Year 2 Short Film Screenings and Feedback

Yesterday we had our short film screenings and feedback sessions.

I found the films a little bit disappointing on the whole – our skills just haven’t advanced as far as I thought they had.

Seeing my own film up on the big screen was disappointing as well. I felt that we could have done a much better job on the colour correction, one scene in particular could definitely have been shorter, and in another, the radio sounded as though it was next to the camera rather than in the scene.

The feedback was quite intense in many ways. I had suggested to the tutors that we should reverse the order of the feedback given so that the director would speak last and I think this was a success. They invited Sophia to speak first and I don’t think that she would have said the things that she said if I had spoken beforehand. I was a little bit annoyed but not necessarily surprised that she said she felt she hadn’t had enough input into the shots and didn’t understand my vision properly. The example she gave though was a bit foolish – she said that when it came to shooting the shot that I was going to use for the title she wasn’t aware of this, however I had noted that this would be the title shot on the storyboards and all four drafts of the shot list! The other students mostly had good things to say about both me and the production, although Jonas felt that he could have done better with the colour correction. I thought RJ’s comments were interesting because he was quite self-critical (which I believe people should be in these sessions) and because he saw the same problem that I did in that we needed to have a more formal, more structured way of working – he said there was a point that we needed to stop being friends and start being professionals.

The tutors feedback was very interesting too, because there were so many differing and strong opinions. Some tutors felt that the acting was excellent and the pacing was good and that I had found the nuances of the story very well and treated it with great sensitivity. Other tutors felt that the music choices were very bad, some of the camera choices were dull or inappropriate, and that the film was too long and the weighting of the scenes was all wrong! I was glad that they had such strong opinions about whether they liked it or not – it showed that they took it a bit seriously as a film, rather than just treating it like a student project and therefore not much was to be expected of it.

Sophia and I had a discussion after the feedback session to talk about where we thought we went wrong. She had thought that she didn’t have enough input, whereas I had felt that she didn’t offer enough or take enough initiative. I think the problem was that our personalities were incompatible. I am very much set to rapid fire when I work, so even though I make it clear that shot lists etc are flexible, perhaps in Sophia’s mind they weren’t, because I didn’t really wait for her input. I just charge ahead and expect her to interrupt me or disagree or speak up when she has an idea. On the other hand I think she expects me to stop and wait for her to have an idea. Anyway, we will know these things about each other when or if we work together in the future.

Theatre of the Oppressed by Augusto Boal

I have just finished writing a research essay for Pedro on Augusto Boal, focusing on his book 'Theatre of the Oppressed'. I feel like I have been drowning in Boal! Nevertheless, I'm sure when I recover from the pain of assignment-writing his theories will remain as appealing to me as they always have been.

Boal's work shows me that artistic fulfillment and helping others can be the same thing - his theatre is aimed at empowering people through theatre action - the spectators are also the actors and therefore participate in a "rehearsal for revolution". Obviously I have explained it all in horribly thorough detail in my actual essay. The reason I'm writing this is because there are some things that can't be put into essays, but which I still want to say.

As much as I loved reading about Boal's work and ideas, his writing was incredibly annoying! His main arguments were so strong and yet they felt weakened by the way he investigated them in such enormous and unnecessary detail. It was obvious that he was finding a route to justify his thoughts, rather than developing his thinking through the investigations he was writing about. As a result, there were a lot of logical fallacies in the writing, and a lot of jumping to not-so-conclusive conclusions. The sad thing is that I think the things he was trying to justify were true anyway, and he only undermined himself in his quest for academic integrity :-(

Cinematography by Peter Ettedgui

This was the book I was reading at the same time as the other, to complement its practicality.

This book consists of a series of edited and structured interviews with 18 great cinematographers from various different countries, from the black and white days until (almost) the present. Each of them discuss their beginnings as a cinematographer, stories from their working life, their individual approach to lighting a scene or choosing a script or collaborating with a director, their individual influences, their philosophy on the role of cinematography and film, and their best advice for new cinematographers. Each chapter is accompanied by photographs from the shooting of their films, storyboards and diagrams, images that have influenced them, and screen shots from their work.

What a fantastic book! I read one chapter per day. All of the cinematographers had fascinating stories to tell, and it was great to see the many different approaches they had to their art. Reading this also finally made me understand why many people mourn the fact that film is being replaced by digital - the descriptions of the particular care taken in developing each film and the different processes they used to control the colours etc gave me a window of insight into the value of film that I've never had before. Best of all though was being able to read about the cinematographers choices for each film and then compare them directly with the photographs to see the actual result of the techniques and ideas they spoke about; after all, the point of reading the book was to develop my visual my eye for these things. As someone who doesn't have a natural instinct for it, it was invaluable to have the theory spelt out for me with such great concrete examples.

Digital Video Production Cookbook by Chris Kenworthy

"100 professional techniques for independent & amateur filmmakers"

I rather enjoyed this book, I must say, although I read it at the wrong time.

I have been spending a lot of time at my boyfriend's house in the evenings lately, and because it is his house and not mine I sometimes find myself waiting for him as he puts on the washing etc. I loathe incidentally watching TV just because I have nothing better to do - sitting down to watch a show I like is one thing; sitting in front of any old crap is another - so I decided that I would fill the gap with reading, which has been on my "I should do more..." list (next to exercise) for ages.

I have been concerned that I need to develop my "visual eye" for film more, and so I chose two books; the one I am writing about now, and another that I will write about once I read the last chapter. I decided that if I read a practically focused book and a theoretically/aesthetically focused book at the same time then they would enhance each other - the aesthetic would give me greater curiousity for the practical and vice versa. And the technique has been a success! So I shall continue this method through the summer.

Anyway, 'Digital Video Production Cookbook' is essentially a collection of cheap and easy tips and tricks for film-makers, divided up into chapters devoted to various areas of film-making – lighting techniques, editing tricks, special effects make-up etc. And I thoroughly enjoyed the book and all of the ideas it gave me – I just wish I had read it before making my last short film! It’s not necessarily that I would have used many (or any?) of the techniques suggested, it’s just that reading this sort of thing gives you an outside-the-square way of thinking that might have been really helpful in finding some short cuts during the filming process. But never mind; I’ve read it now, and at least now I know where to look as a reference when I do need these tricks!

Editing

I have just finished my third day of scheduled editing with Jonas; we have one more scheduled, and then it will be up to us to try to squeeze in at odd opportunities to do any more tweaks after that.

I thoroughly enjoy editing with Jonas. I find that we are frequently on the same page and recognize the same cut points, and when something is right we can both feel it. And where we have differences of opinion he is always happy to try both ways, and we can discuss and argue over the point without having to be careful of each others' egoes - we both just want what's best for the film.

The only problem with Jonas is that it's hard to leave him alone. If I need to go and do something else, I can come back a few hours later and I always find that almost nothing has changed. The problem is, he likes editing the montages too much. I understand that; editing a montage has an element of instant gratification to it, whereas editing drama dialogue scenes is where the sweat is. So Jonas always seems to remember one thing he wanted to tweak in the montage... and three hours later he's only changed a cut or two! Not to say that he's lazy - not at all - he just loses sight of the big picture sometimes!

Anyway, the cut is going well and we have had fantastic feedback so far. The only real problem we have is with sound. Our recordist was as lazy as possible and radio mic'd everything, and as a result everything is full of clothing rustle! One major scene has no sound at all because he didn't even radio mic it! It may not have dialogue, but it should have had laughter, heavy breathing and footsteps, and it's his job to know that. It makes me so angry to think about. Even worse, he doesn't reply to me, so I can't get a hold of him to record any sounds in the post sound suite. Grrrr!!!! Looks like it's going to cost me a box of beer and a lot of begging to get another student to help me. It shouldn't have to be like that though; this is a team project and he has let us down.

The Idea of America

You wouldn't know this play was written by a student; in my opinion it could compete with many respected contemporary playwrights. I think Sam Shore did an excellent job, in both the writing and direction of this play.

The writing was very funny yet profoundly tragic, and the way the characters and plot unfolded gradually throughout the play, without ever once feeling like exposition, was utterly engaging. Plus Sam had the advantage of having cast the play superbly, and the actors gave very powerful performances. The only sort-of exception to this, in my opinion, was the actress playing Maureen. Her characterization was generally very strong, but I felt that the actress had the tendency to play many of the moments with a kind of happy immunity that didn't necessarily belong to the character, or to the play. The only other flaw I could identify in the production was possibly the staging - the lower, front level was used a lot, but unfortunately it was a bit shallow which restricted the staging a bit and sometimes made it very difficult for the audience to see all of the action. I think if the play were to be staged again it would benefit from having a shallower upper level and more depth in the lower. It was still a really wonderful play though!

