Production Constraints

The end of this working week saw a successful conclusion finally come about to the tiring problem we had been facing within our production group week after week. We finally decided that spending all our time looking for a location which yes, was integral to the story, instead of finding quality actors and developing our skills was too testing on our psyches and so it is with great sadness that we announce that we will no longer be producing Megan Kiantos' The Milkbar due to the following production constraints:

1. Unattainable location: We tried, and tried, and tried again but each time we approached a milkbar we thought would be suitable for the project, something else happened to stand in our way: the shop was open 7 days a week, the owner wasn't having a bar of it, or it was too small. The one location we did find which agreed to let us film only did so with the parameters that we were only allowed to film at the shop 2 hours a day from 8am till 10am for a week. As you can probably guess, Paul and Christine were not pleased with this and told us to keep looking but I had already discussed with Christine the day we had approached this particular shop again that if we hadn't found a location by the end of the day, then we would be moving onto the next script.

2. Actors/Characters: The age and description of our characters meant that we would have had a number of issues with finding suitable actors. In particular, we predicted that most of the actors would be too busy at the time of day we were thinking of filming or would be too old to get there on time meaning a clash in personal and professional lives for the two parties. Finally, after seeing everyone else in the class receive hundreds of applications in just 24 hours of their casting calls being sent out, we only received 2 over 3 days so we thought we probably weren't going to get much more.

3. Production schedule: The shop had dictated we would have to film from 8am till 10am from the 10th of May till the 16th of May, a week and a half from now. This was no way enough time for our production group who are still struggling with equipment, organizational practices and settling into eachothers roles. I thought we might be able to do it but I then realised it would have to be an extrememly experienced, professional production crew who would be able to pull something like that off. Particularly when we still didn't have any actors by that point.

In a way, I was a little bit glad when Paul stopped us from going ahead with the location we had found. When the shop owner finally agreed to let us film in the store, I had a funny gut feeling it just wasn't going to work out. And as it happens, it just wasn't going to. I'm really glad that we made the executive decision to move on to our new project instead of wasting our time trying to make our last one work. This in no way is a reflection on Megan's script - it is a brilliant story that I was really excited to tell but as it just happens, time and production constraints just meant it was just not a viable project. Onwards and upwards as they say!

Producing content for online networks

In this week's tute, Seth sat down with my group members and I and brought up a rather interesting topic related to our K-Film: how does producing content for online networks differ from producing content for another medium, say a film?

I've thought about this lately particularly in relation to the recent Careers Expo seminar we had on Wednesday where one of the course's graduates explained that his job was to produce videos for real estate companies wishing to make their websites more interesting. What fascinated me was the fact that this guy had intended to pursue a career in television and film editing and had decided when on a particular freelance editing job one day, to take up a partnership with another post-production artist in the current business he now runs.

What I want to figure out is, what was so appealing about producing online content over editing TV and Film? What is involved in the process and is there really a difference between the 2? A little research helped me answer some of these questions.

Online Content, or Web Content as it is more widely known, is defined broadly by authors Lou Rosenfeld and Peter Morville as " 'the stuff in your Web site." That includes text, visual, audio and animations. Ok then, so basically all the stuff we are used to seeing in the big wide world just on the internet. So how do these all differ from the same content that's produced elsewhere?

This all ties in nicely with Adrian's essay on "Softvideo" which explores the differences between soft media and hard media which are essentially the same terms that can be applied to my definitions above. In the essay, he references Diane Balestri as saying of soft and hard media "she discriminates between using the computer to author ‘hard copy’, that is work which requires a material substrate such as the page, and using the computer to author ‘softcopy’, work that is only intended to be presented via the immaterial substrate of the screen." Ok then, so its just merely the platform upon which the viewer is exposed to the material. I wasn't quite happy with this definition so decided to dig a little deeper.

