Week 11 Set: Draft your director's statement

Writing the statement that frames your capstone's process and intent, plus a disclosure line for a festival that requires one

3 May 2027

Before the session#

Bring your capstone story bible and whatever you’ve produced against it so far, even if it’s two test clips and a title.

In the session#

Draft a director’s statement, 300–500 words, for the piece you’re making. Structure it the way the genre actually expects — not because a personal essay is naturally shaped this way, but because the director’s statement is a genre convention with its own moves, borrowed wholesale from festival programme notes and pressroom copy: a paragraph of intent (why this story, why now), a paragraph on process (what was actually made with what tools, stated plainly rather than mystified), and a paragraph that addresses the piece’s ethical choices head-on — whose likeness, voice or labour the piece depends on, and why you think that’s defensible or how you’ve limited it.

Then draft the harder sentence: a one-line synthetic-content disclosure, as if the piece were being submitted to a festival that requires one. Say what was AI-generated and what wasn’t, in language specific enough that a programmer reading a hundred of these could actually tell your piece apart from the next one’s disclosure. “AI tools were used in the making of this film” discloses nothing; “the lead performance is a synthetic likeness generated from a licensed voice model; all backgrounds are camera-original” discloses something.

Afterwards#

Bring both to week 12. The capstone work session assumes the statement exists in draft, because the last week of set time is for finishing the piece the statement describes, not for starting to think about what it means.