Post Ten: Job roles

DIRECTORS

The first department I chose to research in regards to necessity to media production was the director; the director is usually associated with the creative side of media production, respsonsible for the general style of the film and also the 'creative vision' of it and as a single person. However, in director department the central director is supported and helped by several assistant directors who all have dfferent roles but essentially are there to 'assist' the director in helping achieve his visions to the desired standards through the use of both production and editing.The assistant director's key skills must include a high standard of time management and general organisational skills in order to successfully help the director.

ASSISTANT DIRECTORS

• The first assistant director: Otherwise referred to as the directors 'right hand man', taking over the practicalities that the director cannot focus on as well as participating in the creaive practices of the film production.
• The second assistant: One step down from the first assistant director, the role of the second assistant is to help the first assistant. The main focus of this job is ensuring everything involved in the production side runs smoothly without any faults. 
•  The film director: This title is responsible for the creative forces of the flm production, this director acts as the main link and source of communication between the creative and technical sides of production.
• Runners: Or often referred to as 'floor runners'. This title is the entry-level position, the beginning role from which people work their way up from. Their role is literally in their title, they run around for the people above them.

CAMERA

Cinematography is key to the success of media products and having the desired images on screen is key to the success of the cinematogrpahy. These images in order to have the desired effect on the audience need to be able to tell the audience somethingabout the focus, e.g. a charatcer or location. Shot composition, camera movement and the way a director of photography chooses to manipulate light and shade are all key elements of what makes a film both signature to the crew or gives it it's unique style. 

• A script supervisor: The job of this title is to ensure that regardless of the sequence in which the film is shot that eventually become a completely continuous verbal and visual sense. This involves making sure that the film makes sense and has sucessfully followed the script.
• The first assistant camera: This title's main focus is the focus of the shots, their job is to focus and refocus the camera in use as the actors move in, out and around the frame as the focal length changes.
• The “grip”: This is the title with the responsibility of the building, maintenance and operation of all of the equipment that supports the camera e.g. dollies, tracks, cranes, jibs and tripods.
• The director of photography: The director of photography is employed with an important and specific role within the production of a film, their task is to give a film a unique or visual identity that are key to a films success.
• The camera operator: The role of the camera operator is to set up, position and operate the cameras accordingly.
• Other roles: The aerial camera assistant, crane operator, steadicam operator. These specified jobs are often given to students.

LIGHTING

Equally as relevant and key to film production as the rest of the departments is the lighting department. As well as the use of natural lighting, for the majority of films employ lighting for most shots. The lighting department works along side other departments i.e. the camera department/crew and the art department, part of the off screen team.

• The “gaffer”: The gaffers are in charge of all of the electrical manual work on production e.g. leading the team of technicians who install the lighting equipment and arranging the power supply in order to create the designed lighting effects.
• A lighting technician: The lighting technician allows the relevant lighting paired with the relevant power supply by supplying them for films, this can be on a studio set or on location.
• “Best boy”: This title has to essentially co-ordinate the team of lighting technicians and has to deal with the variety of logistics and paperwork relating to the specific role.
• The moving light operator: controls all the “intelligent”, or automated, this role is chosen by the director of photography. 

The lighting department I would say would play a particularly key role in the production of my short film 'Bruises', especially in achieving the strong imagery my film is centred around.

SOUND
Films although majorly and primarily visual are nothing without sound, a significant amount of the story-telling and emotional resonance of a film are produced and conveyed through he use of sound, in particular dialogue. Because of the importance of sound when recording all sound on set/ on location it is done by the production sound crew. This consists of production sound mixers, boom operators and sound assistants.

• Production sound mixer: This title is responsible for recording sound and dialogue and ensuring that the dialogue that is recorded during filming of the desired quality for the film production.
• A boom operator: This job requires placing the microphones is the ideal positions without jeopardising the visual image or effecting the camera operators work. 
• Sound assistants: The sound assistants provide general feedback and support to the production of sound mixer and the boom operator. Their jobs involve ensuring everyone that the sound is to the best of its capability and making decisions weather any sound needs to be re-recorded.



ART/PRODUCTION DESIGN
Creating all visual aspects of a film set is down to the Art department in a production team, this is a vital and difficult task due to the fact that a film can be located anywhere with any desired set. The physical aspect of the set/location is never left to chance, a massive amount of work goes into the designing and the construction of overall sets including props and back drops. This involvement is key to the art and production department of a films making.

• Art director: This title involves the role of acting as a project manager for this section of the production team. They produce the creative productions vision. 
• The set decorator: The set director provides the film set with anything that furnishes it e.g. chairs and tables. They are then responsible for arranging them in order to create the best look suited to the desired theme and genre of the film.
• Story board artists: The storyboard artists are responsible for the translation of screenplays or sequences from screenplays into a storyboard (a series of illustrations that map out the film in a comic book layout).
• Production designers: Responsible for the entire art department the production designers, they enable the directors to achieve their films visual requirements with the help of the rest of the department.

This is another area in which I would place a lot of importance when producing my short film 'Bruises', due to the fact that the short film is focused on a visual impact and using visual hints to tell the story over anything else I would personally invest a particular interest in this department.