Focusing purely on cinema now, I decided to research the works of Lev Manovich once more, a renowned media artist who not only has a background in painting and architecture, but also in computer programming. Beldning these disciplines, Manovich came up with the concept of "Soft Cinema", a solution to the current problem faced by media artists of the 21st Century who must create content that answers the queston of "How to represent the subjective experience of a person living in a global information society? If daily interaction with volumes of data and numerous messages is part of our new “data-subjectivity.” Manovich goes on to ask "how can we visualize this subjectivity in new ways using new media— without resorting to already familiar and “normalized” modernist techniques of montage, surrealism, absurd?"

His solution to this is the production of four cinema forms:

1. "Algorithmic Cinema."
Using systems of rules, software controls both the layout of the screen (number and positions of frames) and the sequences of media elements which appear in these frames.
2. "Database Cinema." The media elements are selected from a large database to construct a potentially unlimited number of different narrative films.
3. "Macro-cinema." Soft Cinema imagines how moving images may look when the Net will mature, and when unlimited bandwidth and very high resolution displays would become the norm.
4. "Multimedia cinema." In Soft Cinema video is used as only one type of representation among others: 2D animation, motion graphics, 3D scenes, diagrams, etc.

So that's form. But what about content?

In Softvideography: Digital Video as Postliterate Practice, Adrian writes of hard copy content as being "still presented in primarily linear forms, the dimensions are relatively stable within a document, documents tend to be single objects, pagination and textual features such as headers, footers, alphabetisation, indices and tables of contents are enforced to manage usability." Softcopy content on the otherhand has "spaces [that]are no longer pages but screens, they can be multiple, variable in size, altered by the user, and that...can now be presented, and not only written, in multilinear and multisequential ways."

My final question is, how do these two dimensions of content production affect the creation of the content? This relates specifically to the K-Film projects we are now creating in class which I feel, blends the concepts of "hardcopy" cinema and "softcopy" cinema. Let's take a simple narrative and look at how a normal, conventional filmmaker such as James Cameron would approach creating that narrative compared to someone like Lev Manovich.

"The story is about Melissa who meets David on a train. Each day, the two sit closer and closer, an attraction acting like a magnet pulling them closer together. One day, when waiting for the train however, Melissa notices David's absence on the platform. As their train arrives, David is still nowhere to be seen. She boards the train and walks towards their usual seats when she hears yelling coming from the road. David can be seen racing towards the train and just as he crosses the railway tracks, the 8:05am Moreland to Flinders St passes through the crossing. Melissa watches in agony as David's life is erased by the same vehicle that gave him such hope each morning on his way to work. The flowers he was to give Melissa that morning lay scattered about the pebbles and tracks."

Firstly, this is not your a-typical Hollywood story. The narrative itself is a tragedy which doesn't work well in Hollywood film so maybe James Cameron isn't the best director to be involved but lets just say he is for arguments sake. To make this film, you would assume he would employ actors, a lighting crew, production office, hire a location, arrange meetings and script the whole story before attempting to film. Then, once his production assistant had created the shooting schedule, he would get stuck into filming the whole thing, probably taking up to 3 months to finish. Finally, he would enter all the taped content into a computerised editing software and edit the film. The narrative would be presented in your classic three act structure, working from an exposition to the climax and finally the denouement. The characters would be attractive yet with faults, normal people in an unusual situation. Finally, the whole thing would probably be shown in film festivals around the world and definitely in at least 3000 cinemas.

So how does this production approach differ to the one that we could say Manovich would take? Manovich writes of the importance of realism in softcinema as being likened to the avant garde movement "Dogma 95". The movement was started in 1995 by Danish filmmakers Lars Von Trier and Thomas Vinterberg and is characterised by the following features contained withing "The Vow of Chastity" which lists a set of rules filmmakers who wish to created films of this genre must adhere to. If softcinema is made in this way, then it makes the process of converting that footage into an interactive film. With this in mind, this is how we would approach a softcinema version of the above story:

The film would have to be made on location, with all props brought it, using a hand-held camera. The films format should be on 35mm but in this day and age, it may be acceptable to use 16mm instead. The film would be in colour and not only that, but David's death would have to be alluded to rather than filmed as the Vow of Chastity states that no superficial action shall take place. Finally, the sound of the production would be completely diegetic with no additional music added on top.

