week FOUR plus Media Camp MADNESS

A little behind schedule, but developing nicely none the less, this is week three in the life of a media student. Learning about directing is not quite what I would have expected at first, a lot more about emotional content and making sure each scene tells a story. I've always prefered films of different natures, that don't follow the set structure but instead aimed to tell the story through other ways. Nothing is random is the lesson that we have been taught, whereas I would like to see a random event, like earthquakes or cyclones, that add to the realism of the world, but have no real impact on the story.

Breaking down a script into it's emotive language can be a tricky process, as different people will have different opinions about the same story. Every persons life experience is an indication of their depth of understanding, someone who has not experienced the sorrow of loss will have more difficulty in analysing a scene of the same. Therefore, what a writer imagines with their script, might not neccessily be understood in the correct way by a director, but will still have the ability to achieve a satisfactory outcome.

In other news, also the main reason for the delayed post, we as a class group have spent the last week on a media camp with our peers, from across the arts and media classes, to learn and grow our networks and experiences in an informal setting, with the culmunation being a quickly filmed "gronkfest" short film festival, in camera edit, that everyone participates in. The theme for the festival was "stick" which created a lot of pun's and sticky situations. I ended up directing for my group and chose to try slap-stick comedy of sorts to achieve the goal of the theme. Trying to visualise a scene, without time for pre-production or scripts, does not seem to co-incide with the lessons we have been learning about for directing, the "off the top of my head" senario instead of well thought out and planned action, leaving me to wonder about the nature of a director.

Also as a part of the camp, we were assigned groups for working with the more advanced students on their planned productions later in the year, and participated in a half day production that aimed to film one page from their scripts. Akin to a rehearsal or a block through, I took on the roles of Grip and as Talent. As a learning experience i found that the methods used by the advanced students differ again to those taught to us up to this time. Again mixed messages about the teaching process.

hey you! go and film something.. don't be lazy now y'hear.