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As a new transfer student for 2nd year, adjusting to the University of Creative Arts has been especially tough. This is mostly due to the fact everybody already knows each other - everyone has had a year to establish their strengths as creators. Being dropped into this university having known nobody in my course and then immediately being tasked to group up and pitch a short film idea within the space of a week was incredibly daunting. There were two people however whom I had met during fresher's week, and having recognised them in my lecture I instantly latched on.

I was assigned as editor, a field in which I am extremely confident in, and thus saw this as an opportunity to prove myself to the rest of my peers. Knowing I could very easily sit and twiddle my thumbs until the footage was sent over a week before submission, the moment our film was greenlit and we had the go ahead I put myself out there and created mock posters based on the logline and treatment. Alongside our DPs vision-board, this helped establish a visual code that would guide the aesthetics of the film throughout it's production.

Unfortunately, when it came to shoot I was unavailable to make it to set because I had been booked to shoot content for a creator in the states. This proved to be a frustrating issue when it came to categorising the footage. Looking through, I noticed there were several bits of continuity missing within the shots - some aspects of the script were just not covered at all and there was no basic coverage to fall back on - meaning that I had to edit around large gaps in the narrative. There were also persistent issues with framing whereby crew members could be seen in shot. Working my magic and under immense stress I managed to compile a version of the film our director was happy with and one I am proud to have had a part in making.

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For our conscious practitioner unit we were tasked to curate a presentation exploring and evaluating ethical film practices. As students we were equipped with the tools to become more mindful in the ways we operate, cast actors and crew and represent demographics and ideologies on and off screen. We were briefly educated on sustainability and how to be more environmentally conscious as well as the ethics and social impacts our films could have.

I was unsure what exactly I should present about as I was aware of my privilege as a white, male - knowing that I lack the authority to speak on topics such as representations of race or gender in film. However, after our lecture on neurodiversity in cinema I knew this was a topic I could passionately dive into. As somebody diagnosed with autism I had pre-established critiques of the way the disorder is often depicted on-screen and felt it my duty to share these while also researching and shining a light on more positive representations.

Examining Rain Man (Levinson, 1988), I concluded that the film's depiction of autism, albeit one of the first depictions in cinema, is fairly rudimentary and only exists to mould the stereotypical autistic savants that followed in it's footsteps. Temple Grandin (Jackson, 2010), however, focuses on a real life autistic women and subverts the expectations that had been heavily imposed by previous films.

This unit served as a process of self discovery as I was forced to confront where I stand as a filmmaker; how would I handle neurodivergent representation in my films given the chance? I decided I aspire to write stories that further reject the negative belief that those with Autism are one-dimensional savants with no other purpose than furthering somebody else's story. I would also cast neurodivergent actors for neurodivergent roles so that they could afford the same opportunities as those not on the spectrum.

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APPLIED SKILLS FOR SUSTAINABLE INDUSTRIES

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APPLIED SKILLS FOR SUSTAINABLE INDUSTRIES

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I chose Applied Skills for Sustainable Industries for my elective because I saw it as a useful skill to brandish; as a world on the brink of climate change emergency, being environmental conscious should be standard for everyone who values their home planet. Seeing this as an option on the electives PowerPoint meant me realise I am not as informed as I should be, especially in how sustainability relates to the film industry. Therefore, I picked this unit as a means of becoming more sustainable as a filmmaker - reducing waste and becoming more conscious and efficient.

The first week was dedicated to climate change generally and learning how it will affect our planet if nothing is done immediately. We were informed about the 1.5 degrees tipping point whereby if the planet becomes 1.5 degrees hotter than it should then we will enter the point of no return; we will not be able to revert back to normalcy. Hearing about this caused immense stress amongst me and my peers, knowing that there's so little we can do - however - it's terribly unproductive if we all have this mindset. Our second week was spent curating a pledge to commit to more sustainable practices as filmmakers. I was encouraged to reflect on where in my life I exert the most CO2 and provide more sustainable alternatives. I found that travelling to see my family in Austria twice a year by plane was terrible for emissions and have since reduced this by driving over and visiting less frequently.

For the third week we were provided data for a film production and asked to calculate its CO2 emissions using the Albert calculator - a tool productions must use to ensure they are albert certified and that they reach net zero emissions. It's very important we become familiar with this tool so we can use it for our future entirely sustainable projects. However, this was something a producer would benefit from being familiar with and not someone like me who is aspiring for a more creative role in the film industry. Important to know nevertheless.

I was allowed to better flex my creative muscles for our fourth and final week as we were tasked to create an elevator pitch for a project that both encompasses sustainable practices in it's production and can be used as a means of spreading awareness to audiences. I decided to pitch a remake of an existing film with a sustainable twist; theoretically a remake was mostly likely to be greenlit by producers as there is already an established market. My idea was a modern-day retelling of the widely known romcom ‘You’ve got Mail’ (Nora Ephron, 1998) with a contemporary narrative focus on sustainability.