Ioane and Alofa

A couple of weeks ago I went to see a third year play; Ioane and Alofa. I had been a part of a reading during the workshop stage and really enoyed the script, so I was curious to see how the production would turn out.

All in all I think it was a very enjoyable play, although it seemed to be missing a magic ingredient. One of the problems that I saw in the script early on was still there in the final production; one of the characters is an alcoholic party girl, but the stereotype was so blatant that it lost all meaning in my opinion. The performances were okay, but they had a little bit of an amateur feel - no one was properly convincing. The influence of TV on the writer was also really evident in the way the story was structured, and I don't think this episodicness helped the rhythm of the story. Probably the biggest flaw though was that the two central characters, Ioane and Alofa, were not really the protagonists. They did not have clear personalities and everything seemed to happen around them and to them; they did not seem to drive the plot themselves, and the story lacked a strong spine.

Nevertheless it was very enjoyable to watch and painted an amusing picture of the trials and tribulations of being a Samoan in New Zealand.

2nd year short film shoot

Well, my 2nd year short film shoot is over. What a relief!

The lead up to the shoot was absolute chaos. Somehow, from having everything well and truly organised and under control, the whole thing flipped and suddenly nothing was certain.

Jesse sent a text to reconfirm with one of our locations the Thursday before shooting, and received a reply saying that they had changed their minds and actually the day we were planning to shoot was the most inconvenient day of the month. Having confirmed the other two days with our other location, and having no flexibility due to actor and DoP availability, this sent me into a small panic.

And then, less than 24 hours after receiving this news, we were told that our young actor, Hamish, would have to leave at 5pm on one of the days we were shooting - a huge problem given how many scenes in the script take place at night!!!

So we went into a flurry of activity trying to find a new location - Jesse sent an email through Blackboard to everyone in SPASA, and I handed out 220 flyers to students around campus, appealing for a new location.

Eventually the problem was sorted by the original location agreeing to let us use their place on a different day, and our main location agreeing to change days. This was a pain for scheduling and art department and for the lady whose house we were filming in, as it meant splitting up the time spent filming in her place. Nevertheless, the problem was solved, much to our relief, and we were able to schedule around Hamish having to leave early on the Wednesday.

Thank goodness I have a great production manager in the form of Jesse! The fact was we couldn't have foreseen the problems, but we did overcome them.

On the Saturday before filming, I held a rehearsal with my actors. Rehearsal is actually not the right name for it; it was just a session. I had the two actors come to my flat to talk about the script, the filming process, try on costumes, and bake cookies. I had decided that I didn't want to rehearse beforehand as the actors I had cast seemed so close to the characters already, and I didn't want them to get bored of the film before we even got going. Particularly with a child actor I did not want to wear out his enthusiasm for the scenes, and I knew that we could not work out blocking without being in the location or having the props anyway. Furthermore, since I had a kid to work with, and wanted to make the process fun, I decided not to do the script work seated around a table, but rather have the actors bake a batch of cookies together as we discussed the story and characters. The session was their first opportunity to meet, and only the second time they had each met me, so I wanted something that would help us make friends. Since I was also managing the wardrobe on the film (all the costume students were too busy), I had the actors try on costumes while the cookies were in the oven.

I definitely think that this session was a success, as it achieved all of my aims; the actors were able to bond with each other and with me, I was able to ensure that they knew the story of the film thoroughly, was able to sort out their costuming, and had the opportunity to make sure they knew what to expect from the filming process. I also had the opportunity to meet and chat with Hamish's mother, which ensured that she also knew what to expect, and agreed to play a small role in the film. In hindsight though, I think I should have had an extra session before filming, with Paul, the adult actor.

I found on set that Hamish was able to incorporate directions very easily into his acting, and performed extremely well. Paul, on the other hand, obviously needed to have some more guidance at an early stage. He had obviously given the role a lot of thought, however he seemed to be taking it from a director's perspective and thinking about what effect he wanted to creat for the audience. He had quite obviously been rehearsing by himself, probably in front of a mirror, and had already developed and fixed a performance. As such he was able to understand but not incorporate my directions on set, as he was already too fixed in a habitual performance. I think it was probably over-confident and foolish of me not to schedule a one-on-one script analysis session with him, and ask him not to rehearse on his own. The thing that made him so excellent in his audition - his preparation - turned out to be our greatest problem on set, and I was almost never happy with his performance.

The shoot itself was mildly chaotic. The first day, a Tuesday, was quite a satisfying one. The schedule went entirely out of the window, due to the weather playing tricks on us, and we actually came away thinking that we were ahead of schedule. How wrong we were.

On the Wednesday we were in a different location, filming in the bedroom and bathroom of a house in Waterview. I learned very quickly the effect that a small location has. It's difficult to manoevre lights and equipment, and the room soon grows very hot. Sooner rather than later, the crew start to get very grumpy.

This included me. I got very frustrated with the camera crew in the first half of the day. Many of our shots were to be used very quickly in montages, and were not key parts of the plot. I felt that it was good enough to light them and shoot them well, but the crew insisted on making each a work of art, which inevitably took a very long time. The result was that many shots had to be cut, not enough time could be spent on scenes that really mattered, and our plans to relocate to our primary location at the end of the day had to be abandoned as we would have lost the light before even arriving. This also put a lot of pressure on our final day of shooting.

Our final day was a Friday - we could not film on the Thursday as our DoP, Sophia, was in Wellington for the presentation of awards for a competition she had entered.

I went into Friday determined to finish shooting the film with as little compromise as possible (very little compromise was possible anyway - most scenes were only one shot long), and determined to be fun and friendly on set. The stress of the second day had meant that I had no sense of humour on set - I was certainly no angry dragon, but I was certainly no fun either. Conscious that a happy crew who like their director are more likely to work hard and listen to that same director, I tried very hard to be relaxed on set. I brought extra food for the crew, and baked cookies myself that morning to share around. I made sure to step light and speak light, and asked RJ to bring a CD player so that we could have some music while unpacking the van and setting up etc.

Unfortunately I found the mood impossible to sustain. I had forgotten to bring the entire costume bag. Then we ran into some very time-consuming problems with light in the morning that required important changes. And once again I found that too much time was being spent making good images only slightly better. The fact is that I do work well under pressure - I'm certainly very productive - but unfortunately I'm not very fun.

When our lunch break finally came (somewhere around 6) we were roughly two hours behind schedule. I cut a few shots, and took the opportunity to meet privately with the AD, Sophia, and the gaffer, to inform them that from then on we would be working strictly to time, rather than to our desires, as unless we got all of the remaining shots, much of what we had already worked so hard on would have to be cut.

Chaos resumed, but for the most part working strictly to time was a success. We were able to power through a few important scenes at least, and my stress levels eased. As the night continued however, Sophia became more and more tired and would ignor the AD and I more often, and poor Hamish, our young actor, was falling asleep on set between takes. We fought through, and with the help of a couple hours of overtime, were able to cover all of the main story points, although not all of the shots.

I have learned many many things.

A good, patient, location host is completely invaluable.
Even someone who is fantastic at their own specific job will be hugely detrimental to a crew if they are not good a communicator too.
Children are fabulous actors.
Working quiet on set is absolutely necessary for everyone's sanity and speed.
Never try to compete with the sun.
The more fun you can be when things are going well, the more seriously people will take you when things are not going so well.
There is no such thing as ahead of schedule.
A good AD is totally invaluable.

Sometimes it is necessary to be a dictator.

In my eagerness to make use of the expertise of others in my crew and keep everyone happy, I initially allowed a lot of freedom for the camera department to continue to improve the look. Quite often I would see an image I liked, and wanted to shoot with, but they would not listen to me and would have some idea of how to improve it. It cost me a lot of time. I think there were many times when I needed to trust my own instincts better - if I liked what I saw then I should have made sure that that was what we went with. I should have paid more respect to my own decision-making ability, knowing that as the director I am the one who sees the big picture, and sometimes the smaller picture has to suffer for the sake of the whole. In other words, I needed to ensure that my decisions were respected - I needed to dictate a bit more.

Alfonsina

I went to see Alfonsina on Saturday night - and absolutely loved it!

Pedro spends so much time talking about masks and clowning - it was fantastic to finally see his work in action and get a proper feel for what he was talking about! Not that the play actually used masks, but I know they were used a lot in development.

The play was thoroughly enjoyable and the actors did a great job. The actors were very fit and particularly in tune with one another - timing was fantastic! The play had many physical gags that relied on synchronicity and time, and I was so impressed with the way not one of these was mistimed or lacking energy. The actors always seemed to be so aware of what each other was doing, without having to look.

