A Rousing Return

Wow. This past week has been pretty good. Really good, in fact. Lots of enjoyable classes, and certainly a really nice way to return after a holiday. There's always that slight dreading about going back - less so now than those times at High School - but it was completely unjustified!

Firstly, on Tuesday we had a Technical Class with Ray in which we moved onto lighting. It was an enjoyable class for me. Some of the terms which are also used in theatrical lighting were familiar, and a lot of the "how-they-work" I've covered in Physics. After that, playing with manual white-balance with the lighting was quite interesting. I agree with Ray that when something is perfectly white-balanced it doesn't always look right, so it can be an idea to adjust it to where you like it's look.

Next on Tuesday was Richard's screenwriting class. This was actually more tiring in the afternoon than first thing on Monday morning. Strange, huh? But it was a good lesson. I'm now far less happy with my script because I felt we covered some things which helped me realise where I could improve it. But I quite like the assignment of confidentially sharing our secrets. Some people have claimed to have no secrets. Okay, maybe you have nothing that you've never told anyone, but there must be something. Everyone has something.

Wednesday. Squeee. Wednesday was fun, because not only do I have a potentially-unhealthy obsession with Doctor Who, but the area of TV I'm most interested in is that BBC1 Saturday 7pm Drama slot. I'd love to work on Doctor Who, or Merlin, or maybe even the new Sherlock Holmes (which I think is going for that slot). I really like those types of show. So this lesson was nice and relevant in every way.

Thursday's class was good, too. I quite enjoy the history of cinema. The inventing, and then the evolution of a new art form are both really interesting. It's particularly strange looking at the original ways that film-reels were shown.

I'll cover The Battleship Potemkin in the next post, so I'll talk about Friday's second class - Introduction to Production. Abigail was really nice and she was particularly clear in setting out the role of a Producer, and the producerly things they do. That's a tough job, because the role of a producer is not only hard to define, but it can differ for each production, depending on what is required. I'm still open towards producing - the big list didn't scare me off - but I'll need to see how I feel after a few more classes!

I certainly hope that we have a few more weeks like this in our time here!