From here, the film's shots would be arranged in accordance with one of the four rules Manovich created above and the entire film uploaded to an online platform. In addition, the film would never be viewed in the same way twice due to the randomness set out by the softcinema application used.

With all of this in mind, its interesting to look at the way in which soft cinema and hard cinema differentiate. The same concepts that surround these terms can also be looked at for other media art forms as today's technology develops another idea Manovich explores in relation to the future of cinema.



how is this different to producing content for other mediums? is online a medium as well when the videos themselves are made with cameras?

Team Meeting # 2

Ok, so no motto but we'll get there eventually. Today's meeting was really productive. I'm becoming more and more confident in my group's creative abilities as well as the prospect of us all having to go through this birthing process for our film over the next 8 weeks. The act of making a film is a daunting enough task in itself without you having to worry about whether or not your crew can perform as well.

Today was all about Megan's script and going through every paragraph, sentence and word to make sure we fully understood the script inside out. The aim was to leave the meeting that day having visualised every aspect of the script and having made sure we had covered all the holes we had found during our first team meeting. These were mainly the fact that the script was only 3 pages long, thus equating to 3 minutes, and a few minor details but having spoken to Robin at the lecture on Tuesday, I assured my group that this was actually a way for us to get more creative with our camera work rather than our writing skills so that was the attitude we took today.

In a bizarre twist, we ended up working from the middle of the script storyboarding and analysing every excrutiating action of our characters to ensure that they were in fact plausible and effective, all the way till the end of the script. We deliberated a while over whether we should change it and decided that it did require a little altering just to pump up the black comedy style we were going for in the middle. From there, we worked our way back to the beginning again, resorting to shot lists as we'd run out of spare paper, and writing down every shot type, angle, camera movement and action we could think of to enhance Megan's script. Along the way, we semi-acted out the dialogue pieces and also changed those as we thought that some lines just didn't really make sense when read aloud.

Finally, having done all that, we got down to business. We worked out we had 2 weeks to find actors and a location, extra crew members and to book everything we need for the shoot, which we are aiming to do around the 15th of May. Knowing this I think has really put us all into gear as we now only have 4 weeks to get everything absolutely organised. And as it turns out, we made need a second unit set up to film part of the script (this is still under consideration). At the end of the meeting, it was decided I would send out a casting call for actors on the AT2 website as well as sending them out to various agencies across Melbourne as well as start on the storyboard; Roland would scout out the locations he had seen on his way home the other day; and Louise would focus on revising all the info she'd need to remember for recording with the sound equipment. Unfortunately, due to disorganisation, Deanna couldn't find our meeting place and so missed out on most of the planning work but we showed her what we did in class and she was really happy with it which was awesome. I'm not really looking forward to sending out the casting calls just because we are dealing with slightly older actors who have probably experienced way more professional crews but I'm going to have to swallow that if we're going to make this film a success.

Sydney Pollack - How to Direct

This week's interview with acclaimed director Sydney Pollack was extremely helpful to me as the director of our film as as I have previously mentioned, I have been researching the various directing methods and the role of a director on set.

Pollack's methods are quite unusual. One of the first things he says is he asks all the crew to remove themselves from set. Then, he instructs his actors to "do nothing". To read the script with no performance, no movement and no expression. He says that if he has set this up right then "the actors won't be able to do nothing. They will start to do the scene". I find this intriguing particularly when you read the part about how he tries to reduce rehearsals to a bare minimum and never instructs his actors about the type of character they are playing. In a way, he lets the actors figure it out for themselves. He goes on to explain how he attempts to get his actors to work towards causes, not results. He does this by telling them little details about the scene or another character, knowing that they will have to react accordingly to that action. The example he gives is where he tells one actor that another has a gun in his pocket and he is now reaching for it. Instead of telling the actor to look frighened or suspicious, he tells applies a cause to them and waits to see what comes up as a result.