The other great thing was the way the material was so contemporary; so relevant, of-the-moment and urgent. Because it was devised by people living in the same context as me it really found it's mark by talking about issues that are current, going on even as the play was being performed. I think it's a really great thing when a play can make you aware of social justice issues close to home, and this one certainly did that. Without making any accusations or demands, the play simply said, 'this is how it is, and this is how it affects people'. Beautiful work!!!

A low day

My motivation for making my short film is very low at the moment. I don't really know why that is, because things are going pretty well - we have locations and actors sorted and I still like the script and the story. I'm just struggling to find the motivation to do the work that needs to be done between now and the shoot days - namely, planning and organising and conducting rehearsals, organising costumes, re-assessing my shot list, and having final meetings with HODs.

My primary problem is that I just don't feel like dealing with people at the moment. I think I just need twenty-four hours on my own. I don't want to speak to people, I don't want to email or text people or call people. Sometimes I just need some space, and this is one of those times. I don't have the energy to be a director today; a director should inspire and lead their team, make decisions and have ideas and answers, and instill confidence in the people they work with. These things take a lot of energy. Normally I am a very energetic person, but today I have no energy. Hence I find myself here, writing this blog because at least I'm still getting something done, but it doesn't involve other people. The problem is that it really is urgent that I get on top of all those tasks above - primarily the ones that involve other people.

Maybe it's a health thing. My tummy has been feeling a bit queasy today. And I have a mouth ulcer which probably means my body is currently trying to fend off a cold. That being said, I had a very good sleep last night and there have been plenty of times when I have been very sick but still managed to be tough and vivacious.

Whatever the reason for my low, slow, antisocial feelings, I need to find a cure - and fast.

I realised yesterday afternoon that I have done something foolish. I have left having rehearsals until this weekend, which wouldn't be a problem except that it also means that I have left seeing my actors clothes (which I want to sue as costumes) until this weekend too. That could be a big problem, because if the actors don't have good clothes then I am left with only normal stores as a back-up - which is very expensive. Being Labour weekend, school and op shops will be closed for three days. Eep!

I don't even want to think about it.

In other news, I am having computer troubles. It crashed three times yesterday, in a way that I have never seen it do before. It appears to be a hardware problem rather than a software problem too, which means that I have no idea how to fix it, and suspect it will be very expensive to fix as well. Then today the computer was working fine - but the computer charger would not work. I tried it in many different power sockets but the little green light would not come one. Now I have one hour of computer battery left. I have copied the files that are currently most important to me onto the Unitec computers, but I've only got a few megabytes left on the server now and there are a lot more things I want to be able to back up. It looks like I'm going to have to get a new charger ($60), an external hard-drive ($200), and possibly even a new computer ($1000). On top of having my bike stolen a couple of weeks ago ($600) and breaking my camera ($350), no wonder I am depressed!!!

The good news is, I am gradually getting on top of my theatre research journal - finally! I'm still a fair way behind on it, but I have now gotten into a kind of rhythm and habit of working on it, and no longer find it so incredibly difficult, so therefore being a bit behind is far less daunting as I am confident I can catch up.

Speaking of catching up, the last two weeks:

8th October: We found a great location. One of the art direction students, Andrea, volunteered her house, so Jesse and I went along to have a look. It does have a lot of stuff in it, but it is a god-send. The front yard and facade are great, you can easily see the driveway from the lounge and the lounge from the kitchen, and it's not too difficult to cheat a bedroom window as the kitchen window in order to be able to see the backyard and the neighbour's washing line. It also has a nice big window in the lounge room, and a fairly dark little hallway, both of which I was looking for. As for the bedroom and bathroom, we are going to use a house in Waterview for those things. The great thing is that our main location is Andrea's house, and since she does art direction she will be really patient and understanding of our needs. On the other hand, we're not using her bathroom or bedroom, so at least we're not encroaching too badly on her personal spaces, yet the house where we are using the bedroom and bathroom we won't be there for too long. Sounds good to me!

10th/11th October: On the last weekend of the holidays, one of the second year editing students, Carsten, had the shoot for the short film he has been working on for a while. I had volunteered to do the unit for him, and did so. Unfortunately this meant I was very separated from the set and didn't really get to observe him at work much, but it was good to be able to use my skills (I've worked in hospitality for years) to help someone out. It was also great as I got the chance to work with my boyfriend, Rayner, for the first time. Rayner is actually a camera operator (he was a student at South Seas and now works on Shortland Street) and although I wasn't working with him in a director/DP capacity on this occasion, I was nevertheless under some stress (not much time, not much money, not much equipment, many hungry mouths to feed quickly) and I got a feel for the kind of personality he has in a working environment. I also observed him for a little bit camera operating for the Dramarama shoot on the same day. I'm stoked to say that I can tell we will be a really good team. He is patient, takes initiative, quick-thinking, and has fantastic people skills. I can't wait to make a film together!

13th October: Our shot lists, storyboards and marked up scripts were due, and I think I was one of the few who actually got it done. I started out with the attitude, "Just get it done; revise it later when there's more time", but of course my nature took over and I had to make it "perfect". I'll still revise it later though; these things are never right the first time around. Plus, my shot list is 84 shots long. That does sound excessive for a short film to be shot in three days, and it is - but having said that, I really don't think this script was written to be shot in 3 days. After all, once broken down, it's 30 scenes long!!! So 84 shots is actually less than three shots per scene on average, and eight of those shots are alternative takes of existing shots anyway, so it's really 76.

Milton is horrified at the length of my shot list, understandably, and insists that I need to "really sit down" and look at the absolute essentials to make sure I don't miss the point of the story. And although I haven't actually changed my shot list yet, I have gone back over the film to find the essentials, and I have discovered that a whole dialogue scene can (and should) be taken out. One of my problems though is that it's some of the cutest dialogue in the whole film, and I don't see how I'm going to convince the writer to let me remove the whole scene. I don't particularly want to, but I have to accept that it merely slows the story down. It adds things to the characters, but they're things that we can do without in this particular story. I suspect this will lead to a particularly challenging writer-director discussion.

15th October: We had a pre-production meeting, led by the production manager. I felt that we did very well. We had had some luck, because our lead actor emailed me that morning confirming that he was definitely available on the dates that we needed him for. If he had not confirmed I think it would have been a very different production meeting! We really didn't get in trouble for anything significant, which was a relief as we had heard that meetings on the previous day had not gone very well.

One thing that happened afterwards though was that Dan approached me and said that he had noticed I was a bit defensive when tutors offered suggestions or asked questions, and that they were only trying to help. I think he was right; I was constantly on guard, thinking that we were going to get into trouble for something, and there were a couple of times when I got slightly (but quietly) irritated as sometimes tutors didn't seem to listen to the answers we gave to the questions. Mostly I think it was just nervousness, but I'm also worried that there was a touch of arrogance too. I don't know where it comes from but occasionally I have to give myself a stern reminder to be humble. I guess I can be relieved knowing that at least I am capable of self-assessing and realising when I might be getting too big for my boots.

16th October: We went on a tech recce to our locations, to introduce the DP and Art Deptmt to the locations for the first time. Time really flew! There was so much I needed to do. I am realising that some of my shots may not work. I really need to be in the location to work out the shots, but it's just not possible. So much still to do!

Another catch up

I complained about my theatre journal on Facebook, and when someone misinterpretted me as meaning this journal, I remembered that I have to catch up on this one too. So here I am, using this journal as a productive means of procrastination from my other journal!

The final performance of New York have long been and gone, and to my great satisfaction, the two actors I had been working with, Gypsy and Chloe, really peaked and nailed it in the final performance. We each did some one on one work during the day, and the difference and improvement was astounding. I was very very proud of the play in the end! It's just quite disappointing sometimes having no one there just to see my work; it makes me miss my family in Australia as I wish I could have them in the audience.

Work on my short film, "Fraser and Gareth", is well and truly underway. I was SO wrong in my last post when I said:

"The thing that makes me most nervous though is the fact that I might not get the ideal crew, as it doesn't hold much excitement from their perspective as far as I can see. It doesn't lend itself to a whacky, distinctive visual style, the editing will be fairly straight-forward, and it won't be particularly exciting to go location scouting for as the only location is a single house with a front yard."

My pitch was a hit, thank god! After some work on the script I discovered that yes, in fact it did lend itself to a distinctive visual style, the editing will not be straight forward (I want to use some animation, which we have not done before) and the location scouting is extremely challenging (which is a nice way of saying extremely difficult)!

