Week 2

Back in College
This was our first week actually in College. My timetable and teachers were different to last week since I had been moved from Group A into Group B, along with Adam Vincent and Ellie Simpson from 90%Bloopers. Although I can understand that some people needed to be moved, we were not happy with this move, since we wanted to be together with the rest of 90%Bloopers, Jack Harper and Harley Graham. As I have mentioned in my blog for the previous 2 weeks, our group of 5 work really well, and professionally, together. We want to continue to develop that teamwork even further. Also, we really supported each other through the difficult time of Covid-19 lockdown from March, and nobody knows what this year will bring in terms of lockdowns and how that will affect our College course. Fortunately, for the start of the next week, we were able to be moved back into Group A, which we are very pleased about. But that is why the lessons this week are a bit different to last week and next week.

On the teamwork note, I know that part of working in the Film/TV Industry is being able to work well and quickly with all sorts of different people. And I think that both on our course, and in any work experience we manage to get in these difficult times, we will have ample opportunities to practise that. For example, I was fortunate enough in January this year (2020) to get shadow Director Damian Power (TOWIE and Made in Chelsea) for 2 days. I had to slot in quickly to a team, I operated the boom mic for shots, held a camera for the camera operator in between shots, and (probably most importantly) learnt how to made copious quantities of good (hopefully) coffee for the cast and crew. I had never met these people before, but cast members told me towards the end of the second day that they hadn’t realised that I wasn’t just part of the crew. I was very pleased since I was trying really hard to get the most out of this opportunity, to work really hard and I absolutely loved my 2 days. It was freezing outside, and we were outside all the second day, but I had seen it would be cold so I had loads of layers on ready. I would do it again at the drop of a hat.

I was a Year 1 TV/Film student and there were also 2 Year 2 TV/Film students, and from what we were told we all did really well. I think any of 90%Bloopers would have been able to do that too. So I think the benefits of being able to work and film together as 90%Bloopers group, each learning our own strengths and supporting each other, and having people that we know we can rely on, is more important, so I am really grateful and pleased that we are able to be in the same group.

New Equipment
Attila showed us some new equipment including a Lumix Camera. We practised how to properly handle equipment safely to ensure we won’t damage it. E.g. Say “Got it” when passed a piece of equipment. Although it is perfectly possible these days to create amazing content using phones, there is also amazing, and expensive, equipment in the Industry that we are going into. It would be bad to get work experience then break a piece of expensive equipment. So, communication is important for safety.

We were also shown the new lighting set up in the TV studio and how to use it. We got to experiment with the light temperature. I had looked into light temperature when I got my lights for my 18^th Birthday. I chose NEEWER LED-NL660 lights and one of the features is being able to change the light temperature. I’m really looking forward to using the new lighting in our projects.

Black and White film practise
In the second lesson with Attila, we were put into groups and told to shoot a short silent black and white film, like for the Unit 9 brief. I was already developing an idea, which would take more than 3 people in a team, but it was a good opportunity for practice and primary research by being able to shoot some footage, edit it and see what worked and what didn’t. I was in a group with Adam Vincent and Olivia McCartney.

We decided to do a film about 2 men walking past each other and one accidentally bumping into the other. We all agreed that we wanted a comedy feel, so Adam and I exaggerated our movements (as we had seen in our research) and also acted out the misunderstanding of the men getting cross at the other. We panned round to follow one man (Me) as he then bumps into the other man (Adam). We did lots of gesticulating and waving our hands around to show we were getting annoyed. Then Adam knocks my hat off and I start to chase him. The next shot is me chasing Adam toward the trees. I have a few comments about the film. I don’t feel that we gave it a satisfactory conclusion, which affects the success of the comedy element, since I think comedy often effectively needs a “punch line” whether it is verbal or visual. We also didn’t stick to the brief in so far as we panned round, so it wasn’t a stationary shot, and we had the second shot from a different angle, which also doesn’t meet the brief of a single shot. However, I think the concept has a lot of promise, and had we had longer to work on it I think we could have upped the comedy element, and found a way round the panning and the 2^nd shot. I think the idea of a “misunderstanding” is a good one since that is a strong premise of a lot of comedy. Olivia edited it together on her phone, I need to get a copy from her which I will put on here since it is a useful piece of Primary Research, i.e. research carried out by us rather than the Secondary Research that most of my research will inevitably be for this Unit.

(Later Note: thinking back on this film was useful to me when realising that filming a fight/chase scene in a single stationary shot is actually difficult due to the verisimilitude that I keep mentioning, since inevitably one of the men would probably try to run away as we had them do in this film. I am happier with the Musical Chairs idea that I came up with since I think it fully meets the brief and maintains verisimilitude. But this was a useful exercise).

