Looking at the Self Directed Project unit in hindsight I can
say with confidence that it was by far my favorite unit of the past two years. One of the things I think that struck me as
so valuable about this unit was that all of the work was practical and not just
theoretical, I have enjoyed our previous units but the theoretical work (while
still very valuable) lacks the experience of actually working towards an end
product. Practical work teaches the kind of thinking and problem solving that
you can only learn by from experiencing it first-hand. Before this unit I was
not completely sold on working in film but after this unit I am very much
interested in the medium and it’s something I very much look forward to gaining
more experience in, hopefully in the grad films as well. I do think that beginning with the styling
project was an excellent introduction to the amount of sourcing we would have
to do during our film projects, especially when dealing with interpretations. There are definitely things I would have done
differently the second time around when it came to the styling project like
choosing a different period for the painting, I feel I could have done a better
recreation out of period but by the time I realized this I had just missed my
window of opportunity. I also had difficult time finding information about my
actual painting or I anything directly related to its subject matter other than
the blurb that is displayed with it in the National Gallery, any books
containing analytical texts referencing the painting were academic texts and
were either far too expensive or unavailable in the time that I needed it to
be. Time management was definitely a
large part of this project for both the painting and filming parts of this and was
something that I struggled with however feel that I progressed with that in
this unit when it was under my control.
Working with the Film Course on this project was definitely
an eye opener. My personal experience
working on the film that I designed was incredibly frustrating- my director
left everything until the very last minute (we didn’t even have an actor until
the night before- no measurements, no fittings) and he was incredibly difficult
to get a hold of. As frustrating as this was I do appreciate that this was an
excellent exercise in staying professional in the face of being incredibly
frustrated but as helpful as that was I think it would be an improvement on the
project if the Film students next year were given more of a briefing on what
costume requires such as our budgets and preparation time (measurements,
fittings would be ideal though I know many actors come in from London and have
travel expenses to think about) and though we did do our best to explain it to
them it would be nice if they had a lecture from tutors beforehand on how to
work with us and exactly what our roles are. I don’t think there was any
malicious intent in the way that costume was treated by film, but I do think
that in some cases there was a bit of honest confusion that added extra strain.
Costume Prop Pro is definitely one of the invaluable parts
of this unit, particularly our training time with Clare Collins. As someone who
does work well with technology I really enjoyed getting to see they kind of
systems that are used professionally as well as getting a chance to gain the
ability to use a tool that is specified to and
prevalent in our industry. That being said there were moments that I
wanted never to see Costume Prop Pro again but I think that was just to do with
the learning curve with all completely unfamiliar programs. It does seem a bit
buggy at times as well and currently won’t take any of my .jpeg photos for my
supervising file (I got them uploaded on the laptop and then realized I couldn’t
print and re-did it on the desktop only to have it not upload my photos and
then find out the desktop wasn’t printing either. Not my best moment with technology) I am definitely
looking forward to getting a chance to use it next year on a larger script as
our shorter films didn’t give us much of a chance to experience it at its full
potential in dealing with managing a larger cast an multiple shots (mine is
especially thin being that there was two different scenes and one of them was
just nude pants.)
