Organisation || Week 4

We’ve made it to week 4! My gosh, the weeks are absolutely flying past.

This week, we were offered an opportunity to mingle, cross discipline’s, with lovely sound students. Sound design is usually dangerously overlooked, how many student films or even feature films have you watched and absolutely cringed at? Maybe the footsteps or dialogue was out of sync or maybe the sound effects would mask the important dialogue of a scene. As someone who has dabbled in sound design, completing a sound subject whilst studying game design last year, I find become very unnerved when fellow film students ignore the importance of sound and imply to “fix it in post.” As our guest lecture explained, sound should never be limited to be “fixed in post” as it proves to be both time consuming and expensive, thus greater care on set, will prove for a smoother and authentic process.  I learnt a lot from the lecture, such as, lapels being used for wide shots to capture audio where a boom mic would not be appropriate. Also, that having two boom swingers covering shots can prove to be most effective. I went home and watched the animation and behind the scenes of, WALL·E,  gaining a lot more respect for sound designers in films.

Whilst doing a practical activity for the sound lecture, I introduced myself to two sound students, I also introduced to them the short film I’m currently producing. Too my luck, they seemed interested and have offered to record sound for our film, come production week, they even offered to compose music for it! How awesome is that? I’d like to take a moment to give myself a pat on the back.

Speaking of my short film, it has been four days since I posted a casting call onto Starnow.com, and I have received 17 applications, fully booking the two nights of auditions I had scheduled. I both impressed and a little unnerved, suddenly the short film feels very, very real. I can safely say that I am on top of all things, I’ve really researched the role of a producer and implemented some of my learnings. I’ve planned out the next few weeks of pre-production, including audition times, deadlines and meetings.

Finally to round out this week we had guest lecturer, Craig Proudly, chat to us about, What makes a “great” director. I found this lecture so informative and eye opening as to how, no that I am a film student, I should watch and understand films. I’ve realised that I can enjoy films but I shouldn’t, to put it simply, shut off whilst viewing. I need to start analysing films and deconstruct them to gain a better understanding of the film and the work put into making it. Together we did a very in depth break down of two scenes from the Robert De Niro and Al Pacino, 1995 film Heat. With break down tied in neatly with last weeks blog topic of showing as opposed to telling. The director, in both scenes, illustrated the plot, story and character development by camera movements and character performance. I admit, that I hadn’t watched the film prior to the class, however by seeing two scene from the film I could piece together the plot of the film. I made sure to come home and watch the film, which I recommend you do so to, if you haven’t seen it already.

‘Till Next Time.

– Pri