Directions Unit: Steve Finn Workshop

This week we had two workshops with the director Steve Finn. We were split into two groups of six, given three scripts and we individually decided on which ones we'd like to shoot. My script is called Ted & Jo, a scene taken from the film Kramer vs Kramer - we were told this at the very end of the workshop so that our ideas would be completely original.

I planned the shoot by writing out the certain ways I wanted the characters to say the lines and how I wanted them to be positioned, I listed the props I needed and created a shot list.

Using the five people in my group I had Dannie play Jo, Jordan play Ted, Wez as my sound assistant and Harry as my camera operator as I directed the scene.

Overall I'm happy with my work. I managed to get every shot from my shot list in the short amount of time I had and I managed to portray the scene in the way I intended. However, I didn't give good enough instructions to my camera operator so my 'close-up' of Jo's face is a mid-shot of the side of her face for the most part. I think this clashes with the successful close-ups of Ted.

Steve told me he liked my master shot and how they continue to move throughout the scene once she's done with the list. He also picked up that my 'close-up' of Dannie didn't work and was too similar to the master shot and I found that very helpful.

I feel like I still need more practice with directing as I need to be a lot clearer with my camera instructions. But I enjoyed the workshop as it was the first time I've ever directed someone else's script.