“Perhaps it sounds ridiculous, but the best thing that young filmmakers should do is to get hold of a camera and some film and make a movie of any kind at all.” - Stanley Kubrick

Everywhere, over the past few weeks, there have been various round-ups of the last ten years. Of course it’s understandable as we’re now into a new decade, but it really is astounding, to me, how long ago ten years seems.

In the year 2000 I was doing my GCSEs, since then I went on to do A-Levels, went to uni, got a degree, went out into the world and started making films. There’s still a long way to go but I’ve already got loads of good (and some bad!) memories of working on various shoots, meeting people and directing my own stuff. Looking back, I’ve come a long long way since 2000, I hope I can say the same thing in 2020 (which really really sounds a long way off doesn’t it!).

So it’s a New Year and after some much appreciated time off I’m back to work. 2010 is the year to make some more cool little films and start getting some paid director work. I’ve got a few ideas for some simple, performance-led, film projects that I hope to make a start on in the coming weeks. I’ve also got loads of work to do to finish off my various projects from last year and put together all the necessary promotional material.

So much of my time is taken up with jobs that don’t involve directing, but kind of contributes to the greater cause. Things like submitting my films to festivals, putting together press packs and burning DVDs. It’s a necessary evil though, because no-one else is going to do this stuff to promote my films. There are thousands of short films made each year and it’s up to me to get my work seen. Hopefully it’s a means to an end though, one day I might be able to afford an assistant or something who could help out with this kind of thing.

What I’m hoping to do with my first project of 2010 is spend some time with a few actors, some character profiles and a basic script, then play around with the story in rehearsal sessions and use that as a tool to develop the characters and the script. I have never really done much rehearsing on my films in the past, time constraints usually make things difficult, but also I’ve wanted to try and keep the performances fresh and new for when the cameras are rolling. This is great in theory, but the upshot of it is that all my time working with actors, giving direction, has been on set, which isn’t exactly the most relaxing atmosphere to experiment in. I’m looking forward to working in the new, rehearsal filled, way just to see what comes out of it. I’ve got a little camera that also shoots nice HD video to easily record any rehearsal sessions if I need and from that I can hopefully work towards a compelling story with some interesting characters and honest performances, which is all anyone wants right?

I’m really keen to shoot it in quite a free and vibrant way too. I think it’s really interesting how used we are to the framing of a standard close-up shot, even though it’s an angle we rarely see in real life. Our eyes see the world in a series of wide and mid-shots and I’d quite like to use a camera in this way for this project. I think if close-ups were used sparingly, they would have much more dramatic effect, rather than being seen as the norm. I don’t know for sure, it needs some experimentation.

I just need to do some basic character work now and weave that into a few scenes, or at least dramatic starting points.

I’ll let you know how it goes.

Filed under: journal entry by Mike | Social tagging: cameras > directing > film festival > shooting