Introduction to Module Brief

This morning's seminar was an introduction to the Creative Project Realisation module, which involves exploring and experimenting with different ways to approach Production Design on a film set. The brief requires us to make a short film piece on the topic of 'the uncanny', working together as a group to plan, design and build a set and creatively solve any problems that arise in doing so. The actual film does not require a narrative, but instead the focus is on understanding the creative side to the production, and making decisions as a group to problem solve and experiment creatively.

I am looking forward to getting started with this module and putting a lot of effort into planning and designing the set, as this is an area I have never really explored much previously when working on productions. I like the idea that the focus of this brief is to try new things and experiment creatively, instead of being assessed purely on the technical aspects which other modules on the course seem to rely more heavily on. I enjoy coming up with and developing creative ideas, and on other modules I have also found an interest in Producing, so to be able to do a module which is practical seems like it will be enjoyable as well as useful.

This week's seminar also involved trying out a short creative meditation exercise, which was supposed to help in getting into a creative mind-set. Although I had a basic idea before this, I did use the time to think about ways to develop my idea further and I found imagining being in a room to be useful, as I was able to fully explore the space I had initially thought of in more depth.

From this, I took away an idea that focuses on the theme of imagination, and visuals that could be representative of childhood. A lot of the examples we looked at of special effects and production design within this week's session seemed to be associated with fear in relation to being unsure if something was real or not. I thought about developing the idea of imagination further in a different way - exploring the imagination world of a child, the excitement in a belief something is real as opposed to the fear of it. A film that I thought about whilst trying to visualise this idea more clearly was Pan's Labyrinth (Dir. Guillermo del Toro, 2006.)