Consider Sandra’s lecture “Directing Actors” and describe at least a couple of points that you took away from it (even if you’re not the director).

Director Sandra Schibberas’ lecture on directing actors was insightful and interesting. Having been to theatre and acting school herself, she is confident in working with actors and communicating with them about exactly what she wants for a particular scene.

Her first important piece of advice was to ensure that you cast actors that understand the story of your film. She explained that casting a great actor who has the look you want and has a great voice won’t be the right fit for your film if they don’t understand or grasp the story you are trying to tell. Ensuring that they understand the genre of the film and demonstrating an awareness of changes in their character’s mood or perspective is also very important.

In regards to our film ‘Getting By’, we were very fortunate to cast a fantastic actor, Kostas, as our main character. He immediately understood the genre of the film as being a drama and we knew right from the first audition that he understood his character Arthur’s emotional arc as well as the story of our film.

Her advice was great in that she emphasized the importance of preparation and rehearsals before the shooting of your film. She recommended that when rehearsing with actors, you shouldn’t get bogged down in technicalities or specifics of movement. I brought this advice to our rehearsal with Kostas and when he became flustered with some of the dialogue, both Torika and I encouraged him to find his own way of expressing the same emotion.

Getting any and all questions from the actors prior to the day of shooting is also integral to ensuring that the shoot runs smoothly. Sandra recommended this as on the day of filming, the crew needs to be able to talk to the director at any moment to solve any issues or ensure that they are setting up the shots the way the director wants. This is something that we could’ve done a bit better on our own film as preparing the actors for the following scene took up a lot of the directors time, which did put more pressure on the crew.

Sandra also advised that you should always give encouraging feedback after every take so that the actor/s feel positive about their experience. Being aware of how you are communicating to the actor/s is important and trying to influence them to think that your idea for their delivery is actually theirs will make them even more positive about their performance.

In this clip screened in the lecture from the Coen brothers’ ‘Blood Simple‘ describe what is happening in terms of the edits specifically in terms of the audio and video. Also name the different kinds of audio you can hear.

This excerpt from ‘Blood Simple’ demonstrates that when editing together a conversation between two characters, there are more interesting ways to go about it. Rather than always cutting to vision of the person speaking, showing the other characters’ reaction to the information they are being told can provide an insight into the character’s motivations and emotions. For example; the hitman’s anxiousness to be paid by the man who hired him (Julian Marty) and not be found out that he has faked the photos is highlighted as the camera focuses on his reaction to the Julian’s dialogue and him being sick. This is also used to show Julian’s reaction of being sick after seeing the photographs and hearing from the hitman that the kill has been carried out.

The sounds implemented in this scene are all diegetic, or a part of the story world even if not all of them are onscreen. There is no added music or other nondiegetic sound in the scene. The sound of the fish slapping the table is heard as well as crickets and the fan which are heard constantly throughout the scene. Noises coming from the street including sirens are heard. The chair creaking, envelope rustling, the lighter being used, cigarette being butted out, and footsteps are all included. Sliding the fish across the table, the creaking of the door opening, Julian being sick, flush of the toilet and running water are heard. The fly buzzing, safe being opened, pushing of the money across the table all lead up to the sound of the gun being cocked by the hitman and the subsequent echoed gunshot.

The edit of the vision to show Julian’s knowing and scared reaction to hearing the gun being cocked is well executed as it shows that he has realized that he has been played and is about to die.

Find the keyboard shortcuts for Adobe Premiere and note two or more functions that you’ve never used before that may be invaluable to editing.

One of the keyboard shortcuts for Adobe Premiere that would be really useful in editing is the shortcut for Ripple Delete which on Mac is Shift+Forward Delete, and is Shift+Delete on PC. When you’re adding clips to a sequence or have cut a clip and want it to snap to the previous clip so that you can watch the sequence continuously, this keyboard shortcut eliminates the empty video space between the two clips.

Another shortcut is Cmd+G (Mac) or Ctrl+G (PC) which is used for grouping clips in a layer. This means that if you want to apply the editing techniques to multiple clips you can do so without doing them individually.

Cmd+D (Mac) or Ctrl D (PC) is the keyboard shortcut for applying a video transition for a clip. This makes placing transitions between clips much more simpler and quicker as you can easily add the video transition at the playhead.