Pre-Production: Andrea Kapos on Directing

We were given a masterclass in Directing from Andrea Kapos who is a leading director in Advertising. She started out as a runner on small sets and from the word go always said what she wanted to be.  She managed to get her break through saying she was a directer and someone that remembered her hired her to direct a music video after the original directer dropped out. Andrea showed us many of the things she has directed including many advertisements involving children.  Andrea commented how if you're seen to do a good job in a specific area you tend to get similar jobs come forward.  Andrea works a lot with children now as she is seen to get the most of them to benefit the advert. 

Andrea gave the advice of letting your actors do what they want to start with, let their creativity breathe life into the characters they are playing and then direct their creativity to suit your vision. This is great advice that we will take away for when we shoot Young & Famous.  As it is a comedy it is important for us to trust our actors with their character to be able to interpret it how they believe the character would behave. It is important to have this natural freedom when directing our sitcom as the jokes will become less funny and unnatural if they are over performed. 

After the masterclass we had tutorials with Andrea to allow her to know what our ideas were and to see if she could offer us any advice.  She liked our idea and suggested that we work on where the story is going to take the audience. She also suggested that we could make a bigger thing of the older generation trying to understand new technology which is a theme that lots of people could relate to and find amusing. Moving forward we plan to work on Andrea's notes to deepen our idea and develop it further.