REN

Yasmin Kentera, ABC representative, discuss what the press kit it is. she thought it should be included the contents as following:

1 attractive cover (better with the staged photos, name/title,
and duration)
2 short synopsis
3 long synopsis
4 character breakdowns (character analyse)
5 cast list
6 production company/film maker details

In fact, only press kit is not hard, but if you want to make it looks attractively, it’s more different, but as a producer, he/she has to do it, becasue sometimes press kit’s quality can decide the film’s marketing. every producer knows that even the film is good, but if it has no marketing, that means zero.

i use what i’ve learnt from Yasmin Kentera to do the press kit for my film, i found it’s very hard for me to do the tag lines. whatever how long the film it is, you have to use one sentence to generalize all the film’s main point, also the sentencs should be attractive, it’s really hard.

Publicity is very important, because it’s not enough to make a good film if nobody know and see it. therefore, publicizing and marketing to the film is necessary and important.

From Kerrie, a freelance publicist i’ve learnt some about the publicity. she thought photos are the main point during the process of publicizing and marketing. In different fields, such as newspaper and magazine, photos are the best one to attract the audiencs to read the articles directly, especially some hero staged photos are more powerful.

some companies like to keep the hero staged photos as a secret before the film be publicized, and so that they can get more interest and attention to the film. Last year in China there was a film named “the promise”, they used this way to attract the audiencs successfully, of courese most of audiences didn’t like this film, but i can’t deny that when i saw the hero staged photos from the internet, i couldn’t help watching this film!

Kerrie also outlined the other important elements for the publicizing and marketing the film such as target audience, aim of project, strongpoints and weakness of project, and so on.

As a cameraman, i think i am not employable. Actually, when i studied in the university, i have learnt some knowledge about that, but at that time, i had no any chance to practise it. and many years later, when i have to use it now, i almost forget all the rules in this field. i like to shoot the focus in the middle of the camera, so some of the lenses looked very strange, and it’s very hard to be edit as well. and next time, i should try to use different angle to shoot the same scene. sometimes details are very important in the film, i shouldn’t ignore the import of them.

As an editor, i have more to say. this time i know a very perfessional editor with the help of my friend, and we became good friends though the editting work of this film. he taught me a lot. from the camera shooting knowledge to editting knowledge, i have learnt a lot from him. now i have known how to use the editting software what i have wanted to learn for long time. with his help, i tried to practise and edit my short film. although i have editted before, i still learn many new knowledge i had never heard before, and i am sure it will be used in my future. i think i am so lucky to know him and i appreciate what he taught me.

Another gain from the process of creating this project is i taste the rare friendship in my heart. the film can be finished with the help of my friends. i can’t forget them. i have to say, just because of them, my life in Australia has been changed more wonderful than what i had imaged before i came to Australia three years ago!

Individual project has been finished already, i think i have learnt a lot from the process of creating this piece.

In this production, i did many different roles, such as producer, screen writer, director, cameraman and editor. i almost did all not only because i had no enough money to employ some professionals to help me, the most important reason is i want to learn more in this field.

As a producer, i have to organise all the things. decide the story, looking for the charactors, organise the money for the film, ensure the quality of the film, do some marketing plan for the film, and even the charactors’ dinner and so on. producer should think everything very careful and comprehensive, otherwise maybe all the film making will be in the trouble. at first, i didn’t thought it’s a hard work, i thought it was a bit easy, just withdraw enough money for all the work, that’s all, but when i started to do it, i knew i was wrong. everybody are looking at me, i had to organise all the things well, and tried to make everyone happy. because every charactor is student, so organising their timetable for shooting was very important, our film has been shot for twice, when the first time was finished, everyone had no time to continue because it was almost the exam period in last semester. so at that time, i had to stopped shotting and they promised me to start again in the summer holiday. but when the holiday was coming, some of them wanted to go home, so i have to wait again, at last, my main actor had to go home because of his personal business, and we had no any contract, so i lost chance to continue my film. although i have found other friend to help me, but it has a very bad influence to my film. so i know to a film group, how important the organizer he is! this time my fault in the organizing almost break down all the film!

As the director, i learnt a lot too. in order to make the performance of the charactor more natural, i didn’t write the dialogue, so all the charactors should perform in terms of the story. so in general, i wouldn’t ask them to perform for the second time if they perform well in the first time. but becasue i have no any experience to shoot, so some of the shooting looks not good, some of them are not integrated, some of them are broken the rules of shooting, so it’s very hard for me to edit. however, when i shot, i didn’t found the problem, when i started to edit, a professional editor told me the reason, i just knew it. so it’s a big pity for me in this film.

Making film is a kind of group work, noboday can do it by oneself. collarborative project just gives us a chance to learn how to cooperate with others.

in our group, we are from different country, different background, before we studied in this course, we didn’t know each other, so at the beginning of the cooperation, we always had some different viewpoints. sometimes we even had some fights about that, but we are very lucky, because all of us know we have one target– we must finish the project before the end of the course. so in the past 18 months, all of us tried our best to do everything we can.

Therefore, today, when we finish the documentary, i can’t express my feeling at that time. Maybe our project is not the best one, but this is result of our hard work in the past 18 months, so in my heart, it is the best one! as one of member of this group, i just want to say: thanks, my friends, i have learnt a lot from you! because of your help, my life in Australia changed more wonderful than what i had imagined before!

About my collaborative project, our group still doing a documentary about a Chinese artist in Australia although one of our group mate gave up this course in this semester.

one of my task is to record all the interview content. i didn’t go to do interview with my other group mates, so when i started to record the content, that was the first time i saw all the interview of our group. all the interview is about 80 minutes.

