Professional Practise - Main goal - post 1

Once again we have been set a blogging task as an assessment. Actually I have two blogging tasks as assessments, but I probably won't begin the other one until tomorrow or Wednesday.

For my main goal of the semester I have decided to combine two of the bullet points from the list of suggested goals. They are:

a) Understanding & Respecting Boundaries between your/their role & others’ roles

b) Ability to Delegate appropriately

I've decided that this is appropriate because I feel that the two go hand-in-hand. I think it must be impossible for a director to delegate tasks appropriately if they do not understand and respect the boundaries between their own and others' roles. In fact I think the primary reason for understanding and respecting these boundaries must be so that the director can delegate appropriately, including knowing who to ask for ideas and opinions and advice. In other words, b) is impossible without a), and b) is the reason for a). If these things are not combined then a director cannot possibly get the best possible output from their collaborators, because those collaborators may be either too restricted or too stretched in their work.

Explain how you perceive yourself to be in need of development in the area you have chosen.

The reason I have chosen this goal is because I think this is an area I continue to struggle with. While I have had greater problems with professionalism in the past - most notably with punctuality and adhering to deadlines - I have in fact made good improvements in these areas and feel confident that I am continuing to slowly but steadily overcome the problem. On the other hand I have never properly addressed the issue of boundaries and delegation. I struggle to be patient on set, and sometimes this leads me to overstep the boundaries of mine and others' roles. This is particularly revealed in a bad habit of trying to help which in fact leads to me getting in other people's way. For example I may move props or pieces of set dressing or lighting and camera equipment. While this comes out of a desire to assist the team I am working with and speed the shoot along for the benefit of everyone, it can have a negative effect. I can get in people's way, or do something wrongly, and sometimes I probably make people feel as though I think they are not doing their jobs properly, which would make them feel defensive and antagonistic. It is in my nature to be proactive and to want to take part in all aspects of the work, however I suspect this is something I will have to learn to suppress in order to prevent the negative effects I just mentioned. One of the temptations I might have to be careful of in the process is that of asking other people to do the things I want to help with myself. Part of learning to delegate appropriately will also be learning when it is not my turn to delegate, as I need to respect the HODs and not interfere with them taking charge of their own departments. Wanting to do everything yourself is not considered a strength in a director, and this is an issue I struggle with.

State exactly what you want to achieve with the Goal and what it will look like once you’ve gotten there.

I want to be able to work in teams that are free of interpersonal tensions, because everybody knows their own place in the team and takes ownership of their role, and does not feel imposed upon by me overstepping my marks. I want to be able to help productions run efficiently by ensuring that tasks are delegated appropriately.

Chart a path for growth which will deliver you to that goal.

I don't think I can chart a path for growth over the entire semester, but I think I can do so over shorter periods of time such as one or two weeks, so in my weekly blog posts on this topic I will try to do this. In the blog posts I will look at the tasks that I face over the following one to two weeks and try to predict times when I may be required to face the challenge of this goal, and try to suggest in advance ways that I might be able to deal with it.

At the moment, I have just found out the script and crew that I will be working with for the upcoming TVC project. In 11 days, on the 26th of March, I am required to submit a treatment for my TVC, including a first draft shot list, casting brief, and location briefs. Between now and that time I will be having two classes with the production students to study scheduling, and one for developing the TVCs with the camera students.

A unique challenge that will arise on this project will be in working with the production students, who will be taking on the role of "producer" on this project, rather than "production manager". Since I have never worked with a producer before it will be difficult at first to understand their role, therefore I will make sure that I take some time this week to discuss this with my producer, Lisa, and ask her to explain how she sees the role of producer. We will discuss how we will collaborate and try to foresee any problems that could arise between us.

The relationship that I have always struggled with most on projects has been the relationship with the DP, and I have to say that I have never once a had a director-DP relationship that I was satisfied with. On the other side of the coin, I very much doubt that any DP has ever been satisfied with their relationship with me. For this project I will be working with Ben, who I have never worked closely with before. I think I will also try to meet with him some time this week, purely to discuss our collaboration before making a start on the creative work we will be doing together. I will prepare by writing down my thoughts on how our collaboration should work, so that when I ask Ben I can focus on listening to his thoughts, without busily trying to formulate my own. Then I can offer my own thoughts and we can find ways to compromise if there are aspects that we disagree on.

Visual references

I don't have a great eye, or a great memory for visuals. My strengths lie more in words, I have to admit. Film, though, is a visual and aural medium, so if I want to make films I had better bloody well catch up on the visual and aural skills.

At some point, possibly quite soon, some camera student is going to ask me for visual references. We will have just found out that we are working together on the advert, and will want to develop a "look".

