IMP Directors Chronicle- Role evaluation and progression

So, all the blood sweat and tears have finally paid off. The sleepless nights and hectic days have all lead to a good end product. As a crew we worked together really well with each department puling it's weight in he uphill battle which is film making. But now is a time to reflect back on my own role as Director. In this post I hope to answer the important questions like what were the strengths & challenges and how did I overcome. Plus how I can progress in the industry in my chosen job role.

First things first likes start out with are best foot forward, Strengths. I felt that I was a very effective director when it came to putting my ideas and concepts across. As Quentin Tarantino says "being a good director isn't about being able to be good at everything to bring your vision to life, it's about explaining your vision to people that know what they are doing". I took that advice very much to heart during the production. Instead of having to think about multiply things at once (like I normally have to do when working) I instead honed on just on my role, focusing on working with the actors to get the best performances.

This wasn't easy at times as in the past I have struggled with putting the ideas in my brain into actual words that make sense but, with some practise (and some patients from my amazing crew) we managed it. My crew mates seem to agree as well which is great after the stressfulness of working so closely on a project like Scribes.

Another strength that I felt really help things along was coordination. Right from the beginning, I knew that if I wasn't organised that I would be totally overwhelmed by the task. Me and my DOP started work as early as we could on getting some test footage and storyboardings out the feel and style we wanted. Same goes with myself and the Producer during the casting process. I wanted to get the ball rolling on things as soon as possible so no to have things jump up at us when deadlines started getting tight.

My final Strength was working with the actors. As previously mentioned, I was able to really spend some time with them on set, helping them to understand their role and what I needed from them. This lead to two very good and believable performances. You can really feel that brother and sister relationship on screen, as well as Dans distress when his world starts to come crashing down around him.

However, you can't have strengths without some weaknesses. For me, my biggest weakness was my own lateness. Time keeping has always been an issue for me and this project was no different. If their is one thing I could do different from a role stand point it would be to have got everywhere an hour earlier than I did.

Unsurprisingly, with a project of this size their were a lot of challenges. One of the biggest issues we had came the night before are many studio shoot. We had purpose built a flat in a studio space but only had it for one day. However, in try film making style, one on the key cables for connection up the camera to an external monitor broke. This meant we wouldn't be able to use the camera crane the next day meaning we wouldn't have been able get a lot of the shots we needed. Nightmare! We walked around bath for hours searching high and low for a new cable but alas, nothing. That night I reserved one at a local electronics store. Then, that morning, I waited outside for them to open to be the first in to get the cable.

Overall, I have learnt a huge amount as a film maker and even more as a director. I will take away from this project the true need for team work and clear communication as well as being able to clearly put your vision into words or a media that others can understand.

FMP- Chosen production

Looking through the 3 ideas that I narrowed down there was only really one I had my heart set on. I tried to look at the 3 subjectively, but hey, it's my final major project so I am allowed to have a bias. Granted I want to make all of them at some point, but as I can only make one, I have chosen to focus in on a short film with a view to sell it has a TV show.

The reason I want to go for this is mostly because of the timing of things. Amazon Prime, a key streaming service we want to target, is priming (pardon the pun) to release it's biggest show yet, that being a car show staring ex-top gear presenters James May, Richard Hammond and Jeremy Clarkson. When the show drops, million more will be attracted the to service. By getting a show into production now, we can have it released just as the new "Top gear" finishes. With all the new hype around the service, are viewing figrues will be through the roof compared to last year.

This careful timing will hopefully allow us to build the show with a second series. Not only will it be a lot of fun and earn us a good deal of money, but it will also give me great contacts in the industry and cred to be able to proceed with more projects whether they be in TV or film.

The film is also much further through it's development stage than the other ideas. This allows me to not have to start from scratch and means that I can focus on the important things, without having to waste time tooing and frooing over the little things.

Hopefully, with any luck we will come out of this with not just a great short film, but the bases for a TV series which would be seen by millions. However, simply producing a short film does not mean a studio will pick up your project. To get my chances even higher, I will be conducting research into what makes a show attractive to a studio, the dos and don'ts of pitching a show and interviewing those who have walked through the fire and came out the other-side only slightly singed.

Harvard references

"Parenthetical referencing, also known as Harvard referencing, is a citation style in which partial citations—for example, "(Smith 2010, p. 1)"—are enclosed within parentheses and embedded in the text, either within or after a sentence.

According to an 1896 paper by Charles Sedgwick Minot of the Harvard Medical School, the origin of the author-date style is attributed to a paper by Edward Laurens Mark, Hersey professor of anatomy and director of the zoological laboratory at Harvard University, who may have copied it from the cataloguing system used then and now by the library of Harvard's Museum of Comparative Zoology. In 1881 Mark wrote a paper on the embryogenesis of the garden slug, in which he included an author-date citation in parentheses on page 194, the first known instance of such a reference. Until then, according to Eli Chernin writing in the British Medical Journal, references had appeared in inconsistent styles in footnotes, referred to in the text using a variety of printers' symbols, including asterisks and daggers. Chernin writes that a 1903 festschr dedicated to Mark by 140 students, including Theodore Roosevelt, confirms that the author-date system is attributable to Mark. British Medical Journal in 1945, an unconfirmed anecdote is that the term "Harvard system" was introduced by an English visitor to Harvard University library, who was impressed by the citation system and dubbed it "Harvard system" upon his return to England
The festschrift pays tribute to Mark's 1881 paper, writing that it "introduced into zoology a proper fullness and accuracy of citation and a convenient and uniform method of referring from text to bibliography." According to an editorial note in the

Examples:

Kate and Jerry. (2015). Christmas 2015. Available: http://findmadeleine.com/updates/index.html. Last accessed January 2016.

Zooey Deschanel. (2013). WHERE DO I BEGIN?. Available: http://zooeydeschanel.tumblr.com/post/50379245993/upfronts-2013-with-miss-mindy-kaling. Last accessed 26th of January 2016.