Question 3

Script:

  Minh: “Hello everyone, welcome to my podcast! I’m Minh the host, I’m here with Linh, the director of THE MURDER THAT NEVER HAPPENED. On this podcast today we’re going to be looking back onto the whole process of making this scene and talk about what the crew had gained and acquired from it. So Linh, what have you learned from this experience?”

Linh: “I think this project has given us the chance to experience making movie as a real job and a professional. We started the project only as movie-enthusiasts, but as we continued to work I realized that there are much more things other than great actors needed to make a quality film: mise-en-scene, camera work,… As a person who never makes plans, this project had propelled me to become more methodical and work more efficiently by making prop list, shot list, and setting up a schedule to prepare for the filming days. The prop list, storyboard and location recce all helped us envision how the setting would look like and thus prepared us to deal with hiccups and unexpected events. Another thing I’ve improved in as a director is script-writing. I think I’ve learned how to use my script as a tool to present my vision to the team and not just to write about the plot of the story: For example, I learned to be more descriptive about my characters in the script \to help the art director to build them a more suitable wardrobe and also help the actor to get a better idea of how to portray themselves”

Minh: "I think your team had done a great job in pre-production. And me personally I've already watched the opening scene and I think it's amazing! So tell me more, what about the production stage did you learn anything in this stage of the process?"

Linh: “Definitely! I’ve developed most of my technical skills in production. As a director, because I have to oversee the whole process, I’m very grateful that I had the chance to work in every department! Working with the art director helped me learn better how to set up a scene to make it real and fitting with the character’s disposition. Another thing I found very interesting is learning to convey hidden meanings through the use of colour and integrating different props. I also had a fun time working with the cinematographer. We’ve learned about structures of cameras and camera settings like ISO, Aperture and how to adjust the camera in different occasions like using a low shutter speed for drunk shots. Besides, we also became more versatile and adapting to changes when things don’t go as planned like when the envision we had in the storyboard didn’t look as good on camera and we had to switch the camera angle and movement. Moreover, because our filming schedule was delayed and shots were ruined because there are no sunlights, we learned it the hard way that we had to speed up our pace and pay more attention to the external setting. We learned from our mistakes and scheduled another date which went well. Apart from technical skills, I also developed my teamwork and communication skills. Before this project, I was a timid person and I very seldomly voice my opinions. But in this project, I was given the chance to kinda be the leader of the team, which I was scared at first, but having great team members really helped me become less shy and take actions more often. We try to communicatd as much as we can, and whenever there is a disagreement we would try to listen to everyone’s opinion and settle with the solution that we think is the most suitable for the project. After this project I’ve definitely become more active and more open to constructive criticisms.”

Minh: "Thank you so much for sharing I'm sure as a newly director there were a lot of stages that you need to stay on top of and that must have been challenging. Previously you've talked about the pre production and the production process. So tell me more did you participate in the post production process and how was it for you?"

Linh: "Well, because the director has to oversee the whole process, my work isn’t done until the final product is done. After production, I worked with the editor to select out the best footages and put them together. We encountered some problems with the footages, however I feel like this was an opportunity for me to hone my problem solving skills and fast thinking. I still remember when we were editing and in the last part of the scene we found out that the actress looks more like she is smiling than being mad. I think we handled this perfectly when we decided to put a shaky filter onto the footage to make the smile blurry and show the character’s drunken state. Another thing I’ve learned is how to do foley sounds. The reason behind this is that our team wanted for some shots to be silent but also heighten the sound of movements to create tension. So we decided to mute the footages and then record foley sounds to put in later on. When doing foley sounds, we had to both look at the footage and follow the movements of objects and the character, so this had really helped me improve my coordination. Overall this was a fun skill to have acquired."

Linh: "All in all, this project was a fun experience and I’m very grateful to have developed a lot of technical and also social skills. I want to thanks my teammate and teachers for all the support that helped boost my confidence and encouraging me to speak up more. I hope that in the future, these skills could be even more developed and I could have more opportunities to learn more skills!"

Minh: "Well thank you so much for joining us today at the podcast and I hope to see more of your work in the future!"