Reflective Journal
Week 10
Monday 23-11-2020 to Sunday 29-11-2020
Promo Video Location Scouting
Ellie, Charlie, Jack and I did some Location Scouting today before College. We had already discussed that we thought there was a good grassy large square with nice houses round it, just off Amersham High Street. We also wanted to find a bin on the High Street to use. The location scouting went well, we are happy with the locations that we found and we also have some good behind-the-scenes photos that we can use in our write-ups.
On the way home from College today I asked my Mum if we could drive round to see if we could find any “Welcome to Amersham” signs. We had looked during our location scouting but, as we had expected, we didn’t find any since we were in the centre of Amersham and you’d expect the Welcome signs to be at the edge of the town, on the way in. My mum and I, in the car, found some which weren’t exactly “Welcome” signs but were close. They said “AMERSHAM TWINNED WITH BENSHEIM, GERMANY. KRYNICA, POLAND”. I will show them to the others tomorrow. I also took some photos of Amersham Old Town, which is more “Oldy-Worldy” and I’ll show them to the others tomorrow too.
When I got home, I googled to see if I could find the locations of any actual “Welcome to Amersham” signs rather than the “Amersham twinned with…” signs. I remembered that Samuel Sellers (The Distinction level example FMP that we were told about) did this to find where old red telephone boxes were for his Year 2 FMP. However, I couldn’t find any Welcome signs online. I found an article about how there was a petition to get Amersham signs, but they seemed to be the “twinned” signs. I also found some photos of awards won by Amersham, which are in the form of oval plaques on a post near the church. They look nice and could be useful.
Covid-19 strikes again - Promo Video shooting day re-arrangement
We had planned on doing our Promo Filming today during Nick’s lesson times because it is Adam’s first day back after he had to self-isolate for 10 days. However yesterday evening we received an email from Nick explaining that he had been double checking the rules for filming offsite during College time. It turns out that since we are in a new National Lockdown the College Risk Assessment says that we now cannot film offsite during College time.
Nick was extremely apologetic about the late notice. We were disappointed, but we understood the difficulties at the moment in working out what is and isn’t allowed. We will need to have a think about what to do. I am aware that in the Film Industry there are challenges with locations. The location challenges have historically been more related to the weather when filming outside, for example heavy rain when the day is supposed to be sunny. Covid-19 is a new challenge for the Film Industry, and many productions have had to be rescheduled, delayed or cancelled.
Some productions have simply had to cancel certain episodes, for example His Dark Materials (the TV adaptation of Philip Pullman’s books of the same name), from BBC/HBO had one episode of their second series left to film. It was a planned, standalone episode about one character, Lord Asriel, played by James McAcvoy. It was lucky that most of the rest of the series had been largely finished before the initial UK lockdown in March 2020, but the Lord Asriel episode had not. Executive Producer Jane Tranter said “Essentially, our adaptation of The Subtle Knife (book two) had been completed so we were really lucky from that point of view”. But they had to make the decision to leave the Lord Asriel episode for the moment, which is a shame, but I can understand why. They have said that it may be revisited, and I hope so, since I was really looking forward to it, but I am just glad that they were able to complete the rest of season two.
I watched all of season one and loved it. I have just started watching season two, and I am lucky enough this evening to be taking part in a live webinar on Zoom about this TV adaptation of His Dark Materials, with a panel of Joel Collins (the executive Producer and Production Designer) and Ben Irving (The Commissioning Editor for BBC Drama). I am really excited about this and am really looking forward to it. I will be writing it up for my website.
And our group will need to have a discussion to see how to solve this problem of not being able to film today. I’m sure we will come up with a solution as we are all good at problem solving.
Promo Video - triangles
Ellie asked me about ISO, Shutter speed and Aperture, so I made a PowerPoint to explain more to Ellie about “Understanding ISO, Shutter Speed and Aperture Better” and we had an online call via Discord in which I talked her through it. We had recently learned about these things in class and we wanted to go into them in more depth. We both (me as Director and Ellie as Cinematographer) wanted to make use of what we had learned for this project, we wanted to be more adventurous with our camera work and hopefully end up with more professional looking shots.
I was pleased with my PowerPoint, especially the “triangle” diagrams that I had found online. I had used tringle diagrams when I was studying IGCSE Geography and I found them a useful way to understand the inter-relationship between 3 things. I wondered if they existed for ISO, Shutter Speed and Aperture, since they are also 3 interlinked settings. I looked online and found them. In the PowerPoint, I first put some general triangle diagrams so that I could more easily explain how triangle diagrams work, then on the next slide I put in several versions of triangle diagrams for ISO, Shutter Speed and Aperture.
Explaining something to someone else is always a good way of confirming your own understanding of it. I found that putting together the PowerPoint and explaining it to Ellie helped me to clarify my own understanding too, so this was a useful exercise for both of us. This helped us a lot when we were filming, because we were also developing an understanding that helped us to collaborate to get shot types that we were after.
In the Film Industry, Directors and Cinematographers often collaborate closely, and many Directors have Cinematographers who they frequently work with, for example Steven Spielberg and Janusz Kaminski. They have a very long history of collaboration, since 1993, and have produced many films together, 19 including Schindler’s List (1993), Saving Private Ryan (1998) and The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997). I can see that a long-time collaboration is beneficial to both parties, since they develop an understanding of the creative vision of the other one. However in an interview Janusz Kaminski said that working with Steven Spielberg “Never became routine” because he said that he still keeps discovering that Spielberg has so much new, untapped creativity that with every movie that they do, Spielberg amazes him with his new point of view. This must be a wonderful way to work. My career aspirations are to eventually become a fiction Film/TV Director, via a cinematography route, so both sides of their relationship are interesting to me.
