CINE 1115 Pre-Production and Industry Preparation Reflective Ess

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Introduction

In this reflective blog like an essay, I will attempt to go back in past and critically evaluate my actions and course as well as what I wish I could learn and how much I took from the CINE 1115 Pre-Production and Industry Preparation.

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Part A

Brief CINE 1115

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Individual Learning Across the Course

CINE 1115 Pre-production module was an interesting index of topics that would help us prepare for the pre-production process and gave a vague idea of how the real industry works. Every week was bringing something new but I am going to mention a few that picked my particular attention. Week fourth was called ‘How to produce a Film’ and supposedly have to provide us with information regarding creating production framework, memos and contracts, health and safety, etc. according to the official CINE 1115 Course Handbook. What I learned was “pre-production roles and tasks required to complete the pre-production stage. We also discuss health and safety aspects and why we shouldn't ignore them.” What I wish I could learn more was more in-depth roles hierarchy and a wider variety of the examples where people did not comply with the health and safety procedures. It is due to the fact that there was no particular hierarchy provided and we heard about the train track dream sequence accident for the third time over three years of our education.   Week five session was called ‘Film Festival and Film Festival Strategy’ and its purpose was to teach us about the list of festivals, entry, market and strategy according to the official CINE 1115 Course Handbook. What we learned was “(…) of early festival planning in order to avoid wasting time and unexpected expenses. (…) an activity that opens our eyes on possible research and actions to take yet during the pre-production and not leaving it until the last minute. The activity was to search, in the groups,  film festivals, costs of submission and crew/talent travel expenses. We had an imaginary budget of £10k. This experience showed us that festivals need very careful planning and strategy that equals the one during the actual film production. My group's choices were split into the categories of submission cost and festival prestige. The low-cost one was a Screentest. The student-friendly short film festival with a free submission. The second festival was LOLO. This film festival had a higher prestige, small entry fee and was based in London what cut the expenses. The third one was the Raindance festival that is known from its high popularity and medium submission charge, based in London but crew and talent will need to buy their own tickets.” This session was loaded with very useful information, however, I wish we could be provided with a better list of festivals that would fit the size and requirements of our graduation project films. Lastly, week ten was titled “Scheduling”, however,  according to the diaries of people (I could not find my entry) we were covering budget formats, useful software and budgeting strategies. What we learned were indeed budget formats in Microsoft Excel, however, I wish we could learn more about the budgeting applications or websites that could make everything more clear and less complicated. Despite this, budgeting strategies had a handful of good advice that I applied in my own budget that included cuts and improvisation like catering, location and crew logistic.

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history of production pack draft on Google Drive

Production Pack Contribution

Production Pack was a complex and detailed project that was difficult as part of the group project. Our course of action was to split the work among the group members and then putting it up together by me and my VFX producer Katie. The part of the of the production pack, excluding merging documents into one, was creating a mock budget and schedule spreadsheet. The task was particularly difficult as two weeks before the production pack deadline, we decided to entirely change our idea which leads to scrapping the entire budget and schedule and starting from the scratches. However, these circumstances gave me a good idea of how precious is production time and the importance of careful planning that may have an impact on the entire production. Looking myself back, I think that I could spend more time on this task and reach for lectures advice more often, This way my work would significantly gain on quality and clarity. The last most challenging task was to gather everyone work and modify them in terms of wording and originality to keep even consistency of the final document. This task taught me the importance of the second or third opinion, as someone else can spot mistakes that you otherwise could overlook. Overall, I wish I could spend more time to review the entire production pack with my team.

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Work Experience

My current ambition is to become a film producer. In order to do that I created long term plan that, in a fact, contains a lot of question marks but is the most reliable in terms of my current career stability. I am planning to apply for multiple training schemes including screen skill and call time runner scheme. Another step I took towards achieving my career goal is contacting people that have similar ambitions and are already in the further stage of their professional development. I found out from them their history and actions that lead them to where they are now. I compare their stories, took the advice, made them as one of the contacts and created long term plan of action. I did work experience over the last six months such as camera operator at two philosophical festivals, short film logging and being a part of an audience in live tv shows such as X factor. Yet, current work experience doesn’t correlate with my chosen career path. In order to achieve this, I need to find more work experience related to office and production runner as those roles are leading to my chosen career path. The biggest struggle found on the way is to find reliable sources that would provide such experience. 

I also participated in a Calltime Runner training day.

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Part B

Brief CINE1115

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Enterprise Week - Day 1 - Discussion Panel & Networking Drinks

The first day of Creative Enterprise week had a long and highly interesting panel of speakers that were kind enough to have spoken to us and, in some cases, have workshops with us. We began our first day with Jodi Nelson-Tabor that showed us networking and share some stories from her personal experience. From these workshops, I had a chance to learn how the possible ways of approaching people, which included finding common ground that you and possible giver of work experience would have. However, I wish I could learn more about the research technique that would allow me to find useful information regarding my potential employer. 

