Daniel Clark

Hello all, Only just discovered this thread. I'm also attending the workshop tomorrow, so thought I'd pip in with a good luck wish to all of you who'll be there too. I'm really looking forward to it, and will value the experience no matter what the outcome is. After the workshop, it's one day off then I'm straight onto the shoot of a film I'm directing a DoP-ing. Always good to keep on one's toes I believe! Dan

Damn straight! Thanks for the pointer.

Would be most delighted if I could get some feedback on this little gem I shot as my college grad film. I'm just a little proud considering it was mini-dv and it won a Kodak student film award (the prize being 16mm stock which I'm currently in the porcess of using to make my first directed short). Enjoy, please! http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/filmnetwork/A3433051 xxx dan

Advice for the video: no matter how narrow constraints are you can still create something interesting if you let your mind wander, and avoid doing anything because others have done it and it's "cool". Be original. Play on what other people ahve done if you have to, but if you're making a music video you want it to stand out which it won't do it's all fish-eye, bleached out lighting, shallow focus, high-shutter speed. Experiment, play around (within budgetary reason). So wondering and originality. Vague but true.

Aguirre Wrath of God, the opening and closing shots are breath-forcefully-removed-from-body amazing. The long take that goes through the bars and into the courtyard at the end of Antonioni's The Passenegr had my brain shitting itself asking 'how did he have the tenacity to do that?' Most of Persona and Blade Runner Cliche but the 'napalm shot' in Apocalypse now still sends shivers a-tingling down my spinal column. I love the photography of the French New wave particularly anything by Raoul Coutard and Henri Decae. One of Tarkovsky's films, can't remember which (maybe some one can help me), when a man crosses a field in wide as the wind blows the grass, causing it to move in sideways waves. It's impossible to describe how enigmatic it is.

I would say the best thing to do is gain some life experience; explore life a little, and don't box yourself into the narrow world of ladder climbing when you've only just come out of university. There are far too many "film-makers" out there who have, when it comes down to it, have nothing to say, and if film is art and art is expression, this obviously negates any validity. If simply being in the industry is enough for you then go for it, toil away and get treated like poop for years until eventually you're making shiny, glossy, empty music videos and commercials, but my advice for anyone who wants a deeper experience from film and life, is to have a reason to do it, something to communicate that's personal. And how can you do this until you know yourself? Christopher Doyle spent 10 years doing all-sort jobs, anything you care to think of he probably did, and in a rainbow-colourful mix countries. How do you think he is able to create such amazing images? Through an appreciation of a greater sense of life, from having truly engaged with it.