"Hi Honey - it's Thursday night!"

In an attempt to stay on top of blogging, here's my post about the past week - the week beginning the 19th of October.

On Monday we played party games with Andy, as we dove into discussion about sound design. I'm surprised to see that it was such a recent development - talkies were introduced in the late 1920's, production design in the 1930's, but yet sound design took until the 1970's. It would have required necessary technological advancements to fully realise the potential, I suppose, and other such advancements (such as colour grading) have only been possible lately due to technology. Nonetheless, it was a very important step.

Monday afternoon was spent with Richard, as we explored more ideas regarding film structure. An assignment to write a story that was stronger because is disobeyed the structure was seemingly less important than I had assumed it would be. I thought we would exchange the ideas in groups, and then try to work out why they didn't work. Nope. We handed them in. Since my idea wasn't great, I'm guessing it will be a brief point of discussion in a tutorial, and then we'll go straight back to my other continuing work.

On Tuesday, Andy taught us how to deal with interviews and surveys, with some top-tips from his own experiences. I loved the story about Liza Minnelli. That's the most exciting name-drop we've heard so far! Well, for me at least! Again, a lot of the Factual Programme classes on research cover things I have done before, but at least I'm considerably more interested in them in a filmmaking context, and it's good to hear it from the perspective of someone who has conducted many interviews.

After a delightful day off on Wednesday, we had an all-day session with Gav. I must give him credit - he has taught me more about AVID in 6 hours than I have ever learnt when using it before. I used to claim I hated AVID (purely because it makes less sense than Final Cut Pro, or the similar Premiere Pro), but now that I understand it better, I'm looking forward to using it properly. I also must credit this class, along with Andy's class on editing, for making me seriously consider editing as a specialism. Currently, I'm loving screenwriting, the core of which is storytelling. None of the specialisms, apart from editing, really focus on this. I'll just stay open to all the options at the moment, and see what takes me.

On Friday we continued with Adam, looking at shared themes in popular TV shows. I did a similar thing once in Higher Drama, where we tried to find the common themes in Contemporary Scottish Plays. If I remember rightly, sexism and poverty were the two most common. But at least now it's about exciting TV drama which appeals to me (like Life on Mars and Shameless) - though there will always be a place in my heart for The Steamie, and Men Should Weep. I've never thought about the themes of my work before, really. Obviously I mean "theme" in the Adam-sense of a topic, not in the Richard-sense of what a film is trying to say. I have a tendency to write about outsiders, and I often have strong female protagonists, but I really should try to actively incorporate themes that appeal to me, and ones that would be successful with an audience.

The week ended with a screening of Twelve Angry Men, which I have decided deserves its own post later in the week. Until then, stay shiny.

"... Top Right."

The weekend is upon us, and that means blogging. So here is my post about the week beginning 12th of October!

On Monday we started with a class about editing with Andy, which followed on from the screening of Strike. The class looked at the theories of Sergei Eisenstein and Walter Murch, and I really enjoyed learning about the different theologies behind a cut. Their shared philosophy that the cut between two images creates a new idea is one I quite agree with. Additionally, we discussed how editing links with blinking. Strangely enough, I had been reading about why people blink the evening before, in a chapter of Derren Brown's book (which I wish I could find time to finish). What I found most interesting about this idea was that I was once mentored by a man who had the catchphrase, "Never cut on a blink," whilst editing. I don't think he is wrong. A cut on a character blinking may seem jarring. The cut should synchronise with where the audience might blink, in response to a piece of information.

Tuesday saw us in class with Zam for a full day. First, we read one another's treatments out loud. This was an interesting idea, as a huge part of directing is communicating your vision to a group of people who then have to recreate it. As other people have noted, it was strange hearing the words of one class-member coming from the mouth of another. But this perfectly illustrated Zam's point that you must be clear and understandable in a treatment. The treatments themselves were really good. They varied from being about the style and tone of the scene, to technical aspects of production, to the emotional impact necessary. Following this, Zam went over the structure of storytelling. As I had said after our session with John Yorke, though we have done this many times with Richard, it is great to have it rearticulated and explained in a new way. It is important, after all.

After a day off on Wednesday, we had our first lesson with Cammy on Thursday. I missed the first few hours of the lesson (thanks, NHS24) but Cammy had only been going over everything we should have learnt the previous year. My retention of the knowledge has been okay, and I took notes from Cammy's class to hopefully help me fill in any gaps in my knowledge. It's fair enough to say that I won't probably be specialising in sound, but I still want to know as much as I can. After this class, a few of us were fortunate enough to go and see the TPA pyrotechnics display. I must remember to pitch a film with explosions...