Going on, Pollack explains how the hardest part of his job is encouraging his actors to relax. To express the subconscious consciously to be exact. Thinking about this a little more, you definitely can see the implications of this style of directing. Tell an actor too much and they become a robot. Tell them too little and they look lost. The balance Pollack describes he is trying to achieve is in getting his actor's to a place where they are comfortable enough in their role so much so that they "subconsciously" as well as consciously, act like that character. A great point I found was where he says "The really good actors are incredible listeners". In essence, a good actor is a good "reactor", someone who isn't sitting there thinking "crap, what's my line?! crap, what's my line?!" and instead has internalized his dialogue so that when spoken, it sounds like a reaction to the words spoken by the other actor. This to us is the most natural form of conversation as in real life, we can not know what the other person is going to say and so we react accordingly when they say something to us. With film obviously, only so much of this can occur before it gets messy.

With all this in mind, three things I've taken away from this article are:
1. Make sure your actors LOOK comfortable in their roles. Asking them will only make them more conscious of the fact that they are playing a character. Ensure their environment is cushy and safe so that they can relax into their character.
2. Try encouraging an actor to "react" not act when the camera is rolling. This will create a better scene for you as well as them.
3. When searching for actors, guage how well they listen to the person they are auditioning with. If they are able to do this well, they will be able to complete step 2 more efficiently as well.

Some famous people...

I've really been getting into this idea of finding out what exactly a director does on set. As I've mentioned numerous times before, I'm still kicking myself for not paying enough attention to the director's I worked with, save for when they yelled out to the crew "Alright, that's a wrap people. Break for lunch". So now I'm punishing myself by navigating the ever obnoxious system of google to see what crops up.

Type in "what is a director" and unfortunately what you'll come up with in the first 3 hits are a bizarre E-How list whose first point is to go to film school (pretty sure half the directors I know have never even stepped foot in one, let alone attended one. Save for the Brat Pack); a how to become a director from business week; and a wikipedia article about the definition of Film Director.

Always trusting Wikipedia's judgment, I browsed through the article and actually found a number of helpful topics but none which couldn't have been made up by just any random person. Scrolling to the bottom however, I hit jackpot. A link to one of the largest databases of interviews on directing from the world's most famous directors.

In relation to what a director does or how a director works on set, I came across three really useful quotes:
From Alfred Hitchock - "Well, I never look through the camera, you know. The cameraman knows me well enough to know what I want--and when in doubt, draw a rectangle and then draw the shot out for him. You see, the point is that you are, first of all, in a two-dimensional medium. Mustn't forget that. You have a rectangle to fill. Fill it. Compose it. I don't have to look through a camera for that. First of all, the cameraman knows very well that when I compose I object to air, space around figures or above their heads, because I think that's redundant. It's like a newspaperman taking a still and trimming it down to its essentials. They have standing instructions from me--they never give any air around the figures. If I want air, I'll say so."

From an interview with Lars Von Trier - "LvT: Yes, I've always placed a great importance on one being able to see on a film that I've made that it's been made by me.

SB: So what for you is unique about your signature? What is it that enables one to see a film is made by you?

LvT: Perhaps it sounds pretentious, but in one way or another I hope that you can see that every image contains an idea. It certainly sounds presumptuous - and perhaps it's also untruthful. But as I see it, every image and every cut is thought out. They are not there by chance."

And finally, from Jean Luc Godard - "I'm always doing what is not done. What I never do is what everyone else is doing. I always begin with ideas and that doesn't help with the audience. But I always prefer a good audience. I'd rather feed 100 percent of 10 people. Hollywood would rather feed 1 percent of 1 million people. Commercially speaking, my way is not better."

Taking all of this into account, I think I have to start thinking less about what it is A director does on set or for a film and more about what I can do as a director - what strengths and weaknesses I know I have, what I am capable of doing, what ideas I am comfortable to unleash upon my crew for this film. I'm only 20 but I am still finding myself which makes this challenge all the more harder but hopefully, with a little practice, I will come out on top from this.

