After pitching my idea, it was time to get into a group. We’re not specifically told to do so, but we were encouraged to find someone with similar ideas or is good at certain aspects of filming and work together.
At first it was chaotic. Everyone has different ideas, so when we sat down on the table, we were confused as to how we’re going to group up. There was Rachel, Kay, Ben and Lyreca. Kay’s idea was about a deaf dancer, Ben was a stand up comedy show, and both Rachel and Lyreca turned out to be flexible with narrative and want to focus on doing a certain aspects of filming instead.
It was mostly me, Kay and Rachel deciding to go with which idea for the film, mine or Kay’s. It somehow ended up with them set on the deaf dancer idea, with Rachel focusing on sound. My initial research focus was on script writing, specifically dialogues, but then they were worried that there wouldn’t be much on that. Thus I was happy to focus on other aspects such as operating camera, directing, etc, because at that point I just wanted to settle in a group and start planning things out.
However, Jonah came up to me and told me he’d like to work with me because he told me our ideas are similar. To be honest, apart from the theme of suicide in our pitches, there weren’t much in common. His approach was different from mine, but at the end he was happy to go with my idea with a little revision. The script that he sent me was somehow my idea, but there were some additional scenes of the character in a cemetery shots, buying pills in a pharmacy, and inner head dialogues. It was fine, but if I were to go with it, I’d definitely do more changes as it was not something I would go for.
The next day, after watching our first film that we just made and some inspiring videos, we had some time to consult our ideas with James. It turned out James didn’t like the modification Jonah made on my idea, and told us the idea was very amateur. He told me he liked my original idea the way it is, which was surprising, because I was so close to just tossing my idea and just work on whatever. I can still clearly remember him telling me “Never do what you don’t want to do” which really speaks to me. Right then, I knew I had to do this movie. He asked me to direct the film instead of Jonah and again at that point i’m not sure what Jonah will help out with. Nonetheless, James gave me a green light to work with someone else outside of class which was relieving, knowing there’s only the two of us.
A few days later, Jonah told me that James asked him to do his own project. Somehow, I was relieved because firstly I don’t want him to do a project he is not interested in, and also because I have a feeling we won’t work well together. Another guy in our class, Ben, kindly offered to help out with my project and since he’s good in scripting, he’ll be helping me do that. My friend Terry also agreed to help me out, mostly in editing and maybe filming.
I just met Ben and we talked briefly about what we’re gonna do with the film, including scripts, locations, and equipment. He also kindly taught me how to properly write a script, as I had never done it before. I have had only done short story writing, which was quite different. It was challenging, and I’m still trying to understand how to properly write one.
Nonetheless, at this point, I’m glad we sorted out quite a lot already. I planned to actually shoot in two week’s time, when Terry will be back in Melbourne. But before that, I’ll be mainly focusing on my script.