This past Thursday, I was introduced to the Gold Arts Award as a part of the Future Producers Plus. Not only is the Award a great qualification, but the process of acquiring the Award is, in itself, a brilliant scheme to increase one’s knowledge, skills and awareness of the creative arts in a wide variety of means.

Part of the Unit 1 exercise for the Award requires developing new arts skills through the use of one’s existing artistic experience as well as exploring another art form to produce a new, original piece of work. Choosing my primary art form was somewhat difficult as I’m the sort of person with the curiousity and interest in numerous artistic fields. My real difficulty lay in deciding between writing and acting, as such mediums are my particular favourites as well as the mediums I have the most extensive experience in; after all, I chose to study English Literature at university, which is a subject that feeds both my love of literary and dramatic artistry. After much thoughtful consideration, however, I decided to follow my love of drama and chose acting as my primary art form. Indeed, it was my years of experience of acting on the stage that inspired me to follow a career in the creative arts and take up a degree in English Literature; I have always felt drama and literature to be inextricably linked, for so much of the films and theatre we watch is inspired by literature, and vice versa. As well as having performed in numerous amateur plays, such as Arhur Miller’s The Crucible and Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale, I also possess a GCSE in Drama (A), an A-Level in Theatre Studies (A*) and a Grade 8 in LAMDA Drama: Duologue Acting (passed with Distinction), academically demonstrating my passion and extensive experience in acting.

The secondary art form I want to explore more is one I am really passionate and excited about; film-making. I am, and always have been, a dedicated cinephile, which has complimented my love of story-telling through both performance and the written word. In recent years, I have become increasingly interested in the process of making films, and it is a field I am particularly keen to follow a career in; indeed, I am going to be studying a module on Screenwriting this coming year because of my fascination with the process of film-making. I already have some minor experience in making short, amateur films such as spoofs of television shows and films, but I’m really looking forward to learning more about the technicalities of film from Luke such as in using more professional-grade cameras.

I feel that both the art forms of acting and of film-making compliment one another really well. My intention for delving more into the art form of film-making is in order to view the creative process of producing a visual narrative from the production’s genesis. Having been an actor for many years, I have been able to engage in creative productions from the point whereby a plot has already been decided upon and nuanced. As a film-maker, I want to develop a narrative from scratch, while also bearing in mind how the narrative will be performed via the art form of acting. I also wish to explore the difference and similarities between performing on a stage and performing to a camera, and how a narrative can be translated to an audience via recorded images; how the flow of edited scenes influences the flow of the narrative.

To utilize both these art forms, I hope to create a promotional video/trailer for the Cinekids events at the Watershed in response to our brief for this section of the Gold Arts Award. It will be great to help enthuse young children about cinema and film, as I was when I was little. Well, littler.