Professional Practise - Main Goal - Post 8

In many ways, our ability to conform to our own roles without encroaching on the roles of others is shaped by how our colleagues perform in their own roles. For directing students in particular, we are always told in feedback sessions that we are responsible for the end product, no matter what, and that we must double-check everything and leave nothing to chance. We won't always have the luxury of working with people who fulfill our every need and are the epitomy of professionalism, technical skill, and creativity. So what do we do in such a situation? Is there a limit to how much respect we pay to the boundaries between ours and others roles when others are not coming to the party? My instinctive answer to that is to say, 'Stuff the respect. Do what needs to be done to give the project what it needs.' But does everyone see it that way? I'm not sure that even I can fully stand by that statement, especially when no one's being paid. What do you do when your colleague is trying to come to the party but simply doesn't have the technical skill to deliver? It's hardly fair to overstep the boundaries when someone is giving you everything they've got.

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I have found myself in this predicament and haven't known what to do. I could see it coming, and had plenty of patience stored up in readiness, but while this solves the problem of potential personality conflict, it does not solve the problem of giving the project what it needs. I have found myself trying to subtly overstep the mark, provide gentle tips and guidance, or secretly plug the gaps. I must sound incredibly arrogant making the claim that I know how to do someone else's job better than they can do their own, but I'm not trying to make the claim overall and I'm not saying I don't need the person. There are just certain technical abilities that I possess that another does not. Anyway, these sneaky methods are not the way I like to work, and I have not been enjoying it. So I can't say I've been doing well with the respecting boundaries goal lately, but then I may have reached the limit of its application.

TVC - post 12

Well, the colour grade at Digipost happened today. Everyone was stoked to discover that we each had thirty minutes to work with the grader, rather than the 15 or 20 minutes we had been expecting.

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It was really interesting watching the grader work on everyone's TVCs. He was certainly far more sensitive to the subtleties of colour and light than I am, as one would expect from someone whose occupation it is to twist and tweak such things every day. I was really pleasantly surprised by the beauty he was able to bring out in shots that would otherwise have looked plain or dark etc. It was also great as far as revealing the capabilities and limitations of the technology available. Although I did not get a chance to ask why, I was surprised to find that he was only able to use oval shaped windows on the image to adjust specific areas of colour, rather than, say, rectangles. I can't think why this would be, but I should ask someone if I get a chance. I was also surprised to find that colour can't be simply injected into an image, like using the paint bucket tool on Paint. I had thought that if a shot were still then the grader may be able to put in a fill in a given area, like in a graphics program, but it seems not. Once again, there was no time to ask why this was the case. At the end of the session I asked the grader if he had any tips for us to get the most out of the grading experience when shooting in the future. He said to simply expose everything correctly, nice and flat, and then the grader will have everything they need to get the most out of the colours.

TVC - post 11

My, how time flies!!!

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My last post about editing the TVC was very hopeful. There's something lovely and exciting and hopeful about the initial rough cut of a project. ll the problems are blatantly obvious, but the individual disparate shots begin to be shaped into a story for the first time ever. Every hiccup in the cut is part of its beauty. "It's fine, it's only a rough cut. Imagine what it will be like when we've trimmed it all properly and got a good sound mix on there!"

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From the rough cut of my TVC it has mostly been downhill. All of the loveable issues of the rough cut have shown themselves to be much much more difficult to solve than first thought, and a good sound mix has been an elusive beast, and very difficult to tame.

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Unfortunately Sima said no to cutting out the city part of the ad and we ended up spending a huge chunk of our editing time trying different options for the transition from city to forest. Finally we have a transition that is far less jarring than any others we tried, but I still don't feel that it totally works for the ad. We've also spent a lot of time playing with different music options, and the placement of the music within the ad. The mood of the voiceover has been tricky too; the voiceover as it was written was too long for the ad, and has to be very rushed to squish it all in. We've cut out some phrases and played around with the timing, and have managed to improve it greatly, however I would rather take it out completely as I think it is a pure distraction from the images, which tell us everything we need to know anyway. The problem with this is that the structure of the end dialogue (which begins with the word "so") is slightly jarring without the voiceover, and I would also have to run the idea past Sima, as it is quite a big departure from the scripted ad. Fortunately I do have some more time in post-sound to work with Michael and make it work. I think I might end up trying to cut out almost all of the voiceover, and leave only a phrase or two, possibly with an echo effect added.

