2019 was a crazy year, where I was overworked. I am now working at Uxbridge College in the Creative Studies department, teaching media to 16-20-year-old students. Goals for 2020 include exploring more of the UK and expanding Action On The Side outside London. I’m also going to improve this website and the AOTS website. I’ve […]
Category Archives: Teaching
Vlog experiment
I’m trying a bit of an experiment over on my Raindance YouTube channel. This year I’m doing a short 1-minute vlog at the end of each teaching day, just going over what we covered that day. I think it could be useful for my students to see what was covered and when; I think it […]
A summer (what?)
An update on what I’m doing this summer
The HND on IG
As we’re gearing up for year three of the Raindance Higher National Diploma, we’ve just created an Instagram page for the programme. There’s talk of running a Snapchat as well. I’m now running three Instagrams: Action On The Side and my personal IG. As part of the HND, we’ll be running rolling short social media marketing […]
Raindance HND Feature Film
The inaugural Raindance HND £5k Student Feature Film is being announced today The Raindance Higher National Diploma (HND) on which I teach has created a competition for our students: across the two years of the diploma, we will find the best writer, best director, best producer, best DP, best editor, etc., and those students will […]
Creating an animatic
A step-by-step guide for creating an animatic
Scheduling your short: working days
In the film industry, the average shoot day is 12 hours on set. Feature film shoots may be scheduled 6 days a week, but if the film runs behind, crew will shoot 7-day weeks, for weeks at a time (imagine going 21 days without a day off). Add travel time and you can see how […]
Budgeting your film: low- medium- high-
An outline of the three budgets for your film
Scheduling your short film shoot: set-ups
A set-up is a shot. The set-up changes every time the camera changes position. The rule of thumb for every set-up is: 30 minutes for an average shot 45 minutes for complicated shots (e.g. dolly, steadicam) If there are added complications, such as traffic, lots of extras, or weather, I would allow 60 minutes 20 […]
How to create an IMDb page
I created a resource for my students recently, that shows the steps for creating an IMDb page. I share this here with you… and here is the page Review Check with your cast and crew whether they have an IMDb page first. A spreadsheet will help you. So will having your film open in […]