When i finished watched it, i felt a little pity. this documentary record a Chinese artist’s life in Australia, this artist is a lecturer in Melbourne University. in fact, her story is very interesting and attractive, but when i finished record all the content, i found i can’t remember anything else expect confidnent and successful, only these two words.

Finally, i knew the reason. Becuase this lady is a Chinese, although her English is good, sometimes she still can’t use exact words to express her experience. she still only can use these two words to express her situation now, so all the interview looks not wonderful and attractive. she talks too much, but to some English speakers, they can’t understand how woderful her story it is with her presentation. therefore, i felt a little pity. i think if we can use Chinese to do this interview, and then use English subtitle, maybe the documentary would be better. it would be more attractive at least.

When i was a child, my mum had taught me i should do everything by myself, and don’t be lied on others even my friend. so i don’t like to ask for help even i really need it. However, since i started to make the short film project, it seemed that everything was changed, because the time for the beginning of the film making was also the time for the start of my friends’ help.

Making film is a kind of group work, nobody can do it by oneself. i can finish all the producer, screen writer, cameraman and director work, but i can’t perform all the film by myself. i know how important for the charactors it is in a film! At that time, it was very hard for me to find some professional characters to perform in a short time, and i had no enough money to employ them too. so i had to ask for my friend’s help. in Australia, i have no many friends. But to my surprised, although they were all very busy for the course, all of them still like to help me! one of them even asked his other friends who like to do it. so at last, i chose three persons. But you know, at that time they even didn’t know how could they help me when they agree with me.

Until today, i still remember the first day we shot, actually, i think i can’t forget that day in my whole life! It was one night, on Sep, 2005, in Melbourne Airport, because in the day time all the charactors had to have class, so we had to work at night. That night was very cold, but everbody still worked with summer wear.
in the airport, they tried again and again, we discussed how to shot, how to perform, everyone was new in this field, we just tried our best to do everything better, to try to make every scene looked like similar to what we had imagined. that day we finished all the work at 3:00 in the morning, nobody complained how tired he/she was, they looked happy and even exciting, but i know how tired they were! i was moved deeply, i called my parents in China, when i talked about it, i said i felt very sorry to all of my friends, i cried. my father was moved by them too, he told me he was proud of what we had done, and he was proud of me, because i can make friends with them and they were so excellent! yes, my father is right, i am so lucky that i can make friends with them!

Just because of them, the life in Australia to me has been changed into a specially experience in my whole life.

Thanks, all of my friends!

With my friends’ help and my hard work, i have finished my individual project eventually. i am really very exciting and pride on what i have done although my work (short film) still has a lot of problems. you know, this is the first time for me to do a short film by myself. i almost did everything by myself, producer, cameraman, director, screenwriter, editor, until now i still can’t believe i can do that all by myself. however, i have to say, yes, i did them!

However, i know very much that i couldn’t do anything without my friends’ help. so in this space, i will try my best to express my thankfulness to everybody who helped me to do this short film in the past 18 months in Australia. Although my English skill is still limited, i still hope all my friends can understand me.

The first person i should thank is Rachel. now i still remember the first semester, when Rachel encouraged me to do this short film as my individual project, i couldn’t believe that whether i can finish it or not by myself at that time, just because of Rachel’s encouragement, i wanted to try. now, today, i have to say, thanks, Rachel! if at that time, you didn’t encourage me, i’ll have no any chance to taste the feeling from success today. of course, the help from Rachel was not only the encouragement in the past 18 months, the best help from her is when i met some unexpected problems and i wanted to give it up, she always try to use her special way to reduce my pressure and support me to keep it on. i feel very lucky i can meet Rachel as my lecturer, she teach me what confidence and braveness they are.

What is the future? maybe this question is too wide to answer, these days, i am thinking it over in my spare time. It is the time again for some students to graduate from the university , every year is the same, only the students have the different feeling.

Next year i will graduate, that is the only thing i am going in for in this two years. However, now i almost get it, i am not happy as what had imaged before, why? i had thought it for long time then i knew the reason: because i don’t know what is my future, so to me, graduation equal to be unemployed. Maybe i am too futilitarian, but now i really don’t know what should i do, and how can i solve this problem.

As a person, sometimes, things are very strange. When i just arrived in Australia, i didn’t like or even i hated Australia, i had no family here, no friends here, the only thing i had here was just hard life. However, now, two years passed, very fast, just like a person twinkles once, everything changed, i began to like Australia, because i have many friends here now, and i have a new life here as well, and i believe that this new life should be better than better. While everything like this, when you keep it, you don’t know treasure it, once you will lose it, you can understand how cherish it is, but unfortunately, you can’t do anything at that time.

Maybe i shouldn’t think so, anyway i am lucky to have this experience, i should say that is enough! What is the future? i still don’t know, but i know hope should be in it, to me, that is enough!

The sunshine is coming

“After effects” with Leo Berkeley is my first time to learn “after effects”. In fact, before that i had never heard this technology. So that is the reason why this one can give me so much pleasantly surprised until now. in this module, i learnt what the after effects it is, why to use after effects and how to use it.

During all the modules, in order to avoid feeling boring in the class, Leo coached everyone how to use it throught the practice. Everyone had the chance to use after effects in person. At last, we made a small project with everyone’s help.

Looking this process, i can feel the supernatural from this technical. With the development of TV making technology, TV as a medium changed very strong, it seems nothing can’t be made through the TV medium, if there is real anything can’t be made, that just because the producers can’t think them out. The development of technology help all the TV producers to open a big door leading to a more colourful and wonderful dreamy world!