APPLYING THE JOB ROLES TO OUR ON PROJECT:

Due to the fact that the within my media class there is only two people working on our project the research I have carried out into the job roles is key in enabling both of us ork together and split the responsibilites equally and in terms of preference and skill. After discussion we came to a conclusion of how we are going to split the jobs, with the small number of our group in mind some of the jobs have been shared.

 

Person #1: This person will be me, as the writer of the script I have taken on the role of the director due to the fact that I have a detailed insight into the films visual and over all aspects of the film - I will be in charge of over seeing all of the production in order to ensure the film is created to how I imagined it to be. Along with person #2 the responsibilities of the camera, lighting and sound departments.

Person #2: As previously metioned this person will share responsibilites of the camera, lighting and sound departments with myself to ensure that out production is created to the best of our combined potenial. However this person will be in charge of equiptment and construction more than the director.

Post seven: Creating your own script.

I personally found the planning of my script one of the easier elements of the pre-production work scheme. This process begun through us watching several short films, due to our teacher's personal taste in short film genre as a class our short film viewing had been mainly focused around the heavier social realist films. With this in mind we were then given a lesson in which to watch 'Signs' a romantic comedy, eleven minutes long short film directed by Patrick Hughes a film based around a man's life, the lack of and the different forms of communication within it: "Where do you find love? Sometimes all you need is a sign". Shown at 'Schweppes short film festival' the film was warmly received by the 'maturer' audience that the festival is aimed at. Whilst watching the film our teacher would pause the film at certain intervals and asked us questions about the film, such as what did we think was going to happen next. Of course due to the twists in the film none of our predictions were completely correct, this meaning the film achieved a pleasant surprise for the audience at the end.

Watching 'Signs' both enabled us as a class to realise that not all short films need to be based around political or economical issues as many of the 'gritty' social realist films we had previously watched were. It showed and encouraged me personally to focus on a creating a film based around subject that will have an effect with the audience and that would avoid the predictable and venture into the almost erratic. With this in mind, whilst creating my script I decided that I wanted to include strong twists to in a sense, confuse and throw the audience out of place making my short film unpredictable and leaving the audience wondering what is actually going on.

'SIGNS'

During the process of planning my script after coming up with my initial idea I developed the major points I wanted involved in my script a rough beginning, two twists in the plot and the rough ending, I achieved this through the use of mind maps.

My next focus was the central protagonists in my short film - once establishing a rough idea of what I wanted in my characters I focused primarily on the details of the characters so i created character profiles:

GRACE:

My central protagonist 'Grace' is a relatively stereotypical female teen, she is physically feminine and is noticeably popular in school. There is one major difference between Grace and most girls of her age and that's her home life. Although the audience remain completely unaware of what truly goes on in her life throughout the film 'Grace' is a silent victim of child abuse, when Grace returns home after her days at school everything changes. She is the representation and the physical embodiment of the message running throughout the short film "Abuse is not always physical".

GRACE'S FATHER:

My Second character profile is of the other protagonist 'Grace's father', physically well built and  fitting to most stereotypically masculine traits. He is an erratic person with an abnormally short fuse, he generally has an aggressive tone about him and is often unnecessarily confrontational. A seemingly normal, 9-5 working and well-respected man who's home life, much like 'Grace's' is dramatically different from his work life. He abuses his daughter, 'Grace'.

PLOT OUTLINE:

The short film begins in the evening after Grace has school, she enters her home still in her school uniform and carrying her school bad and heads straight towards her kitchen. Once in the kitchen Grace goes to get herself some food, she gets out a crisp container out of one of her kitchen cupboards but while doing so, she drops it. At this moment Grace's father yells at her and Grace hastily attempts to recollect everything she has dropped and put it back into the container and proceeds at a fast pace towards her stairs and up into her bedroom. We next see Grace sat in school, in an English lesson as she stares out of the window, completely unfocused. Grace's teacher asks her to repeat what she just said and as Grace attempts to regain a focus and remember what the teacher just said, the teacher carries on teaching.

Grace arrives back home, enters house and then then her bedroom to find a present on her bed, although she is confused about it her father soon appears and tells her that it's from him.

 

DIFFERENT THEORIES:

Due to our prior research in a range of theories within our organised lesson our understand of a variety of theories was above average. One we focused on was Todorv, he focused on the three main specific parts of to a film: equilibrium, disequilibrium and a disequilibrium. A prime example of his theory is presented in 'Goldilocks and the three bears', the beginning of the film involves a positive atmosphere in which the characters are stereotypically happy, this is equilibrium. As the film proceeds a problem arises during the second part, in the example of 'Goldilocks and the three bears' this problem would be 'Goldilock' herself being in the bear house, this is disequilibrium. As the film runs into the concluding stage the atmosphere and tone of the film return to being happy but with a significant change to the first instance of happiness, this is the new equilibrium. This is identified because the characters have adapted to their new situations i.e. Goldilocks being there and are coping with it, therefore the happiness is different than before, the happiness is not identical to the happiness they all felt at the beginning of the story.