My worries about not interesting a good crew were unfounded; after the pitch a number of people approached me and said that they were really interested in my script. I didn't get all of my first preferences however I did get all people who are passionate about the script - which is all that really matters to me.

At the moment we are fighting our way through pre-production. I have handed in my script analysis - which turned out to be absolutely epic, and yet still feels incomplete! I've worked on the script with Sophie - it's now supposedly in its final draft, however given the complications we are having with locations, some rewriting may be necessary. I hope not. I have also been casting.

Casting has been quite a challenge - and not one that we have had to face before. I had to cast for Short Cuts, but I struck pretty lucky there in finding good actors, and I was also lucky that they didn't have to be a specific age, as they were playing characters that were inevitably not their own age anyway. This time I had to start from scratch, writing and disseminating a casting notice. Fortunately Elizabeth had a moment of inspiration and put us in touch with a kids' acting school in Western Springs, and we had lots of responses from mothers eager for their child to be a star. We then set up audition times, I organised for one of the third year actors to help us, and off we went.

I've never had to audition anybody before, and I was very nervous at first. I didn't quite know how to go about it, as I have not had to audition for parts myself either. I started off quite shakey, but soon found a couple of methods that could help me get what I wanted to see from the kids. At first I thought we had struck gold with the second child we auditioned, and I wanted to cast him straight away, however we had so many other kids lined up to audition we had to give them their chance too, and I ended up choosing another child, who was even better than the first.

As for the adults, at first we only got two adult responses from the website StarNow. Both were fairly bad, although I realise now that that was partly because I was not running the auditions very well. So after the first round of auditions we had to keep looking. I contacted a number of different casting agencies, all of whom agreed to help us, however in the end the only one we got responses through was Talent Banque, from whom we got four responses. We also got one more from StarNow.

So today we had another round of auditions... and I think we've found our guy! In fact I know we've found our guy, because I'm going to call him tomorrow and let him know. He looks great for the part - right size and colouring - and he has a really great energy about him. He asked questions about the part and seemed to have prepared and had a very good understanding of it. His acting was very good - he played the key moments very well. The only problem will be his very slight English accent and his acting is a little bit stagey. We might have to get him to tone it down very slightly, but that's all!

I do have one worry though. I approached someone last night and offered him the part! He was an actor I had seen on one of the talent websites and by a fluke I found out that he was doing stand-up comedy with Joe last night, so I checked him out on Youtube and rushed into the city to give him the script and a letter asking him to play the role. He hasn't contacted me at all yet... but if he contacts me tonight and says yes he can do it I'm going to have a very awkward situation! Hopefully he'll just say no.

Anyway, apart from one non-speaking role, which I anticipate will be quite easy to fill, my casting is done! Hurrah! Now for locations...

How could I possibly think this would be an easy or boring location to find?

We need a house... for 3 days...

It needs to be close to Unitec.

It needs to be clean and neat and tidy. Inside and outside.

We need to be able to use the loungeroom. The kitchen. A bedroom. A bathroom. A hallway. The front door. And the front yard.

We need to be able to see the front yard from the lounge. We need to be able to see the neighbour's washing line from the lounge. We need to be able to see the yard from the kitchen. We need to be able to see the lounge from the kitchen.
And we can only pay $50 per day.

That's next to impossible!!!

We have advertised around the campus and are hoping to get lots of reponses to the headline "Want to make an easy $50?" So far we have only had two responses - it is "holidays" at the moment after all - but neither has met our requirements. The first house had a good master bedroom, and the en suite attached was quite good as well. Nothing else was usable though, in my opinion. The second house we went to today had a better layout - but the amount of stuff they had strewn through the place was epic!!! We would have needed a week just to pack their stuff into boxes, and another week to get it out again. Clearly not going to work. We might pass on their contact details to another team though - today's house might be suitable for Ian's film.

We will just have to keep on looking and hoping.

In another news, I have been catching a bit of theatre.

Chicken or Fish? was the devised piece from the year 2 actors, and I quite enjoyed it. I liked the layout of the set - it was stretched lengthways across the theatre, with two levels. I also really liked the risque treatment of various racial stereotypes in order to expose them. Some moments were very funny and some of the acting was very good - other parts less so. I liked the way that most of the actors played multiple roles, and the way the play was very fast moving, however I probably would have prefered to see slightly fewer characters and a stronger core storyline.

Killer Joe was the first time I have seen a play at The Basement, but I'm sure won't be the last. The play featured some well-known New Zealand actors, and for the most part the performances were excellent. The son needed to tidy up his accent a bit I felt, and the man playing Joe needed a bit more strength in his walk, but all the actors did a great job really. It was a very intense play, plot-wise and theme-wise, and I felt a very strong physical reaction in some parts that were quite difficult to handle. It's not pleasant, yet I love the way a play can do that to you. The set designer did a great job too; the set gets pretty much trashed at the end of the play, and they managed to create a set that really does look trashed and very effective, yet can be put back together for the next show.

The play was set in Texas, USA. Talking about it afterwards with my boyfriend I suggested that maybe they should have set it in New Zealand. I thought maybe having it close to home would have hit the audience harder and driven the themes through more strongly, but he felt that it would no longer have been a black comedy. It would have been too heavy, and people would have reacted against it, calling it unrealistic. He's probably right. I don't necessarily think it would be unrealistic to set it in New Zealand, but I can see how people might find it so heavy that their defences would label it so.

Harlequin: Servant of Two Masters was a much-anticipated commedia dell'arte style performance by an Italian theatre company at the ASB Theatre, The Edge.

I have wanted to see a commedia dell'arte performance since a drama teacher first told me about the style as a 15 year old. It wasn't exactly what I expected, but it didn't disappoint. I only wish I spoke Italian! The show had surtitles, which was fine, but you don't get all the information, just the essentials of the story. I have a feeling we missed out on quite a lot of jokes. That being said, I think I still could have enjoyed it well enough without any surtitles at all, because by far the greatest part of it was the physicality of the actors. Everything was so clearly expressed with their whole bodies - it was fantastic to see such total immersion in the action of the play and their energy was extraordinary. It was full of physical jokes, large and small, and they constantly projected strongly to the large auditorium - yet they never once seemed tired or out of breath! The energy they gave was 100% all the way through. It was a marvellous feat of sheer fitness. Very enjoyable theatre.

As for films, the only movie I have seen at the theatre lately was Up, which I saw in 3D. I felt the three-dimensionality aspect of it was a little bit disappointing in that it didn't add as much to it as I felt it could have. It was beautiful - there's no doubt about that - but it wasn't really used. The only other occasion I have seen something in 3D it was at Imax and it was about dinosaurs and it was most definitely used to full advantage. Apart from that though, I really enjoyed the film Up. I enjoyed it for its sentimentality and its total abandonment at any pretense of realism. No aspect of the film was remotely possible, yet every aspect was thoroughly enjoyable, particularly if you like dogs, which I most certainly do!

I watched another film recently too; Old Boy, a Korean film. This was a great example of an exceptionally well-devised plot (although it was particularly disturbing), and also a great example of why I need to expose myself to non-English-speaking films more often!

A bit of catch-up

Wow, it's been almost a month since I last blogged! of course a lot has happened in that time, but I think it would be best to try to limit myself to a few important things, rather than try to catch up on everything.

We have finished work on our Studio films, and had our screening and feedback session on Wednesday. From my point of view, it was a great success, in that almost all of the feedback for my film was very positive. People were very complimentary about many aspects of the whole piece, including saying that I had good performances from the actors, that my shot choices were good as they allowed the audience to get inside the scene, and that the pace of the edit was very good. People actually laughed, which is fantastic. As great as all of this is, there were a number of things that I would have liked to do better, but I've already talked about those in a different post. One other problem that comes from the compliments is the issue of pressure - I feel like I have a standard to maintain. I feel like, for me psychologically, it's harder to fight against disappointing people than it is to fight to surprise people. All this is just ego getting in the way though; I should be focusing on making the best film I can for myself and because I care about the film, not to impress others.

Another thing that has occurred was the first readings of the short film scripts yesterday, Friday. Seven were read but I only really liked two of them - Ben's and Sophie's. Then I had the problem that I liked both of them equally. Ben's script gave me great ideas for a fun visual style, but I felt the ending needed quite a lot of work. Sophie's had a very sweet story and very full characters, however it was too long and didn't necessarily inspire any visual ideas for me. I ended up putting them as equal first preference, and was allocated Sophie's script. I'm very nervous about it. It demands excellent performances and a lot of subtlety I think. Music will be very important. The thing that makes me most nervous though is the fact that I might not get the ideal crew, as it doesn't hold much excitement from their perspective as far as I can see. It doesn't lend itself to a whacky, distinctive visual style, the editing will be fairly straight-forward, and it won't be particularly exciting to go location scouting for as the only location is a single house with a front yard. I shall have to work very hard to prepare a good pitch, but where does one find the time?!

