that fit the criteria that I was looking for, the only film that really came up (not even a British director but was a British-American cast, directed by  a female) was 'Green Street' (2005) directed by Lexi Alexander, but it was just another 'football holligan' film and after looking into the history of Alexander the director, all I could find out is that she was a proffessional mixed martial artist who decided she wanted to make a film.

I spoke to Simon again and told him about my dilemma, he said to look at Kathryn Bigelow - I did - It came to pass that I, in fact, had already seen a few of her films but that she had many that I hadn't and I wanted to pick a film that I hadn't seen, so I picked 'The Hurt Locker'.

I think that for my research I could have done more, I wished that I watched more films about Bigelow's instead of just watching interviews. I did watch 'The Hurt Locker' but I couldn't really get into the film, although the scene that I picked to re-create was a good choice because I could connect with the emotions of the characters.

Finding a supermarket for the scene I originally wanted to do seemed to be a bigger problem then I thought so I had to make the decision to re-look at the scenes that I wanted to do, I did here on the course a lot that some people really thought that it was all over when something like that happened to them but to be honest I don't and never will have that mentality, in this industry there are going to be many challenges that we need to fix and fast and we just have to move on no matter how frustrated that we may be.

I spent a lot of time preparing for my shoot in pre-production, production and the edit, I have enjoyed the process of putting into practice what I had learned from the last unit, but I do feel like I have neglected my blog work on this unit as I have been so focused on the quality of my final film.
In the last unit, I was blogging every day.

It took me 3 day's to write my director's statement as I feel I had a lot to say, I have had to priorities my blogs this time and not had enough home time to watch and research my 2nd TV show because I have been playing catch and putting in extra time at the studio. I need to find a balance between production work and blog work, however, saying that I do feel like I have put in some good points and views.

I have enjoyed learning about sound design in this unit and the importance of sound because it is not something that I have done before in the last unit, I have applied my knowledge of sound within my final edit and have really enjoyed experimenting on my edits.
I wanted to do a major blog on sound after our sound edit workshop but other things where piling up on top of things and by the time I came to blog it I had already put into practice everything that i had learned so at the bottom of this blog instead of having a separate blog I have uploaded 'Jet Sam' By Simon Wealsford, what we edited on the day of our workshop, i added sounds of traffic, a train, children playing in the park, walking through leaves all from my own sound library which I have on my hard drive, what was fun is that I added the 'Taken' Dialogue, everyone in the class thought I was going to get into trouble but Simon said to have fun with it and I did, sound is fun and I can't wait to learn more about it.

Jetsam Sound Edit.

The worst part of the unit for me was the title sequence, the non-communication or co-operation between the group had my stress level boil over and it has affected my sleep, which has never happened before, it would have been an enjoyable experience if everyone came together as a team.

At the end of my film days, my two actor's Brady and Tony gave me some feedback as to what it was like working with me as a director, below is the video.