I've already reviewed Friday's screening of The Conversation, so I think that's this week covered!

Return of the Mini-Reviews

This has been a slightly hard post to write, just because I've been struggling to find the right words to describe my thoughts about a few of these. So instead of finding the right words, I've just written some other ones. Enjoy.

Fame - Not as bad as I thought it was going to be, as I had worried that it was only going to be bearable. It was above bearable, certainly watchable, and was actually nearing enjoyable. The songs were a bit rubbish, the best ones being songs from the original film with a little rapping thrown in. The story of the film was, urm, slightly non-existent, and I was disappointed to see that it was all very friendly and suitable for kids. Whilst I have not seen the original, I hear that it had themes which were slightly more mature, and I think that’s what was missing from this. Additionally, I wouldn't actually class this as a musical, as it wasn't set in a "musical-world" where people burst into spontaneous songs. A lot of praise is deserved for the dancing, though, which was pretty impressive.

Strike - Okay, this one was slightly off the bottom of my scale, below bearable. As much as I appreciate Eisenstein's contributions to editing, I wanted to hang myself like one of those cats. This film did nothing for me. Looking back at a previous review, it appears that Eisenstein also failed to enthral me with Battleship Pokémon. I know that these films are very old and were made with a particular audience in mind, but I just wish they were a little more accessible to a modern audience. The only redeeming feature of Strike was the completely-unintentional hilarity that we found in the scenes with the firemen soaking the people, and the young child being thrown from the balcony. This came just as I was giving up on life, because of the crazy narrative, and cheered me up a little.

UP - Awesome, brilliant, heart-warming, and most importantly, enjoyable... Marry me, Pixar! And even though I don't think anyone would have bet against me liking this, I'm still going to rave about it for a bit. It's up there with Wall-E and Finding Nemo, for me. I thought the opening ten-minutes were perfect, and I really loved the story. I had slight problems with the "baddie" - which felt more Classic-Disney than Pixar - and I wasn't in love with the music, but I loved the characters, the visuals, and almost everything else. Particularly Dug. If you haven’t already (in fact, even in you have), go and see it!

The Conversation - This was at least bearable, and for the most part I could follow what was going on, but near the end I just lost the plot – literally! Was someone actually murdered? Was he there? Did he witness it? Or did he only see the aftermath? Or was it all in his head? Plus, why was someone tapping him? I just couldn't follow... The one thing I did like, however, was the clever play with the phrase "He'd kill us if he got the chance." Nothing terribly amazing, but a simple misinterpretation changing the entire meaning was clever. I look forward to finding out more about the sound-design of The Conversation, and its importance to field.

Kinky Boots - On the advice of Richard, I decided to watch this film. It has similar ideas and themes to an idea that I am working on, and it felt necessary to see it. I found myself a little worried at the very beginning, as there was a flashback not too dissimilar from one I was planning on writing, but after that it was all very different. I really enjoyed the film, but it didn’t feel hugely original. I think it was slightly formulaic, and it was very similar in tone to Billy Elliot, with a lot of the same themes. I really enjoyed Chiwetel Ejiofor’s performance, however, which was both touching and hilarious. Thankfully, I am now far less worried about comparisons. So long as I stay true to the central idea of my script, then I think comparisons will be limited to the fact that both are about shoes. But shoes were never really central in the story of Kinky Boots; it was about a drag queen being accepted in a conservative village. In my idea, the shoes are central - a whole other character in fact – and it’s about the shoes fitting into that world, not the person in them. Hopefully, having now seen Kinky Boots, I can try to purposefully avoid any more similarities. But I think comparisons will still be unavoidable.

"Oh my gosh, Nemo's swimming out to sea!"

Oh my, blogging twice a week is already becoming slightly troublesome, it would appear. I think I need to get into a routine.

On Monday morning of last week, we had a class with Andy about Production Design, which followed on from watching Metropolis. This was a very interesting class, and whilst I've never been big on production design myself, I appreciate the value it adds, and I understand its importance. I do hope we get the chance to work on more films in which the production design plays a big part. Little Clown was a great experience, and I'd love to do something with more design challenges.