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The other issue at the moment is the graphic at the end of the ad. I had wanted to include a fern frond in the logo for "Life Cycle", however I couldn't find one that had already been simply drawn, only actual photographs, and I'm not skilled enough with my graphic software to draw one myself from scratch. I tried various effects on the best photograph I found to try use the frond in my logo, and then tried to incorporate it into the text as the "C" for "Cycle", however in order to match the look of the text to the look of the frond I gave it a three-dimensional illusion look, and made it quite bright. Sadly, the effect of this was to make the logo look quite gaudy; much like a heading I might have used for a school project five years ago. It simply looked terribly unfashionable and did not match the simple elegance of the other imagery. Anyway, I was too slow to replace it. I prepared some new graphics (much simpler, more elegant) last night and went in to meet Toetu today to put it in, only to discover that Glenn had already done outputs ready for colour grading at Digipost tomorrow. Noooooo!!!!! I was so disappointed. Fortunately it is probably solvable. After the colour grade we will put it back into Avid, rewrite over the last shot and graphic, and use the graded shot from the previous copy as a reference to colour grade the final shot in the Avid. It's a bit of a mission but it will be worth it to save face!!!

Professional Practise - Main goal - Post 7

In my last Main Goal post I said that I would put more effort into clarity of communication and knowing what I want before I walk on set, so that I am doing everything I can to help the shoot go efficiently and not stress the 1st AD out. I am happy to say that I did both of these things on Tuesday and never saw Lisa stressed (although she may have been hiding it?), and for the first time in my life I finished a shoot early. That's a little off topic from my main goal, but it was a task I lay down for myself, so I thought I'd better comment on it.
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Understanding and respecting boundaries did not actually go superbly well last week I must say, although I'm still in mixed minds as to whether that was my fault or not. Lisa and I had a minor personality clash via email the night before the TVC shoot last week. This is particularly awkward to blog about because Lisa will no doubt read and comment on this blog (hi Lisa!). How do I discuss this objectively and take care not to reopen a rift that seems to have been sealed?

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Basically, Lisa sent out a call sheet on Monday night that, and I noticed a few small issues with it. Although a couple of this issues were of no real consequence, a couple of them could have had serious repercussions for the shoot. Because it was titled "Draft Call Sheet" I assumed that Lisa must have accidentally attached an old draft to the email, rather than her current one, so I responded to the email asking about this and raising the issues that I had noticed, which made Lisa feel that I was questioning her ability to do her job.

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So here's the thing. After every single screen project that we have made at Unitec we have a feedback session with all the screen arts tutors, and without fail, during every single feedback session, the directors are told that they are responsible for everything in the final product and that they must double check everything. It always happens; a tutor will comment on a problem, the director will explain how that problem came about, and the tutors' reponses are always the same: "It doesn't matter, people forget things. You need to check and double check everything. Accidents happen and people forget. You are the one who needs to be sure." In my mind, this is what I was doing when I pointed out the issues to Lisa.

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On the other hand, call sheets are not my job, so am I overstepping the boundaries? But when the consequences of a couple of the issues could have been be really really serious for me, how could I possibly keep quiet?

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Perhaps the issue is the way that I pointed out the problems.

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On the weekend, my boyfriend gently raised an issue with me, pointing out that sometimes I need to let things go. He said that I need to let people be wrong about things, let them make mistakes, or if I hear them ask a question but it's not directed at me then I don't always need to pipe up and answer. He wasn't talking about us, but rather the way I act around other people. I need to be careful not to come across as a know-it-all. Perhaps this was the real issue here. When I pointed out the issues to Lisa I pointed out all of them. What I should have done was point out only the issues that could have had really serious consequences, and let the smaller things slide. That way perhaps she would have taken my concerns more seriously, instead of me coming across as a nit-picking know-it-all when there was no need.