One of the biggest things that has been taking up my time lately is the play, New York. Sometimes it's very rewarding and sometimes it's exceedingly frustrating. One of the frustrating things was not having creative control over the play. My role in it has essentially been to just work with two actors to develop their characters and the way they play the scene. Having someone else be in control of the concept was frustrating for a while, as we came up with a number of ideas but always had to wait to find out whether tey would fit in with the play as a whole, which they never did. I've also spent a huge amount of time in the rehearsals and performances without actually being very useful. On the other hand, last night's second performance was very rewarding. I had felt that my actors were taking their monologues way off track, so I caught each of them between the first and second performances and did some one-on-one work with them, which we haven't done since group rehearsals began in earnest last... Friday, I think it was. After that work, their performances were so much better that I felt incredibly proud and humbled at the same time. I also gave a couple of the other actors a bit of feedback and saw huge improvements in their work too. Sometimes directing feels as pointless and painful as bashing your head against a brick wall, but last night it felt just right. I'm so lucky to have the opportunity to train and practise as a director!

District 9

I had no expectations of District 9 really - I had not seen any promotional material for the film (did I have my head under a rock? Maybe.) and I had heard mixed accounts - some people loved it, some people didn't. I knew it had something to do with aliens, but that's about it. It's good going into a film with no expectations, I think - everything is a surprise.

The first thing to hit you about the film is its very distinctive style; it's made as a mockumentary, in order to seem more real and more relevant. The word mockumentary has always implied, to me, that the documentary genre and style is being mocked, made fun of, satirised. As it turns out, the word actually means that the film is a mock-up documentary; a fiction film made using the conventions of documentary.

I really enjoyed the style choice - to begin with, it was novel - it got me excited about the film. Then, through the use of mock interviews commenting on the action, it gave a sense of objectivity - it suggested to me that I should view the events of the film somewhat critically. At first all of the shot choices supported the mockumentary style, but as the film continued and the story and its hero became clearer, the style gradually fell away, allowing the audience to become absorbed in the story-telling. As the film reached its conclusion, the style was again emphasised, through interviews and titles, reminding the audience once again of their responsibility to think critically about the film. Awesome! The only times where I think the film fell down a little bit stylistically was the use of some shots that tracked with some gunmen where the camera was obviously attached to the front of the actor. I feel that these kinds of shots give a fantasy, computer game-like quality that did not sit well with the rest of the film.

As for content, and the story was interesting and fast-paced but comprehensible. The unlikely hero was extremely unlikely, and very real in his flawedness. Most of all it's great to see a film tackling huge issues of human rights and prejudice without necessarily foisting any conclusions on the audience. I'm sure Peter Jackson does not regret putting his name to this one.

City of God

I watched City of God on Friday night. My boyfriend has been urging me to watch it for a while - it's his favourite movie, and I can see why. He's a cameraman, and it is magnificently shot.

The colours are intense and moody and the angles really take you inside the story and inside the world, while not blatantly revealing everything on camera. Often the visuals will tell you just enough, and the cutting and sound effects paint the rest of the gory picture. It's obviously a very well-made, clever film, and I found it quite a gutteral experience. The story matter was quite hard to swallow for me - the film is full of murder, rape, drug use, abuse, corruption and poverty - everything that could make the world of the film hell on earth, rather than a City of God.

One thing that got in the way of my appreciation of the film though was a problem with the subtitles. This is such a pity, because it is surely a simple thing to fix. The film is entirely in Portuguese - the language of Brazil - so as an English speaker I was totally reliant on the subtitles to properly understand the plot. Normally it takes only a few minutes of watching a film with subtitles for me to get into an easy habit and reading speed that allows me to take in all of the visual and aural information and subtitles at the same time. With City of God, this could not happen because many of the subtitles were out of time with what was going on on the screen. Sometimes the title would appear before a person spoke, or sometimes after. Because of this, it was impossible for me to get into that easy habit and rhythm, which made it hard to keep up with the story at times.

This was also made more difficult by the similarity in the appearances of the characters. I think that in films aimed at a white audience, the casting director usually puts some effort into distinguishing characters of same sex and age from one another by choosing actors with different hair or skin types, or at least by choosing actors with distinguishing features. This helps the audience identify characters more quickly. In City of God, this was not the case. Almost all of the characters were male (the only female characters were peripheral to the story) and all of them had black skin and black fuzzy hair. And because we were following the stories of a group of characters as they grew up, they were also the same age as one another. For these reasons it was hard to identify characters in the beginning, and therefore hard to associate later adult characters with the child versions that had previously been shown.

Fifth week excluding Monday because I wrote about Monday on Monday.

Tuesday and Wednesday were spent editing - hurrah! I love editing. I'm so glad being a director also means I get to keep working on the editing side of things, without having to know and worry about all the technical details that an actual editor has to take care of!

Marty is my editor on this project. We had never worked together previously, and I was worried because he is always so quiet and reserved - but as it turns out, I think he's wonderful! He is still quiet, but he's very patient, very competent, and a perfectionist. When I work with him I hardly ever have the urge to grab the mouse and do it myself, even though he does occasionally get a bit stuck with trimming. He's very easy-going too; this is a god-send because it means that if I want to I can sit with him and pour over every little frame with him, or I can leave him alone and he's perfectly happy to work on his own, and so far I have done both. As far as I can tell he has neither felt stifled or neglected, although now I am wondering whether that is just because he's quiet and isn't expressing those feelings... hmm. Interpersonally, the only problem I can actually pinpoint comes entirely from me. I can be very vocally critical of my own work, and sometimes I just flat-out complain about it. This is a problem because my work is never isolated - my work encompasses the work of everybody on the team. If I complain too much, it hurts other people because I make them feel that they have done a bad job. This may have happened yesterday with Marty... I'm not sure, but I hope not.

As for the actual material itself, it is awful. I'm rather ashamed. Although I have to say here that the film is still going to turn out MUCH better than I expected, because Marty (and I) have done a really good job in pulling together the best bits to make a good cut. I'm quite pleased.

Anyway, I have two major gripes at myself, and both come from not double-checking and being absolutely thorough. The first is that my planned side-on close up of Trevor was supposed to pan to a poster on the wall of the elevator when he exited the elevator, however when it came to capturing the shot I forgot about the poster and we just cut the shot once he exited. Dammit! I should have double-checked my shot list! I had it written on there. Secondly, I do not have any footage of the Courier holding Trevor's briefcase, and so the audience can't possibly tell that he has stolen it. All of my shots from the point of the steal are too tight to show the briefcase. This is such foolishness on my part, as I evidently completely lost track of capturing the basic plot of the scene, and therefore lost the punchline. What I am hoping to do now, to fill the hole, is to actually find a location on campus and shoot the little scene where the courier steals the briefcase, even though the original script says that this happens off screen. I always hated that.

Other smaller gripes include making the shot on Sarah before she enters the elevator a bit too tight, and not spending enough time on the floating two-shot that is basically the most important shot. If I could do it again I would definitely spend more time on that, although even now I cannot think what I would give up to do it, as we have used and needed everything. Wait, scrap that statement. The shot that I had planned to use as my opening shot was never going to work - that's the one I would scrap.

One problem that I can't really blame myself for is the way the art department let me down a bit. I think I chased them as much as anyone could expect me to, but the fact is, my shoot was the last of eight, and I think by that time they were tired and did not care very much. It's such a pity.

Other things this week:

I had a rehearsal with Chloe yesterday, and one for Gypsy today, for their scenes in New York. I say rehearsals, but actually I mean meetings for discussions. We focused on parts of the text that required research, and tried to draw conclusions about characters' backstories from the text. They were good sessions, but it's going to get harder from now. The next thing I plan to do with them is to have them tell me the results of their research, and tell me their backstories, not as actors but as characters, as though the facts are part of their own memories and experiences, rather than simply research. I hope I can keep up with all this - I'm still finding it very difficult to know how to work on these monologues, and I haven't found the hook that makes me fall in love with the play yet. I just need to work on it more I suppose, and soon I'll find that moment of magic. I'm rehearsing with Chloe tomorrow - perhaps I will find it then.

Week 4

The journalling is slipping! Week 5 has already begun and here I am writing about week 4.

