Andrea Kappos | Masterclass & Tutorial #2

We recently had a masterclass with a professional within the industry, Andrea Kappos. Andrea is a director, who is usually known for working with children on screen and directing adverts for companies or TV channels such as Tescos, Legoland, Sky Arts, KFC and more. She started off as a runner in the industry, and then started doing directing jobs on the side after trying it once for a shoot. She is now a freelance director who is a part of an agency, but she founded a production agency with two other workers called 'Think Make Create'. She was invited in to talk to us about what she does for her job, the rough process of getting a job and giving us some advice for the future.
http://www.thinkmakecreate.com/about
http://www.darkenergyfilms.com/andrea-kapos/

Andrea started off by talking about her speciality within the directing industry, which is "un-scripted" jobs. This means that people do a lot of improv and she says she likes to use "real people" as it makes the video look more natural which is the aim. She also mentioned she's known for working with children within projects for companies such as Tescos and Legoland. One of the things she always looks for when casting children is that they're natural, down to earth but also good in front of the camera. This way the children be themselves within the video, and it makes the purpose of the video more effective and keeps it entertaining.

Some of the advice she gave us was:

• Be vocal about what you want to do.
• Create an identity for yourself.
• Communicate what you want.
• Get your idea and vision across - especially if are a Director.
• Stay openminded.
• Be decisive.
• Companies want to feel like they know what you want to do before they hire you for the job.
• Decide what it is you want to do.
• Be honest with yourself.
• Let people know.
• This will potentially get you some work opportunities.

Some of the advice for directors working with actors on a job was:

• Make sure the environment feels safe.
• Actors should feel like they can be themselves - if that's the desired look.
• Make the actors feel like they aren't doing anything wrong, just give them better direction or a different direction to help them when getting your desired look.

There were a few steps within the process that I found quite interesting, and would like to interpret those into our own project. These are:

• Physical face-to-face Auditions.
• Gives you a better idea on the actors talent, the actors personality and how they are in person.
• A Pre-Production Meeting.
• This meeting is usually before a shoot and the purpose is to make sure everything is signed off and everyone knows what is wanted from them during the shoots. 
• On Shoot Days.
• Give positive feedback to the actors during the shoot.
• Turn negative comments into positive ones with constructive solutions.
• Make them feel like they're doing well.
• Praise first and then suggestion for change.
• There is no wrong way of doing it.

I feel as if these points will help alongside making sure we get the most out of our actors and they feel comfortable during the shoot. Also it will help when bonding as a group and working well within the team of crew and cast. This will make for a good shoot, which in turn will come across on camera and hopefully project through the actors performance.

.................................................................

We had a tutorial with both Simon and Andrea separately.

Simon's Tutorial

Within our tutorial, we told Simon our ideas for audience and channel. The audience we want to target our show at is middle aged adults but also families, and the channel we want it to appear on is BBC. We will need to do some research on both of these aspects to make sure they fit will with one another, but we are confident that our show would air on this channel and for this range of ages. 

After the last tutorial we thought about our purpose, and we told Simon our decision of the couple not having any contact with the children or grandchildren. However, there still needs to be a story arch of the series, which is the main plot that will carry across throughout the whole series, not just the pilot. Although we have a plot of the couple trying to become Young & Famous, there still isn't a clear reason why, which there needs to be. This is something we will need to think about a little bit more before starting the writing of the script.

Simon suggested we look at a show called 'Stella' starring Ruth Jones, but upon watching the pilot episode, we all decided it wasn't really something that fitted in with our idea. 

The mention of the recent trend 'Vlogging' came up and there was a though that the couple could be into YouTube and vlog themselves. This is potentially something we will think about, but it may end up that another character does this rather than the couple as we think they would prefer Instagram to YouTube.

Andrea Tutorial

Within our tutorial, we told Andrea our ideas for the whole major project, and she was really positive about it. We need to do some research on the time era of the 40s, 50s, 60s and so on, and other shows such as 'Outnumbered', 'My Family' & 'Mrs Browns Boys' to influence us in developing the idea. She also suggested looking at the characters within the show 'Keeping Up Appearances', as they are quite old and this is relatable to our characters. 

She mention the phrase 'How to navigate the modern world', and this relates a lot to our character's journey in trying Instagram and trying to become young and famous. We also mentioned the idea of social media and promoting on that, and she suggested that we do something like 'Arnold cam'. This could be where the robotic cat wanders around and captures BTS footage or films the characters, etc. This is a good idea and we will think a further into this. We could also create an actual Instagram for Annie to make it a little bit more personal for her and the audience.

Overall, the tutorials went well, but there are still some aspects to the plot that we still need to think about. However, we are on track and we are all feeling positive about our idea and our progress on the development of the show.