Kodak Awards- Popcorn Director

Popcorn director sounds like a fancy name for someone who works the counter in a cinema, but no, what I mean is that I am directing the popcorn themed advert, the original title of which was "cheeky handful" but our lectures refer to it as popcorn so that's what we have adopted. As I wrote a post last year about how to be a good director, instead I would like to write one about what I learnt from doing this.

So my main directing experience comes from Brush Stroke which I directed last year, this was very eye opening for me as it gave me my first real look at the job I want to do, well, here I am directing again so that gives you some idea of whether I enjoyed it or not. What I did learn was that it isn't always smooth sailing. Some shoots were immensely fun and flew by without a hitch and stress free, one such was the above one where it was fun, everyone worked well and the location was nice.

Others were not so fun, there were days when it was just miserable, morale was low, people were getting stressed and it just wasn't fun to be making this film, it happens. The above was the lowest of these times, we were filming in freezing conditions on a very windy day, sound was a nightmare and it started snowing, also on this day we were late and one of the actors went home, as a result of this we had to re plan and shoot the script on set. However, it was times like this I feel I learnt the most as it meant that I had the most direction to give as things didn't just fall into place.

Another thing that was new to me was working with actors that I didn't already know, this had mixed results, without naming anyone, in the interest of professionalism, some of the actors were a dream to work with and some where a nightmare. I worked with some who were very professional and some who I got along with very well and got good performances out of, this was good as when you have professional people who are receptive to what you're telling them it always makes directing easier.

However, like before, it was the bad times that made me learn more, I had one actor who wasn't very responsive to what I was telling him and also was often quite pushy in telling me how I should do things when it is in no way his job to tell me how to do mine. As a result of this I learned that at the end of the day I need to have more backbone and demanding of my actors and not settle for what they're giving me if I'm not happy. I did a lot of learning on that production and I look forward to benefitting and making things of a higher standard as a result, that's all for now, until next time.