Makena Dettwiler

The Film For my class feature film project called The Hidden, I was the 1st Assistant Director. This meant that I help with our main director with anything he needed plus making the master schedule and call sheets. The biggest challenge we faced was staying on task. This caused us to film on more days than originally planned. I learned how to be a trusted leader in the class and used those skills beyond the filming set and classroom. My overall opinion of the film and my work on the film is positive because it was a successful film but I wish we could have had more time and used our time more productively. My Time In Class Every day in class, I was working on either call sheets or collaborating with my fellow crew members about upcoming filming dates and made sure that everyone was prepared. Outside of class, I make sure that I continue to be a leader so that I can better my classmates in this film. My Strengths I would say my biggest strengths are productivity, problem-...

e-Communication has greatly impacted my life, even though I don’t plan on entering the AV Communication field. I am going to school to study music education, and I plan to take the leadership skill I gained in this program and applying it to my own classroom. I feel that I am more technically advanced than a lot of other kids my age. For example, I made my grad party invites myself, after coaching my mom through the photography process and photoshopping my own pictures. I have learned to collaborate with people I don’t particularly like, and I feel this skill will help me in my future workplace. As a teacher, I will need to be able to communicate with my students and my coworkers, and my job as AD greatly prepared me for that. Managing a set taught me management skills by allowing me to know when to adjust deadlines and when to stick to them. Leadership went from being a quality I never had to one of my greatest values, and I’m so grateful to e-Comm for teaching me all of this. Le...

The purpose of No Film School's article titled "9 Basic Tips for a Smother Indie Film Production" aims to instruct readers on easy things they can do to have a productive film set. What caught my attention was the fact that the author mentioned the value of an AD second, just after the necessity of a producer. I'm mainly going to focus on this paragraph. The author focuses on how the AD runs production on a "day-to-day" basis, meaning they schedule and manage smaller crews (light, sound, camera, etc.) during the set. While I liked that they referenced Wikipedia as a source to refer to for on-set commands, I wish they had instead listed the commands themselves. It seems more professional and less lazy that way. I like what this article says about ADs and their responsibilities and I wish that every crew member could read this tip at some point! It provides nice insight into an AD's mindset. For reference: https://nofilmschool.com/2011/12/9-basic-tip...

During Fourth Quater, I had the pleasure to work as Assistant Director on our last few filming days and as "Film Mom" for post-production. One of my favorite things in the world is caring for people, and as an AD, I got to do just that.