How can someone with a terrible memory for visuals, like me, give great visual references? By turning them into something that I DO understand and remember: words. Words conjure up visual images in my mind. So if I can just manage to convert some visuals into words then I will have a useful catalogue to refer to when asked for references.

From now on, every time I watch a movie I will add a description of its visual style to this list. I will begin with the films I have seen recently. Hopefully I will remember them correctly...

I Am Legend: Low angles that show how dwarfed the lead character is by the enromous, empty, New York environment. Tight close ups on the the main character and dog, to let us into their emotions. Shots on the Dark Seekers (or whatever they are called) seem to be sympathetic. They are shot straight on, like humans, rather than using grotesque horror-style close ups and sharp angles. The colour palette appears to be very yellow sunlight, giving a feeling of disappearing end-of-day light, with cool greys and bright greens.

Tristan and Isolde: Desaturated colours, accentuating the fact that it's a period piece - makes it seem more like an ancient time. Film becomes more and more drained of colour as the film goes on and the danger and sense of foreboding increase. The film is black and white in some parts of the end. Lots of silhouettes used. Slow motion used during battle scenes and love scenes.

Vertigo: Colours seem dull because of the old film stock. Gives every shot the appearance of a beautiful pencil drawing. Use of jade green as a motif in costume and lighting. POV track-zooms used to accentuate fear of heights.

Goodbye Pork Pie: classic late 70s slight brown tone to film stock. Greens and blues very muted. Yellow highlighted and used as motif in costume and car. Few wide shots - the film is about the characters rather than the places they visit.

Things To Come: Black and white. Fast-cutting, for its time. The old times have an elegance, despite the ruin of the environment. The future times are very bland - not much texture or contrast. Smoothness, hardness, and cylinders are all predominant.

Sione's Wedding: Even though I saw it last night, I can't really describe it. It wasn't very distinctive, although I guess you could say that the colours were predominantly dark when hope was low or the situation was negative, and bright when the mood was good.

Querelle: Fantasy-like. Predominance of striking orange and yellow sunset colours over background and set and creating a golden wash over characters. Creates a feeling of over-bearing heat; compliments images of sweaty-skinned bodies. Contrasted with a sickly jade green light used on characters at times, possibly to highlight times of jealousy and coldness, eg in scene with female character in front of mirror. Lighting is non-naturalistic - gives no indication of time of day or diegetic sources. Used to create atmosphere of other-worldness and oppressive heat. Vaseline (?) used to soften image during sex scene between Querelle and Nono.

Renaissance 2025: Black and white animations. No use of grey - gives very strong film noir feeling. Colour used only in the drawings of one character. Effects such as reflections still used despite black and white animation.

War Lords: Initially a predominance of greys in locations, costumes etc. Indicates cold and poverty and hopelessness. Predominance of brown colours when the bandits join the army. The red of the uniforms is slightly browned - looks like the colour of dried blood. Ending uses brighter colours, more beautiful, stronger constrast and saturation, to indicate prosperity. Camera movement etc are very stock-standard Holywood style.

Can it possibly be Friday already?

Monday: The first "Documentary Research & History" class. The class was mostly some theory from Scott, and an intro from Sima. Scott focused on one of his favourite topics, the Truth, and threw us all into an uncomfortable place of confronting our roles as aspiring doco makers and how that sits with ideas about truth/authenticity/fact. Far more uncomfortable for me, however, was Sima's request that we all bring a documentary idea to class next week to begin working on our treatments.

WHAT?!?! NOOOOO!!!!!!!

I was so, SO looking forward to NOT having to make decisions on that for a while. I looked at the course title and thought, "Hurrah! A whole semester of analysing, discussing and researching documentary and documentary ideas!" Admittedly it would be great to spend so much time researching one idea, but I was expecting time to look at options first!!! I wish I had known ahead of time, so that I could have looked more thoroughly at options during the holidays. Maybe I should have been doing that anyway. But anyway, I cannot possibly convey HOW BADLY I want to write one of the treatments that gets chosen to be made next semester. The idea of making a film that I know inside and out and back to front sounds awesome. Sure I could make someone else's but it could never measure up. The research would all be second-hand. No thanks. Anyway, I need a great idea/s fast. And I currently have none. Eep!

Tuesday: Film theory in the morning. Turned up to class on time and the movie was already going. Actually, it had already been going for an hour. What the?! Turned out there had been an email during the week that I had missed out on, saying that the screenings would begin at 8am from now on. I won't make that mistake again. Vertigo was thoroughly confusing after missing the first hour and if there was a point to the film I did not get it. I did find the look of the film extremely beautiful though. The discussions afterwards were good in that I could actually grasp them, and for once I had done the reading, but to be honest the information has gone in one ear and out of the other (and same with the reading, although I don't know where it exited) as I cannot actually remember what the reading was about other than "film form". What did that mean again? I guess I'll have to skim over it before moving on to the next, EVEN LONGER reading.

