What you want from this studio? What you think this studio is? Outline your goals and desires for the semester. 

Originally when I signed up for this studio, I thought I had a fairly good idea of what would be going on. I had a few friends who had done this studio last semester and they made a really cool webseries. Given that I have exhausted all my options for the practical studios of “the news is a joke’ and “it’s alive”, and still wanting a studio focused on production and making, I thought this was a good compromise.

Now given the discussions in class, I know that a web series may not be the result of this class, which is, (i’m not gonna lie) a bit of a bummer. I do really enjoy working throughout the semester on one single final product because I feel like thats the closest thing to a real industry experience and I really value that. Also these studios all require a level of collaboration, which is something that university alone can help me experience.

Now because of the changes to the studio, I am re-aligning my goals to be focused on small scale collaboration within each class, both with other media students and the writing students towards many smaller projects. I want to also be able to critique these, analyse what works and what could be improved in terms of what we produce and how it is produced.

I also will be aiming to experience the ‘ideas’ stage, because this isn’t something I have had to do before. In the news is a joke, the media focus was the news, and in ‘its alive’, i was not part of the writing team so i didn’t have to worry about concepts. Now that the writers and media students are working more closely and we are able to have input into the direction of the script, I want to explore my ability to provide prompts and starting points for potential stories.

Reflect upon our first 3 classes.  How valuable and/or relevant have they been?  What ideas and questions have they provoked?  What have you learnt?  What do you feel you need to investigate next? 

The first three lessons gave me an insight into the writing process. I have never taken a writing class, scriptwriting class or even had a role as a writer on any production before, so to have Ana here to take us through it was really quite fascinating. I must admit I didn’t realise how much of the spine of a film comes from the script and how important the structure of it is. If anything, it made me more apprehensive to step into the world of writing, it sounds complex, a fine art that is very difficult to achieve without may rough drafts and late nights fuelled by coffee and toast. I think I learnt to appreciate the role of a writer, or screenwriter more; how much of the tone and atmosphere of the film is setup and can inspire the cinematography, editing, direction, acting among other things. I feel like seeing the writing process, following it along with the creative writing students, having input, seeing drafts and adding suggestions will give me a much more rounded view of the production process of film, TV, and of course a webseries.