MASTERCLASS
Week two began with the well achieved writer/director Louis Paxton. Due to me soon to be directing my own film this term I ensured that I took in any information he had to offer, my five main takeaways from this masterclass were as follows.
1. Working with children can be very difficult at times but a great way to go about particularly excitable children is to bribe with food! It is also important for the cast and crew to create a great relationship with the younger actors.
2. Louis also recommended looking to smaller cities to get started with your film career as there are more job opportunities as the industry is smaller and closer.
3. I asked Louis if going to a casting agent is best for some project and he said that if you have the budget for it, it is incredibly useful to go through one. He also said that it never hurts to ask, so sometimes, some casting agents will offer to help cast for a small amount of money if they think that the project is worth it.
4. He also spoke about creating an emotion with younger actors that was real rather than telling them to ‘act it’ as this creates more realistic and truthful acting. For example, in his film Neville is Dead, he made the child actually bored when he was to be acting bored.
5. He also advised us on taking our time and experimenting when directing because it takes time to find the style that you like and bond with the most.
GRAD FILM
I also heard back from the HOD’s of the grad film and scheduled a meeting for the same week! To prep for the meeting I tried to have as much possible to provide them with, and to hopefully have their trust instilled in me from the get go. This included revising over my notes from the last and current week, and as given the idea in this week’s class discussion, making a register list for crew with space for headshots (to prevent annoyance of not knowing who’s who). I also prepped all that I could for the call sheet just to make my life easier in the future. The register that I created included the role, name, phone number, email and headshot, which will be sent out individually to cast and crew when the shoot begins.
In the meeting we discussed the deadline for the casting call to be posted, of which I was in charge of the websites, being backstage and starnow, as I had prior experience using them. Hana, our producer, was in control of the Facebook page call out, and with some help from Hana and I, Ava, our social media manager and runner was in charge of the instagram.
To briefly get going on creating the casting call we discussed ages, overall getting the gist from Louis about how he envisions the characters, and any important skills that the they needed, such as being able to drive a car. We also discussed the necessity of some of the smaller characters, which gave Louis something to think about for his next draft.
We also set a deadline for the graphic designers to have both a portrait and square casting call for us, meaning a deadline for the longline and synopsis too!
Location scouting was discussed but not too much pressure was added. The main desired aspects were noted such as “can’t be too close to a main road” and “need to check car parking prices”. We decided on Hana doing a call out on a local app for any suggestions for one of our locations and decided to keep an eye for the rest (for the time being).
The final roles we needed to fill were also discussed, such as caterer and sound designer, and as a result of this, I made sure to contact any students with access to a kitchen who may be interested in catering and a friend that is currently studying at Abbey Road Institute of Music for a potential sound designer.
We also spoke about some post production aspects like affording submissions to film festivals and added it to something to think on but not put much urgency to at this moment. We also set a deadline for Hana to put up an indigogo page for the project.
An important aspect for me to cover was ensuring that all of the crew had an easy way to communicate with us, so I got the log in for the film’s google drive and email and shot an email to everyone on the team. I acquired their phone numbers to add to a WhatsApp chat (as this is the most accessible online communication for everyone).
Overall my first time meeting the entirety of the HOD’s was a wonderful experience and I’m glad to be helping such motivated and ‘on the ball’ people.
