Starting my Website
I tried to make a website so that I could start editing it. I really don't know anything about making websites, so this is a new skill that I will be learning. I had heard of Wordpress and Wix, and I could see that these seemed to be 2 popular ones. I started to take a closer look at these 2 website builders, to see reasons for and against them. I liked the way they both looked. I also asked my friends why they had made the website choices that they had and what their opinions were. In summary they said that Wix was easier for people who have never built a website before (like me) and WordPress was better for people who were a bit more experienced at building websites. I had a look at WordPress, but like they said it was confusing. So, I decided to use Wix. And I’ve been experimenting with how to use it.
Feedback
I asked another of my tutors, Nargess for feedback on my Camera Movement in Film and TV idea. I think that, because I had been thinking it through a lot more over the weekend, I did a better job of explaining my idea to her than I had done the previous Friday to Tom. It was in a zoom lesson, so this is what I typed to explain my idea.
"My idea is to look at camera movement in Film and TV. When I started this course, I got interested in camera movement and borrowed the Steadicam and then the slider track to experiment. In my last film I used the track even more and had started noticing directors using movement to get certain audience reactions even when sometimes you don't notice the movement. I want to explore this and explore the different ways that you can achieve the desired movement options that there are in film including the history and try some of them out myself while recording it like an informational YouTube video type of thing, haven't decided the video format I want to do yet but entertaining like Mark Rober or The Slo Mo Guys, so a bit of humour in there".
I think this explains it more clearly than I had done to Tom on the Friday.
Nargess' feedback was "This is a really good idea and you've explained it well. You can use some of this content in this message for your Proposal. Have you started working on it yet?"
This feedback made me feel confident that my idea was better than my previous D&D idea, which Nargess had been less enthusiastic about. I think that she had maybe seen sooner than I had that there were limitations in that previous idea. But it was good that she gave me the opportunity to work that out myself, since of course there was always the chance that I could have had some amazing ideas about a D&D film that weren't initially apparent. I felt it was good that Nargess had heard both my ideas since it backs up my opinion that camera movement is the better way to go for this FMP under these circumstances. It was also very helpful Nargess suggesting that I could consider some of what I had written here towards my Proposal, since I knew that I needed to start on that immediately but had been unsure how to get started and what kind of things I should be including. This helped me to have a basis to take the ideas that were whizzing around my brain and start to get some words down.
Tutor feedback has been very helpful to me. I like that my tutors trust me to be able to work out if an idea is good or not, and to develop it and act accordingly. Tom gave me confidence to trust in myself because by him being happy that, even though it wasn't immediately obvious to him what my final film would be, I had demonstrated in previous projects that I always come through and produce good work. I shall keep asking for feedback all the way through, since happy as I am to trust myself now, I also think that as much feedback as possible will enable me to see what I am doing through other people's eyes and see potential areas of improvement that I may have missed.
Starting Proposal and Time Plan
Having rethought and decided on what my FMP will be, the next stage was to start my Proposal, which I hadn't been able to start last week as I was still sorting out what my FMP would actually be.
I started with the words that I had put in my explanation above and worked from there. I also started working on my time plan. I decided to start by working on the Daily Schedule that Tom had given us to fill in, and then use that to help me to summarise it for the weekly one in the Official Proposal. I decided to put as much detail into the Daily Schedule as I could, because I felt that this would help me to not miss out any key areas during the FMP. It took me much longer to fill in than I had anticipated, but I feel it was a really useful exercise and I believe it will be really helpful over the coming weeks.
The only concern that I have is that although I have allocated certain days for doing certain research, or for test filming etc, I am aware from previous projects of a couple of potential problems here. For example, when I have done research in past projects, often the research will throw up a whole new potentially useful area that I should research, an area that could not have occurred to me until after I did the initial research. And I think that this is a sign of good research, since if you only get to look at what you thought you were going to look at before you started the research then you have probably missed out learning new and exciting stuff that could make your film better.
I thought hard about this, because another option was to keep my Daily Schedule more vague, be less specific and put "Research" over several days without specifying what research. But I felt that this also had potential pitfalls because, for example, there did seem to me to be a logical order to do my research in, and also I didn't want to miss out key areas of research.
