Reflection

OUR MISSION:

Overall the Cleanliness of Dirt crew working in association with Birdcage Productions had the goal of making a film which wasn’t created to be something greater than just a student film or an assignment.

Our mission was to create a festival and possibly an award-contending short film.

With that my mission was to use the skills I have developed through attending film school as well as working on a range of freelance work to help us achieve our teams’ overall mission.

WHAT I DID:

As many of you in this room I worked on two films, the first was Cleanliness of Dirt, on this film I was hired as the Co-Producer, with that role I put out casting calls, prepared a budget organised accommodation for actors as well as anything else Jordan needed throughout production.

Apart from Co-producer I also became a Camera Operator, and colourist, while I was camera operator I operated the second camera as well as the second Unit when we split to capture internal and external shots to save time.

As the colourist I work with same to understand the feel she needed, then me and Jake would work and a range of different mock ups then send them to Sam to get advice and instruction, one we had landed on a look Sam liked I got Jake to go through and adjust each clip to reflect that, afterwards I would touch up for the final look as well as help troubleshoot any issues.

For my second film I was on Colours of The Dark as camera assistant, essentially, my roles were to build out and rig up the camera to what out DoP needed or wanted, get him what he needed including lenses and support gear and occasionally screw up the focus.

CHALLENGES WE ENCOUNTERED:

One of the biggest was getting the entire crew up to Ballarat and organising overall logistics of getting gear and crew to set and finding a place to stay, then also having to work with a night time schedule.

WHAT I CAN IMPROVE:

• My overall communication, I would have liked to have more open forms of lateral communication so that if things weren’t clear with anyone they could have found out what they needed to know a lot faster and allow them to do their job with more confidence, also more overall top down communication simply would have insured everyone knew what they needed to do as well Know the plans and schedules so they could perform to them, my subpar communication skills is what prevented them from doing what was expected.

• My attempts to get the minor roles involved (would have prevented a lot of the time wasted on set where people where asking what was going on.) – wouldn’t have missed shots, and overall have a much more efficient crew

• Finding more of a suitable pool of actors – speaks for itself, some of the acting was subpar at beast, it I had helped find the actors sooner we could have overcome those issues with by scheduling more auditions and insuring they had the time they needed to workshop and really understand their roles.

• Finding extras that were keen and available – speaks for itself really, I wish I would have been able to find extras that were willing, although the times and locations were a rough with a little harder work I think I would have been able to find a few more viable candidates.

• Improved post production communication and deadlines, overall communication with all members of the post production team would have led to a better flowing post production timeline could have fixed issues with audio syncing, and insuring everyone that needed to play a part did.

• ‘protecting the director’ there were often times where groups of people that weren't needed near camera after takes – just added to pressure and didn’t allow Sam to focus on her vision more of what everyone suggestions were.

GRADE:

Overall I believe I deserve a Credit mainly because I feel like there is always room for improvement, there are areas I feel I did not too bad in and others that need a lot of work, and getting a score like a credit or a distinction allow me to identify areas I need to improve on to insure that I give more than I have this trimester.

Overall feedback:

Hearing people say its the best visually looking film has made me feel proud of our team and what we have been able to achieve as a crew