...You don't have to feel safe to feel unafraid.
Today brought a spark of almost-sort of-maybe progress for me. My production company has had the .com url for the group name for some time now, but up until today we'd done nothing with it. This was beginning to frustrate me as it was sitting there, professional, beautiful, and so empty. Thus, I took it upon myself to attempt to fill it. Having upgraded my MacBook to a MacBook Pro recently, I find myself in possession of a brilliant little piece of software called 'iWeb'. This is a website building program, and it is gloriously simple to use. No longer must I slave away at the nightmare that is Adobe Dreamweaver. After not a very long time at all, I have created all the necessary pages for the site, and put as much content on it as I can at the present moment. For those who are interested, I will post the link to the site at the end of this blog - though I cannot promise that the site will have updated - I'm no computer wizz, and I'm not quite sure how to post it to the domain.
On another positive note, our group has created an 'indiegogo' page and a rather cute little video to go alongside it. Indiegogo is a website through which people can obtain funding for projects that require a higher budget than they can produce through their own income - and since our documentary plans are quite ambitious, we will certainly require this funding. There are a number of 'perks' available to those who do donate, varying in value depending on the contribution they make. If you are interested in our documentary, or perhaps even feeling generous enough to aid us in the production of it, I will also be posting the link to our indiegogo page.
As time goes on, I am, admittedly, realising how ill-suited I am for time on-set in our productions. It is a shame, really, because I used to love setting up a camera and bringing my mental images into reality, although that didn't happen very often. This year of my course truly does seem to be about discovering the roles we want to/ should pursue as careers once we're finished with university, and as you will know, I have been struggling with this. We had a workshop directing two professional actors only yesterday, and I displayed my incredible ineptitude for directing quite plainly. When it came to seeing the actors perform, and thinking, 'That's not really how I imagined it', I would just stand there, looking at them. Their performances were always brilliant, but they weren't what I wanted, and I couldn't tell them. I seemed to lose the inability to speak, opening my mouth and hearing silence. Even when it came to calling 'action' and 'cut' my volume was so low that I had to say it twice on occasion, because the camera operators didn't hear me.
As one can see, I'm clearly not the right sort of person to be commanding a group of actors and crew members, and so I find myself experimenting behind the scenes. When devising our short drama film, my head began swimming with mental images of the main character, and as soon as I had contact with plain paper I was drawing him. So I'm now putting myself in the role of creating concept art for the piece. Another thing I recently discovered I enjoy is Adobe After Effects. Special Effects in film and television have always been something I am interested in, since I am a lover of the science fiction and fantasy genres. I never really thought of it as something for me to specialise in, but what I have done so far with the program has been relatively simple, and certainly good fun - though I realise that the better I want to get, the harder it will become to use. And finally, I have started attempting editing. Despite my disastrous performance of directing yesterday, we left the workshop with footage that is definitely 'good'. The chief editor within our group set us a challenge within group - we'll all have a little go at editing the piece and then compare the results after. I lept to the occasion with enthusiasm, and whilst I have found it somewhat difficult, I'm sure it could have been worse - and I am quite proud of my achievements for a first attempt. When I get a moment, I will upload these endeavours onto my personal youtube channel for all to see, and I will post that link in my next blog.
Links:
http://www.indiegogo.com/stamped?c=home
http://www.badduckproductions.com/SiteBad_Duck_Productions/Bad_Duck_Productions.html
So, for the first time in a while, I am rounding off a blog post on a positive note. Whilst I am still worried about whether I'm suited for the course, or whether I'll succeed in my attempts, I have finally found tasks that I can occupy myself with and enjoy, and I plan to focus on those. Thank you to all who have endured my ramblings.
Turn End,
Devan.
Having, just re read your post; Adobe After Effects, re "what I have done so far with the program has been relatively simple, and certainly good fun - though I realise that the better I want to get, the harder it will become to use." We all start somewhere, no one is a born 'expert'. Ask a programmer what was the first thing they wrote and the chances are it will be "Hello World! You move on from those early 'simple?' beginnings, by challenging yourself to do something, bigger, better, more complicated and stretching. Whilst it may be challenging if you are enjoying it it won't necessarily be harder. Someone has more than likely already been there done that and got the T Shirt. So you have this wonderful tool called the internet, friends, tutors and books where you can ask/look for to help move you forward. Just take it in small steps, and try to learn something new each day. Doing something you enjoy is never hard, just challenging at times :0)
ReplyDeleteThe same goes for editing!