I was also aware that I didn’t want it make it look like I was only intending to do research at the start of the project, since I have learnt from previous projects that research is a process that can continue right up to the end of a project, because, for example whenever a problem arises it is a good idea to do some research to find a solution. Also, I realised that, however much planning I do before hand, once I see my draft film come together I may need to re-evaluate parts of it and that could mean I need to do more research, either into content, format, to solve technical problems that I didn't manage to avoid in filming (e.g. flicker due to lights in a previous film), or theory to maybe understand what a director is explaining.
Reflecting like this was helpful to me, because in previous projects I hadn't planned out a Daily Plan like this or broken down my research to this degree. Thinking about it in this much detail made me realise just how circular research is, and how it is an ongoing process that you shouldn't plan on having a defined end to. However, I could see that you do also have to have a point that you say that no matter how brilliant the extra bit of info or content that you have just found is, it can't go in the film because otherwise you would never finish the film. I can see that it is going to be a fine balance, especially given my perfectionist nature. It will be a good learning experience for going into the Film Industry.
In the end, I made the decision to do as I originally intended and still allocate specific research to specific days but to keep a flexible and open mind and allow myself to go where the research takes me, and keep checking back against the plan to be sure that I keep roughly on schedule.
To help with this, I made the decision not to allocate any specific work at weekends, but to use this time as a chance to reflect, to see how I was doing regarding my plan, catch-up and to re-jig things if necessary.
Also, I tried to build in a lot of flexibility regarding filming and test filming. Since I was planning on filming me trying out different camera movements outside, I knew that the weather could be a problem. So, I needed to allow backup time there, in the form of longer filming time than I thought I would need, and also some reshoot days, which I added into my Daily Schedule. Also, the whole point of test filming is to highlight and uncover issues and then be able to fix them so that they aren't an issue on filming day. It would be nice if there are no issues, but that is a bit optimistic and probably unrealistic. And by definition they are unforeseen, otherwise you would already have fixed them, so I had difficulty in estimating how long to allow for test filming. I considered all the things that I thought could be a problem and added in some extra ones for being in lockdown and tried to think roughly of some backup plans already. For example, I already had some thoughts about location for filming, since we may still be in lockdown and unable to travel. I will explain this more in more detail in my Location Scouting section, but I tried hard to think about and consider the rationale behind how many days to allocate in my Daily Schedule, and when was best to schedule them in.
Being a perfectionist, I really wanted to get my Daily Schedule just right, but that is obviously tricky given it is all about the future. So I decided that I have got it as good as I can for now, it has a lot of detail in it and even if the actual schedule slips the detail is really useful to hopefully prevent me from missing out things. I have also designed it so that if I do end up with any slippage it should be able to be absorbed and still meet the deadline because I have built in plenty of contingency time. And I can always add to it if something does occur to me.
Overall Reflection and Evaluation
Making my Daily Schedule took a lot longer than I had anticipated, but I was happy that it was a really useful document and exercise in making me really think hard and focus about all the individual elements that make up this FMP, and it helped me to identify the various issues that could arise with them. I realise that there are still issues that could arise that I have not foreseen, obviously, since that is why they are called "unforeseen issues". But when I thought about it I also realised that those will happen in real life in a production too, so that is where I will need to be able to think on my feet and hopefully come up with appropriate, potentially innovative solutions, just like I would have to if I were on a real-life film set. It makes me a bit nervous, as this is an important project, but also rather excited as I like problem solving. I do still hope it goes according to plan with no major issues, and that my planning and thinking at this stage have eliminated as many issues as possible, since, obviously that is also the outcome that you would really like too on a real-life film set.
I still need to work on website design more. It doesn’t need to be perfect in the next few days, I have more time after the Proposal deadline to get it the way I want, but it does need to be up and running and functional to be able to hand my Proposal in on it.
I need to get on and finish my Proposal since the deadline is only a few days. Despite that, I am still really glad that I took the extra time to reconsider my FMP subject because going ahead with the wrong one would have made life much harder down the line as I would have had a harder job putting it all together in a way that would make me pleased.
I'm really happy with my FMP subject now, it is coming together in my mind. I need to remember to not get so carried away with it that I forget to ask for feedback at appropriate times. And I need to remember to consider all feedback, even if it is not what I was expecting, since I want this FMP to be really good, the best I can make it.
My Key Learnings: I learnt that feedback is really helpful. As well as giving you fresh ideas to improve your ideas, it can also help and encourage you that you are headed in the right direction. Also, feedback is a necessary part of the creative process. This is because if I don’t ask for feedback, then my project will not be as good as it could be. I am also learning to relate my experience to real-life productions, to develop a professional viewpoint.
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