More great “Tim Tales”
We had a couple of lessons with Tim today. He talked about Eadweard Muybridge and his revolutionary horse photos, which I’m planning on talking about in my Lesson Journals, and also about the Art Department.

Tim also asked us to watch 3 films and write some notes about our reactions to them for next week. They were “Chef (2014)” written by, directed by and starring Jon Favreau (a favourite writer, director and actor of mine, I’m loving the TV series “The Mandalorian (2019- )” which was created by him), “The World’s Fastest Indian (2005)” directed and written by Roger Donaldson and starring Anthony Hopkins, and “The Peanut Butter Falcon (2019)” written and directed by Tyler Nilson and Michael Schwartz (first film they directed). I watched them over the week, and wrote my thoughts about them, which I want to write up and put in a website section about Films I have watched and my thoughts about them.

I have way too many thoughts about these 3 films to put them all here, but a few comments are that I would not have thought to watch them without Tim mentioning them. But I really loved them and think I learnt a lot from them. So, I want to make a list of other films that other people recommend (and why they recommend them) to see if there are other films that I would not have thought of watching. Prior to watching these three films, I hadn’t been sure what I would think of them. But I was drawn into all 3 stories and wanted to know what the endings would be, which is good, since that is what the directors want me to do. The order I watched them in was “Chef (2014)” then “The World’s Fastest Indian (2005)” then “The Peanut Butter Falcon (2019)”. Originally, I had thought that my favourite would be “The Peanut Butter Falcon (2019)” because Tim said it was a really good “feel good film”, which I thought I would prefer. Having said that, 1917 (2019) had a sort of sad ending, and that is my favourite film, but generally I do like it when things come good in the end. It was a really good “feel good film”, and I loved it, but in the end my favourite film was “Chef (2014)” was my favourite. I think this is because I liked the story of the father and son bonding over a road trip, and the whole production with the way the music and visuals were all edited together really stood out for me. Although I very much liked “The World’s Fastest Indian (2005)” too, I think I probably identified more with the other 2 films because they both had main characters closer to my age. I think this is an interesting point that I have learnt from my time at College, that you have to know your target audience and what will make them identify with your film. I would still very happily watch “The World’s Fastest Indian (2005)” again, but I felt more drawn to the other 2 films which is a useful thing for me to learn for making my own films.

But the part that stood out for me is a story he told us about a student, who I think was from Amersham College. This student was doing work experience on a film set. He worked really hard, doing not only his own work but helping lots of other people too. His Unit noticed and said they wanted him to be hired again. Then a few days later a big car pulled up and the window wound down, and the person inside gave him their card and said to call him. It turned out that the person in the car was Ron Howard. It emphasised for me that you should always do your best and show a good work ethic, even if you think you are “only” doing work experience, since no work in the Industry is “only” anything, you could always get noticed. Damian Power, who I mentioned above that I shadowed, said that he would have me work for him again. Unfortunately since then we have had Covid-19 rules, but once we are able to meet people I will be contacting him to see if there is anything that I can get some more work experience with, I really loved my 2 days. Everyone on the crew was so kind and explained what was going on to me, although I was careful to only ask questions at appropriate times so that I didn’t get in the way or mess up any shots.

Facts, Feelings, Ideas and Storytelling
Nick talked to us about a lot of things that were really useful and interesting. There are lots of ideas that I took away from this lesson that I want to make more comments about in my Lessons Journals, but I wanted to pick a few that resonated with me particularly. Although to be honest, they all did.

One thing that made a big impact on me was when he was talking about the importance, in the Film/TV industry of having ideas. Some jobs it seems obvious that you need ideas to do, e.g. if you get to be a Director, like I would like to be, or if you are a Screenwriter. But Nick was explaining that actually you need ideas even for jobs that you wouldn’t necessarily think you would need ideas for, like more technical jobs like cameraman, and without ideas you will only go so far. I love ideas and storytelling, my parents tell me that when I was little, I used to tell them long, intricate, often slightly bizarre stories over dinner. They say they were often “bizarre” because, being so young, I often wasn’t bound by the “rules” of what could really happen in our world. That’s probably why I love other worlds like in Dungeons and Dragons, because there are different rules, and you can even make some up yourself.

Nick also said, “it’s about your ideas, it’s about the way you’re using your brain, the way you’re using your feelings and the way you’re using your understanding of the world to make something“, and that we should first try looking at our own experiences, which does tie in with me feeling that “verisimilitude” matters (see previous blogs). Although our experiences are within the “real” world, they can always be a jumping off point for something more “bizarre”, e.g. the Marvel Cinematic Universe is recognisable as our world, and obeys many real rules, but then alters our understanding of Physics and Chemistry, although it keeps it just “believable” enough that we go along with it, probably because most of us would love a world in which there are superheroes.

