Explorations in the Dark (How I Told 300 Stories Without A Single Image) by Matt Thompson (Director of Rockethouse Productions) Lecture - Notes

• "It is important that the audience doesn't know what will happen next in a story"
• Don't do absolutely everything yourself; you can learn from how other people do things
• The quality of the voice is of the personality
• "If you don't know about the characters, how do you care about them?"
• Details make stories sound more true
• "Listen to what people are saying and be aware of it"
• "You can tell what people are from their attitude"
• "Visual details work very well on radio, as sound works well on film"
• "The more specific the better"
• Get boring background information over at the beginning
• "Words themselves seem to embody so much emotion just in the way they are spoken"
• You can be vague to suggest the epic
• Prefiguring - plant an idea earlier on
• You can use sound to establish a (type of) person
• You can use music as a breather
• Anthropomorphism can be used
• "Observe the world and notice it's sounds"
• Some people are naturally really good interviewers, good listeners

Creative Project Course Outcomes

This course extends the ideas explored during students’ earlier practice courses. Having chosen a practice medium on which to focus in the second year, students will engage in the design, research and production of a practice project in that same medium. The course provides students with master classes from professionals and faculty in the practice field, offers supervision in designing and researching a project, as well as production tutor support in tackling technical and production issues associated with producing a project to the set brief. This practice work will be supported by relevant readings in media theory, aesthetics and production techniques which will be discussed in workshops.

 

Upon successful completion of the course you will be able to:

 

•       By the end of the course, a successful student should be able to:

•       Demonstrate conception, design, research and realisation of a creative media project;

•       Demonstrate deployment of advanced skills in developing a proposal and plan for a medium-specific project;

•       Show application of methods of critical analysis to the research and development of that project;

•       Demonstrate a refined skill in reflecting critically and theoretically on their own and others’ media practice.