Commission: Directing

In my commission project, among many other jobs I am directing. Something thats really inspired my directing was a masterclass I had last year where British award-winning director for film and TV is screenwriter Farren Blackburn came in and discussed his professional career in directing. I felt very inspired by what he had to say and it influenced my 'Directions Unit' Project at the time.

When having meetings to discuss new projects, Blackburn often uses mood boards to show how he wants things to look like and refers to different movies, but he never uses stills from movies to say exactly how he'll do it. I too for my project designed a storyboard for how I wanted my promotional video to go, as it would help me visualise how I wanted my piece to look.

Farren Blackburn 
However, he doesn't use shot-lists or storyboards unless it's something big, visual effect. "I know my blocking and I know my action. I know what I want when I go on the floor and work with the actors, but I'm also flexible if they have any inputs. The reason why I don't do shot list and storyboards is to avoid being locked to a set up."This is very unique for a director, as storyboarding can be key. I feel my project is big enough to justify a storyboard as I technically have to make three separate videos (One 90 second promotional video, one website banner video [promo video cut down] and three 20 second clips of specific areas).  
Blackburn said towards the end of his presentation that he doesn't think any director has a specific trademark or signature voice, like we are lead to believe. He said he used to worry about that in the beginning of his career but since  felt that he needed to have a trademark to be a director. But that trademark and that"voice" is something subconscious that you probably won't even know that you have before you have done loads and loads of work. He believes that a lot of your signature voice is portrayed in your work through your own character and what you are like as a person. I agree with this and even have researched other directing masterclasses and one that I really enjoyed was 'Ron Howard Teaches Directing; Ron Howard made his first film in 22 days with $602,000. He is known today as the Oscar-winning director of Apollo 13 and A Beautiful Mind. One think he says is “We all have an instinct; Back up that instinct with craft”. This makes perfect since, we all do have instinct but we don't all have the craft to back this up. However, the point that relates most to my project was “It doesn’t matter how big your crew is. It doesn’t matter how much money you have to spend. Its what you’re capturing inside the frame-lines thats gonna have this impact on the audience”. I have little to no crew. I have resorted myself an animator and asked one of my peers to help me with setting up lighting etc to go around with me on the shoot.

https://www.masterclass.com/classes/ron-howard-teaches-directing?utm_source=Paid&utm_medium=YouTube&utm_term=Aq-Prospecting&utm_content=Video&utm_campaign=RH


Although this is only a promotional video, I will still be directing people. Because I want actuality in my video to show the studio is an active, busy place, it makes sense I direct people doing their jobs so I can film it. This could include someone making coffee in the cafe, or someone driving a forklift, working in gallery, moving stuff around and rigging up lighting etc.


“As a director you have to move beyond your intuition” 



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