We started this week off with our second masterclass, this time from writer/ director, Louis Paxton. My 5 main takeaways from this talk were:

1. Sometimes smaller cities are actually better than larger ones for getting job oppurtunities in film as there is more of a tight knit community. Louis talked about how he lived in London for a few years and one of the best decisions he made was coming back to Edinburgh, as he was able to make more meaningful connections there.
2. Different types of challenges occur when working with children on set, especially when they’re neurodiverse, so you need to experiement around and find what works. Louis was talking about how he found food to be good for getting one of his younger actors to stay more still and focused on the film.
3. There are different routes to go down when it comes to casting, and each have their merits. You can either cast through your own circle of friends, family and people you’ve previously worked with, or you can go through an agency.
4. Sometimes it takes time to find your own style. Louis talked about how he wasn’t fully satisfied by some of his films at different points of his career, and it took time and a range of different experiences to find out what worked and what didn’t for him.
5. Sometimes with actors, and especially with younger or less experienced actors, it is easier to generate the emotion you want them to portray by actually making them experience it, than by telling them to act that emotion. For instance Louis said that when he wanted one of his actors on his set of ‘Neville is Dead’ to act bored, he’d just make him actually be bored and capture that, and this creates more realistic, truthful acting.

We started hearing more from some of the 4th years about the grad films this week and I got a few tasks to complete, and had a few meetings. I also attended a 4th year FTV & Graphic Design mixer in order to better understand the relationship between the two, and to make connections with some of the Graphic Designers who are running the studios which I will likely be working with for the 4th year films.

For ‘Waiting for Marcus’, I had a meeting with the director, Sára, and the rest of the production team on Wednesday. I told her about my research on the Indiegogo page and we discussed the next steps for that. One of the tasks she set me was to set up a login for Indiegogo with the ‘Waiting for Marcus’ email and then explore the setup process a little to see what information we’d need to collect. I completed this on Sunday morning, and found out that we needed information such as a blurb, the bank information, the perks and more. I contacted Sára to let her know this information so she was kept in the loop. My other task was emailing certain key crew members for a photo and bio which could be used for the Indiegogo and other purposes, such as the social media. We briefly encountered problems when I tried to log into the ‘Waiting for Marcus’ email, however we communicated and managed to temporarily solve the issue.

For ‘Hypervigilant’, I recieved an email from Roisin asking whether I’d be able to put together a casting call using the information she provided. I worked on this on Sunday afternoon, first researching what it could look like visually, based off of the images and description provided in their pitch, and then putting it together on Canva and making sure it was easily readable. I used a still from their pitch as the background and blurred and faded it slightly to make the words stand out better against it. I wasn’t sure whether it was readble enough, so I made another one with a graphic background as a second option. I got some feedback from another first year film student to have an outside opinion on it, and then made a couple of small changes and sent both in to Roisin to ask which she preferred and if she wanted any changes made. I have attached the two casting calls below.

For ‘Us Not Them’, I met the director, Louis, at the FTV & Graphic Design mixer, and talked to him about my experience in marketing, and we discussed the film and how it would work with the graphic designers. He introduced me to Leoni, one of the 4th year Graphic Designers, who has applied to work on ‘Us Not Them’. A little later in the week on Thursday I got communication from their 1st AD, Maddie, asking me to create an instagram account for the film. I did this on Friday morning, however ran into complications as the name “usnotthemfilm” was not available, despite me not being able to find an account with this name. The HoDs offered up some alternate suggestions, and I gave my recommendation for which I felt would work the best, and we decided to go with that, which was “usnotthem.film”. I then created the account and shared it with Maddie to share with the rest of the HoDs.

We started off this week with a masterclass from the amazing Stuart Cadenhead, a 1st AD in the industry. My 5 main takeaways from this masterclass were:

1. That the role of a 1st AD is much more involved with aiding the production team than the directing team.
2. What a movement order is, and how one would go about creating and following one
3. The importance of being on time to shoots and meetings, as after the second time being late, people are much less likely to want to hire you for future projects
4. The level of preparation you have to do for a film job in general, but especially for a 1st AD job. You must make sure that you try and think of anything and cover all of your bases.
5. Try and get a runner job (OE) over the summer, as it will give you experience on set, and connections within the industry.

I am working on three 4th year grad films this term, which are ‘Waiting For Marcus’, ‘Hypervigilant’ and ‘Us Not Them’. I am doing distribution and also being a runner on ‘Waiting For Marcus’ and ‘Us Not Them’, and am doing marketing, especially social media management for ‘Hypervigilant’. Due to the 4th year students finishing their dissertations this week, I have not had many tasks to do, however have been thinking and researching a little in the background whilst I wait to hear from them.

For ‘Waiting for Marcus’, I have already had a few meetings with Sára and the rest of the production team over the christmas holidays, where we discussed that I would be doing distribution and was asked to look into crowdfunding on the page Indiegogo. I did most of the research over the christmas break, however have continued looking into it this week, and have been brainstorming ideas for perks that we could offer in exchange for donations. I have attached my research below. I also reposted the intial post and the casting call from the ‘Waiting For Marcus’ instagram onto my personal instagram to help it gain more traction.

Following my meeting with Roisin over christmas discussing roughly what my role might entail, I have been thinking about the sort of posts that I could post to build the ‘Hypervigilant’ brand and gain traction both for fundraising and awareness purposes. I have also rewatched the pitch that Roisin and Jude created in order to gain an idea of the aesthetic they would want me to recreate on the social medias.