Directing 20-5-05

In my first week of assessment I was the director in the afternoon crew. I was nervous about this position as it is considered one of the hardest by my peers. When i started i was a little unsure on what ii had to do before the production but after five minutes and a deadline being set I just got to work. The tapes operator was late to the class which meant that the timings of the tapes was not able to be ascertained as soon as I wanted.

At several points during the day i set times for the step through and practice runs. I had to change almost all the times except for my record run. Bruce challenged me at one point to not leave lots of time where nothing is happening so i tried to keep things rolling. During the debrief i was told that the production had momentum and pace which is the way i wanted it to be run, because people tend to perform better when they have no time to fool around.

During the practice runs i was trying to look at the monitor wall and the script which caused me to loose my place in the show several times. By the time the record run came along I had become familiar enough with the show to not be 100% reliant on the script and the predetermined cuts. I had a problem with the vision mixer at one point in the record run when the wrong source was selected. I just kept calling the show as usual.

During he interview i found it difficult to choose which camera to cut to, as i had no idea about the questions or content. Bruce and Storrie were able to give me advice on camera selection and cut points which i tried to take on board but in the end cut to too many reaction shots of the interviewer no the interviewee.

I found the experience of directing challenging but by the end of the day i felt quite comfortable directing the show. I found that the FM could have given me more info from the floor, not just when i spoke to her. I had some trouble with camera 3 as the operator kept giving me variations of the shot that had ben previously set and moved the camera at the wrong time during the interview only leaving me with one camera which i tried to correct by asking for a two shot from camera 2. The DA also missed and gave a few late VTR roll commands but as a whole was good. Cameras 1 and 2 were both good and needed little direction in their shots.

To me it felt that some of the crew on that day were in positions that they were not comfortable in. I think that overall i did an alright job however i was disappointed with the end result as it wasn't of the highest quality. Some things that could make the process better would be to record the last practice and final run, a check list for the director and all people generally knowing a little more about their particular roles responsibilities.