My long-term professional goal is to write and direct feature films. In the meantime, I would like to continue making short films and gain as much experience and as many industry connections as possible. Throughout my research, which can be found in greater detail in my journal (https://daniel-bingham.wixsite.com/website), I have developed a clear plan for how I’m going to achieve these goals after university.
In my self-evaluation, I identified various strengths and weaknesses that I have. One of my strengths as a filmmaker is that I think I am a good collaborator. I have been lucky enough to enjoy many fruitful collaborations over the past few years, working very closely with every department to get a film made. Most people seem to have enjoyed their collaborations with me, so I plan to continue many of these collaborations on into the future.
However, in terms of my ability as a director, perhaps my main weakness which I identified was my lack of experience working with actors. The university didn’t really provide classes on working with actors so my only knowledge comes from just diving in and giving it a go on each film. This is obviously a fantastic way to learn however, I identified in my self-evaluation that it would be easier to understand the experience of an actor having attempted acting myself. So I decided that I would attend an acting class. After a quick google search, I discovered countless acting classes running in Edinburgh. However, most of these seemed to be for children or teens and so weren’t what I was looking for. The class that drew my attention was Acting Out Drama School’s Adult Beginners Drama Course. It has various videos on its website and from watching these, it seems to take itself seriously enough that I should be able to learn a thing or two, however it’s still friendly enough that I shouldn’t have a problem as a beginner. I also know one of its members, so I have her personal recommendations and having a friendly face there couldn’t hurt! I have emailed them to find out more information about when they plan to resume their in-person sessions after COVID 19 restrictions are lifted.
As recently as only several months ago, I gave my action plan presentation to Paul Holmes. Up until this point, I had completely dismissed the idea of getting a job at a production company or as a runner on set. I saw this as selling out and giving up; after all my goal is writing and directing my own films, not working on someone else’s. However, Holmes pointed out to me that this is, while a nice idea, perhaps a bit naïve. I am going to need to get a job after university in order to support myself as I make my own short films either way. So why shouldn’t that job be on a film set? After all, it would give me experience on a professional film set, it would provide me with an opportunity to observe other departments at work; possibly even the director, and it would let me network with other local filmmakers who I might potentially want to work with. The more I think about it, there doesn’t really seem to be a downside to this kind of job. I realised that I may struggle to get these jobs straight out of university, so I might need to use bulletin boards on Facebook and volunteer on a few sets, before I can get paying work, however the positives of this kind of job definitely seem to outway this negative. I have been paying close attention to these kinds of pages, regularly checking for jobs and getting in touch with the ones that seem to fulfil what I’m looking for; not to mention pages like Screen Scotland which offer paid work. If it weren’t for this research and some good advice, I wouldn’t even have considered this route as an option.
I always imagined myself self-financing my short films, at the start at least. I self-financed all of my short films before university and this continued during university too with the exception of my grad film which was crowdfunded. This is still an option for smaller scale films, however when I want to make something a bit more ambitious, then I will need to begin applying for grants. So far, I have found it easy to find people willing to work for free for the experience, and hopefully this will carry forwards, however I may find it more difficult to find reliable crew unless I start paying people. I researched these grants and found a few places which provided them, for example Short Circuit and First Flights. The deadline for applications to Short Circuit’s short film fund this year is 17th May, so I have started an application for Down in the Hole. This was a short film I tried to make in 2020, however it fell through when the pandemic hit. It also acts as a proof of concept for my feature film that I’m developing called Radio Underground. Short Circuit offer up to £15,000 for films. You do need to pay your crew at least minimum wage, but this would be an amazing opportunity.
I wanted a central place online where I could send anyone who is interested in order to see my showreel, films, updates etc. So I decided to make a website. I already have a blog I have been keeping at university, however I wanted something a bit more professional. So I bought a domain name using GoDaddy and I created this website; https://daniel-bingham.co.uk/. This is still a work in progress. I still need to add information about my production company as it develops and I’m yet to start my blog, but all the important stuff is there. I didn’t want to bog the site down with unnecessary text that nobody is going to read anyway, so I tried to keep it as minimalist as possible. For example, my homepage has my showreel, social media links and nothing else other than my name. I think things like this make navigating the website so much easier, so I’m happy with the design.
Featured prominently on my website is my showreel. I thought it was past time for an update, even including footage from The Hollow Men, my most recent film. I’m not sure how useful this kind of thing is for a writer director, because it’s surely more useful to judge me by just watching one of my films. However, it is a good indicator of style and tone. While I would hesitate to say my films are just depressing (despite what some people say…), I would say that they generally tend to be quite melancholic in tone. I wanted the music to reflect this, so I chose a song called The Lost Garden by Radical Face. This song was part of an album released with the intention for young independent filmmakers to use for free. I think the clips I chose for the showreel reflect the variety of different films I have made over the years. I cropped some films’ aspect ratio to create a sense of consistency, while I enjoyed discovering interesting edits between shots from entirely separate films!
I already had a social media presence, however this is something I feel deserves more attention, because I recognise it could be very useful as an independent filmmaker. I have an Instagram page were I post my photography and art, but I decided to place more of a focus on my filmmaking on this page, so I have started posting updates on my filmmaking. Similarly, I am on YouTube and Vimeo, but I have decided that going forwards, I am going to try to post only my best work and I am going to make a sincere effort to engage an audience.
Before undertaking this module, I knew what my end goal was, but I was still a bit unsure how to get there. However after doing extensive research, I now have a much more practical idea of what I’m going to do and I am a lot more confident going forwards. I have taken measures to address my weaknesses and I am continuing to do so in the coming months. Leaving university, I think I’m ready for the future and I’m feeling optimistic about it.
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