Careers Inquiry (Film directing)

How can I be successful in the career of Film directing?

Careers Timeline (direct steps to become a successful director)

Weekly reflections

Reflection week 1

This week I have made a strong start in my career Inquiry. I have answered all my research questions using Google. I have also contacted and arranged to meet in person with my expert. I have managed to do all my work at school, I have not fallen behind as I did in some of my previous Inquiry’s; instead, I have kept up to date and I feel like I am where I should be completion wise. I have learned that there are many different skills and attributes needed to be a successful director, such as Technological literacy, film conjunction and more. I didn’t know what film conjunctions were so I Googled about them and found out that they are the frequent occurrence of an object, scenario or character in a specific genre of film. I have also been making sure to add (own thoughts) information to my notes document. I think this is an important thing to do because it forces me to really think about the question rather than just finding, reading and copy/pasting an answer. So far I am really enjoying this Inquiry. I have wanted to come up with a more detailed plan for my career in filmmaking for a while now but I didn’t know what job I really wanted to have in the film industry. After considerable deliberation I went for film directing as it best provides the aspects of filmmaking that I enjoy most.

Reflection week 2

This week has been quite difficult, my expert told me that they can no longer do the face-to-face interview with me, nor can they offer any answers to my questions via email! On a positive note they did offer me some in-the-workplace experience for mid March. I will definately be taking them up on that because I would love to experience what it's like on a budgeted film set. I have found a new expert and organised a face-to-face interview with them. I will be extremely pressured next week as my new interview is scheduled for Sunday this weekend. This means I will only be able to start my report then. I am a bit worried about this from a time pressure perspective especially as the deadline appears to be on friday afternoon at the end of the school day, meaning I won’t be able to spend time on the weekend working on getting this Inquiry completed. I have learned a few more things about being a film director this week. I have learned that getting a BFA (Bachelor of Fine Arts) degree is suggested as a must have by most of my research sources. I have learned more about what a director does and i’ve found out that the directors are actually hired to assist with the script as well as direct later down the track. I did not realise the director had such a deep involvement with the script. It means I will need to get a reasonable result in English which is something to bear in mind.

Reflection week 3

This week I have been under a huge amount of time pressure and stress. This is mainly due to the fact that my expert was only available for interviewing on the Sunday of the second week of the Inquiry. Because she was the second director I had contacted and directors are notoriously busy people I decided to go for it. I am very glad that I did the interview and that it was face to face. I found that the engagement is much higher when talking to someone directly rather than in some of my previous Inquiry’s where I would just email my expert. The information I got from my expert, I would say, was worth more than all my other research combined. My expert had over 12 years of experience in directing and was more than qualified to answer all of my questions in great detail. Which she did. I have learnt what I can do as a part time job in order to gain the necessary practical skills to be a successful film director and also what subjects I should pursue in year Ten through to film school and beyond. Overall, I have found this Inquiry to be my favourite Inquiry yet. The knowledge I have gained from it makes me feel much more capable of achieving my aspirations of becoming a successful film director as a full time career. When I first saw Sean Galdemans career plan and it’s length of over one thousand words I couldn’t possibly imagine being able to add that amount of detail into my own. I worked extremely hard on mine spending hours of my time researching the necessary information to create a highly detailed career plan. When it reached completion I ran a word count and found that I had written over two thousand words of highly detailed quality work! I also put in over 11 hours of work into my report this weekend in an effort to get it done to the standard that I wanted. The word count on that is just under two thousand seven hundred! I am very proud of the effort and hard work I have put into this Inquiry and I hope to carry this work ethic into not only my future Inquiry’s but also any other work I do in my future life. Including film directing.