I come to this course as a professional scriptwriter with a range of credits for TV series and serials. Over the last four years I have shot and edited my first short (35min) documentary, I’d Rather be Surfing which is screening at the Lorne Film Festival in November this year.
I learnt an enormous amount making the documentary but most of this was learning from my mistakes and learning alone. What I really felt I lacked during my shoot and edit was a methodology and workflow and I am looking for the opportunity to clarify practice and processes in all areas of pre-production, production and post-production especially in terms of documentary film-making but in filmmaking in general as well.
I have had training in Final Cut 7 but edited my documentary in Final Cut X. I changed to FCX because FC7 is no longer being supported by Apple and FCX was at the time cost effective and was familiar in some aspects after using FC7. Now however I definitely want to get up to speed with Premiere as this is one of the key editing tools that the industry is choosing to work with as FC7 dies a slow death.
In terms of production I am familiar with the production processes from working as a script editor on shows such as Stingers and Blue Heelers but as a writer and editor you hand your work on to a director, crew etc. So I am keen to have more hands on experience planning and shooting where possible though I think this subject is more about post than production.
In my previous RMIT Screenwriting course I studied film analysis and am familiar with film language. However this has been more from a writer’s perspective not a director’s or cinematographer’s so am very keen to engage in close analysis and refresh and build on my film language and my knowledge of different methodologies of film analysis especially from a practitioner’s perspective.
My interest at this point is in documentary rather than feature film but this is an opportunity to understand the processes of both genres and I am really looking forward to the semester.
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