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As for delegating tasks appropiately, I'm starting to wonder whether this was really appropriate for me to add as a main goal, as I don't really seem to come up against any serious problems in this area. I did end up doing all of my own art department prop buying the day before my TVC shoot, but that was not because I had not allowed the art department to do it themselves. I think it must have been a communication issue and somehow they missed out on realising that they were supposed to do it, although to be honest I'm not really sure how that communication issue came about. I don't think I misinterpreted the role of art department on these shoots; I expected them to source the props. Why else would we havemeetings discussing what I was looking for? And they certainly knew the shoot date from the beginning. It may have simply been poor time management on their behalf. My fear is that I may have given off an impression of not trusting them to find the best props, and therefore made them hesitant to go out and get them. This is possible as I was quite particular in our meeting about how the props should be. Nevertheless, this still should not stop them from doing the job. I really should chase them down and have a chat to find out what went wrong.

Professional Practise - Seondary goal - Post 6

My secondary goals for last week were clarity of communication and appropriate attitudes, which I chose in the hope that these things would help my shoot go well on Tuesday.

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Clarity of communication:

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With regard to working with crew, no time was wasted in having to go over and explain things multiple times, no one expressed confusion, and no setups had to be changed, so I can only assume that my communication with the crew must have been clear! These things were also the result of very thorough preparation with my AD and DP.

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With regard to working with actors, I don't think my communication was as clear as it could have been. It was fine when working with Paradise, but with Veronica I think I was trying too hard give her something to work on as an actor, and ended up making my direction quite convoluted. Because the acting needs of the commercial were very simple, I feared it might bore her as an actor, and therefore I made my direction overly complicated, or rather tried to explain a simple thing in an overly complicated way. Although the outcome was good - her performance was exactly what I was looking for - I think if I were an actor in her position I would have found it frustrating trying to strip down what I was saying to find the essence, which is all I really should have said in the first place.

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Appropriate attitudes:

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I think I did fine with the attitudes from the original list (humility, good faith, generosity, can-do, respect for others). I can't think of any slip ups in those areas. Another thing that I should have had on the list, however, was "unfailing positivity". A director won't always get the outcomes they want on a shoot - there always bound to be shots that don't quite fulfill expectations - however I think that if the director and crew have tried everything they can to fulfill the original vision for that shot then the director has a responsibility as a leader to hide their disappointment and maintain a positive attitude at all times in order to keep the energy of the shoot high. I think I had a slip up in this area during my shoot on Tuesday, which although small, is something I would like never to slip up in again. I had been disappointed with y first two shots. We did not have a monitor and in the playback on the small screen of the camera they seemed to be unattractive shots by comparison with what I had imagined. I only mentioned my disappointment once quietly to one crew member, however this is one too many. Although it didn't on this occasion, that kind of thing has the ability to spread through the whole crew and infect the shoot. I need to be better at a) maintaining my poker face and not allowing people to see disappointment, and b) maintaining a constant, forward-looking positive attitude. Instead of feeling disappointment with those two shots, I should have been thinking, "Okay, those two weren't as good as I thought they would be. Now how can I squeeze even more out of my remaining shots and time to make up for it?" The thing is, I was actually falsely disappointed; when I saw those two shots on a larger screen in the rushes room at the end of the day I was actually really pleased with them!

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This week my secondary goal will be "using effective problem-solving techniques". I'm having difficulty editing my TVC to actually look and feel like a TVC. I have a problem, now I have to solve it!

TVCs - post 10

Editing began yesterday!

Actually that's not true, because Toetu actually decided to get in a day early and began labelling clips and rough cutting on Wednesday. I was very impressed! He had made a few different rough cuts to show me as soon as I walked in. Unfortunately for him I got him to begin again from scratch, but it was still useful as it meant that he had already selected the best bits from some of the takes, and we were able to use that.

Toetu and I didn't have a great experience last time we worked together, as he was going through a period of questioning whether he wanted to continue to pursue editing, and I was going through a very high stress time which meant that my patience was thin. Nevertheless, thanks to Toetu's initiative we were able to get off on a very good foot yesterday morning.

Sadly, beginning the cut quickly revealed that a lot of the gorgeous footage we shot on Tuesday will never make the light of day - or rather the darkness of the screening room. We simply could not fit it all into 30 seconds and difficult decisions had to be made.