Following this, we had a class with Richard, which was a nice screenwriting-refresher. Having been in screenwriting tutorials for the past while, it was good to find ourselves in the class environment again. Whilst having one-on-one time is great for individual stories and troubleshooting particular scripts, it is nice to have discussions about themes and issues, and to fabricate examples purely so that we can then deconstruct them. This can be useful, as sometimes you can be so close to a story or an idea that you can't see what is wrong with it, but working on a very simple outline of something else can make you realise.

On Tuesday we watched the first episode of Teachers as we started on our mission to come up with ideas that could be the perfect thing for Channel 4's comedy-drama slot. I do find the brief funny, however. They want a "young-skewing" comedy-drama, like Teachers or Shameless, which wouldn't look out of place on HBO. That's a very specific brief, and I think that if people focus too much on that, then they may miss out on some amazingly original and challenging ideas, which is exactly what Channel 4 really need.

On Tuesday afternoon, we continued with Zam. It was good to see the remaining film scenes that people had chosen, and to then start on some work for the next lesson; writing a treatment for the scene as the director. I really thought it was a good assignment, and I was happy that I had chosen such an enjoyable scene!

On Wednesday we had a short class about the Internet. Having had to do a lot of research for my dissertation in Advanced Higher Modern Studies, I've been through all the Wikipedia-warnings and the "how to get good search results" stuff before, but Andy was a lot more honest and fair about it, particularly with respect to Wikipedia. Generally it is a good idea to check the sources listed on Wikipedia, and they can often lead you to more specialised information anyway. Oh, and just a random fact I know: Andy explained the various internet suffixes (.com = commercial, .org = organisation), and a few years ago there was a big push for there to be a new extension for the porn industry, ".xxx", which would have allowed better regulation of the web, particularly in helping to protect minors. It never came to fruition, but it was an interesting idea.

On Thursday we had a full day with Ray, which started with a little Moodle-madness, and a short quiz. I found that a few of the questions were quite tricky (mostly about things we were never taught), but I think I remembered the most important and relevant work from last year. I'm looking forward to the feedback, just to confirm that's actually true. In the afternoon, we broke out the tripods and new heads, and then some lamps. I can't help but feel slightly responsible for the fact we now have gloves, as I was the one who reported Paul's accident officially. However, I was only doing what I was being assessed on: carrying out my work with due respect to the Official Health and Safety guidelines of the Academy. And as that rule still exists, and always will, we should use the gloves.

And concluding the week, we had our screening of Strike, which I will discuss in my next post, and then I had a tutorial with Richard. It was fun, and I'm far happier with where my ideas are at the moment. I'm trying to keep more time aside for writing, and so far it's been working out, but we're getting a lot of small assignments at the moment, so I'll need to carefully balance everything.

"If I were a milkshake..."

And so we returned. And to welcome us, we had a School of Drama [and Dance] assembly, in which people were typically enthusiastic about the year to come and the exciting creative lives we have ahead of us. Following this we had a full DFTV meeting, in which we would find out about the year to come. Adam's emphasis on keeping free from stress sounds good, if not entirely fictional at the Academy, but I will do my best to try and be a little more chilled this year. I've always been a little over-conscientious, which has had a tendency to make me worry about getting things done. Though Adam's suggestion that we might not be making many films this year wasn't the most inspiring news. I understand that things do get out of hand when too many shoots are going ahead - and I suppose to create a stress-free work environment for the lecturers, less shoots is better - but a lot of learning goes on on-set.

Following this re-introductory morning, we had a class with Andy, and were sent out on a mission to find out all we can about him. As other people have blogged, this personal touch was really clever to make us interested. What can we discover about Andy Dougan in half-an-hour? Quite a fun task, and I hope that nothing that was "reported" was too intrusive. Following the lesson, I had an interesting thought: Andy said that works of art are good primary sources. However, you can only draw conclusions from artwork by interpreting it, and that interpretation is a secondary source. If an artist used red-paint, then the statement "The red paint shows his anger at this stage in his life" is a secondary source interpretation, based on the art. The only primary source conclusion that can be made is "He used red paint".

On Wednesday we had our first class with Zam Salim, which was good fun. When watching clips from our most influential films, Zam was very good at articulating what he thought, and would often pin-point exactly what made the scene strong or what let it down. I think these lessons will prove really useful with the new emphasis on performance in our films, something which I agree could be stronger. I blame a mix of inexperience of the actors in working for screen, and our own inexperience in directing actors. Thankfully this class addresses the latter!

