Unit 23: Multi-cam production blog

27th November 2013

Today our groups were formed for the multi-cam production of "Cinderella." The first group consists of Isaak Hest, Rose Ashworth and Ryan Bartle. The second group (Our group) has Shemar Chawla, Leah Sharp, Jordan Dent and Dale Whyte (Me). The first group has fewer people due to our class being uneven with 7 students, as a result of this one member from our group will be helping them in their production by operating one of their cameras (Still to be decided). Out job roles in the group have been decided. Shemar will be our Director, Jordan our Vision mixer, Leah the Sound Recordist and I will be the Lighting Director. As the lighting director in this production I will have very little say as to what the lighting will be as it is mainly up to the acting Director Sonya. So I will have to speak with Sonya to sort out the lighting in preparation for filming. 

11th December 2013

We went to the theatre to map out the camera shots and draw out a risk assessment, recce checklist and floor plan. We now have a better idea on how we are going to film the Cinderella project.

Risk assessment
Risks that we found were, trailing wires, staircase (In the dark it is impossible to see where you are going up the stairs), small possibility of falling lights. To overcome these risks we need to, tape the wires down, have some form of light source when moving around behind the seats and going up the stairs, making sure the lights are secure.

Location recce
In the location recce we wrote for things to take, camera, risk assessment form. "Talking to people;" confirm ownership, exchange details, explain intensions, passes are required, local events. No tansport is required. "Camera and lighting;" Secure place for kit, cables. "Sound;" Electrical hazard, background music. "Things for director;" photos.

17th December 2013

Rehersal
At 2:00 today we went to the rehersal for the Cinderella production and now have a better idea on how to set up the shoot. We now know who to focus on in the scene depending on where you are on camera. As the rehersal was going on I took a few photos so we could refer back to them if needed.

 

18th December 2013

We filmed the production. There were no problems with eny equipment apart from a tripod that wouldn't allow us to remove a plate. We are now ready for the capture and editing process.

 

9th January 2013

We began the capture process with the first four tapes which were both of the right and left side cameras for acts 1 and 2. I also capture a 5th tape accidentally one of the other groups tapes which unfortunately took an extra hour out of out edit time.

 

13th January 2013

We thought we had the final four tapes and in capturing we discovered that one of the tapes was one used in a different production. This tape was damaged and was unable to record on so we were panicing a little about if we might have used that tape or not.

 

14th January 2013

We found the actual final tape and captured it. This allowed us to set up the multi-cam edit and in a few hours it was complete. We would have captured but we had to leave for the day and didn't have the time.

 

15th January 2013

Now that it was all exported we were ready to burn it. I burned two copies one for he acting students tutor and one for ours. Now we are ready for the hand in.

 

Here is our title background picture;

 

3 minute wonder production blog

November 1st 2013
The idea
My idea for my 3 minute wonder is to address Asperger syndrome, or "Asperger's." It will be a simple shoot of having someone with Asperger's say what it is like to have it, have an expert give a brief description on what it is, and have someone who has lived with someone who suffers from Asperger syndrome. It will require a lot of editing to cut it down to 3 minutes, but as long as all the interview subject give workable answers then it should be fine. The target audience are those who discover that someone they know (Family, friends) has Asperger's or they have it themselves and just to help them know what that means for whoever has it.

November 10th 2013
A small change
It has been made clear to me that I cannot use the expert in Asperger's and the person who has lived with someone with it as they will likely give too long answers and will not be able to use them at all. What I need to remember is that it is only 3 minutes and I cannot fit 3 interviews into that short a time. The interview with the person who has it will be more than enough.

November 11th 2013
Preparation
Filming will need to take place soon and I still need to make my proposal and pitch for the documentary. The proposal is close to completion and hopefully will be finished by tomorrow.

November 12th 2013
Ready to film
With the pitch/proposal now complete and knowing what I want to do for the documentary I feel that I can now go out and film. For the interview subject I will be giving a statement myself on my views on having Asperer syndrome. This does make it easier for me to film my 3 minute wonder as I know what I am looking for and can answer the main question. I won't be preparing any answers before I film the interview and will improvise an answer when it comes to filming.

November 21st 2013
Getting the equipment
To be perfectly honest, I was procrastinating getting the equipment and filming the documentary. But an opportunity arrised that has allowed me to finally film it. We went out to film another documentary about Paul Burgam, I was trusted with the equipment to take home so I can now film my 3 minute wonder. I will have that finished tomorrow.

