Directors Journal

As the Director of my production company, it was my responsibility to

administer the filming process, as well as the narrative and who it was
conveyed to the audience in a comprehensible and compelling manner. It
was also my job to critic the editor and cinematographers work, in order
to produce a successful opening sequence, which exemplified a range of
shots shown correctly and smooth editing, taking into account the pace
and how each shot transitioned to the next; in order to establish realism
and professionalism. Due to the fact I am a natural leader, and am able to
cope in situations under pressure, whilst defining what needs to be done, I
found it easy to aid my group in the direction we needed to go to, in order
to obtain success. An example of this was the change in location. Firstly,
we decided to film a flashback scene to of the protagonist was kidnapped
in an alleyway. However, when watching this footage, it came to my
attention that the actual abduction wasnt as effective as I hoped for. In a
thriller, a fundamental factor is to have the audience at the edge of their
seats, due to the tension and action within the piece. Therefore I decided
we should film the protagonist being tied up in a shed, rather than just
being kidnaped and cutting to her trying to escape. This is because when
watching a thriller, I was aware of the codes and conventions which
epitomized the idea that the action needed to be evident from the off set.
As well as this, due to the fact I was familiar with my group members but
were not best friends with them, made it easier for me to constructively
criticise areas of their work and tell them the truth about what needed to
be done, as well as how to improve the film as a whole. An example of this
was the editing process. Although our editor had previous experience of
editing due to her GCSEs, certain areas of her transitions lacked a swift
flow. Luckily, I was able to justify areas of the film which lacked
smoothness, and she was able to modify her work, in order to aid the
realism of our piece.
As a Director, I encountered many hardships during the filming process,
which created complications in which I had to solve. For example, when
casting the roles for our movie, we envisioned four antagonists and one
protagonist. However, due to the unreliability of a minority of the actors
we casted, we minimalized the roles into two antagonists and one
protagonist. Despite this predicament, I practically asserted my initiative
and changed the narrative structure slightly, in order to utilise the original
antagonists traits and personas, but to also make sense of having two
less characters within the opening sequence. As well as this, I had to exert
a form of austerity when filming. This is because the actors got bored
when awaiting instruction, and therefore were prone to distraction. In
order to prevent this, I constantly involved the actors with what shots
were going to happen next, rather than leaving them out whilst the editor,
cinematographer and I discussed our vision. This was effective, because
the actors were then aware of where they needed to be in the frames
which sped the filming process up.
In terms of team work, I believe although my group thrived to produce a
successful two minute opening sequence, there was a lack of
communication and deadlines were established at the last minute. This
caused many altercations, for example the cancelling of certain filing
dates and bad work ethic in later filming dates. This is was later resolved
by making a Whatsapp group containing the cinematographer, editor and
I, as well as another group containing the actors also. This was effective,
because everyone knew when filming fates were and what they needed to
bring in terms of mise en scene and camera equipment. As well as this, at
times, the cinematographer found it difficult to film certain shots
effectively, which led to a tedious filming process of wasted time and
therefore annoyed actors. In order to resolve this, I specifically
demonstrated a step by step plan of what I wanted her to carry out and
how to exemplify each shot effectively. For example she kept using the
camera free hand which produced a shaky and unprofessional shot.
Therefore to resolve this issue, I told her to use the tripod and film the
same shot more than once in order to compare which one is better, whilst
improving how she delivers her shots I the long run. Overall, my group
worked efficiently, and were able to adapt their work from instruction in
order to make it better. As well as this, we had good work ethic when
filming, because we were all motivated to get the work done to the
highest standard as possible. On top of this, we all obtained mutual
respect for one another and both members took on my critics without any
delay or counter argument. If they disagreed with any pints raised by me
or each other, it was easy for us to initiate a compromise, which in the
long run, aided the opening scene as a whole. An example of this was
during the ideas process for our film. There were many disagreements in
what the film was going to be about, which was due to our differences in
genres we watched. I like horror/thriller genres, whilst the other two
members preferred science fictions and rom coms. However, we had to
exemplify elements of a thriller, because this was our chosen genre,
therefore we adapted all of our ideas to relate to a thriller.
Overall, despite having issues with the deviation from the original
narrative idea, I feel we exemplified a successful opening sequence, which
epitomized elements of a thriller, whilst creating a verisimilitude and
tension throughout the audiences experience.