For my initial test footage for my Final Project, I wanted to see if my idea for using a Water balloon for a substitute for an exploding head would work.

This video is my first ever test of using an iPhones slow-mo camera to shoot the explosion of water.

I was very happy with how it turned out, and I saw that I would be able to make it look very good.

In this week’s classes we continued planning the End of Semester presentation about the studio, and corrolating all our answers into a Google Doc, so that the speakers can give answers that represent the whole class and not just themselves. Having a look at other peoples answers, something statements are very common and appear again and again only worded slightly differently. Common recurring themes were the freedom of choice in the final assignment, as well as appricating the massive variety in films we watched and different ways of analysing the frame.

On thursday’s class we all had to give an update on how our major project is going, and show some footage if we had it avalible. It was interesting to see so many people’s projects change direction since the proposal presentations. Most people had some kind of footage to show, and it was very interesting seeing how peoples ideas were coming to frutition.

My “update” came in the form of reassuring the class that everything was going more-or-less to plan, and that I had completed all my filming on schedule over the long weekend. I showed two sections of footage, the first was a compolation of all my “Slo-Motion Exploding Balloons” which I filmed many, MANY times experimenting with different techniques and trying to perfectly replicate a cheesy “Head-splosion” effect.

My second segment was something, that in retro-spect was probably a waste of time but it was fun anyway, was a approx 1 minute “trailer” for my film. I wanted to make something tounge-in-cheek and make it look like my film was serious and important. It was harder than I though, and i probably spent at least 2-3 hours putting it together. I wanted to make it as “Hollywood” as possible, with dramatic phrases over the top of unrelated footage (as in stuff from another part of the film), I found some cheesy “Duh DUN” sound effects to puncuate my  cuts to classic trailer phrases such as “This October…..”. Im also pretty proud of the ending to my trailer, which has the segment preceeding the Exploding head, including pulling a gun up to someones forehead and pulling the trigger. Instead of showing the explosion, i just played as gunshot sound-effect and cut to black for 4 seconds, which was fairly “proffesional” looking, if I do say so myself.

Again, it was probably a waste of time, but It was fun.

In this weeks class we talked about how we are going to deal with the final 8 minute studio presentation, we quickly agreed that it would be best to only have a few people speak as to not clutter everything up and go massivly overtime, so everyone in the studio has to be a part of writing the things that these designated speakers will say.

To get a start on this we all answered 3 questions.

What is the Studio investigating/exploring. How is it doing this.

The studio looked at the Frame, and all the various aspects of how it influences cinema as well as other mediums. One of the first things we did was the “gallery ramble” in which we looked at various paintings in the National Gallery of Victoria and identified aspects such as colour, size, shape etc… as well as thier actual physical frames and where they were placed in the gallery, and how all of this affects our viewing of the artwork, which was a precursor to applying these thoughts to film.

Throughout the semester we watched many films, from across many genres and decades, each looking at different ways film-makers have used the frame to produce thier work. We looked at French new wave, Noir, High Concept, mobile cinema as well as a plethora of readings by various film theorists on how the many ways film can be read and made.

What did YOU discover in terms of your current/future proffesional practice.

Througout this semester I discovered lots about film production and theory that will, and already has, help my potential film making career. I learned lots about practical methods of doing filmmaking, such as 180 degree rule, shot-reverse-shot, using colour, movement and other visual aspects to aid in creating the narrative (these were all concepts I knew of, but the studio greatly enhanced by knowledge and understanding).

The final project, in which I directed a 5 minute film, was a great practical experience that both put all the theory into reality but also was a foray into other challanges of filmaming. Things like managing conflicting schedules (one of my actors who was in the beginning, middle and ending only had 4 hours of avalibility over the weekend of filming befoore leaving for Europe), as well as putting concepts into reality with a very limited budget, many concessions from my original storyboards had to be abandonned because I didnt have the equipment, manpower or time.

All of this is just as, if not more, valuable to real-life professional filmmaking than any theory.

What about the Studio would you recommend to potential future students?

I would suggest this studio to students who want to both learn and study film as well as engage in practical work, if they want to do nothing but learn how to and participate in making film another studio is probably better for them. However this studio was great in studying film and looking intensly at how and why other people did certain things when making films, as well as different techniques and methods which came about over the history of film.

I would recommend this studio to students who love film and want to learn more about it, and with assignments that are very open-ended to suit basically any appraoch.