November 22nd 2013
Finally filming
The previous night me and 3 others from my class filmed a section for another documentary as a group project separate from the 3 minute wonder. After that was filmed I was trusted with the equipment to take home until Monday. I took the opportunity of having the equipment to film my 3 minute wonder and also made a little short film (Just because I could). In filming the 3 minute wonder I had my the camera set up on the tripod and the clip mic attached to my shirt and answered common questions asked about having Asperger syndrome. This included "What triggers your abnormal behaviour?" "How friends/ family treated you any different since finding out about your Asperger's?" Etc. It took a few takes, I never realised how much I could talk to answer just one question. And after I was happy with what was filmed I watched it back a few seconds. As it turned out I forgot to turn on the microphone. I already had 9 minutes of footage (Which was now worthless) so I thought to myself to either re-record the interview with the microphone on this time, or add some non-diegetic dialogue in to try to sync up what I was saying. I came to the conclusion of just filming again as it was the easier choice. When the interview was finally over I was leaving the house with my equipment to get some cutaways of Redcar. I had planned to get a long panning shot from New Marske woods, shots of a moving train (Internal and external) A shot from the top of the beacon and the rest of the cutaways were filmed inside the house. When getting the external shot of the train I was surprised to see the station was filled with police men. I thought that with the amount of dogs and them looking through the bushes that they were searching for a large stash of drugs or something else illegal. As it turned out the royal train was pulling into Redcar and they were looking for anything that might cause harm to the royals. After getting 5-15 seconds of footage of the train one of the policemen came to me and asked me to leave. I explained what I was doing and he let me off but asked to not film any more on the platform. I knew something like this would happen so that was why I was stood in an area far away enough from them that it took them some time to get to me, and I could still get a good shot of the train. That night I was happy with what I got and received a message from another member of my class Isaak Hest. He needed the equipment so he could film the next day and asked if I could meet him tomorrow to give him it. I agreed and also took the opportunity of having the equipment that one night to make my short horror film.

November 25th 2013
Capturing
Came in ready to capture the footage. The 3 minute wonder footage was fine. The short horror was fine. The longer group documentary tape however was corrupted and all footage was lost. 2 out of 3 ain't bad, but it is still very annoying.

December 10th 2013

Beginning the edit
Admittedly it did take me a while to get around to the edit but that was only due to other assignments deadlines approaching. I knew the first 9 minutes of footage were useless due to the lack of sound, the rest was completely usable. It took a total of around 1 hour and a half to get it cut down and edited to completion of the offline edit. All that was needed then was to add in the cutaways and soundtrack. Unfortunately the day was at an end so I would have to come back the next day to finish it off.

December 16th 2013

Almost finished edit
I know I said I'd do it on the 11th but again other work took priority. Either way by the end of thew day I had the whole thing almost completed. All the cut aways and the voice over were shot and added to the video. All that was required was the soundtrack, which is my weakest point. It may take a while.

January 6th 2014

Finally finished
It took a while but after failing at creating my own soundtrack I decided to hunt for some royalty free music and after several searches and attempts at finding the perfect music I found one that worked very well with what was being said at what time. Here is the link; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0pSAzEN07Xk. I now feel confident burning it onto a disk.

January 9th 2014

Burned
The video is now burned and handed in.

Motion graphics Production blog

OCT 1st 2013
Initial idea: A crowd of people outside watching a large screen showing clips from different events and music videos from the 1970's. The shot zooms through the crowd to get a better view of the screen which shows more clips from that era. Finally the title of the programme shows on the screen. (No title so far)

Storyboard for 1st title sequence idea.

In this storyboard we can see that it will begin with a moving shot of an animated crowd watching a large screen as a type of concert. The screen features many different clips from the 70's showing things such as news stories, big TV/ film events, 70's music videos and bands, along with anything else that would concern that era. It will move through the crowd of people, going to the right until it is in the centre of the crowd facing the screen head on. It will finally zoom though the crowd and onto the screen alone so it is all that is in shot. The screen will then show the title of the programme "Hits of the 70's (Working title) and from there it will fade out and onto the presenter or presenters depending on how the script turns out.

70's font styles

As this will be centred around the 1970's it will have to feature as much content from the 70's as possible. This could be something as simple as font styles that were highly used and known throughout the era. Here are some examples;

From these images we can see that there is a large variety of different font styles that we do not use much today if at all. Any of these wold be service to use as a title and possible logo in the background.

13th Nov 2013

As for the actual presenting of the programme the room will be green screened as a 1970's style room as used by TV presenters in the 70's. The presented him or herself I am planning on being on being dressed in a 1970's style and open with something like "Hello and welcome to "Events of the era" (Working title) Today we will be looking at the 1970's which explains why I am dressed like this and why the room does also." In the 2-4 minutes of presenting various facts about the 70's will be either mentioned or shown in clips. This could be things like the death of Elvis. The birth of Disco. The premier of the show M*A*S*H*. Or any other event that was known in the 1970's. It will then end with either a highly known and popular music video from the 1970's (possibly "God save the queen" by the sex pistols as it is the number one on the 1970's music charts), or a montage of different clips from the 70's much like at the start when it is coming into the programme.