Next Speaker was Stephen Nixon, VFX producer that came to tell about his life and his career choices. He taught me that it is very important to follow something that you are interested in and get really good at it and if it won’t work out find another thing even if it is not within the same industry. The entire talk was a very positive experience for me however, I wish I could learn more about the position he was currently in; what are his tasks and responsibilities. Following the day, another event featured a discussion panel with people within the industry such as Vicky Bennet, Stephen Nixon, Alex Worrall, Jude Winstanley and Kolton Lee. The panel provided stories from each point of view and their position accordingly, from Television producer and owner of a film studio to recent graduate and independent filmmaker. I learned that five days is a maximum time you can do unpaid work experience. The only regrettable thing that could endorse is time for students to ask the panel. At the end of the first day, students have a chance to practice their networking skills with the panel mentioned earlier. I had a chance to learn that approaching people and finding common ground are two different things and are not as easy as they seem. This gave me an idea of how networking works and help me understand that I will not always be able to smoothly communicate with every person from the industry I meet. Also, I learned that my library of watched films is extremely limited and has to be expanded in order to reach people more easily.

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Enterprise Week - Day 2 - Jude Winstanley & Dan Aldiss 

The second day started with Jude Winstanley that provided a variety of extremely useful and honest advice. She talked about the different type of film and television entry roles. The difference in terminology between film and television as well as providing a handful of advice regarding work on the set and what people in position contact regarding work experience. Now looking back at this, I come to a realisation that I could prepare more question regarding getting into the industry because despite being a television producer, Jude was hugely knowledgeable within her own and film area. Another speaker was Dan Aldiss,  creative director at Artwork Projections. Dan’s speech was different than the other as it was covering topic seemingly not film nor television related; projection mapping. He went through the wide range of project he and his team did over the last couple of years and briefly explained what positions and tasks are usually covered in the Artwork Projection company. He gave me a new perspective on using my skills gained throughout the course for the new generation of media sector that was born from film, television, games and technology. Despite his wide knowledge, I wish he could cover more regarding the pre-production roles that lay more in the circle of my future career path.

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Enterprise Week - Day 3 - Terry Bamber

Wednesday; the last day of Creative Enterprise week was highlighted by the appearance of Terry Bamber, 1st AD that works on films such as “Skyfall” or “Ghost Stories”. I had a chance to meet Terry year earlier on one of the networking events organised by the previous graduate students. Mr Bamber told his career story and gave incredibly devices, which included equipment usage, planning strategies and real perspective of how long it takes to create certain sequences, which he showed the open sequence of Skyfall as an example. I found his talk extraordinarily interesting as part of the job as 1st AD requires careful planning, which is my strong point and part that I would like to do in the future. He gave me a new perspective on planning my graduation project filming schedule and expanded the list of jobs that I’d like to do in the future.

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Conclusion

This module covered a lot of important aspects of my future career industry. However, I felt like I was missing something; the Depth. In the future, I am hoping to learn even more with the knowledge taken from CINE 1115 Pre-Production and Industry Preparation.

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Bibliography

References

Aldiss, D. (2019) Dan Aldiss, LinkedIn. Available at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dan-alldis/ (Accessed: 10 February 2019).

Alex Worrall - ENTREPRENEUR (2019). Available at: https://www.worrall.uk.com/ (Accessed: 10 February 2019).

Ghost Stories (2017) (2019). Available at: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5516328/ (Accessed: 10 February 2019).

Halaczek, Z. (2019) Zofia Halaczek - Week 5 Blog Post, Moodle. Available at: http://file:///C:/Users/Zofia/Downloads/post%20(1).html (Accessed: 10 February 2019).

Halaczek, Z. (2019) Zofia Halaczek - weekly blog week 4, Moodle. Available at: http://file:///C:/Users/Zofia/Downloads/post.html (Accessed: 10 February 2019).

Jodi Nelson-Tabor (2019). Available at: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm1817611/ (Accessed: 10 February 2019).

Login to University of Greenwich services (2019). Available at: https://moodlecurrent.gre.ac.uk/mod/forum/view.php?id=700486 (Accessed: 10 February 2019).

Skyfall (2012) (2019). Available at: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1074638/ (Accessed: 10 February 2019).

Stephen Nixon (2019). Available at: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm1452982/ (Accessed: 11 February 2019).

Terry Bamber (2019). Available at: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0051403/ (Accessed: 10 February 2019).

Winstanley, J. (2019) JUDE WINSTANLEY, JUDE WINSTANLEY. Available at: http://www.judewinstanley.com/ (Accessed: 10 February 2019).