Fin Gibbs is entering his third year as a BA (Hons) Film Production student. Having featured in We Love Your Sound!, he earned his first official credits in a film. I caught up with him to talk about his journey to this moment, his work across other short films and collaborations with fellow students, how he feels entering his final year, and the evolution that’s taken place in his first two years at AUB.
When you first signed up for the BA (Hons) Film Production course, what did you want to achieve, and what have you achieved so far?
When I initially started at AUB, I was mostly interested in directing. However, my passion and talent for editing became more apparent to me and I ended up changing my mind.
So far, I’ve had pretty varied achievements so far at AUB, both academic and otherwise. Not only have I successfully passed the first two years of the course, which feels worthy of celebration in itself, but I’ve also worked in a variety of post-production roles: editor, colourist, assistant and more.
How has AUB helped you in this first two years? Did you expect to be acting in films and taking part in the way you do now?
I definitely hoped I would be acting in these first two years at AUB. At GCSE and A-Level, I was involved with musical theatre and doing drama, as well as studying English. I'd done a lot of acting work in my film studies class before university too, so there was that experience of acting in front of a camera too that I brought to university.
The relationships that I’ve fostered through the creative space at AUB allowed me to get into this position where I can do more acting and I can work creatively, especially with friends who were in higher years on the AUB Film Production course and with people at Bournemouth University. Those contacts made me more aware of what opportunities there were, so I put myself in a position where I could take advantage of them.
The community that AUB breeds, and the creativity that is intrinsic in the nature of the University make it a very creative space to work, and in a place full of very creative people, there are endless chances where you will encounter people and lead you to opportunities to get involved with really interesting projects and to be involved in new and exciting ways as well that you may not expect.
How does it feel for you to see your name credited? Is it something you want more of?
It's a very special feeling to have credits across multiple different roles at this point in my career. Being at university and having credits as actor, as an editor, even smaller roles on bigger projects as well; it’s definitely special.
It’s my belief that it’s a constant measure of your creativity, not necessarily of success, but as a measure of intent. If you can put yourself out there enough to get those credits, then you’re genuinely intent on working in the industry. If you're not intent on working there, and you're not willing to do the work, then those credits won't appear. It’s a very good indication that I'm on the right track and I’m working towards the ultimate goal that I have of wanting to be in the film industry.
What did you think was the biggest change between film in first year and second year? What do you expect it to be entering third year?
Definitely the workload. It got a lot busier, but the projects also got more challenging. I quite enjoyed that, because in first year our projects were basic. It was very much getting a handle on software and equipment and different roles that you'd be working, and in second year, they know that we understand things now, and they ask us, "What else can you expand upon? What else can you bring, how else can you develop your ability to do your job?
So I found that quite an interesting challenge, and it allowed for more independence, and the projects became larger scale, gave us more freedom, higher budgets. It meant that we could spend our time exploring more interesting, extravagant ideas, which was really exciting.
I think that next year is going to be more difficult. The projects will obviously become even bigger, the funded grad films are quite high budget for student films and so the challenge going into third year is going to be trying to rise to that level. As an editor, you’re given hours and hours of footage and it's a great opportunity to fine tune your skills and sit there and really break it down and really digest it. I'm really looking forward to that opportunity of doing the tough work and expand my portfolio a little bit more as well.
Talk me through your final project. How will it go down and what’s involved?
There's not a whole lot to say as of yet. As I said, it's a big funded short film. There's a lot of scope. It's a two-week shoot and a multi-week edit. There's a lot of time that goes into this. We haven't crewed for them just yet, but we’ve voted on which projects we want, but that's not finalised yet.
Crewing for that will happen the beginning of next term, and I’m definitely excited for it. I keep talking about this idea of having a lot of time, but it's really nice to have guaranteed time spent in your role in the industry. It's like being a pilot – a pilot has to fly a certain amount of hours before they can fly commercial, and this feels the same. It's really nice to know that you have a certain amount of hours spent in an edit suite or on a film set or whatever it is that you might find yourself on as a student at a creative university.
Being a part of AUB, you guarantee yourself that you're getting those contact hours with the industry before you have to step into it professionally. You can experiment as a student before you reach the industry and have to face real consequences, and all of those things that can be daunting about an industry that is constantly shifting. It's really nice to have that as a student and as somebody who's trying to tackle that industry, to know that I get an opportunity to experience it before I have to go into it, it’s great.
What’s a piece of advice you have to other students, prospectives and creatives, that want to study Film Production and/or follow the same path you’ve taken?
Make sure that you love it. I’ll say it's going to be difficult and it's not something that you can coast by on. I know a lot of people sometimes consider creative degrees to be easier in some ways, or at least deserve less merit. There's a lot of sort of stigma about that, but actually the amount of passion and effort and energy that has to go into being constantly productively creative is so difficult sometimes.
You really have to love the what you're going to study and if you want to go into film, you really have to love making films and watching films and I know it sounds simple, but you have to really care, because if you don't, the workload and the level that's expected of you will catch up. However, if you do, the rewards are so brilliant and the people you will meet and the communities you’ll make are so strong and so exciting to be a part of. Look forward to it.
