1.1       Describe areas for development in your current knowledge, understanding and skills 

I am very interested in acting in film, but also directing in film. I’ve had some experience in film making; in 2017 I helped film a political art video on behalf of the artist Joanna Rajkowska, which was shown in her London exhibition. I’ve acted in my friends short film; ‘Halloween Dropout’ by Ada Urbaniak which was part of an international Young People’s film competition, screened in London at a film festival.

Also, I would see myself taking the roles of an actor in my Academy film. Potentially a director too, so I could experience control of numerous important film making areas e.g. filming to blocking scenes.

Hopefully, I will gain confidence in myself and my abilities, understanding of the film making process, access to the film making industry and to broaden my horizons of potential future careers/ areas I could pursue; whether that be within the acting industry or a producer.

I would like to understand the process of making a film better, because I used to make films in my spare time but never took them seriously. But once I know the true professional technique, I could develop my own projects and make them a significantly better standard; allowing me to publish them and possibly progress in a more serious film career. Secondly, improving my acting in film skills will benefit my acting skills all together; as I would then have theatrical drama skills as well as on-film skills, helping me pursue a possibly career in acting. I plan to experience acting in film further, hence my participation in the BFI Film Academy, which will also hopefully help me decide of I wish to study other aspects of film further.

1.2       Take a role in the production of a short film

My chosen production role is the Director and Actor. To plan for my role/s I think I will practice my acting on screen, by getting involved in more acting opportunities e.g. NSPCC commercial which I play an abused 16 year old, which I managed to get involved in after I chose the role. Also, I will research the roles and responsibilities a Director has, in order to act appropriately in my group.

In pre-production I will help decide on how the story should be conveyed technically, emotionally via the acting, costumes, locations and organisation of my peers whilst working as a group; advising them on how they should be doing certain things e.g. the camera person; I will advise them on the best type of shots for when we are filming, and I shall run rehearsals for the actors, etc. In production I will have a major role in telling the rest of the crew the most effective ways to do their jobs; especially the actors and any extras, I will run through the scenes, multiple times if necessary, in order to make sure they look as good as they can and the actors have met their potential. Post-production my role will be less significant and prominent, but I will still advise crew members; I will help guide the editors choices, in terms of sound and scene length and organise credits. 

In order to fulfil my role successfully as a director I need to have good communication, team work, leadership and management/organisational skills as well as creativity, education and understanding of my role. I also think I will need patience and determination during the production process; often creative directorial choices clash with the ideas of other crew members; causing conflict. Therefore, in moments like that, I would need creative flexibility, patience and open-mindedness to get past the disagreement and come up with a satisfactory solution. As well as making hard decisions at times.

As an actor, I will need numerous important skills and features; confidence, creativity, perseverance, thoughtfulness and communication skills. In order to cooperate with others I would need to be patient and determined, especially if there are any scenes that need several retakes. Communication skills are massively important in regards to the latter, as I need to be able to understand I’ve been expected to do, in what way, and to be able to tell others if a certain performance demand wasn’t working for me. Creativity is significant in film making as an actor, because it means I could offer interesting interpretations to lines and to a character, consequently making the film more intriguing and skilful in its visual presentation. 

As a director I don’t think I will need any major equipment other than organisational equipment like a notebook, pen, checklist; I would use the notebook to keep a list of things to do, check, advise throughout each stage of the production and a checklist for each crew member to make sure they’re on track and performing to their best ability. 

The resources I will need in my film production will be a camera to film with, locations, extras, costumes, possibly extra lights, maybe microphones, computer for editing with an editing software and importantly the help of others; the producer!

1.3       Gain feedback on how you performed your role

What did I do well?

• I stayed focus throughout the shoot day, demonstrating teamwork because I kept concentrated on the tasks at hand
• I helped direct the acting, especially when scenes were taking multiple takes due to the director’s intention being difficult to translate into acting; this sped up the filming process and I demonstrated directorial qualities
• I helped out with the lighting when the rest of my crew were busy with other technical sides to the filming; I took initiative in areas that I wasn’t fully confident in; good teamwork
• I stepped in quickly and confidently to edit the short film, despite having no past experience and edited it within the time limit, gave other crew members tasks to do e.g. looking for certain sound effects, and edited the short film very well given the circumstances and improvisation

Areas for improvement;

• Initially more involvement; as an actor on set, don’t just focus on preparing for the scene; help transport equipment/ learn how to set up the camera to help the efficiency of location changes and endorse more teamwork
• Communication; similar to the latter, I initially went divided naturally into groups of similar roles; talking to the other actor. Really, I should be talking to everyone about how I feel about certain things to do with the production, to create a team rather than a divided group

How I overcame some of the areas of improvement;

• Initially I wasn’t involving myself in all areas of the production team and production/ filming processes like setting up equipment, checking sound and carrying extra stuff. I overcame this lack of involvement by observing more; I observed how the camera is set up, so I could step in to help at any time and overlooked shooting scenes that I weren’t in, to offer acting advice and see how it works in case I had to step in
• Through observing others, I was able to communicate better with others because I adopted more of an understanding of their duty.
• Initially I wasn’t fully comfortable with the whole of my production crew, because we were under pressure of time and generally quite tense due to lack of experience and the obligation to get it right. Hence I felt like I rushed my acting, particularly in the first scene, because I was nervous and under pressure, having never done official acting on screen before I wanted to get it right. As an actor I’m used to theatre acting, so I felt like my acting wasn’t great because it felt minimalistic, to overcome this anxiety and potential weak performance, I would ask the director what she wanted me to get across before a shot and if it was satisfactory after the shot. I also spoke with my co worker who I was acting with, rehearsing certain shots to see if it felt right and also to get a sense of chemistry before under the pressure of the camera.