The afternoon was directing class with Sima. Script analysis. I quite liked the script we worked on - it didn't read like a student script for once. The script analysis questions she gave us though were confusing to me, although she kept saying they were great because they were straight forward. I prefer the questions we got last year from Athina and will probably stick with those.

Wednesday: I missed the emerging technologies class in the mornin to go to the first Faculty Academic Committee for Creative Industries and Business (FAC CIB) meeting of the year. Sigh. It was disappointing to miss emerging technologies, and although I learned a lot at the meeting, unfortunately I also came to the realisation that the issues that are brought to that committee are things that I am very unlikely to have any useful input on.

My evening was spent in Grey Lynn park, snuggled on a picnic blanket with Rayner watching Goodbye Pork Pie in the open air. Unfortunately we were late and missed the start of it, and we didn't have a great view because some people who were even later than us plonked themselves in front of us, but nevertheless I was able to follow and enjoy the film. It took a while to get used to the HORRENDOUS acting but once that was achieved I could relax. The film has some very bizarre and some very funny moments, but despite its status as a class I can't say it's a film I want to emulate.

Thursday: Directing class in the afternoon was spent on scene analysis with the same script as the previous class. was glad to spend some time on that as even though I feel I'm quite strong with script analysis and understanding scripts and characters and mood etc as a whole, I really want to improve my attention to detail and ability to convey meaning throug the minutiae. I will definitely be using scene analysis when planning the shots and design for my next shoot.

The first genre studies class was held in the evening. The genre in focus will be "science fiction". It's a pity that I will only be able to go to every second class (I have USU Exec meetings in the weeks in between) as the first class was very interesting, despite the movie ("Things To Come") being extremely dull. Initially I thought to myself, "I don't really like science fiction", but actually that's not true. I just don't like specific films or sub-genres of science fiction, particularly Star Trek and most (but not all) space travel films. I do like many though, such as The Matrix, District 9, Gattaca, and I Am Legend, which I saw for the first time recently. Here's hoping the screenings for genre studies class fall primarily under my "like" column.

After genre studies Rayner was SUPPOSED to come and pick me up straight away so that we could go to another Movies In Parks session; this time to see Sione's Wedding. Unfortunately, he forgot, and so once again we missed the beginning of the film. Sione's Wedding had definite strengths and weaknesses. On the one hand, many parts of the film were very funny and entertaining. On the other hand, most of the parts that were supposed to be touching were so over-indulgent that they ended up being slightly repulsive. The acting was good and so was the script, but just wish the director had had a bit more of a sense of subtlety sometimes!

Today (Friday): "Advert development" in the morning, with the students from the other disciplines (except the writers). The class was run by Sima, who seems to have found her groove at the front of a class, which was nice to see. She also had a lot of interesting ads to show and interesting things to say about them, which made for an enjoyable class. I'm pleased that she's writing social ads for us. As much as I would love to sell a glamorous product (especially because I really want to practise constructing great visuals) I just don't think we could achieve something at Unitec that looks anything less than cheap (*cough* HD *cough*). On the other hand, social ads seem to very achievable in the time and budget constraints, and lend themselves to the crappy look of HD, which we will be shooting on. Fingers crossed that we get great scripts that lend themselves to creativity though!

A new week

There were no classes after Tuesday last week as most of the year level were away on the marae trip Unfortunately I missed out on this, as I stayed back to be available to the Beijing Film Academy students. Although we had finished shooting by the time the marae began, I'm still glad I stayed behind as I was able to save myself a bit of stress by having time to tie up loose ends, such as sending thankyou gifts to our interviewees, repaying petrol and phone debts, and making sure the BFA students copied the footage to their hard drive before going. The bonus was that I was also able to go to the Sounds In The Sun music festival, which was brilliant!

This week brings the first of many classes. I'm particularly looking forward to Doco Research & History. It's quite exciting to realise that we will have a whole semester to explore the genre and research a topic, rather than the very short and shallow research that I've been able to do in the past. The week also brings the first Creative Industries and Business Faculty Academic Committee meeting, which I am both looking forward to and dreading. I am about to discover whether I will ave a great opportunity to bring change this year, or whether I am just going to be sitting through many hours of boredom. I really hope it's the former, as I will be missing an emerging technologies class in order to be there.

Meeting Sima

Well I didn't manage to keep my mouth shut at all. On the upside, I think the reason for this was because Sima made everyone feel very comfortable and we were very easily able to engage in honest open dialogue with her straight away. Unfortunately I was very honest about all my particular difficulties, and she might now think I'm "struggling", which I don't think I am. But maybe I'm just being paranoid.