First draft for the presenters script.

19th Nov 2013

Mapping out all ideas for the production.



 Presenters look: The person who will be presenting this programme will be wearing 1 of 2 possible outfits. My first though is that he or she wear a 1970's style of clothing much like as seen in the pictures below;

This is to help them fit into the category of the 1970's and to possibly provide a little humour to the audience. Failing to obtain clothing like this then they will be wearing a more modern and simple style. This will most likely include a plain shirt, jeans or smart trousers, and sensible shoes, by this I mean no trainers.

1970's montage

In the title sequence and playing in the background there will be a montage of the 1970's. In this montage there will be randomised footage from music videos, news footage, old shows/Films and other content from the 70's. Music video clips that will be seen will be from popular artists who lived or died in the 70's such as Elvis or Michael Jackson. News related can show the 1972 Olympics terrorist attack along with the news article of Elvis passing.

20th November 2013

Set design sketch

As the deadline date is getting closer and closer I have began to think about what the set of the programme will look like. The presenter(s) will be stood in front of the middle wall where 2 other walls will be on either side, both with TV screen on showing footage of the topic which the presenter(s) is currently addressing. There will be a large flower on the ground to have a brief representation of the 70's. The walls will all be covered in a 1970's style wallpaper with "Events of an era the 1970's" written multiple times on it.

Working on the backdrop I have found the issue of setting the triple walls so they look accurate, and have yet to start on the floor. I have the design for the walls finished and only have to add all 3 into the same image. I looked up on Google how to set it out and came across this image that is a great example of what I am trying to do.

21st November 2013

Coming to improve my script and draw out my storyboard for filming I had the idea of working with the 2 minute time limit as a way on making my production longer. This consists of the intro having the presenter saying "Now I only have 2 minutes" and soon after when he or she is listing off the facts a 2 minute timer is counting down in the corner. There will also be someone off camera with a timer waiting to press the button so it is more accurate. Then I will include an outro which when but together with the intro makes it roughly 20-30 seconds longer which will give me a full 2 minutes of the information with a little bit of speaking with the audience added on.

Storyboard

Script second draft

With my new idea of being able to lengthen the production I had to rewrite the script to accommodate that. To do this I added more to the intro and outro, in the informative section when facts about the 70's is being listed then I have shortened some of the longer subjects to ensure that I won't go over the 2 minute limit for that section. As a result the script is not much different but it is an improvement.



2nd December 2013

My presenting actor is now decided as Rosa Graham. She is a first year acting student at Stockton Riverside and is more then egar to help out with this production. She will be supplying the 70's costume as she has assured me that she has 70's style clothes at home, so it saves me some money on purchasing some for her. She has received the script and will know it for the planned filming this Friday on the 6th.

(Rosa Graham)

6th December 2013

Today I filmed my presentation for the motion graphics and overall it went well. I was delayed with the fact that the room was opened 1 hour and a half later than first promised. It took 30-50 minutes to set up, film and clean away the equipment. Set up took about 10 minutes, clean up about 5 and the remainder was filming. It took so long due to my actress constantly making the same mistake of saying "1997" instead of "1977" but it wasn't too much of a problem. Footage captured was 11 minutes 21 seconds long, after the first few takes we decided to turn the camera off and run through it until we got it right. Rosa did really well and never complained on my points for improvement, and we ended up breaking into laughter whenever she said "1997" so it was a lot of fun to film. It was a bit more of a challenge to film the whole thing than I first thought. Another member of the class, Shemar Chawla, was supposed to meet me there at 10 to help film. We finished around 11-11:30 and he never came. This led me to operate the camera, set up the lights, run the teleprompter, direct Rosa, and I'm sure I'm forgetting something. This did provide me with more experience in all of these areas but I am concerned about the footage as I had to stay at the computer to run the Teleprompter and as a result could not see what the camera was capturing.

11th December 2013

Edit almost finished, just requiring to finish the set, balance out the screens, and add in a little soundtrack. While I was importing Rosa from the green scree onto the backdrop I accidental used the "Glass" tool in after effects and ended up spending the next half hour trying to work out what I did until I got help from an after effects expert in my class Jordan Dent. 

17th December 2013

Edit is now complete all I need is to burn it onto disk.

7th January 2014

Back in collge and able to burn onto disk. Checked through the finished project again to look for any problems I hadn't noticed and found several jump cuts that were seen in the monitors on the wall. Now that is fixed I am fully confident I can burn it onto my disk.


Now is burned and handed in.