Directions - Evaluation

"You have many years ahead of you to create the dreams

 that we can't even imagine dreaming."

- Steven Speilberg 

I started this unit off by choosing a director and research him. I decided to choose Steven Spielberg, mainly because of his film 'Bridge of Spies' (2015) about an American lawyer who's recruited to defend an arrested Soviet spy during the Cold War'. I was hoping to recreate this film, but discovered it was too dialogue-driven and decided to do 'Catch Me If You Can' (2002) instead which is about Frank Abagnale who, before his 19th birthday successfully conned millions of dollars worth of checks as a Pan Am pilot, doctor and legal prosecutor.

On the project I worked independently on the planning, research and edit for the project. When it came to filming I got Gavin as my camera operator, Simon on sound and Morgan on lighting/set assistance. The crew worked very well together and even tho we were pressured by time no one got overly stressed and angry, everyone kept doing their job, acting professionally, all keen on making the project as good as possible. It's a crew I'd happily work with again any time. 

The actors I used for this project was Aaron Phairon as Carl Hanratty, Alec Porter as Frank Abagnale,  Peter Thorburn as Chief of police, Gerald Newcomb as the tailor and Linda Russell as the B&B owner. All my actors had some degree of acting experience, either as a working actor, recent graduate from acting school or were acting in projects at a younger age.

I posted the roles of Carl Hanratty, Frank Abagnale and the chief of police on Castingcallpro and had people applying for all of them. I decided to have audition over Skype to chat with those who applied to talk about the project and to hear the actors read some lines from the script. For the roles of the B&B owner and the tailor I went to two of the locations where I was going to film and asked if the owners would be interested in acting and whether they had any experience or not. Both of them said yes to taking part in the project and both had previous experience in acting. 

I got my full cast approximately 2 weeks before shooting. To make sure that none of them dropped out I kept sending them info, asking what they would want to eat on set, whether they'd be able to provide their own  costume or not etc. 4 days before shoot I also called all of the actors to make sure they were OK with everything, that they had received the call sheet, read through the script etc and of course to confirm that they weren't going to drop out. 

The locations I used was Medway Little Townhouse, Penguin Suits and Medway Council, all located in Rochester and Chatham, 5-10 minutes car drive between. The locations worked very well considering I was making a periodic piece. I did a lot of prop work to make it more realistic and make it look like 1960. Not having done a periodic piece before I found it very interesting as it forced me to research everything from whether or not B&B's were around in 1960 (whether I could use it as location or not), general props and costume (how were people dressed, what did the interior in the houses look like), music (what kind of instruments were popular, what kind of genre, jazz, rock) e.g. 

When choosing the scene I didn't take into consideration how hard it would be to get a gun for the bedroom scene. Getting permission from Kent Film Office and Kent Police were pretty easy and done in 2 days, getting the gun itself was way harder than I thought as I didn't find any place that could sell me a realistic prop gun or let me rent one. I ended up getting in contact with a 1st year at USA studying Design for Theatre, Film and Performance who had an airsoft gun from 1940-50 which I could borrow and use for my shoot. 

Even though we were behind schedule on both days due to actors being late, things taking longer than expected and less time on set than planned etc,  the shoot went pretty well. The actors did great and so did the crew. I had to come up with some alternative shots on set at some point as I saw that we wouldn't be able to shoot all the coverage that I originally had planned. Even though I still feel that I'm lacking some close ups and other angles so you can see more of the characters faces I feel the edit and the shots works well over all. I managed to be a lot more creative with the camera work in this one than in the last one, using both pull focus, cross tracking and breaking the 4th wall. 

I'm very happy that I decided to shoot the project on a 5D mk III as I ended up with a lot less grain than what I did on my first project and it also enabled me to do the focus pulls easier and using a lower f/stop which created more depth in field. 

The goal for this unit was to understand the creative elements controlled by the director, learn how directing works and to learn to direct in a way that you feel works well. 

I found this unit very interesting and it thought me a lot of things that I didn't already know. Workshops with Steve Finn was very helpful as he showed me ways look at the images and the framing which I hadn't thought of before. I have done some directing of short films before, but never had anyone to tell me or give me advice of how to direct better or what to look at/be aware of when directing. Although I enjoy directing, I don't think I want to be one as I enjoy being behind camera and pressing the record button way more. But that said, this unit has definitely thought me a bunch of things, like how much work it is to be a director and how much- and at the same time how little, input the director has on the project, and has made me feel more confident and more prepared for the next time I'll be directing a project.