I noticed one thing in particular today; Sima misunderstood my meaning a few times. I used to think I was a good, clear, concise communicator, but I am beginning to suspect I am not as good as I thought I was. How does one improve this though? I still think I'm pretty good at it, and the holes in my communication are not obvious to me. I think I will just have to keep an ear out for misunderstandings in general and try to work out why they are occuring.

Class consisted of basically introducing ourselves and then discussing the director's role - going off on a lot of tangents along the way. I remember how frustrating it was in the first couple of years having to discuss over and over what the director's role was. I used to think things like, "don't they know anything else to teach us?" But after two years of attempting to fulfill the director's role (and watching other people make the same attempts), I am beginning to understand how important those discussions are. It reminds you of the magnitude of the director's power and responsibility, and that these things must be taken on with 100% commitment and seriousness.

First day of school, 2010

I have decided to start blogging again with a vengeance. I know it's impossible but I will TRY to blog every day if I can.

Even though we had to go into school yesterday for general talks about the course, today is the first day of actual classes. I decided last night that I would do Pedro's theatre theory class this semester, rather than Scott's film one. I felt that I was more likely to retain and use the things described in Pedro's outline, however when I turned up to his class this morning he was in the process of dividing people into groups to work on something for the semester that they could use for a subject they were all doing in the second semester. Given that I would not be doing that course in the second semester I decided that I would disadvantage whichever group I joined, and that I would only be disappointed not to be able to bring my work to fruition, so I left Pedro's class and joined Scott's late.

Scott's class will be interesting, but will I be able to keep up? I wasn't in his class last year and they will be drawing on that work. There will be others in the same position though (the grad dip students)so I guess I shouldn't worry too much. I just hope I have the discipline to do the readings every week and stay awake during the films! I suspect some of them will be extremely boring... Anyway, I'm in now, so here goes!

This arvo I will be meeting the directing tutor, Sima, properly for the first time. I am a bit nevous, I have to say! She seems to be sort of like an older version of myself in many ways. Can I get along with someone like me in a position of authority??? I'm not sure. I hope so! She seems very intense and shrewd and enthusiastic. I want her to like me but she will see through any psycophancy in a heart beat. I think it will be best for me to stay kind of quiet for the first few classes so I have a chance to get used to her before opening my mouth and putting my foot in it. Anyway, shall try to report back later with what happened...

2010

It's about time I got back into this journal. I have thought about working on it a couple of times since I stopped writing in it at the end of second semester, but have always put it off. Now I'm getting back into it, and this is why: I have no goals for this year - so far.

One of the best things about keeping a journal is recording your goals at the beginning of a given period and being able to return to them later, to see how you went. And if you really want to, you can even track your progress on those goals through the period. I haven't done this so far, but it still seems valuable to at least have the option.

Normally the first goals that spring to my mind are things like "be on time" and "be organised" and "stop procrastinating; be proactive". These are all very valuable goals and I have set them for myself many times. Normally I fail at them entirely. The problem this time around is that, for the first time, I actually made a huge amount of progress on all of those goals last year. I really was on time more often than I have been before; I really was more organised than I have ever been, and I was also more proactive than I have ever been. This is not to say that there is no room for improvement in all of these areas, because there is, but they're not good goals anymore. It's just a case of sustaining my progress now.

So in the absence of the usual goals, what shall I do? I need to lay some challenges down for myself, otherwise I have nothing to be proactive about, nothing to organise, nothing to be on time for. What do I really want to achieve?

Okay. Goal-setting.

- Be slower to judge, and judge less harshly. Try to like people in a more generous, open-hearted way and accept everyone as a friend.
- Treat this year as the first year of my career. Be professional at all times.
- Enter at least one film festival or competition.
- Demand brilliance from everyone I work with, but do it nicely, through encouragement not pressure.
- Study camera movement rigourously and use it with confidence.
- Be daring enough to come up with new ideas for films and plays of my own, and even attempt to write one or two. Don't be afraid to make mistakes.
- Treat every film as the film that will launch my career.
- Deserve the respect of peers and teachers, and respect them in return.
- Continue to keep a journal.
- Find or create an opportunity to practise acting.
- Exercise regularly. Possibly join a sports team. Lose 5kgs.
- Be gentle to Rayner and never take him for granted, but always demand fair treatment and maintain independence.
- Follow true priorities, even when they are difficult.
- If something is worth doing then it is worth doing well. If I make a commitment I will give 100%, however I also need to learn to say 'no' when there is no room for more.
- Keep in touch with family on a more regular basis.
- Attempt to understand the workings of the film theatre industries, and make contacts within those industries.


Aaahhh... that feels better! Life has a point again. Nice.

That sure is a lot of goals though......