Edgar

I'm not normally a huge fan of bloody, gorey horror films but I think its the comical timing of Edgar Wright's films which get me giggling rather than the absurd, somewhat ludicrous, crass stories of pyscopathic killers in idyllic British countryside and zombies wandering London's streets.

Since 1995, Edgar has been developing his unusually quirky style of filmmaking which features boxy, snappy editing, lots of fake (or pig's) blood, attainable settings such as London's outer suburbs or the country town of Sandford, highly unique characters (all the way down to the ones who don't even have a line) and thrown into all this array, a number of bizarre plotlines and twists which you know are absolutely implausable but you can't help but go along for the ride anyway.

I have to admit, I haven't always been a huge fan of Edgar. It was only recenly however that I rediscovered the sheer delight of a film made Dad made me watch 3 years ago called Hot Fuzz which I oddly enough had a Bali copy of. Since moving into my new house, my housemates have successfully shown each and every visitor the fantastic tale of Sergeant Nicholas Angel, a super-cop amongst the roaches from London who is transferred to Sandford when his skills outshine those of even the Chief Inspector. Having moved into his new home, Angel sets out to upturn every leaf, twig and cobblestone in order to extradite Sandford's unruly criminals. What's surprising however, is that Angel can not find them. Even when he arrests troublesome youth for underage drinking, Inspector Frank Butterman sends them on their way with a light scalding. When a series of "accidents" occur within the village, Angel is adamant that the true reason for the acts is not pure coincidence but something much more devious. Unfortunately for Angel, he has no idea just how devious it is all about to get.

Edgar's style is purely refined throughout this film. The perfect comic timing aided by the brilliant Simon Pegg (Det. Angel) and Nick Frost (PC Butterman, Angel's partner) is supported by his shameless use of graphic gore and violence and his nifty camera work, accompanied by an interesting editing style which adds to the film's underlying action plot. Overall, Edgar's direction in this film is fingerprinted across every frame, making him a brilliant director to analyse.

Example of Edgar's editing style:

Air

Script Selection - Team Choice

First team meeting today! Whoo! I feel like we need a motto or something. Maybe we can make one up this Friday in class. But for now, we were all very, very concentrated on choosing the right script for our group.

It's not easy you know. When you have four very different minds who all have their own individual styles, likes and desires, the type of script that can be chosen by one person can be something completely different to one chosen by someone else. To combat this, we all set out a few guidelines to help us narrow down the scripts:
1. You should know within the first 30 seconds of the film (i.e half way down the first page), who and what the main character, setting and conflict is.
2. Shootability: we need to aim to produce something that is not going to be too hard to make so that we can really focus on the basics - i.e, nothing with moving car scenes or extravagant set designs.
3. Don't just pick your friends. Try to look at the script selection as a professional who wouldn't just pick their friend's script because they know them.

With this in mind, all four of us came up with the scripts we thought could work for our short film. Some were interesting but had a dissapointing ending (this was quite common unfortunately which was sad); some had exciting characters but not a very interesting plotline; some were a bit too complicated; and the rest were so badly formatted we didn't even give them a chance. When there are thousands of websites dedicated to scriptwriting and even a section on ScreenAustralia about the correct script format, there really is no excuse for a badly formatted script even if you are a first time writer.

After an hour of deliberating and ums and ahs, one of my crew asked whether I had read the last final 3 scripts that were submitted just two nights ago. I admitted I didn't even know they existed as did two other of the crew and so we all read the last three together (was a cute moment which I shall put in the scrapbook in my mind). What was great was that we actually chose our script from one of the last three that were handed in - Megan Kiantos' "The Milkbar".

