Below Par

Written & Directed By :  Jesse Davie

Starring : Guy Knowler & James Kemp

Edited By : Jesse Davie

Synopsis: A talented college golfer is about to experience the repercussions of not giving enough attention to his studies off the golf course. As a result, he ends up losing his spot in the summer invitational, and needless to say, his coach isn’t happy about it.

Part 1

This course at RMIT stands out as my favorite. It was comprehensive, avoiding any half-hearted classes or insignificant lessons, providing a perfect blend of theory and practice. Several key aspects of this studio resonate with me. I further developed my confidence in handling seemingly simple tasks such as auditioning, annotating scripts, table reads, and blocking actors. While these exercises may seem straightforward, the thoroughness with which we approached them significantly boosted my confidence in leading similar activities in the future.

Overall, the course exceeded my expectations. It emphasized the crucial finer points essential for entering the film industry. The seamless mix of theory and practical application, followed with the freedom given for our final project, made it an exceptional experience.

Part 2

My final piece incorporates a heap of knowledge gained from this studio. I thoroughly wanted to break down the script line by line and get a perfect image of how I wanted the scene to look on screen. Being a simple dialogue scene, I really wanted to excel with the pacing and beats of the project. For example, I wanted the tempo at the start to be intense. The coach entering with heat and slamming his books onto the table startling the student. However, after this, I wanted to explore a complete shift and have the coach take his time once sitting down to give a real uneasy and thrill-like atmosphere for the audience. This start I found gave the whole tone of the scene, it being unsettling, argumentative and hostile. So, for me to start the film like this I think gave the audience enough to stay engaged and watch the scene play out.

I also wanted the audience to infer and paint their own context of what’s happening beneath the scene. As I treated this as a scene from a movie rather than a short film, there is lack of closure and a few things left unsaid. I feel as if this gives the audience more to react to and more to use their creative thoughts to fill in what else is potentially happening with these characters.

To further improve the scene I would love to have a lot more emotion from the actors. I’d rewrite the back half of the script and have it be a real battle between the characters. At the moment, this piece is severely run on the coaches terms and his anger is really shown. Perhaps that anger should meet at a two way street by giving the student a few words of himself to say. This way I think the audience would get more out of it. They’d be taken on a greater journey of heightened and erratic emotions that further gets them invested into the film as an audience.

Part 3

The collaboration part is what I was most looking forward to in this studio. The idea of working with ideas and brainstorming in table reads is a real social aspect of film that I’d love to be apart of in the future. When I first met with the actors in the studio, I feel I worked with them well and got the most out of them when working on a scene. That is definitely something I took into account when creating my final project in the studio.

To get this best out of your actors.

However, the main challenge I found is I subconsciously read out a few lines in the tone I was after. When a take didn’t go as I planned I let the actor do their thing but when I went for a second take I, in a way, acted the way I visioned it. I’m still learning yes but I feel as if I broke an unwritten rule and that’s something you should never do as a director. More give them direction and a thought rather than showing them I wanted them to sit and how I wanted them to say the dialogue.

As a whole, to get the best out of myself when collaborating is to keep practicing and learning. By learning what to do and what not to do. It’s a concept that you just have to keep doing and learn as you go.