Nick spoke about having “curiosity”. This is something that I have in abundance. This is a benefit of having been home educated since I was able to investigate things that I became interested in that were outside a normal curriculum. I once got so engrossed in volcanoes after one of my live online Geography lessons that I spent 3 hours watching all sorts of YouTube clips about them – the homework was actually only 10 mins of research. I was able to share loads about volcanoes with my class next lesson, which the teacher liked.

Nick explained about “Facts and Feelings” as a concept. I described an overview of my favourite film, “1917 (2019)”, and when I had described it Nick said that I had included the 2 things that we would be talking about next – Fact and Feeling.  When you are creating something, you need to first understand the impact of it emotionally on yourself, and then emotionally on other people. This is because when telling a story, you need to describe something that happened i.e. tell some facts and then talk about the emotional impact i.e. add in the feeling. It made sense to me that this is the basis of all storytelling that engages an audience. If I am to eventually become a Director, then I need to be very mindful that engaging an audience is my endgame. I won’t say how I described “1917 (2019)” here since I am going to talk about it in my “Films I have watched” section.

But I was delighted with Nick’s comments about my description. He worked out that I was talking about “1917 (2019)” and commented that my comments about the emotions that the long single shot create were exactly right and that “you are demonstrating the exact critical thoughts that you need for this course. You’re describing a technique, talking about something you like and then understanding why that makes you feel a particular way”. I was really pleased about this.

“1917 (2019)”  is the only film (to my memory) that I actually cried at the end of (apart from when I was very little and Bob the Builder got stuck on a roof because Spud the Scarecrow took the ladder away, but that’s another story). This was, I believe, due to the success of the director Sam Mendes in evoking in me exactly the emotions that I am sure he was aiming at. Listening to behind the scenes, this story is a very emotional one for Sam Mendes too.

This leads into “Storytelling” which Nick explained as “An account of imaginary or real people and events told for entertainment” which I think is a good explanation. I feel my strengths are in fiction, but it’s a good point to think about that even when talking about real people we are still storytelling. When I reflected on this afterwards it made me think about how the way we tell a story can totally change the way we perceive it. When I was learning History, I remember learning about “bias”, and the example we were given was to think about when the Vikings raided the Monastery on Lindisfarne. We imagined “newspaper headlines” if they had existed. From the monks’ point of view, it would be something like “Tragedy – Violent Vikings decimate monastery, killing, pillaging and stealing”. However, from the Vikings’ point of view it would have been “Heroic Viking Heroes return victorious with loads of gold and silver”. These are very different, biased views of the same event. I think we need to be aware of this when creating stories, both if purely fictional but particularly if supposedly real.

Nick also explained about the importance, especially this year on the course, of documenting our thought processes and how/why we make decisions relating to our projects, and basically what is going on in our minds, giving a context to how we are making things. That’s one reason that I decided to separate my journal into a “Reflective Journal”, focusing mainly on my thought processes, my reactions to what I learn, basically a window into my mind (if that is not too scary a thought), and a “Lesson Journal” which will be more factual and a record of what we have been learning in class. Nick also mentioned about work/films that we do/have already done outside of lessons, that it would be good to include those too. (Later Note: This is one of the reasons that, later on, when I was planning the layout of my website, I included an are called “Personal Independent Projects”, both for films that I have already made, and make during the year, outside of College. I also have a section under it called “Independent Research”, since I often look into interesting things to do with Filming that I come across. I am currently writing up about J and L cuts).

Bela Bartok Flash Mob – Saturday 26^th September
This was a great day, and I am writing it up in more detail in my Work Experience Section. Attila asked me if I would like to help him to film a “Flash Mob” who were going to be singing, near South Kensington Tube Station in London, to commemorate the 75^th anniversary of the day that Bela Bartok died. Bela Bartok is regarded as one of Hungary’s greatest composers (along with Franz Liszt) and one of the most important composers of the 20^th Century. A “Flash Mob” Choir was going to start singing. Similar occasions were going to be happening in other countries too.

Several groups around the world were also doing flash mobs on the same day.

My parents gave me a lift (to avoid travelling on public transport with Covid-19 around) and we met up with Attila and the other people who were filming with us, including a previous student of Attila’s (who spoke very highly of Attila) and Nick (tutor from College). Attila showed me where he wanted me to stand, and we discussed the kind of footage that he wanted me to film. Gradually the singers arrived, and we took our places. My Dad took some behind the scenes photos of the filming too, which we also passed on to Attila. As I say. I will write it up in more detail in my Work Experience section, but I really loved the day. I love any opportunity to film, and this was great. I’m looking forward to seeing the finished edited result

(Later Note: Attila has sent a link to the edited video, and it is exciting to see footage that I know I took in the final edit. Also, since then Attila has asked me to do an alternate edit over Christmas to get a different perspective on the day. I am looking forward to doing that and am very honoured to be asked and trusted to do this.)