I had actually completely forgotten that this script was in circulation but having read it from front to back, I thought about our one-liner revision 3 weeks back and remembered how even then, I was really interested in Megan's story. I can't quite put my finger on what it was exactly but I think if anything, it was just that she had created these two characters who weren't particularly beautiful and you weren't necessarily going to like either one of them by the end of the film but you did become engrossed in their behaviour and I personally was able to suspend disbelief for the entire script. Looking over the script though, we could tell there were a few holes that needed patching up which we thought could easily happen in our script revision session this Friday coming. I'm really looking forward to see what our group comes up with and I can't wait to start visualising the material.

Script Selection - My Choice

"Twas' the dawn of a new day when the scripts were all done. Not a word could be altered, not even a pun. The scriptwriters were sleeping all snug in their beds. In hopes that Saint Rogers would soothe their poor heads."

Don't ask me where on earth that came from. My head is literally attempting right now to explode into a thousand tiny fragments. The reason for its delirium is due to the fact that in the past 4 hours I have read 20 scripts, drunk 4 cups of tea and eaten 5 Tim Tams. Who knew script reading could be so detrimental to your health??! Needless to say, I have finally finished reading my share of the TV1 script batches and unfortunately, I have to say, I was severely disappointed.

Out of the 20 I read, only 8 really jumped out at me as having potential and even then, there are probably only 2 I would honestly consider making. These two were William Loh's "Cake" and Eric Dittloff's "Under Control". Here are my reasons why.

William's script for a start attempted to address the inner conflicts all of us women battles constantly everyday. Yes, you all know what I am talking about ladies. It that little voice inside you that stops you from keeping up your celery stick vigil and makes you reach for the cookie jar instead. That little fat person deep within our psyche who secretly wants you to look just like her. In "Cake", William fabulously illustrates this inner struggle in the form of Nicole, an overweight woman attempting to shed the kilos for a blind date she is due to meet in two weeks time. Throughout the film, the conflict arising occurs when Nicole attempts to ignore the decadent, gooey chocolate cake her sister has deviously left in the fridge from the night before. Nicole knows the cake is in that fridge. We all know the cake is in that fridge. And unfortunately for Nicole, her stomach also knows it too. In the final act, Nicole gives into her "greed" and devours the cake just as her blind date arrives at the door. Mortified at her appearance and shocked at the fact that her date is two weeks early, Nicole assumes the worst but not before a beautifully naive moment when her knight in shining armour expresses his love of her "curves" and they live happily ever after.

Ahh, bless you William. For honestly thinking that men have the good grace about them not to turn away in disgust when we are elbows deep in chocolate pudding. Unfortunately, this was one of the tiny faults I found in the script. As a body-conscious young girl heavily influenced by popular culture and the Size 0 phenomenon, I just can not believe that a guy would go for this. I was really rooting for them, don't get me wrong. But at the end of the day, I think it was just a little too Disney for my liking this ending. An alternative that probably would have made it more interesting would have been if her date was possibly a personal trainer who immediately instructed her on giving him ten pushups or perhaps a lap-band surgeon. A little more thought into his character could have made it very interesting. All in all though, I really enjoyed the image of Nicole's despair as she tried to fight her inner hunger which is why I think it deserves an E for Effective if nothing else.

Eric's script I have to say was rather intriguing. There was not so much say a conflict as rather a deadline which the two featured characters were attempting to work towards. At times, this did get quite tiring and the ability of Eric to sustain the importance for Stacey to be rescued from her TV land prison was lost a couple of times towards the end. But it was at this stage that the script turned brilliantly. Whilst he did manage to get a steady momentum going with Grant trying to help Stacey escape, the sudden climax when the deadline is up and the question of "What will Grant do next?" provides a brilliant moment for the audience and to top it all off, Grant doesn't do anything at all. Something which, you have to admit, is probably what you too would do if you were a lonely middle-aged single man. If you were a 12 year old boy, you'd probably have already called your mum to get her to help you out. If you were a 60 year old man, you probably would have thought you were senile and taken yourself off to a retirement home to the delight of your daugher-in-law. But I honestly believe a 40 year old man would have had that exact reaction which contrasts so brilliantly with the action style set up that Eric had going in the first half of the film. A little work to be done on keeping the audience engaged but all in all, I would definitely give the script a P for Powerful.

