Overview
So the first official week of the course has come to an end already - I've successfully been introduced to the course and my initial thoughts are mixed. It is completely different to what I've done before at school as basically I've been used to sitting in class being spoon-fed the work, but here I can tell the course is already a lot more independent and a lot more creative. But despite this, I can say that I'm already motivated and excited to start the course!
On our first day of the course, we were briefly introduced into the different units of the course, timetable, what rooms are where etc. However after this we were led into our first unit - storytelling.
Story telling - what is it? We were asked, which although may seem a simple question I found quite hard to answer considering it was the first academic question I've been asked since I've finished school back in June. Nevertheless, Simon then went on to give the main ingredients needed for a script which at first may seem obvious yet helpful to recap (e.g. characters, locations, etc). This then led to the less obvious story ingredients which are split into 3 main ingredients. Firstly, the main protagonist must have a goal - this could be something the protagonist needs to solve or something they don't have. Nevertheless, every story should have a problem, as well as minor problems throughout the story. This furthermore may lead to the change in a story which the protagonist must overcome. Here, there should be a clear difference of character affairs or a evident change within the story that the audience can identify.
After this introduction to story telling, we were then introduced to our first project: Creating a 10 page script which then had to be converted into a 2 minute trailer or the first 2 minutes of our story. The title given was 'The Meeting', and we were also given a few parameters, such as one location, two main characters and to fall in the genre comedy, thriller, or drama. At first I found this project reasonably challenging and found it difficult to come up with an idea which was unpredictable as well as creative.But now, after engaging my project with a personal experience (which I have fictionalised), I think I have come up with a realistic idea for this project!
Whilst we all tried working out what to do for our project, we were given our first deadline a week after (due for the 30th September) which was to come up with a pitch for our project. This at first startled me because it meant we only had a week to come up with an idea for our project! Nevertheless, what is a pitch? Well, this is when we watched a short film called 'Soft' which was a brilliant example of how a short story was told (similar to our project) as well as the meaning(s) the film portrayed. Immediately after watching the film I became very interested in the way Simon Ellis (the director) managed to convey emotions as well as drama within 15 minutes, not forgetting all of the subtle meanings of some parts of the film e.g. the significance of showing the cricket bat earlier in the narrative.
Overall, I'm already excited to start work on my project and the course in general, especially knowing that it will be a new challenge seeing as I've never done moving image work before!