Work Experience

 As the final part of this unit, we had to do an industry-related work placement. This part was quite difficult for me, as despite searching for work placement the year before it was due to start, I did not get a placement opportunity until October time. For work placement, I started using the film academy to fulfill my hours, as upon talking to my lecturer and the lecturers at the film academy I found out that I could use my hours there as work placement hours- which was easier for me as I still had not found a work placement through the college.

At the BFI Film Academy, I took part in a multitude of activities, the main one being the creation of a short 5-6 minute film, which was ultimately the main and final project at the academy. This project too about 3-4 months. The first month consisted of getting to know the rest of the crew and beginning to plan the basis of the ideas we would use. We were split into two groups of ten to create two separate films, each unique to the groups. The group that I was in decided to create a murder mystery film set in the 1940's. We also had to come up with a title, in which we decided to make it a play on the theatre play/book An Inspector Calls: aptly naming our film 'An Inspector Falls'.

After coming up with the ideas, the title and how we would get the film across, we began to plan it more in depth, writing scripts, creating storyboards and going through countless table read throughs and script changes.

After planning everything we needed to, including finalizing the script and sourcing the actors, location and props we began to film. We filmed the production over two days (two separate Saturdays) and used professional methods and items (such as clapperboards and DSLR cameras, as well as professional boom mics) Once we had finished the filming, we began to edit the footage together to create the full movie- using different software (DaVinci Resolve) and using different techniques, some that most of us had never used before, which gave us all an opportunity to expand our knowledge.

The BFI Film Academy was an amazing opportunity to be a part of, and upon talking with the academy lecturers and my own lecturers in college I was able to use this as my work placement, as I had yet to gain another placement opportunity.

With these hours at the film academy, I accumulated over 60 hours of experience, undertaking the role of assistant director in film production as part of this academy, which was over the required amount of hours- despite the preferred being 315 or 45 days worth.

I am currently in the process of starting another work placement opportunity, however, with college work and my job it is difficult to find time to complete the background checks, though I do not believe this will be too big of an issue as I have the required 40 hours, I will attempt to get as many hours as I can with my limited availability so that I can gain more experience.

Currently, I have been logging my hours via a google spreadsheet as GroFar, the site used to track work placement hours, has not been put up yet- so we have been told to log our hours on the spreadsheet for now so that we do not forget how many hours we have done. (Other names have been blurred for privacy)

After working it out, I figured out that I had done 98.5 hours of work placement with the film academy, and that I would only need to try and do around 216 more if I can.

With that, other than attempting to get the rest of my hours I am mostly finished with work placement.