During the shoot day, edit day and the overall production process, I worked quite well within my team. I communicated with others my ideas for certain shots, sounds, acting; even if it wasn’t an area focused on by my role; an outside perspective could be useful and especially advising an actor being an actor myself, I think was useful for others. I took initiative when acting as the sound designer; before the shoot day I listed all the sounds I wished to record considering the different ‘Atmos’ for each scene in the script, throughout the day I altered that list when faced with the resources and other limitations like time. Then I stepped in and told people what I expected them to do, getting numerous people involved and to listen to the recordings, taking other ideas. On the edit day I volunteered to act as the editor and edit the short film when our editor couldn’t make it; this was quite scary for me as my key roles in the production are sound designer, actor, potential assistant director; I hadn’t prepared for the role of editor or had any experience using the Premiere software nor editing under a tight time schedule. However, I used leadership skills in giving different crew members different things to do like creating the credits, looking for certain songs and sound effects; this sped up the editing process and strengthened our teamwork. I also managed to work well under pressure, used organisational skills; writing all potential transitions when going through my initial edit, listing all the sounds needed and songs needed and technical transitions I needed assistance with.

Overall, communication under pressure was the main challenged I faced and working as a team during edit day.

My advice to someone working on a film production, as an actor/director/sound designer/editor would include;

• When getting into character as an actor, make sure the emotional environment is established and firstly that you feel fully comfortable and relaxed with the rest of the crew/ people around you -otherwise it shows in the performance and you could rush out of pressure. Acting on screen is difficult due to the intimacy of the set; the cameraman typically quite close and the rest of the crew around you, therefore it can be hard to get into and keep in character. The director and cameraman should keep rolling and work around the actor.
• As an actor try to get as much feedback on your performance from the director after/before each shot so you can feel comfortable and confident in your acting, bettering your performance. The relationship between the director and yourself, as an actor, should be open, positive and understanding.
• During shoot day make sure to look over your shots, especially important ones, to make sure there are no errors in the colour, image, sound, etc. For example in my short film, we shot a very cinematic outside scene and only shot the wide shot once and during edit it was very exposed, so the colour looked grainy and different from the close-up shots; partly ruining the overall aesthetic of the film.
• Develop a good relationship with your fellow actor and understand their character; this will allow you to work together and discuss scenes, especially intimate ones, so that you both feel comfortable, improving your performance. It’s crucial to be able to see the character not the actor during shooting a scene, and this can be done by having a close relationship with them, so that you understand each others characters, their relationships and when you perform it creates a good overview. Rehearsing scenes beforehand can help develop this rapport. I did this during the outside scenes when me and David were shoving each other, quickly choreographing for safety and smoothness.
• As a sound designer, always mention what doesn’t work; don’t be scared to be outspoken. Since sound is such a cubical element to a film, if you desire a certain sound which will be required for a scene, you must make sure you achieve that aim and get all the Atmos’s right. Then, during the final edit, the sound will already there and won’t require too much time of editing trying to make it sound better. I did this during shoot day, as I got other crew members involved so I could create the desired sound. Also so I could expiermet to try and find the perfect sound of what atmosphere I was trying to capture e.g. I muffled one mic with two coats and muffled the camera mic with a hat, moving it to create a fuzzy sound and then slowly rubbing the different textured coats against the other to create a different distorted sound of silence and a layering effect. I used this in the final edit, on top of white noise, to create a disorientating overall sound scape when Sam goes deaf and distressed after being in a car accident.

1.4     Review own technical skills and use of equipment

Referring back to my feedback, I agree that I was flexible in my support and collaboration, e.g. helping with the lighting even though that wasn’t my responsibility as much as the sound designer, actor and editor. Although, I don’t think I was focused throughout the shoot day. Especially near the end, I would focus on things outside of the production, making me loose focus and quality of performance e.g. I kept corpsing when trying to act seriously during one of the last shots, slowing down the process and wasting valuable time. On the other hand, I agree with the targets for next time (what I didn’t do so well according to my crew members) which was mainly communication because I found myself asking a lot of questions before certain shots to the director, because I hadn’t been engaging with her discussion to the cameraman at what she was expecting from the shot.

Especially as the Sound Designer, I think I carried out my roles very well in production. My strengths include being able to share my ideas and advising others, using a range of equipment; as the sound designer I used two different microphones to experiment with sound distortion, communicating with others as well as considering their ideas. Also, working hard throughout the production process, whether that be reminding others of their duties, bringing extra supplies like gloves and snacks for the shoot day for others to use in case the weather changes and they’re unprepared. Technically, my challenges included general understanding of all the equipment e.g. the camera; even though that wasn’t my specialised area in terms of my role in production, understanding the basics of how it worked could have benefitted the efficiency of filming; when the cameraman’s stamina wore down in the last few hours, I could have stepped in or helped film. However, not understanding all the equipment meant there was more potential for the filming to go wrong as I wouldn’t have been aware of the workings on set.

Initially, my technical filmmaking skills in terms of editing were very limited. Throughout the course they developed because I learnt about different tools to use on Premiere like layering of images and sound, adding reverb to recorded audio, separating/ deleting and moving audio separately to the shot, adding and editing the duration of a range fo transitions. At first I only knew the basics; how to cut and move clips and import media. Also, my skills with mics developed through my experimentation as sound designer on the shoot day. I used the boom mic and the camera mic to create a muffled, distorted sound, I wrapped the boom in several layers, developing an understanding of the different texture responses and the power the boom has in picking up long-distant sound. I’ve learnt a lot about production documents too, for example shot lists, they take a long time but are very crucial for shoot day. Additionally, the actual script remains important throughout the production, shoot day; the actors should refer to it for lines and the sound designer for the desired atmospheres and on edit day the blocking of the film has to match the script.