term 2, week 5

We started off Monday morning with Kim's lesson. I think that this was my favorite class of the week. We had all been asked to submit an idea for a character that could fit into one of the four main soap operas. I chose to create a character for Coronation Street as I know the characters and felt as though if we were asked to write in the style of our character I would be able to do a better job writing for Corrie than I would for a program like River City which is set in Glasgow. I really enjoyed this task and I love the idea of creating new characters to fit into and interact within an existing program. In the end I came up with two separate characters for Coronation Street and submitted them. The first being Shandi Granger, Becky's younger, more chavy, pregnant sister who sleeps with Becky's husband. The second being Troy Cropper, Roy Croppers evil twin, decked out in bikers leathers and on a mission to torment Roy to know end and seduce his wife Hayley. It was enjoyable to think of how my characters would fit into existing storylines and I could just picture Troy riding up the street on his Harley with Roy peeking through the cafe window in his anorak, and Shandi getting into some hair pulling fights with her sister and causing an uproar amongst the locals. It was also great to hear everyones ideas and see how they would imagine an interesting new character coming into Corrie.

We were then asked to split into groups and come up with a more detailed character and an outline of how their characters storyline would play out. We decided to explore Ada's idea of Jackie a lesbian police officer who comes into the street to work in underworld as she had to leave her job in the police force due to her affair with a convicted criminal. I really enjoyed this lesson and i think that a job within the soaps or as a storyliner may be something that I am really interested in. In the afternoon session we split into our groups and had a tutorial with Andy concerning our debate on television. This was quite useful and I think that our group had a good plan and were working well together as a team.

On Tuesday we had a lesson with Ray on three point lighting. We had previously submitted some research on this topic and because of this prior knowledge I learnt whilst researching I think I was able to pick up the concept with relative ease. I enjoyed the afternoon session as we all had the opportunity to be the DP and set up, light and record another member of the class who was modeling. I liked doing this as it was very visual and you can see instant results. It seemed easier to me as you dont need to adjust the light by pressing a little button, you can physically move the light and see an instant result. I really enjoyed this lesson and I am impressed by the difference three simple lights can make when creating the atmosphere on set, it suddenly makes everything you shoot look so much more professional. We were also told that we have an assessment coming up which I dont feel totally confident about, we seem to have a lot to do in such a short period of time. However I am planning on booking the camera out with a couple of other people this week to get a little more experience with the camera. After all, practice makes perfect.

On Wednesday and Thursday we had sound class with Cammy. I found this lesson easier than expected as Cammy explained everything in detail and with lots of clarity. I liked the fact that he passed around each piece of equipment and let us plug in the appropriate cable/ wire. This meant that by the time we were asked to put all of the equipment together we all had a better idea of what we were doing as we had all done this individually. I also discovered that I will need much stronger arms if I am ever going to operate a microphone/ boom.

We also had a creative beginnings talk from Richard Holloway on Wednesday. After some of the failures of the other creative beginnings talks I did not have particularly high hopes for this one. However I was surprised when the talk turned out to be interesting and quite inspiring. Holloway simply oozed intelligence and really made me thing. He approached the question 'Who's culture is it anyway?" In a very interesting way and I really enjoyed listening to him. This talk was followed by the class debate which seemed to go down well. I enjoyed the actual debate but thought that it may have been better if we were given more time to challenge the other teams argument.

The week came to an end with the screening of 'Singing in the rain'. I enjoyed this film, I am not a huge fan of musicals in general, I like Mamma Mia and Moulin Rouge but in general im not crazy about them. I thought that 'Singing In The Rain' was one of the better musicals I have seen. Although it was my first time watching the film, at several points i realized that I had heard some of the songs before. I like the upbeat nature of the film and some of the songs were very catchy. The leading actors were strong and it was a nice film to watch. It felt refreshing to watch a film with sound and colour as I had gotten used to Friday screenings being in the silent era. After the film ended I went back to halls and went on line to access my weekly dose of Grey's Anatomy and Private Practice, back to back and fresh from the USA. Now what could be better than that?