I did have one small victory last week: I finally finished one journal entry for my theatre theory class. The entry was on Stanislavsky, and ended up being 10 pages long. Obviously I need to work on being more concise! Now I just need to tackle Meyerhold, Copeau and now Artaud as well. Phwoar, the list is growing... :-( Today's discussion on Artaud was interesting though - I have better understanding of what is actually meant by "Theatre of Cruelty" now. I feel so sorry for Artaud though. He lead such a frustrating existence - such total inner chaos that he was incapable of expressing. After all, the medium over which he seemed to have the most control was words - yet he writes about the incapacity of language to express higher truths and the need to break verbal language down. Last week's lesson was on Copeau, and once again I think I will reserve comment until after I've done the theatre journal.

To be honest, not much of last week really struck me as anything special or new - we're not working on any projects at the moment and I spent most of the week doing paid work to keep afloat. The one thing that did strike me though was doing a couple of acting exercises in Milton's class. I don't know if I've talked about this on here before but I actually love acting. It's not that we were actually doing any acting at the time, but we were doing exercises that have value for actors and they felt good. I miss acting a lot sometimes, when I'm working with actors or watching performances. I want to study it, and know about it from the inside. The more I think about it the more I realise that it's something that I'm going to have to do, otherwise I will just get more and more frustrated. I think I will join a community theatre or something.

Thelma & Louise

I had been wanting to see this film for a long time and finally watched it last night, courtesy of Chris.

I don't exactly know what I was expecting from Thelma & Louise, but I guess it wasn't that. I knew it was a road movie, but I had no idea they were on the run from the law. I knew there would be a lot of landscape shots, and because of this it seemed there weren't really that many. The characters were very likeable. At times it seemed their transformation was too simple, yet that was also one of the most appealing things about them. I was surprised to see Geena Davis completely outshine Susan Sarandon, and it's not hard to see why Brad Pitt's career took off after this film!

The ending was a bit hard to take though. I never expected it to end in glorified suicide, and at first my reaction was to be appalled at what I was seeing. The shot freezes with the car gracefully flying through the air, and everything about the music says that what we are seeing is a kind of victory. It really clashed with my values, as I've always seen suicide as a weak way out. Only a minute or two beforehand I had said to the person I was watching the film with, "Will they take the suicide option? Nah, they're too tough for that shit." I was so disappointed to find I was wrong. With a bit of time and space though, I see the sense in it. The problem is that my cultural context is different to theirs. The setting of the film is the deep south of the USA. The girls would have been facing the death penalty. The attitude towards their rape defence probably would have been, "She was asking for it". Growing up in Australia, the death penalty didn't cross my mind, and fortunately I also live in a time where sexist attitudes that blame victims for rape are far less prevalent. Once I put myself into the cultural context of the characters I do see the happy ending. They died because they had to, but they died free because they chose it.

Lessons learned: People interpret films according to their personal knowledge and experience of the world, therefore people's interpratations cannot be fully controlled by the filmmakers.

Week 3

Once again, I didn't have any classes scheduled this week except for the Monday theory class, as the Studio 2 shoots were still in progress.

I'm ashamed to say that I did not complete my Stanislavski journal entry in time for the class - not that it was necessary as preparation for the class, but it was something I really wanted to get on top of before the week began. I did do some hours work on it, but found that the approach I was taking was probably too thorough and time-consuming. I had to abandon finishing the entry in order to do the preparation required for the next class on Meyerhold. Once again a week has gone by and I have not done my journal entry on Meyerhold (or finished the one on Stanislavski!). I think I will put my thoughts on Meyerhold in this journal once I have actually had a moment to collect them in the other.

To be honest, there's no good excuse for not having done the entries yet. There is only the issue of balance. This week, my personal life got in the way of my schoolwork a lot, and messed with my time management, focus, and motivation. I have a theory that the reason for this is because I'm not busy enough - last semester my personal life didn't seem to get in my way at all, and I think the reason for this is that I barely allowed myself to have a personal life. Whenever there was the possibility of it becoming problematic I just pushed it aside with the huge abundance of work I had to do. It was easy to be strong and put my studies first because I absolutely had to. Now that there isn't very much work to do (or rather not much urgent work to do), having a personal life becomes important, otherwise things get boring. And herein lies that problem! The more important the personal life, the more important the problems in that life become. It's no longer possible to push them aside and simply focus on schoolwork.

So now that I have located the problem, I am faced with finding a solution. The solution will certainly have to come from me, as when I look at my timetable for the next month I can clearly see that I'm not going to get much busier for at least another month. Work on the New York play with Milton has begun, and my own work on my documentary continues, but is it enough? I think I need to push myself harder and faster on the documentary, for one thing. Maybe set a deadline. But still... I think I need more pressure.

As for everything else...

There was a production meeting scheduled for Monday morning, which almost nobody turned up to, including my DP. There's almost no point having a production meeting without a DP, so that was very frustrating, and very unfprofessional of him. I had Felix and Ashton try on costumes for me at lunchtime - it was much easier than expected. Sarah's fitting was on Tuesday at lunchtime - as expected it is quite difficult to find shirts that are a good fit for her, but fortunately we found a white shirt that fitted well. On Tuesday afternoon we were supposed to have a rehearsal from 4pm-5pm, however I received texts from the actors during the afternoon saying that we had to cancel as their teacher had told everyone off for leaving classes and decided that classes would go until 5:15pm each day that week. I was furious, as we desperately needed the rehearsal, and went directly to Heath to try to have the issue sorted. Heath was very helpful, but was unable to get the actors out of class. He did show me their timetable for the following day though, and pointed out that an SDL had been added in the morning and therefore I would be able to have a long rehearsal with them then. I was greatly relieved until Felix told me that Ian had already booked him for the rest of the time that I had been hoping to fill.

I used the time when I would have been rehearsing on Tuesday afternoon to continue transcribing my documentary footage, and then went to what was apparently going to be our first New York rehearsal. As it turned out, the 'rehearsal' began half an hour late, and actually consisted of watching the first 18 minutes of a documentary about 9/11, and then a bit of discussion. The documentary, I have to say, was riveting, and even though it was a tough watch I think I will watch the whole thing soon in order to get a better grasp on the people at the core of the play. Some of the discussions after the doco were interesting, but I think the most helpful part of the night was hanging around with Milton (and Romain and Chris, although they didn't say much) afterwards. It gave me the opportunity to talk about my thoughts on acting and rehearsal techniques and hear what he had to say about them, instead of the usual way that it works where he talks about his ideas but I don't get much feedback for mine.

Wednesday morning rolled around and it turned out that Felix was the first one there, ready to rehearse - because he had not been rehearsing with Ian that morning. Ian had cancelled the rehearsal because he had never heard back from Felix to say that he was available! So annoying. Neither of us could rehearse, because Felix can't text, it seems.

Anyway, we began the rehearsal, and worked hard. Because we had such a limited time to rehearse I was quite hard on the actors. I had asked them to do a lot of preparation, and had high expectations. I stopped them every couple of seconds to question what they were doing and why, what they were thinking, what their intentions were, etc. They seemed to find it quite gruelling, as they had to be focused all of the time and I often made them go over the same thing many times. Unfortunately, this approach meant that we did not get all the way through the script, as Felix and Sarah soon had to leave for appointments. Nevertheless, the results were undoubtedly good. The improvement in the way they performed their roles was vast, even just in that small space of time, and as he was leaving Ashton said to me, "From an actor's point of view, the way you direct is very fuckin' helpful and supportive". He made my day!

And finally, my shoot on Friday.

When I turned up the set was nowhere near completed. I was shocked, as I had thought that most of the work would be done on it the night before, and that the morning was our time to use it to rehearse. There was some time wasted as a result; I didn't want to waste time or get in the way so decided to take the actors to another room to rehearse, but Milton insisted that this was our time on set and kicked the art department off. There was some fluffing around and eventually we were able to have some time on set, but I have to say I had been thrown and was hopelessly nervous by this stage. For one thing we were standing in a set that seemed to be nowhere near completion, plus it was far bigger than I had imagined. For another, Milton and Stephen (the DP) were now sitting on seats watching us. And the time was ticking. I started off uneasily and badly - fortunately I was saved by Milton, who had no patience for watching me do bad work. He jumped in almost straight away and began directing my actors. Someone doing my job for me will always be a good stir to action for me, because I absolutely can't stand it. As soon as he began directing the actors I felt freed up again, and was able to jump in and do my work. Milton continued to direct alongside me, but at least he allowed me to stear the scene.

