Tom Pearson's Multimedia

After filming my script and looking through some of the footage it is clear that there are some minor problems. These problems which I am about to talk to you about is that of the whole actor / friend issue.

I have realised that whilst filming, it was hard to control my actors. I say actors but really I mean my friends. I ended up using two friends here from Nottingham who I know from the university. They are not trained actors and I have little knowledge of their past experiences of acting. Yes, I know, big mistake on my behalf. But at the time it was just ... well.... a lot simpler and easier.

I’ve come to realise that I had to do 90% of the work of telling them what to do, rather than fine tuning their performance. We recently had some seminars on how we should interact with actors and how to get the best from them. Being able to give them emotive actions without actually demonstrating what it is we want. This allows actors to bring more then just what you tell them to the table.

I do slightly regret using friends at this point, although they were brilliant about helping me with the project, they were just not up to acting standards and what I was looking for in my film. It was all very casual and this affected my scheduling. So, my fault indeed.

I think I chose not to use actors due to my confidence in working with them. The easy way out is to get someone you know who you can already talk to like a friend. This was a big mistake. I realise now that I should have used actors and done my research for them. But because I didn't have all the knowledge and confidence I didn't think it would work out as well. I think this will show in my final edit.

From now on I will be using actors for each piece of work I do. It is very important to get the right person for the right job. You don’t get a carpenter to do open heart surgery (but I guess you can try in my case), you will get a shoddy result and that is something I’m trying to steer clear of.