Our scheduled masterclass was cancelled due to illness this week, so instead we had a great talk from sound specialist, Ali Murray. My 5 main takeaways from this talk were:

1. The earlier you can bring on a sound designer, the better. It’s cheaper and more believable to record it properly to start with than to have to fix it in post.
2. It’s good to make notes when you first watch a piece of footage. That is what the audience will see, and you will never get to see it for the first time again.
3. Try and use as many naturalistic sounds on set as possible, as it will usually sound more realistic.
4. Create a case study before taking on a project, compiling things such as likes & dislikes about the project, and the different factors playing into doing it etc
5. The same sound can be different depending on context e.g. a car crash in Mr Bean will sound very different than one in James Bond, so you have to tailor it to the project you are doing.

It has been a quieter week this week as we prepare for the shoots, so I have just been doing a few tasks here are there for each of the projects.

For Hypervigilant, I have been keeping an eye on the social media page and so when we got a message from a horror blog asking to feature us, I contacted Roisin to see if it was something she would be interested in. She said that whilst we cannot let them show the film before most of the film festivals, we can get some publicity for the film from them, so I got back to them saying that we would be interested and gave them our hypervigilant email. Roisin also asked whether I could post the casting call information on Backstage, and so I created a post for it, but unfortunately I couldn’t post it without paying for it, so I asked Roisin what she wanted to do, and am waiting to hear back.

For Waiting for Marcus, Sára asked us to spread the word about looking for extras for the party scene, so we talked to people who might be interested. Sára also asked if we could have a meeting later in the week, and we agreed on Friday at 12:00. In this meeting we discussed the timings for the shoot day and Sára checked in about the Indiegogo page. I gave her a list of the information I’d need in order to complete the Indiegogo page and she said she’d get it to me as soon as possible. She said she wants the campaign to last for 30 days, so I put that in my notes for when I do the page. We also discussed the incentives a little more as she had changed her mind on the pricing of some of them. We didn’t come up with a finalised set of incentives but Sára said we would discuss and agree on one soon. She also said that I would be getting more involved with posting on the social media, and asked me to come to a meeting with her and the graphic designers for this project on the following Monday.

We started this week off with a fantastic masterclass from publicist Clea Tammes. My 5 main takeaways from this talk were:

1. Volunteering at the Edinburgh International Film Festival was extremely useful for her in gaining experience and making contacts within the industry.
2. It’s important to think about all different user interfaces when creating content, making sure it’ll fit/ can be adapted to posters, trailers, instagram posts etc.
3. You can never get a publicist on too early in the process
4. Don’t blow all of your content at once. Wait until the point at which your audience is able to engage with the content. Most of your content should be coming out in the leadup to the release and shortly after the release of your film.
5. The P&A (Prints & Advertising) budget is usually 4 times the budget for the film as a whole, so never underestimate the importance of it.

This week was a slightly busier week, mostly for ‘Hypervigilant’ and ‘Us Not Them’, posting on the social media pages in preparation for shooting. We also had a seminar where we went through a script in our different departments and analysed the sections important to our group. I was in the production team and so we picked out areas where we would need risk assessments, or where we might need to figure out the logistics of a certain piece of set, or action.

For ‘Waiting for Marcus’, it has been a slightly quieter week as we’ve completed the casting call and are moving on to prepping for the shoot. Sára requested that I send her the meeting notes from our social media meeting the previous week and I did so over WhatsApp. I heard back from Sára about my audition and learnt that I unfortunately did not get the role, as she felt my chemistry was better with the Charlotte they decided not to go with.

For ‘Hypervigilant’ I had a meeting with director, Roisin, on Tuesday to discuss the social media strategy and to set up the Facebook page in order to distribute the casting call. We discussed the sorts of posts that we could post over the next few weeks, such as introductions to the director and DOP, cast announcements, and location photos, and Roisin gave me access to the Milanote page which has lots of the information and content for the film. She asked me to follow a number of people, as well as follow horror and film festival pages from the ‘Hypervigilant’ instagram, which I did shortly after the meeting ended, gaining us around 83 followers so far. She also requested that I post the casting call that day both on the Instagram and the Facebook pages. I added a caption which I felt captured people’s attentions and made the film seem exciting to work on, added some hashtags to get better traction, and posted it on the instagram feed & story, and on multiple different facebook groups for uk/scottish actors/ filmmakers. I have attached a photo of the post below. She also gave me the link to the Indiegogo fundraising page that she had created, along with a few inspiration images, and asked me to post that on the instagram. I suggested that we should wait a couple of days and post the funding post on Thursday, as leaving time between posts on instagram helps boost their traction within the algorithm and she agreed so I posted one of the inspiration images, along with an exciting caption, on Thursday afternoon, which I have attached below. I posted both instagram posts in the afternoon, around 4pm, as this is when they are most likely to be seen. I also messaged Roisin asking whether I would be able to audition for one of the roles in ‘Hypervigilant’ on Friday and am waiting to hear back about that.

For ‘Us Not Them’ I got a phone call from Hana and Maddie, the producer and 1st AD, asking me to post a casting call to the instagram. They had already created a post however asked me to come up with a caption and post it. I drafted a caption that evening and sent it back to Hana to check it was alright. She made a small change to the wording and sent it back to me to post the next day, which I did, adding a few hashtags and reposting it to the instagram story. I have attached the caption for this below. Whilst we were on the call there was also an issue with the password for the instagram account, however we managed to resolve the issue swiftly. I also followed quite a few other accounts, mostly either fellow students, or accounts related to film in order to boost the support for the film.

We started this week off with a masterclass from Lindsay Watson, an editor currently working in the industry. My 5 main takeaways from this talk were

1. You’re not always going to end up where you think so be open to oppurtunities. Lindsay thought she was going to be doing stills photography and ended up in editing.
2. File management is a key part of being an editor.
3. You need to have familiarity with your editing software before the editing as once you’re in the editing room, everything will be happening very quickly.
4. There is more security with in house editing, and you get to meet important people in the industry- however freelance is more unrestrained, so you can work with who you want and can bounce ideas off each other more.
5. Good communication is essential between the editor & the director/ producer. As an editor, you must tell them timings for the project & individual tasks.

This week I continued working on my 4th year grad films, having meetings and doing tasks for them. We also had a seminar with talks from some older students and from Julie about particular aspects of film and being on set, such as the art department, sound and camera. These were helpful to get a different perspective and understand more about set etiquette and smaller parts of the job that we might not have previously considered.

For Waiting For Marcus we had scheduled a social media meeting on Tuesday, so I met with Sára and Molly and we discussed our social media strategy, and what we wanted for future posts. We decided that I would handle the tiktok whilst Molly would handle the instagram, however we would both help each other out where needed. Sára and I also briefly discussed what we wanted to use as the incentives for the indiegogo page, and we decided on the setup included in the photo below. I was also auditioning for Waiting For Marcus as an actress, and so I had my callback on Saturday. I was auditioning for the role of Lucy, and I auditioned with two other actresses who were auditioning for the role of Charlotte to test for chemistry. In preparation for this, I read the full script and then practiced the section which I was going to be auditioning with, trying a few different styles to see which worked.

For Hypervigilant I heard back from Roisin that she liked the second version of my casting call, and requested that I upload it to the instagram and distributed it across facebook pages. Unfortunately that day I got injured, so I was unable to work on this for a few days, however I communicated this with her and she was very understanding. In this email I also asked whether we could have a brief meeting to discuss social media strategy and any upcoming posts she might want and so we arranged a meeting for the following Tuesday.