Of course the time ticked over at a horrendous speed, and soon it was time to show the crew the block. The block is quite nerve-wracking for me - I'm always afraid that the actors won't get the blocking quite right and I will have to correct them in front of the crew, and there is quite a lot of pressure on me to give that first good impression that I really know what I'm doing. The block is the moment when the crew decides in their minds whether they want to be on set or wish they were somewhere else and therefore it's absolutely crucial to the success of the day that it goes well. We got through the block, and the actors were fine. My nerves made it difficult for me to judge whether or not I did a good job, but given that the crew didn't seem to immediately jump out of their skins hustling to get the job done, I think I must have been at least a little bit lacking in energy.

The shooting itself was quite fun for me. I have to say that the acting frustrated me, and I seriously wished we had had more rehearsals (or maybe that I'd done an ordinary rehearsal instead of the one in the elevators?). I constantly wanted to get better performances, but once you begin shooting you do have to let it go, to a certain extent, otherwise you will never get through your shots. The thing that I found fun, though, was responding to the time pressure. I have to admit, I probably over-stepped my mark a little bit, as I was often more of an AD than the AD herself - constantly trying to get everyone to be faster, and changing the schedule according to the needs of the day. I cut two shots quite early on, realising that they were not as important as I had initially thought, and when the art department screwed us over I quickly changed the schedule to work around that too. Even though I frequently had to move on without getting as many takes of things as I wanted, and the compromise was quite painful, I still enjoyed the rush of the urgency of the decision-making. I loved the high energy all day, and lovely organised chaos as we hurtled through. Sadly, the thing that made the compromising less painful was the fact that I had to accept, early on, that the film never had a hope of turning out well. The script, I felt, was decidedly average, I was not getting the performances necessary to pull it off (and I'm not sure that the actors, no matter how much rehearsal we had, would have been capable of it at this stage anyway), and the set was very very ugly. Nevertheless, I may not come out of this exercise with a good film, but I have come out with a much greater level of confidence in my ability to be adaptable as the situation demands.

If I could have made a change, though, it would have been that the space between receiving the script and meeting with the art department should have been greater. We were allocated the scripts in the last week of last semester, at a time when we were frantically, desperately trying to get many assessments finished. We immediately had to meet with Brent so that the sets could be built over the holidays. In hindsight, I see that this really hurt our chances of making a good film, as there was no time to do any preparation and research. Since that time, I have specifically taken the time to look at as many elevators as possible, and I have also watched some scenes from other films that have been shot inside elevators. If I could have done this before meeting with Brent I may not have ended up with such a hideous set (although I was still last on the schedule, which still would have had an effect) and I also may have had a set whose dimensions were more appropriate to the action of the script.

Heavenly Creatures

I watched Heavenly Creatures with Chris last night. I was pleased to be able to watch it, as it is part of the film theory class that everyone else in FTV is taking but I am not. Now I will be able to join in conversations about it, if there are any.

The film was bizarre, I must say. The acting from the two girls was very over-the-top, and a bit jarring at first, however I eventually began to accept it and their oddities. It did make the first half of the film quite hard to watch though, as not a lot was happening to distract me from the weirdness. One thing I certainly did like though was the sense of drama created by the shot choices. Jackson never shied away from laying all of drama bare to the naked eye and heightening everything. I loved a lot of the edits as well, most particularly the transitions between scenes. The ending was also amazing in the way that everything was suddenly drawn out, compared to the rest of the film where just about everything was heavily compressed. The tension was electric, and I felt sick to my stomach in the lead-up to the murder, knowing perfectly well it was going to happen, and simultaneously begging the characters not to go through with it. Even after the first strike to the head I still had the slightest hope that they would pull back, which made the rest even more gruesome to me.

The film makes me desperate to make a feature. There are just so many more opportunities for building style, characters and tension in a feature than in a short. Features are so much more complex, and so much more magnificent as a result. I'd love to write one and get to work straight away, yet where does one find ideas?!

The second week

The second week of term has flown by unbelievably quickly, despite the fact that I wasn't especially busy as, apart from Monday's theory class, there were no classes scheduled due to the Studio 2 shoots.

Monday's theory class on Stanislavski was quite interesting, although it wasn't very specific to Stanislavski. Milton made a guest appearance, and so most of the time was spent discussing Milton's ideas about acting (and some class members' as well), rather than Stanislavski's. As I expected, keeping up with the work for the Monday class is proving difficult for me; I didn't finish the reading in time for the class, and I have been procrastinating all week over writing my theatre journal entry. I will definitely do it tonight though, as if I do not it will probably get left until the end of term, the night before the journal is due. I need to get into good habits, and that means getting on top of this journal NOW.

Apart from a visit to Gayle about the studio 2 costumes, Tuesday was unproductive, however Wednesday saw me finally beginning the transcribing of my Cannabus documentary. Sai Yin set up the tape player in the year 1 editing suite, and I was finally able to review the footage that I shot so many months ago. Between both Wednesday and Friday's transcribing sessions I have done an hour and thirty-four minutes worth of footage so far, so there is still a lot more to go. There was a lot of rubbish on the tapes - but you expect that with documentary - however there was enough good stuff as well that I think we have done very well. Watching the footage, much of which was too shakey or too dark or bright, makes me appreciate just how difficult documentary camera work is. The camera student who helped me with the footage I have looked at so far is excellent in my opinion, however she clearly struggled to make the camera respond quickly enough to events as they took place.

Thursday was an interesting day, as this was the day when I had a rehearsal with my actors for studio 2. I had decided to take them into the city to rehearse in actual elevators so that they could get a feel for how the unique environment of the elevator impacts on people's behaviour, and so that they could rehearse the scene in front of the general public and hopefully convince them of the reality of the situation, rather than revealing themselves as actors. I felt that this was important, as I am finding that they frequently over-act. I was hoping this would encourage them to pull it back a lot.

The day didn't start off too well, as we weren't able to leave on time. Felix had to give a presentation at 1 o'clock - not that he had thought to tell me this himself, despite knowing for more than 24 hours in advance. So of course I turned up at 12, ready to go, and Ashton and Sarah told me about Felix's presentation. I was so annoyed that he hadn't told me in advance, and that he was nowhere to be seen! Nevertheless, we agreed to meet and leave after the presentation; about twenty past one. Once the presentation was over, however, Felix took out his lunch and sat on a bench, refusing to leave with us until after he had had his lunch and a break. What was he doing at lunch time if not eating his lunch?! Since we had already been delayed by almost an hour and a half we asked him to please come with us and eat in the car on the way, but he would not budge. Meanwhile, Ashton and Sarah stood by dressed in clothes that they felt that their character might wear, as they had been asked to do, while Felix wore his normal clothes.

Eventually we drove into town and set about pursuing elevators to rehearse in. Typically, Felix was skeptical and reluctant about the idea, while the other two were happy to discuss challenges and solutions. Similarly, Ashton and Sarah knew their lines - Felix did not. If I had been in the position to do so, I would have kicked Felix out of the scene instantly for his self-indulgent behaviour. Unfortunately though we were not in control of our own casting on this project.

Anyway, eventually we were able to rehearse in elevators. There plenty of mishaps involving people getting stuck on floors they were not supposed to be on, or missing the elevator altogether, however I still feel all in all that the day was quite productive. For one thing, they were certainly able to feel the effects of the environment. For another, they succeeded in the challenge of maintaining their focus despite various things being thrown into the middle of their scene. There was also a small confrontation, when Felix said a line and someone else in the lift thought he was speaking to them and got antsy, so they were able to feel the intensity of what having a confrontation in that tiny little box really feels like. They were also able to observe little details such as the fact that they automatically leaned against the walls of lift. Furthermore, it was all very good fun. The rehearsal wasn't as long as I would have liked, but a good experience for all of us. If I were to do a similar exercise again the future, I would probably do it at a later stage of rehearsal though, when the actors know the text more instinctively.

Friday was quite interesting as we had the first read-through of the 'New York' script. In order to give us more practise working with actors, Milton is helping those of us (directing students) who are interested to put on a play called 'New York'. It is a series of duologues between a psychiatrist and number of people who are traumatised by the events of September 11th. Reading the play on Friday I felt that it was very interesting on the page, but not too sure that it would be very engaging for an audience on the stage because it was so static and reflective; the action was all in the past tense. Nevertheless, I think it will be a very good experience for me as far as working with actors to achieve a performance goes. The read-through with the actors themselves was quite interesting. Some had obviously already done quite a bit of work on their characters beforehand, while some clearly had not. There were also some stand-out American accents around the table, and some very poor ones too. I'm not sure how many scenes we are doing each, but I have listed my preferences and will send them to Milton soon. Fingers crossed that I get good scenes and great actors!

