B. Screenwriting and Tech - Day 2

18th October

Screenwriting

We started the day with a screenwriting course from screenwriter Michelle Duffy. It was a very intensive session, with a lot of knowledge fitted in. We covered genre, structure, pitching ideas, formatting screenplays, characters, and dialogue, as well as watching a few shorts and reading a few screenplays.

I found the session incredibly interesting and useful. I learnt many things about structure of films, something I had never considered before. I also had never thought about pitching ideas, so I found that very interesting as well. The formatting, as I was aware, was incredibly confusing, and I was incredibly grateful when Michelle gave us the names of some free resources we could use for screenwriting. I will definitely be checking celtx out in the future!!

Part way through the session, we got into our groups and created pitches for our 2 films. Members of our groups then pitched them to the rest of the people on the course. Doing this was incredibly useful, as it made us think about our ideas, and receive feedback on how we could improve. Also, any flaws with our ideas were highlighted so that we were aware of any potential problems.

One of our groups pitches

Technology

In the afternoon, we had 3 workshops, on lighting, grips and sound. Our group started in the lighting workshop. We learnt that it was important to light a scene so that the action could actually be seen, although the type of lighting used depended on the atmosphere we wished to create. We learnt about the most basic lighting set-up, three point lighting. The most amazing part of this for me was seeing how big an impact a back light made on the scene, and how it made the film look much more professional. We then had to create a moonlit scene using light. We used a bluey/purpley gel over one light, which helped create the cold sense of moonlight. We softened one other light using special paper, and removed the third light.

We then had a workshop in grip. We looked at many different pieces of grip, including tripods, sliders, dollies, and steadicams. I knew very little about grips, so the workshop was very informative. I found it quite difficult handling the handheld grips, partly because they were very heavy, and partly because they took a lot of skill and steadiness to carry them. We all attempted to then use the vertigo effect, by dollying in and zooming out, and vice versa. It was incredibly difficult, but I managed to do it kind-of by going very slowly.

The last workshop was in sound. I found it incredible that sound was 50% of a film, as I had never thought of it as being especially important. Knowing this, it amazed me even more how few people are used on films to do the sound, and how little considered their role is. We also learnt about foley sound, which is where sounds are recreated in a studio. It was really interesting seeing how different sound effects are made, and really funny knowing that some sounds are made using such weird things.