So that leaves it up to the group unfortunately guys! I have to admit, I haven't really seen many other scripts, other than my friends, so I'm placing a lot of faith in my crew member's judgement. Hopefully they'll come up with something interesting at our meeting this Monday.

Camera Notes

I said at the beginning of semester that I would try and be more creative within this online blogging environment particularly in the way of photos and images so I thought I would get my trusty Lumix out to capture our first "encounter" with the Sony cameras we are using for our short film.

During the tute, Robin went over all the features of the camera, where to find the zoom, exposure etc, etc. All I can say is, there are A LOT of knobs. So I thought my right-sided mind might appreciate a drawn diagram of the camera pointing out all the diffferent features and how to use them.


I really hope I've got all the labels right - it'd be bloody embarassing if I didn't - but there are just so many of them! I'm attempting to find the manual online to see if there is a detailed description of each part as I like to know about something inside out in order to understand it and at the moment, I'm still grappling with all the possibilities of this camera but hopefully, I'll get my head around it soon.

How To Pick A Script

Faced with reading over 20 scripts before Monday's team meeting, I decided that since I had absolutely no idea how or where to start, I should consult my trusty Google search bar for some answers. Literally, all I did was type in "How to judge a good script" and I find this brilliant article by Charles Deemer, a participant on the judging panel of the Pacific Northwest Writers Association's screenwriting competition and screenwriting lecturer at Portland State University. In the article, he mentions a number of good points to look out for when choosing a script that is good or has some good qualities. Here are a few that stood out for me:

1. "The first thing I did was throw away the loglines and synopses... what I knew about each story and characters I wanted to learn directly from the script." - I found this interesting as you would assume a panelist who has the prospect of reading over 50 scripts would go straight to the one liner to see if there is a hint of something interesting for the main meal but Deemer is adamant that this process should be avoided. Thinking about it a little more, I suppose it makes sense. You don't want to be lazy with your script choice. Skim the wrong part and you may not understand the film's complex ending. Only read the ending/beginning and you cheat yourself out of discovering a beautiful story. Throw away the whole thing before you finish it and you're bound to have Karma come bite you in the arse later on in production. Moral of the story: Read the whole script and nothing but the script.

2. "Almost no one seemed to know what they were supposed to be doing. Three-fourths of the scripts were shooting scripts formatted in a style popular twenty years ago but out of fashion today. In fact, I was appalled by how many writers were shooting themselves in the foot by not presenting a script in contemporary spec script format and style." - This is something I was anticipating for our script-reading challenge and its interesting that Deemer also encountered the same problem. Just from browsing through some of these scripts, I can tell that I am going to have an issue on my hands with formatting. At a glance, it looks like nearly half of the 20 scripts I have to read have formatting errors which really shits me because I know that its going to put me off and that there is only so much I will be able to take before I lose it and quit Adobe to move onto the next one. Moral of the story: Do your research. Poor formatting is no excuse.

3. "It also was clear to me by now that two of the four scripts were contending for first and second, the other two for third. I read the last two scripts cover-to-cover and made my selection for third place. Then I read the other two but couldn't make an immediate decision. I let the scripts sit for a few days and picked up the two contenders again." - Giving yourself space from the material can be really handy. It's like that saying "Can't see the wood for the trees" where you become so immersed in what you're doing that you can't work out what it is you set out to do in the first place. I'll have to keep this in mind for when I'm on one of my power surges that I get when I am determined to finish reading all of the scripts. Moral of the story: Take a tea break and breath.

4. "Comparing them was like comparing apples and oranges. One was a sci-fi thriller, the other a witty comedy. Both were over-written but not nearly as badly as the others. I finally asked myself this question: if these were both movies, which would I go see first? The sci-fi thriller, I decided, and this was the script I selected as the winner." - I found this point most interesting. How on earth do you judge two scripts which belong to completely different genres? I found that question Deemer poses a really interesting thought to have during the script selection process as in the end, it is all subjective and just bottles down to what you like. Moral of the story: Go with your feelings.