Another thing that I did on Friday was observing Romain's studio shoot. I was there for the first shot of the day, and popped in a couple of times afterwards too. The set looked great, although inappropriate to the script in my opinion. I was also unsure about Sarah's costume as she closely resembled a nurse, without clearly being one. The thing I was most interested in though was the actinng. It was quite difficult not to whisper in Romain's ear all the things I would have told the actors if I had been him. As I watched them I felt that the actors knew what was going on in the scene on paper but were not actually applying that to how they acted. They were acting the lines too much, and not the subtext and certainly not the circumstances. They were also acting too hard - over-pronouncing their Ts etc. In the end I did end up talking to Romain about one aspect of the performance as he took a quick bathroom break, and he incorporated my suggestion into the scene. When I saw it played, however, it still appeared not to be fully understood. So frustrating! I hope I can get more out of my actors, although it will be no small challenge.

The first week

So the first week of uni has finished and the second has begun, and if I don't write an entry about week one now then I never will.

Monday:

I was late for the first class, which was listed on the timetable as "screening or physical class". I was a little bit disappointed to find that we will not be having either screening or physical classes; instead we will be having lectures and seminars. Never mind.

I have enrolled in NZ & Contemporary Theatre this semester, as opposed to NZ Film like the rest of my classmates. My class consists entirely of actors except for one writer - Joe - and I. The morning consisted of going to the library to research and decide who we felt were the most influential theatre practitioners of the 20th century. I have to admit that I wasn't wholly committed to the task; I paired up with Caroline and found myself at a table of girls all catching up following the holidays, and I ended up joining in many of their conversations. The afternoon was a drag, as we all shared our lists with the class. Nevertheless, I did benefit from it, as so many names that I'd never heard before and I began to realise how much I don't know. Going into the morning session, I had thought that I had a pretty good knowledge of 20th century theatre practitioners already, and it's true that I did know many of the names, however seeing all the ones I didn't know opened me up a lot more to the work. The focus of the course is going to be on reading and research, and we are to keep a research journal each week, documenting our reading and findings. I have to say, I find this task very daunting. Discipline is not necessarily my strong point, and I also have a tendency to take each task far too seriously. I can imagine that the journal entries, which will presumably take everyone else about 2 hours per week to complete, are likely to take the entire week for me, every week. I guess I'll just have to try to train myself.

Tuesday:

The morning session, talking through our studio films with Milton and Elizabeth, was far easier than expected. It had seemed as though we would need a lot of preparation for the session, but in fact I was fine with minimal preparation. I did catch myself out a couple of times though, although always too late. I think I sometimes exhibit a certain arrogance and attitude problem, which makes me cringe to even think about. I caught myself speaking reacting to certain problems that other directors were having as though the problems were really very simple and they should not worry about them. The truth is, I am glad I am not in some people's position, and I certainly have no right to act as though I could handle anything. I am neither very knowledgable, nor very experienced. I have no idea where my sudden ego came from. Whatever the case, I am now resolved to learn to keep my mouth shut until I am sure I want to open it.

Wednesday:

I was supposed to have a team meeting for the studio films in the morning. I had no idea what this meant, but worked hard storyboarding the night before to ensure I would be able to answer most questions about the shots at least. Actually, hardly anyone turned up to the team meeting, and certainly no one actually seemed like they wanted to be there. It was very informal. I think I did well though; having the informal situation and the essential people present gave me the chance to speak informally about the project and finally get people excited to work on it. I was very demonstrative and energetic, and asked for people's ideas and opinions, and was able to answer most questions, or work around the ones I couldn't. Finally, it seemed as though people might actually care. Usually I would hope to get everyone very excited about the project at the first pre-production meeting, but the fact of the matter was that at the first meeting at the end of last term I had very little excitement myself. In fact I just flat out didn't care, as I was drowning in looming assessments. Now that I am interested though, it wasn't hard to get the crew to that point too.

The afternoon session involved four directors each getting up in front of the whole directing and acting classes, plus Milton and Elizabeth, and conducting a rehearsal. I felt very sorry for Chris having to go first. He's very softly spoken, and Elizabeth kept asking him to speak up, which of course made going first that much tougher. I took during notes during Chris's rehearsal, as we had been instructed to do, but after that I just gave up as each director copied Chris's exact methods. I felt embarassed for our directing class, that everyone was so uninteresting! And as I watched everyone else's rehearsals, all I could think of was "this would NOT suit my script. What on earth am I going to do?!"

Thursday:

Pre-production meeting. I got my shot list to Lisa on time on Thursday night and it was duly handed out. Larry estimates that my first shot is going to take about two and a half hours to shoot. Ouch. I guess I will have to change it, but what to? I already have too many shots so I don't want to cut it up into multiple shots - it's just not worth it. Also, it's the opening shot. If I don't have a fantastic opening shot, why bother? But if it's going to take that long to shoot then I pretty much sacrifice the rest of the film, so once again, why bother? Argh, it's going to have to change - I just don't know what to. Apart from that, the meeting went well. There were plenty of questions, but I was able to answer most pretty easily, and everyone seemed pretty calm. This is the bonus of being the last shoot scheduled. Larry even said he thought I was a good director - hurrah!

The afternoon session was once again four directors conducting rehearsals in front of everybody, and this time that meant me. As I watched the first three directors I jotted down a rehearsal plan, but when I got up all I really knew was that I couldn't be like them. Over the course of the two afternoons the routine that Chris had started had gradually evolved into a strange talk-show format. There was nothing genuine left.

I had one assignment for myself: get the actors excited about the film. Having taken a long time to become excited about it myself, I assumed that they might feel similarly about the script to me. I am also aware that when you're not excited about a project you will procrastinate, but when you are excited you will work hard. I think for most actors, the first reason they choose to do acting is because it is fun. So to convince them to choose to work hard on my film, I need to take them to that place of fun that sparks their love of acting and therefor their energy, even if it's just in the first rehearsal.

Happily, I think I succeeded. Funnily enough, the biggest hindrance I found was the tutors. I was moving through my rehearsal quite happily and all was going to plan, when the tutors chimed in. This was to be expected - they were there to give feedback to the directors and help them with their rehearsals, however instead of giving me feedback, the tutors spoke directly to the actors, giving them offering after offering on their characters, and inadvertently beginning to direct my film and my rehearsal themselves. I have to say, I sat on the floor fuming and thinking that they were ruining my plans. I was even going to address the problem with them afterwards, but fortunately I had to sit through a feedback session with the other directors, and this gave me time to put it in perspective. After all, the rehearsal certainly did end well and I did feel that I had achieved my goal. And some of the discussions that the tutors had with my actors were helpful. And they certainly had not seemed to realise that they had jumped in and started to direct the film. I decided to take it as a compliment instead. Perhaps they got so excited too, that they couldn't help themselves and their director/actor instincts just came bursting out and got carried away :-) This probably isn't true, but it helps me to think it is! At the very least, I'm glad that I kept my mouth shut in this case, as I would have ruined a good mood and a good afternoon if I had opened it.

Friday:

Friday afternoon was time set aside for us to rehearse with our actors. Having gotten them excited about the film, I decided to use the time to do the serious text analysis work that the other directors had used their previous rehearsals for. I think it went very well with Ashton and Sarah. Both of them brought creative ideas about their characters to the table, and we were able to have a good laugh over the possibilities and eventually make some valuable decisions about the characters. Unfortunately though, I did not have as much success with Felix. Felix is also acting in Ian's film, and therefore I had to share Felix with Ian in the rehearsal. Unfortunately, this meant that Felix missed out on our original discussions about the characters, and also the good mood and good ideas that were flying about. When Felix was able to join us, many decisions had already been made and Ashton and Sarah tuned out as I talked to Felix. Since they were not strictly necessary to the conversation I found it hard to retain their attention. As a result, Felix had less creative freedom with his character, and the mood was not quite right to promote the fun exploration that was really required. I think that through the discussions I was eventually able to help him see the possibilities and the choices available to him, however his enthusiasm seems considerably lower than I would like at this stage. I always expected that I would have to work hard with him - I've often noticed a tendency towards negativity and resistance in him - I'm just disappointed at the extent, and frustrated as I know the shared time will continue to cause a problem through the whole process.

On Friday night I decided to enact an idea I had had the day before; to make a website about my studio film. Basically, I get sick of chasing people all the time, sending emails and text messages, handing out paperwork, etc. I wanted a central point where people could find all the information available. So I have made a website to do just that. I have been thinking of making a website for a while actually - just to try it out - so this was an excellent opportunity for the experiment. Anyway, I think it is a success so far, although I haven't had much feedback. (This is the one bad point - I always like feedback, and if I put out information on a website then people can access it without actually having to speak to me. Mind you, they don't reply to emails half the time anyway so it's really not much different). Anyway, the site is loveinanelevator.weebly.com. Here's to its success!