Who inspires you?
1. My favourite filmmakers who inspire me are: Martin
Scorsese (Raging Bull, etc); Alfred Hitchcock (Vertigo, Rear Window, etc); Ivan
Sen (Beneath Clouds, Yeller Fellow). If you don't know these filmmakers, you
might like to look them up on the internet. I think Ivan Sen is THE most
talented young Australian filmmaker of today.
2. Students like you who are really
interested in learning about films
*
How do you decide what ideas to go ahead with compared to
others?
For most filmmakers this is a combination of
personal interest and what ideas interest those who will give you the money to
make your film. Filmmakers have to be business people too – that's what
producers do. It's no use for a director to have a brilliant idea even if they
are geniuses, if they can't raise the funds to make it. It’s the television
executives and commissioning editors who decide in the end. It's the job of the
filmmaker to "pitch" it to these people and convince them they want to invest in
their film.
You might like to try forming small
"production teams" in class and each group talks about and then comes up with a
film idea or concept. Then ask the producer to "pitch" it to the rest of the
class (talking and using pictures or even acting out small scenes). The whole class could take a vote on
which film they would give the money to if they were a commissioning editor.
This way you could find out who does the best "pitch". This, of course, might
not be the best film idea - it's a
tough world out there!
What aspects of documentary making do you find the most
difficult to deal with?
I'm not a very patient person, and
documentary filmmaking needs heaps and heaps of patience, so I find this very
difficult. You have to wait until the light is just right. And then wait for the
new battery to arrive. And then wait for the social actor to turn up – or get it
right, or whatever.
One group of year 6 students I know were
filming a beach scene not long ago. They did a location search and found just
the right place with some interesting rocks and just what they needed for the
actors to do the scene. But when they went to shoot this scene they discovered
there was a King tide and their location was 2 meters under water! So they had
to wait 4 hours for the tide to go down! This would have driven me
crazy!
[end of part 4 - see next email for final
part 5]
