Week 2 - Term 2

This week started off on Monday morning with a brand new class that we'd never had before. Kim Millar, a successful storyliner for Coronation Street, Hollyoaks and River City came in to give us our first class on storylining in television. This was quite an interesting class and we learned a lot about how competitive the television industry really is. We also learned about the various different roles and jobs that exist in the writing side of television from the storyliners and script editors to the actual dialogue screenwriters. In the afternoon we had a History of Cinema class with Andy. For the first half we had the opportunity to watch very old films that had been discovered in England that had been filmed right at the start of the twentieth century. These Mitchell and Kenyon films included short silent clips of no more than a couple of minutes where they would film people going about their daily life in the workplace, school, in the street etc. After watching about five of these films, we then watched a final special one that had been filmed in Jamaica Street, Glasgow. This was actually quite fascinating to see, although fairly short it still showed a great deal of information about how people went about their lives back in that time. Every vehicle was horse-drawn and people walked everywhere. There seemed a much stronger sense of community and everyone helping each other as well. We then saw a remake of the video made by Charlotte and Gavin (I think) at the same spot in the year 2009. It was quite strange to contrast them and see how differently it all looked. It was a little bit depressing actually: everyone in cars, nobody dreaming of talking to each other of even looking at each other unless absolutely necessary. In the second half of the lesson we watched a DVD about the origins of editing which dragged on for a bit even though there were some interesting points to it. On Monday night I also went to the Britain's Got Talent auditions at the SECC to the envy of Meg and Kelsey.

Tuesday we had our technical class with Ray and we were continuing with lighting. Today we focused on white balance and colour temperature and how each specific light we use has a different colour temperature that affects the picture. There's a lot of new buttons and terminology to grasp with these lessons but it always becomes clearer when I actually try it myself of a camera. For example, I learning how the do a white balance correctly on the camera by actually doing it myself as opposed to just listening to Ray and scribbling notes. Later in the day I also had my tutorial with Gav to discuss our formative assessments from before Christmas. This went well and we watched the short motorbike advert that I had edited and he also discussed the results for the written test as well.

On Wednesday we had Andy's television class in the morning. We focused on reality TV in this lesson. From its origins with shows following the emergency services to modern day reality television like Big Brother and the X Factor. The main point of the class was to understand about Authorship in relation to reality TV. In the end we decided that there are a various groups of people who influence what happens on reality TV. Of course the whole idea of it is that everything is realistic and unscripted however there is still a degree of authorship in it. For example, the Simon Cowell type characters in each show who, although it is not always overtly shown, does have a decision on which people stay in the show or leave the show or whatever else. The viewing public also have a certain say in reality programmes like I'm a celebrity and the like where they phone in to decide who should stay in the jungle.

I had the day off on Thursday due to Adam's tutorials in the morning and no other classes all day. So after a nice wee lie in I sat in my room and wrote a good bit of my two minute comedy script. After a while of this I decided to go a walk for some fresh air so walked down across the river to the Gorbals kind of area then back round via Bridge Street until I suddenly realised that I was on Jamaica Street where the old Mitchell and Kenyon film was taken. On Thursday night some of us also went to the RSAMD production of the opera War and Peace at the Theatre Royal.

During the week, Andy had already slyly hinted that the Friday's film would once again be silent however it was not Russian. Today it was Nosferatu, effectively the first ever vampire movie. This turned out to be really cool, it was interesting to see where it all started and how vampire films had evolved to what we have now, and also the fact that they are still popular to this day.