Reflecting on my time at MSOA shows me how far I’ve come and how I’ve flourished within the 3 years, throughout the course I’ve developed my skills within each given module, I’ve taken these skills and continued to develop them outside of university, the skills I’m most confident with now would have to be Directing. I completely fell in love with Directing, For me this role fits perfectly, I’ve been developing this skill since first year and I’ve found my leadership, organisational and collaboration skills have become extremely prominent, Over the past academic year I’ve been in full swing with directing both inside and outside of university and I’ve received some great feedback on my skills from clients, students and tutors that really helped boost my confidence even further, Directing is a key skill that I’ll take with me and continue developing in hopes to one day direct my own feature film.
Cinematography and Editing (Colour Grading) are my other key skills in which I have been developing over the past three years and aim to continue developing over time, these are roles I’ve grow extremely confident with, Cinematography has always captivated me, its something I’ve always wanted to do so having the opportunity to work on multiple roles within our modules was a great aspect for me, this gave me the chance to go out and experiment with shots and framing, I can see the development of my cinematography skills and how far I’ve come within the past few years.
I intend on continuing the development of these skills, applying for internships working on short films, working as assistant camera, focus puller and working my way up into cinematographer, I’m currently also in the process of making business cards for wedding cinematography, music videos and short films, this will help me develop my skills. Colour grading is the next aspect of filmmaking I fell in love with although I feel for me this goes hand in hand with cinematography, when I’m out shooting in my head I’m always visualising colour schemes etc. this part of the filming process really brings the film to life and gives it a whole new outlook and mood and this is something I hope to continue developing within my own time.
Looking into future employability plans for the future has been interesting, something that has really caught my eye over the past year would be the TA role at MSOA, I’ve been doing a lot of research and volunteering surrounding this role that you can find more information on within my blog, for me this role seems perfect and would ensure a creative space where not only I can share my skills to date yet can continue in the development for my own skills, following this I would like to become more hands on within the industry with Directing, Cinematography and Editing, I’m hopeful to become a runner on production sets as either AD or AC and working my way up, making contacts within the industry, this is a skill I learnt within talent lab, we spoke to many director and cinematographers who spoke of working there way up, starting out small and getting to larger roles and productions, after a few years of building up contacts I’d then want to start crewing up and developing our own short film’s where I would Direct and then move up into feature films within the future.
Reflecting on the collaboration and teamwork process over the past three years I feel I’ve come a long way, in first year I found myself taking on a lot of work within particular groups,, I’d be doing multiple roles, pre & post production. I developed my leadership skills into second year where I became much more organised and began directing my teams using self initiative coming up with ideas to get everyone involved and pumped for the project at hand, I defiantly received resilience from certain people although I felt we always overcame this well, as I took extra time to work on this as I didn’t want the groups to become disorganised.
I felt in second year the best way to do this and ensure everyone was involved was at the beginning of the production to have everyone give there own ideas and then attempt to incorporate a theme or key part of everyone’s idea into the film. This did work although at the end of second year I realised this wasn’t something essential to be doing, everyone should be involved in the projects at hand without being pushed into doing so, I decided to keep the organisation I’d make schedules for each individual and group schedules, to do lists for each individual, deadlines and tasks and this really seemed to help certain individuals and keep our overall professionalism to the highest standard.
Within third year I actually took a step back from the collaborative and teamwork process as I found using self initiative and working solo on my final projects would work for me personally, I did this in order to not only develop my own skills but to see how far I could push myself and what I could achieve alone, I feel this definitely worked in my favour for my R&D project and has worked great thus far for major film, although I do intend on returning to a collaborative process following our grad film, as I have been outside of university within music videos and short films.
The areas I feel I’m strongest in are Directing, Cinematography and Editing with skills ranging from organisation, Leadership, Collaborative, communicational and using self initiative, these are all things I’m very proud of, at the start of first year if someone told me I’d be the confident, independent filmmaker that I now am, I would have never believed them, I’ve overcome and learnt so much and I know that I’m at the point now where I will keep developing the skills I’ve aquired until I’ve made it to where I want to be, although with that being said there are areas in which I want to continue working on and developing for example although I’ve worked so much on being anxious and nervous there’s still a segment of that, I still get anxious before filming or before editing although I’m of sure if that is something that will stay with all filmmakers, after speaking with tutors they explained they also get anxious before shoots and this definitely helped my confidence so much.
My role within the degree show for ‘MOVE Film Collective’ is ‘Head of Festival Programming Team’ my jobs including:
(Deciding and devising a method of selection for showcased film, Designing and branding the film festival - including the festival name, brochures and posters Shooting a trailer to be played in cinemas advertising the festival, Liaising directly with the programming team at HOME, Having DCP’s made and meeting any other technical requirements, Organizing photo shoot for HOME website, Sending out industry invites and finding film festival curators, BBFC film certifications etc.)
This role really ignites my interests for organisation and being productive at all times, I’ve contributed a lot of time into this role, ensuring the trailer is running on time, regular meetings with the production company, festival programming team, HOME cinema and Festival curators who will be picking 18 of the 30/40 films received. I’ve really been enjoying this role and feel I’m coping well under pressure and keeping a professional outlook and mind set throughout, its been pretty fast paced especially over the Easter break and trying to keep the organisation and preparation on track for the show on 10thJune 2019 where we will have two slots 4-5:30pm and 6:00-7:30pm.
One of my main contributions has been keeping in contact with Jennifer Hall and David Petty at HOME cinema and Johnny Bradshaw who is picking the films that are shown. I’ve also been keeping tight locks on what is needed from all students (Synopsis, Poster, Running time, Title, Trailer and BBFC Certifications), I’m in charge of looking into all ticket release dates and comp tickets this is something I’ve found really interesting, to start we have cinema two where we receive 6 comp tickets, although if tickets are selling well we move to cinema one where we get 8 comp tickets and 2 additional press tickets, for me this has been fascination as I didn’t know this side to festivals until undertaking this role. I’ve learnt so much form taking on this role my organisational and collaborative skills have flourished within this time, I’m managing to keep on time for all deadlines and ensure the best professional outlook is kept on our production company at all times even when under pressure, I’m really happy with the skills I have gained from this and am now looking into more festival programming jobs following this academic year.