I was surprised how quickly we came up with a relatively good 30 second cut. I was quite pleased with how dispassionate I managed to be about dropping footage, although I have to be careful not to think about it too much as it's quite painful if I do! Now the really big challenge is creating the right soundtrack for the ad. I spent a long time yesterday flicking through track after track, trying to find the right music for the forest scene. Although I found some tracks which sort of hinted at being the right style and mood, none were quite right so I'm still looking. I might actually ask a friend to write something specifically for the commercial, but that raises the problem of having to be able to describe exactly what it is I'm looking for, and I'm not terribly good at doing that with music. I did find some stuff that we could definitely use for the city part of the commercial though, although to be honest I really want to drop the city section and will ask Sima about it when she gets back from Wellington.

Aside from music we also need to put in some bird song and wind and make sure the sounds of footsteps sync up nicely with the visuals. I also need to record the voice over. I wish it could be done today but unfortunately all the soundies are on shoots this week.

TVCs - post 9

Things can change very quickly when making projects for the screen! So many people and so many elements are interdependent, and if one part changes then the flow on effect goes on forever. Since I am extremely invested in the TVC project, the flow on effect includes my moods as well.

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At the moment I am happy. My shoot is finally over and done with! And tomorrow editing begins.

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Since my last TVC post:

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In my last post I was very happy and contented, having had a good pre-production meeting. The following day, there was another pre-production meeting that left me feeling far less happy and far less contented.

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In many ways I had brought the problems on myself; after all, we are supposed to be making 30 second commercials, and I turned up to my final meeting with a shot list for a 45 second commercial. I have no one but myself to blame for that fact. On the other hand, I felt that it was completely unfair for the tutors to run the pre-production meeting the way they did. I turn up to a pre-production meeting prepared to talk through production issues. I don't turn up prepared to defend the creative story-telling content of each individual shot. Of course a director should be so prepared and have everything so thoroughly thought out that they should be able to do this at any time, but I still don't believe it is fair to ask this of them in a pre-production meeting in front of the whole crew, wasting everybody's time and making me thoroughly embarassed. This is not to say that the feedback the tutors gave me wasn't helpful - in fact they made some very useful comments, criticisms and suggestions and I wish I had heard these things earlier. I simply think these comments, criticisms and suggestions should have been delivered in a different forum, such as a private tutorial, and in fact I am going to ask whether in future we can actually add such a tutorial into the pre-production process, and save pre-production meetings for production issues.

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After the meeting, Ben felt the need to lay into me a bit as well. As soon as he began I stopped him and warned him to rethink how he wanted to have this discussion with me, as he is not my tutor and shouldn't act like it. From then on, our meeting was entirely constructive and productive. This is the advantage of working with someone like Ben, who shoots straight from the hip; you can shoot straight back and know that they're going to take it, not get the sulks.

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On Saturday I had a costume fitting with my actor, Veronica. It went very well, and not only did we come up with a costume, it was also a good opportunity to get to know each other and bond a little bit.

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On Monday I spent the morning frantically running around filling gaps in my props and wardrobe for the TVC; two Grisilinias from Plant Barn, one green plastic water bottle and one pair of brown tramping boots from Kmart. It was quite stressful running around in the morning looking for the best look for the best price, all before 12 o'clock, but it was fun and satisfying too, and I was pleased with the results.

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After the (horrific) doco pitches on Monday I went to view the edit Toetu had made of our camera test footage, but unfortunately when he tried to show me he found that all the media had gone offline. He was able to get a few clips back and quickly cut them together to show me, but unfortunately there wasn't really enough to get anything from it.

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I also tried desperately to trim down my shot list to a 30 second ad, instead of a 45 second one. After a great deal of frustration, Ben happened to come in, and with his help we were able to create something we called the "33 second plan", which may not be 30 seconds, but is a hell of a lot better then 45. Unfortunately, he later came in to reveal that he had been checking the gear, and discovered that Sai Yin had not given us an LCD monitor or a light meter, which would make things painful for us. This announcement also came around the same time as Lisa and I were frustratedly emailing each other back and forth and I was beginning to wonder whether the shoot was going to be a complete meltdown. All in all, a foul end to a foul day.

