Shooting

So I, along with half of my directing class, shot our first anything ever for film school.

Granted, these were scenes from already existing films, but still, it was a seminal moment for me at least. Working with actors who I had auditioned and who have been in many other projects before was a new experience. This is not to bag on my friends and family who have, in the past, been so generous in helping me out with my projects; I owe them a great deal. It's just that obviously, working with people who have put in a great deal of time and effort to get good at this is going to be a completely different experience.

In addition, I have to say that the instruction from our directing class paid off in spades on the day of my shoot. The ability to break down a scene, form and opinion about the intentions and beat changes, and then communicate those intentions to actors who then make adjustments to their portrayals accordingly actually occurred on Friday. And, yes, I am essentially describing acting and directing in very basic terms, but it's one thing to understand that this is how things should go and another to actually try and do it.

I'm not saying my shoot was flawless; far from it. However, I am saying that I accomplished something I hadn't before, and that it could have gone far worse. It was just the first time I've ever felt like a director, and that was pretty cool.

We'll see how it cuts together when I get it in the lab.

Today was our first day back to our Producing classes; let me explain. For the past several weeks we have been having our regular Monday class with an editor, as I've mentioned in previous posts, but now we're back to Tim Marx, our producing professor from the first few weeks who I always felt was excellent, and also terrifying. Today we did our pitches for our first non-dialogue shorts. This was not like the high pressure pitches we did week 2, but rather a time to explain our ideas to our class and both Tim and our Ideation professor, Mary Beth Fielder.

The professors then provided lots of feedback, both on practical concerns and story points. We all had very different ideas, some of which I felt very much on board with, others which I could never have even conceived, but they were all interesting on some level. I'm extremely interested to see how they end up turning out. Some people had some ambitions ideas which could be very difficult to execute, but if done well could turn out amazing.

I felt like my idea was kinda playing it safe in some regards. I had several ideas about non-dialogue shorts because I was actually prepared to make up to five of them this year (like previous years) so I felt better prepared, but I couldn't help but feel a lack of daring that was present in some of my peers' ideas. Of course, I think I can pull my idea off pretty easily, and that was important to me, so we'll see.

I'm glad the directed scene came before this project. I am not nearly as nervous after that first shoot. I'm really looking forward to shooting actually. Now, I just have to find some actors...