A lot of things have happened since the last time I updated, mostly been kept busy with work. A lot of projects have deadlines soon and I'm working hard on trying to meet them.
Set design is the most difficult I think so far since it's the one unit I feel least experienced in compared to everything else despite I know about the same in every unit. I think I just feel out of my depth in it. Despite that I know I'll get the unit finished on time and already am happy with the work I've done for it.
Practical skills is going really good. I am a camera operator on a QVC based show with a noir feel. It's something that I never expected to see. Even the dialogue is noir which is interesting. The assessment for this is in a week's time from Tuesday and already I feel we have a good chance of doing really well. My second role is director which is I'm looking forward to and I love being in the gallery.
Scriptwriting is arguably the best and most interesting class this semester and in my opinion isn't long enough. I
love the creative aspect of the class more than anything. Currently we are working on scripts for short films that we will shoot after Christmas. I am working with Andy on the script and it is pretty much finished. Dialogue is much more difficult to write than I thought at first, even the simplest things can be difficult to write. So far it has been a difficult and rewarding experience.
This past week I went to the cinema and watched a film called End of Watch with Jake Gyllenhall and Michael Pena. It was a cop movie set in America with them both working together and trying to bring down a Mexican gang. I was iffy about watching the film since I didn't like the look of it but turned out to be one of the best films of the year. David Ayer wrote and directed it, wrote it in 6 days which was very impressive. It was shot on a low budget and was mostly about the relationship of the 2 officers. It had lots of action for a low budget film and was quite brutal. I encourage everyone to watch it, by far one of the best cop movies in recent years along with The Town.
Around several weeks ago me and the rest of the class attended a 'team building' week at the new E3 Building at Springvale. At the start I was really excited to see the new building since I had heard a lot about it. There are a lot of computers with some great specs and a state of the art TV studio.
Unfortunately it wasn't anything like I thought it would be like. When we went in we were told that we had to be split into groups of 4 and we couldn't be with any of our class. Naturally. It then turned out that certain areas of the room were designated as zones. Each zone had about 8 groups or so. Then each zone had a zone leader. Each zone leader talked to us as if we were kids. This brought back memories of P7 and early secondary school.
Anyway the first task we had to do was create an idea for a children's toy using play-doh, weird wires and post its upon post its. We were then given briefs that we looked at and gave ideas on the post its as to make them better. One was about a nail salon wanting to improve their brand. It just seemed like we were being used for free to give these businesses new ideas. I didn't like it.
All the people in charge were constantly saying "You's are all adults" yet still treated us like children and made us do pointless things. I thought it would have been a better idea to team build with the students that we had recently met and will be working with for 2 years. But no that wasn't allowed.
To make matters worse we weren't allowed to work any of the computers or equipment and when given a tour of the building, the people doing it had no idea what any of the equipment was and didn't know how to work it. Turned out that the TV Studio was unusable.
It could have been a better experience had we been treated more maturely and the tasks been reworked to suit the career that we wish to work on.
