Week 1 (Sept 11 – 15 2023)

This year was straight into working as we didn’t need an induction. We received our new timetable, now with the majority of our lessons with Attila along with one for Fahmida, Nick and CCP. In this first week back with him, Attila introduced us to how this year was going to work slightly differently to how the course has been run before. Attila wants the departments at college to be more interconnected and using each others skills so that we as students can maximise our potential and use each other as resources and contacts while we share a campus before work/ university. I think this idea is great as it’s good for networking and, in our case as film makers, we can ask the actors to feature instead of using each other or general friends. Our first day back in college was pretty limited as Attila explained how this was going to work for us during Fahmida’s lesson, which is now for us to apply context to our productions, through studies of music, literature, etc. To me this version of the course is exciting and will inspire us to mingle and focus on particular areas of our projects. 

For the final day of our first week, Friday was when we got the new cameras out fully and were able to give them a test run, as well as a lecture on focal lengths, the length in millimetres between the optical lens and the camera man’s sensor. Below are some of my notes about focal lengths that are the most important things to remember:

- Normal vision = 50mm (What we as humans always see)

- Wide angle lens = <50mm 

- Telephoto lens = 50mm<

- Lens breathing: refers to the shifting of the angle and         view of the frame

- Angle of view: Optical property that doesn’t change

- The focal length of a story’s shot is defined by the           context of what the filmmaker wishes to capture.

This week we kept to ourselves and built a set in the TV studio that we can keep revisiting and changing for the actors to work in. I was proactive in lifting and securing the flats and we created a small room with space for a door to be added later. I have written a longer piece on this initial set which you can read below. 

Following that, Attila got us doing an exercise as preparation for our adapted screenplays. He told us all to choose a piece of literature and find a page, writing a shot list with focal lengths of how we would turn this into a film. I choose the pages of a Christmas Carol where Scrooge finds Marley’s face on the knocker. In the afternoon, Attila wanted us to test the camera’s by getting into small groups at random and filming one of scenes. My group used my idea, which I directed and edited so we ended up with a 30 second clip using a variety of focal lengths and shots. The 4K footage from the new cameras is awesome to work with and a lot better quality than the JVCs we used last year. Below is the footage we collected.