Overall this unit helped me excel as a more environmentally conscious filmmaker but also in my day-to-day life I have become more sustainable. The simple awareness that the little things you can do have a huge effect on climate change has thoroughly affected the way in which I carry out most activities from now on.

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Stating that I had a rough start for our documentary unit would be an understatement. It was a mess from start to finish, but even a mess can be a valuable learning experience. I became too comfortable working with the group I had worked on my fictional film with; even with the knowledge that they had been disorganised and uncommunicative throughout the previous unit I still crewed together with them and this proved to be a fatal mistake. As well as I got on with them as people, sometimes creative differences can be difference between a solid project and rough project

A lot of pre-production was wasted on our producers initial idea to pursue a local pub and document Britain's iconic pub culture. It would have included going into the pub and filming various regulars having conversations. The idea wasn't very cohesive but it was a good starting point. However, it didn't come into fruition after weeks of waiting because our producer had not pushed the idea further; they hadn't asked for or gotten permission to film and they hadn't booked out equipment in time. Because of how much allotted pre-production time we had wasted, we were forced to make a quick U-turn and change our documentary's subject matter entirely.

Under crippling time constraints our director carved our another idea based on contacts they knew who owned their own clothing line. During half term, when I was unfortunately away seeing family, our director sought out these contacts and filmed their day-to-day - we were seemingly saved. However, having not been present for the shoot my job as editor became increasingly hard. This wasn't a narrative driven film that I could still piece together using the script as a guide, no, I had to painstakingly sit through 50 hours of mind-numbing footage and use my own intuition to carve out something vaguely resembling a story. I'm not pleased with the result as the assembly still flows like a series of interviews or podcast answers with no real cohesion but it was a struggle to find anything that linked - there was no semblance of conflict I could find and inject into the film to keep audiences engaged. I was in shambles.

Despite not being pleased with the final result, I'm proud of myself for assembling something despite the terrible time constraints. I was essentially given a single day to edit thanks to our setbacks. Locking myself in the editing suite and not leaving until I was forced out by the campus security turned out to be our saving grace because we at least had a completed project. There were some aspects of the final assembly that I am fond of such as the montage sequence at the start that I used to draw viewers attention so it's never without merit. In future I will learn to use my time more wisely and pick my group more carefully.

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I am Felix Hards, a filmmaking student at UCA. I have created this journal as a means of detailing my learning experience throughout the second year of this course. Join me as I evaluate myself over each unit; detailing my experience and examining what I have learned and where I can improve for future projects.

As an aspiring editor and content creator, I have used the tools given to me this year to prove myself as someone more than competent in the craft, somebody with a passion for assembling the raw materials of cinema and transforming it into a story worth watching. This is my journey spanning from the many setbacks at the start of the year for our fictional film to the thrill of finalising the edit on the live brief.

I've not only engaged with my skills as editor but throughout the year I've been given the tools to learn new skills, like how to be sustainable as a filmmaker. I've faced challenges and persevered, or in the case of our documentary film I have learned value lessons of the importance of a thorough plan. Whether the final result was good or bad, there is something for me to at least take away from every aspect of my course this year.

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In complete contrast to the previous unit, our live brief project has absolutely been my favourite. It was a joy to be apart of and the final result I am enamoured by - it was a blast. Initially, however, having just dealt a terrible hand I was apprehensive. Trying to avoid the pitfalls I fell in to for documentary filmmaking, I made the initiative to put together a group of the most able of my peers. This backfired upon discovering I only knew two people I had complete confidence in. Soon I learned as an editor it wasn't my responsibility to assemble the avengers and we luckily got absorbed into another more capable group. Our task was to create a one minute advertisement for the local business: reel cinema. There were stakes.

After our director organised a meeting for everyone I knew things were going to turn out excellently: seeing everybody talk so passionately about their role in production filled me with inspiring confidence and I took it upon myself to give this project everything I had - go big or go home. For example, the director requested I assemble timings for the 9-shots required for their upcoming previz and I went as far as making a draft assembly using stock footage taken from the shot list: just to more easily demonstrate the duration of each shot juxtaposed with one another.

Very few problems arose with the edit, mainly because everyone else had perfected their specific roles in production. The only issue I found was one of the child actors was a problem to cut around because his actions had no continuity between takes / shots. This just required some ingenuity and with the directors permission the solution became a change-up of the assembly itself. Moving some of the sequencing around we found a cut we were satisfied with.

What I've learnt from this unit and overall this year is that the group you join at the start is easily the most aspect part of production; even if I excel with the edit or for any role I'm assigned, if there are some cogs that refuse to spin then the whole machine stops working. Not to absolve myself of any responsibility, however, I believe I could become more outgoing when joining groups and not stick to the people I'm most familiar with because it's simply more 'comfortable'.