Thursday was a day off, and so that leaves Friday's screening of Metropolis. I found myself surprised at the strong narrative, which others have pointed out as being incredibly clear. This is particularly impressive given the missing reels. As Andy noted, some more footage has been discovered; apparently it was mislabelled on purpose to prevent people from destroying it during the Second World War. But I do wonder how much footage will be lost digitally over time. No one could ever back-up all the content on YouTube, but the problem doesn't end there. I read that 20% of the original Toy Story animation files were corrupted when they went to make the 10th Anniversary DVD. Obviously they restored them somehow, but it proves that digital storage isn't a viable option for preserving film. Anyway, I digress. Metropolis was a really good film, and it had a clear look for the future. The strong production design really has shaped our vision of the future, at least in media. To quote Charlotte, looking at the city-scape, "It's like Futurama!"

Yes, Charlotte. Yes it is.

A Summer of Stuff

Wowzers. It's October now. That's weird. Weird and annoying. That means we're already three quarters of the way into 2009. That's just bizarre.

The good news is that it's great to be back. This is the first time after any summer break when I've wanted to get back to work. At both primary school and high school, you never wanted the summer to end. And last year I was just so nervous about moving away from home, and starting on what was essentially a "new" course, that I again wanted more time to prepare. But this year, knowing that being away from home ain't too shabby, and knowing that the course is awesome, I was excited. Plus, there were all the lovely people I couldn't wait to see again.

Now, given that we've only had two classes so far, I think I'll leave discussion of Academy things for my next post. Why? Well, because I know you're all super-desperate to know what I did in my summer!

Just days after moving out of halls, I found myself on a train to London to attend an event known as Talent Matters. A community film company I've worked with before selected my friend Jen and I to represent Scotland's young film-makers at this event. Quite why they had that power is beyond me. Various different young "talented" groups across the whole of the UK were going: athletes, chefs, future-politicians, dancers, musicians, entrepreneurs. So Jen and I, along with some friendly chaps from Liverpool, and four nice folk from Wales, had to represent young film-makers of the UK. I also had the added responsibility to ensure I didn't impersonate either the Liverpudlian or Welsh accent. Well, at least not in their presence.

To skip a ridiculously long explanation of just how tedious the event was, I shall summarise briefly. The event was all about praising talent, not nurturing it as I had expected. Therefore, the event consisted of the people in charge talking at us about how talented we all are. It was one big day of massaging egos and patting each other on the back. Thing is, other events were about helping people discover their talents - but all the people there were selected because of their known talents in a particular field! The worst part was when listening to a questionable political journalist, and I looked around to see so many of the young people listening attentively, hanging on his every word. A particularly racist statement about the Chinese left many of us shocked, and went entirely unchallenged. Bastard.

The only good thing about the event was that I got a free trip to London! And with two nights paid for, Jen and I made use of the time to go and see Sister Act The Musical (pretty good), and Derren Brown's live stage-show, ENIGMA (awesome!). As you may recall, I have a lot of admiration and respect for Derren Brown, and I love what he does. Following this truly amazing show, I finally purchased his book, and I've been reading it over the summer. It's really interesting and impressive stuff. A lot of it builds on my prior knowledge of hypnosis and psychology, and I'm really passionate about using some of his techniques in film sometime. And just to make the summer even more Derren-Brown-centric, his new show started on Channel 4. I love him too much to be objective, but I do admit that this show seems to be an attempt at more commercial entertainment, which is shifting his audience from those interested in psychology to those who want to be entertained. He has also taken some major risks with this show, which I think would have paid-off more had there been no format change.

I also started work on a webseries this summer, called Me & My Fairy. It's a silly, formulaic sitcom in mini, 5-minute episodes. So far we've filmed two episodes, but we want to complete a series of six before we start uploading them. So don't expect to see any online until next year. But I did use one of the completed episodes as an example of my screenwriting in a BBC Blast/BAFTA competition that I've entered. The prize is a bursary to create a new piece of work with either the BBC or an external production company. If I'm successful, I may get even more free trips to London! I should find out if I'm selected in two weeks time, so just ignore me then if I seem distant.

The rest of my summer included a trip to Alton Towers, an awful lot of flat-hunting, a Lord-of-the-Rings-athon, designing a website for a restaurant, and seeing various shows in the Fringe. So, all-in-all, a pretty good summer. But it's exciting to be back, and I can't wait to see what we'll be getting up to!