Week Three / Semester 2

 This week I turned up to the lecture expecting to see Chris and totally forgot he was off in Melbourne trying to get his feature film picked up. So this week we had a guest lecturer in Mark Defriest, he is a well known TV director in Australia. He has directed shows from The Flying Doctors, Ocean Girl, Parallax and Ship to Shore (which was one of my childhood favourite shows).

He was a very interesting and down to Earth director, who shared some advice and some of his opinions of the industry in Perth, and Australia. It was a different perspective from a stylistically different director from Chris, and just speaking to another director gives us as a class more scope of what it takes, and what it means to be a director.
He was humble about his abilities as a director, claiming he wasn't a great director but had enough ability to get the job done. He introduced the SWOT analysis to me, and recommended we use it to address our individual strengths and weakness'.

SWOT analysis (alternately SLOT analysis) is a strategic planning method used to evaluate the Strengths, Weaknesses/Limitations, Opportunities, and Threats involved in a project or in a business venture. It involves specifying the objective of the business venture or project and identifying the internal and external factors that are favourable and unfavourable to achieve that objective. 

Mark then spoke about passion, and to ask ourselves "do we have passion for film making?". And if we are, are we making the most of our time? It gave me a few things to think about, I've always thought myself to be passionate about films & story telling. But am I doing everything possible to get in to the industry at the moment? Hmm a bit of soul searching is needed, especially after applying the SWOT analysis, but this is a good thing...I can address any weakness'.