Thanks to Deemer, I'm a little less daunted by the task ahead. Hopefully I'll get through them all without any hissyfits but we'll see how we go. To finish, I thought I'd leave you with Deemer's final points:

* A spec script is not a shooting script.
* Screenwriting is not fiction writing.
* Consult a screenwriting book less than five years old, written by a competent author.
* Don't let your writing get in the way of your story.
* Less is more.
* Less is more.
* Less is more.

Adam

Ever since I watched the little Australian short which went on to win big at the Academy Awards 6 years ago, I have been obsessed with Adam Elliot, the amazingly brilliant creator and visionary of some of Australia's best known animated films such as Harvey Krumpet (Oscar, 2004) and Mary and Max, his first feature film.

I have been fortunate enough to meet Adam on a number of random occasions which has only encouraged my obsession with him and his work (yes I know it sounds like a case of Fatal Attraction but I don't think he has a rabbit so we're all safe). But I realise that there must be more to this obsession than the man himself.

Adam has only ever made 5 films, 4 of which were shorts. Yet every single film, every single shot, and every single frame is uniquely Adam Elliot's. Usually in black and white, featuring a troupe of flawed characters and using very simple set designs, Adam loves to play on the audience's expectations of the animation genre. Our childhood experiences dictate that animation is a realm where princesses fall asleep and awake 100 years later without a single wrinkle; where a young girl falls down a rabbit hole and doesn't break a leg; and where an old man and a small boy can sail to Central America in a house floated by thousands of balloons.

Adam's films however, deal with much more complicated subject matter. For example, in Uncle, Adam discusses the life of his real Uncle who's wife committed suicide during their marriage. Rather than focusing on this terrible tragedy however, Adam highlights the way his uncle dealt with his aunt's death by making smiley faces with his food and hanging out with his dog, Reg. The film's plotline is intriguing, unsettling but highly delightful. Adam's selection of shot types, angles and lighting all tie together to produce film's which are simply beautiful.

It is this eclectic style which I eventually hope to emulate later on in my career or at least aspire to during my productions in and outside of RMIT.

Martin

I've worked on various sets before - features, telemovies, adverts and shorts - but never really used that opportunity to ask the director's what it was exactly that they did. From where I was standing, they sat in front of a tiny screen watching the scene unfold and then had some whispered conversations with the art director or actor about a certain detail they want changed. My role on most of these sets was either Addtional Assistant Director or 3rd AD which basically meant I was in charge of making sure little things ran smoothly like there were no cars passing through the shot when we were rolling or making sure I knew where the actors were at all time.

I realise though that none of that really can be said to prepare me for my upcoming role as Director in our short film. So, I decided to investigate a little further into by turning to my favourite director of all time, Martin Scorsese.

Scorsese's work features everything from a tale about Jesus to gangsters in New York on a killing spree. When viewing his films however, you can tell they have a certain style about them which can be attributed to him. The camera work is usually gritty and real, emulating the 1940s Italian Neo-Realism films he loved watching as a kid; he prefers shooting in and around New York, his favourite city; he almost always features the same actors where from 1973 to 1995, he worked with Robert Deniro, and from 2002 onwards, he has appeared to have a particular liking for Leonardo Di'Caprio. His works also include signature shots such as his extended long take, the Hitchcock zoom, and jumpcuts, all elements of past film movements or directors.

In an interview with IGN entertainment, Scorsese says of filmmaking, "But for me to make my own films, I just have to remain true to what the picture is and know that that's the story that I really want to tell and know that I'm going to use a certain style and what I want to achieve with it and the marketplace for it too."

This in essence is the greatest lesson I can take from Scorsese about directing. Pick a story that I really want to tell and use a certain style to make it. From looking at all of the films Scorsese has made over the years, that approach can't be a bad one.