I want many things from this course…

• I want to understand cinema better.
• I want to build my confidence in being a director/cinematographer/sound guy/editor so I ‘don’t look like a tool’ on set or in the editing suites. I essentially just want to improve my technical skills.
• I want to know how to make scenes that can be taken into post production and easily edited to look continuous, but…
• I guess why I’m doing this degree, and more specifically this course, is to learn how to make a film to a ‘professional’ standard. How does this occur? At this point I think it is a combination of EVERYTHING – directing, casting, scripting, storyboarding, lighting, camera work, location, editing, colour grading, sound, organisation, time and money.

So how I am going to help myself to get to a point where my work looks ‘professional’? What is professional? (I guess in the simplest of terms it is simply ‘good quality’ work).

I think a good way to start is to look at films that I really love, not for their story, but for their professional cinematography. Then, if I can find it, watch their ‘making of’ videos that are often in the special features on DVDs. This could help to explain exactly how scenes are created and shed light on the way various actors/crewmen/actors work. Subsequently, I might be able to further pull apart these scenes by analysing their camera coverage, like we have been doing in the past few weeks of The Scene. I would also like to research the different methodologies of directors and see if they themselves have written any accounts of their filmmaking processes.