Film Directors

Overview

When we watch movies, we often do not realize the amount of work the director put into the movie. Like an artist, each movie director has his or her own style of movie and if you watch closely, you can see common themes and styles in the director's movies.

You will choose a director to research and study. Use this list if you need help choosing a director: http://www.cockeyed.com/personal/directors/directors.php.

Sign up for a director.

Directions

Conduct some research on the background of your director. Try to find interesting parts to his life and what inspired and prompted him to become a director. Emphasis and give examples of the obstacles he or she faced. The background should not be a typical bio and longer than the sample text below.

Do cover general information like their family, day they were born, etc unless it is really really interesting.

Do cover the following topics. Your answers do not have to be long and remember to concentrate on the interesting answers while combining some questions to make it more smooth.

    • City they grew up in and how it influenced them, if any, in their directing
    • Who inspired them when growing up and if they had any influences on their directing
    • Education background in terms of where they learned film concepts/education
    • How did they first get into the film industry and why
    • What obstacles did they face along the way to becoming a successful director
    • Why did they become successful? Which movie lifted them to this status?
    • -
    • Talk about two different common themes, methods of filming/cuts, special effects, etc that is characterized by the director and can be seen in at least 2-3 of his movies. Talk about them and compare them. Use screenshots, images, and/or video clips to show while explaining this.

Interview

You will pretend to be that director and you will ask someone to interview you and ask you questions. You don't have to ask the exact questions but the answers need to cover the answers to the content from the bullets above. If you cannot find certain answers, indicate that in your posterous that you left that out. You need to try your best to dress like they do. If they wear glasses, you try to wear them. If they are a man and you are a girl, wear a hat with your hair up and do your best in appearance while talking with a lower voice. Talk clearly with energy, flow, & humor.

Video

Make up the name of a show that is featuring the interview either on TV or online and give a very brief introduction in a different set of clothes, personality, and voice. Then ask someone to wear a collared shirt and ask you, the director the questions. Film closeup, medium, and over the shoulder shots of the interviewer asking the questions. Then film similar shots of you the director answering them but do not use over the shoulder shots because the camera needs to be close enough so that the audio is loud enough.

Make sure the room or outside has good lighting. When you are finished, edit them in any video editing program and put the clips together. Do not use the same shot back to back when filming the person asking questions or the same back to back shots of you answering different questions. Also, the interviewer or director should never look directly at the camera in an interview.

Add two sound effects and fun intro and closing music. The finished video needs to be under 5min.

Publishing

Go to Film Directors and click "Create Page" at the top right (make sure you are signed in to your class gmail account). Use the name of the TestTube title(s) as your title. Make sure you choose "Put page Under the Page"

Upload this video to castudents password happyhowzit and title the video An Interview with Film Director __________. In the description section of the video, write one sentence describing the video.

Then view your video and click "Share" to the right of the "Add to" -- then click Embed and check mark "Use old embed code" located below the HTML code.

Then go to your page your created and in edit mode, click on the HTML icon on the toolbar and paste your HTML in the box after you delete everything inside the box. Change all the width sizes to "600" and all the height sizes to "385" & click update.

Summary

Then below the video, type our your interview questions in bold and a brief summary in italics. Make sure that the text format is the same as the rest of the site. Do not copy and paste text from the Internet, all has to be written in your own words or their site may contact me for copyright infringement. At the bottom of your page, type Created by Your Name.

Post

Post the video to castudents and the YT link and the website link and screenshot to posterous. Also send the posterous video to the posterous link as a backup if he size allows.