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Nevertheless, I'm not one to hang on to a bad mood, and woke at Tuesday, excited and optimistic for the shoot. And I wasn't disappointed!

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Not everything was absolutely ideal of course. It was very touch and go on the first shot, with rain starting and stopping every few minutes, and the light changing every few seconds. Plus it was a difficult shot to operate, a difficult shot to act, very cold, and I had no monitor, so it was extremely difficult to know whether I was getting what I wanted. We then moved onto a tracking shot, moving back on a close-up of the actor's face as she walks down a forest path. The showers continued, it was still cold, the timing for the grip was extremely difficult, and still I had no monitor. Worst of all, we were only just too late to catch the flicker of the sun in the background that we had been hoping for. After a lot of rehearsals and a lot of takes we moved on, with me thinking that the shots were turning out decidedly average and that the commercial was going to turn out average too. For the third shot, however, luck and the light were decidedly on our side. Finally I had a monitor, and was feeling much more capable and comfortable as a result. The shot was extremely difficult to get the timing and focus right, but after many many rehearsals all of the elements came together at last, with perfect timing, perfect focus, perfect acting, and stunningly gorgeous light, and the whole crew was over the moon.

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After this shot we moved on to one of the bigger challenges of the day; working with Paradise, a mischievous five year old girl. The shot had to be changed on the spot, as we discovered that we did not have the mini tripod we required in order to get low enough for our planned tracking shot. We also had a different plant than we had planned for, as we had to plant a seedling given to us by the Park Ranger. Fortunately, the ranger allowed us to use the spot on the trail that we had been planning for. In the end I think it was a lucky accident that we could not do our planned shot, as tracking takes a lot of rehearsals and takes to perfect, and we would never have been able to pull it off with Paradise. She was so young, and so cold, and surrounded by so many people, that we were very lucky to get as many rehearsals and takes as we did, and a huge amount of credit is due to Candice and Veronica for getting so much out of her. Candice looked after her in between takes, and Veronica did a great job acting with her during the takes, and we were able to get what we needed, despite a few tears. I think next time I want to work with a young child I will definitely ask to clear the set of everyone but the essentials, as we had a bit of a problem with Paradise showing off during takes, or being completely overwhelmed with attention in between.

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The rest of the shoot continued to be successful, and we got more material than we had planned for, in both the forest and city locations. The team were fantastic and everyone pulled their weight, and the project along really well. I do have a couple of regrets though. I wish I had asked to stay a little bit longer at the forest location and got one extra boot shot, as these are very useful for linking the material, and I also wish I had tried the track zoom in the city. We definitely ended up having time for it, and tried many options. I was thinking of it while we were doing the other options, and wanting to try it, but as we came to the end of the shoot I was increasingly desperate to go to the toilet and ended up completely forgetting about it! I really think we could have pulled it off too, as the camera team were really in form by that stage, and Veronica still could have given us a few more takes. But no use crying over spilt milk. I just hope I don't find myself sitting in the editing room desperate for those shots!

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It was a fantastic shoot, all in all; incredibly stress free, with a good team, good actor, and a bit of luck weather-wise. And I finished a shoot early for the first time ever! The day was capped off superbly by watching the rushes later and discovering that the two shots that I had thought were average actually turned out to be stunning.

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I learned a few things:

• The joy of shooting outside, in open spaces, not hot cramped rooms and studios
• The joy of working with only natural light, and how much faster and more relaxed and beautiful it makes things
• The joy of having an awesome relationship and thorough preparation with my DP
• The fact that it is really really hard to direct without a monitor
• That I feel sorry for camera people, having to try to get the most beautiful shot possible with only a tiny view finder. There is no way I would be able to tell with such a small screen whether the shot is any good.
• That you can only get a couple of rehearsals and takes out of a young child, and that you really should clear the set of people as much as possible
• The value of a great makeup/wardrobe person in looking after actors
• The fact that a 5am call time is actually wonderful. It always takes a really long time to get the first shot away, and working in the cool darkness without the stress of the passing day really helps to have a good, relaxed mood on set. And plus it feels great to finish early.

That's all for now; I can't wait to edit!