The making of The Music Experience. Aka my studio production

Day 1- Friday 10th May- Preparation.

During this day, my team and I went to the uni to the studio to prepare for the upcoming live music show we were creating. Most of the time we prepared the plans of where the presenter was going to be, the bands are standing etc, acoustic sets etc.  The biggest thing we had to set up was the lighting cause we wanted to use a different range of colors. We also had issues about the VT Graphics in the background that needed to be fixed because it was very glichy on the projection at the background.

Us camera ops didn't have anything to do so we practiced on what shots we can use for the performers. Pretty slow day today I have to say. But I felt that it was needed so that we can practice the shots. To help this our lecturer and one of the team members. Here is a few pictures of the day:

Day 2-13 May- Rehearsal with the acts

During this day, we set up of were the acts were going to be during their parts and also their sound checks. This was also the time of where us camera ops tested shots that could possibly be used.

The lighting was finally sorted out but the issue was the white cloth on the background for the VT Graphics projection. We decided to cover the whole background in black but unfortunately the VT Graphics didn't come out as well as we hoped.

The bands sounded good and their positions were final. Ready to rock on roll. Here's a few pics for the setups:

Day 3- 14th May-The main event

Today was the day for the main event to go live. But the first problem we had was that there was no audience, so some of the team went to go and collect as much audience as they can. We then ended up with quite a large group so that was a step up. For the VT Graphics, we had to loose it because it didn't work on the black curtains. Another issue was that the recorded interviews with the acts weren't edited so they have to be done at the end of the production on editing.

The presenter came on and the bands played. I took as much shots as I can but I felt there wasn't enough communication for new shots. But I feel that I've done the best I can. Some angles were slightly shaky but I thought the rest worked well. The acts were fantastic and the presenter did really well. The only thing I think needed improving was the sound on the acts when they did their short interviews after their songs.

We then had to do a second take of the whole thing. This time I changed role for other team members to use the camera. The second take went really well with the replacements.

The bands, presenter and the acts were fantastic. The sound on the short interviews after the acts were much better cause the sound was improved.

Overall a good show. Hopefully the final edit should come out successfully. Another few pics:

And now the studio module

Now that I've finished my documentary module, I am now on my studio production module where I have to work with a team at the uni campus to film a live music show.

We had a meeting on Wednesday about what days we have to be at the uni and what the plan when we are there. The first day is on the Friday, we have to prepare the sets and make sure everything is working. On the Monday, we are going to do the band rehearsals and then on the Tuesday we are going to film the whole event.

The meeting today was about what times we need to be there for the three days which are 9 till 4. So I'm going to ask my cab if he can take me to the uni campus and collect me from there.

During the past few days, I have been finishing my module on Documentary.

I have added more cuttaways on the interviews by filming more shots of my book and DVD collection. I didn't have a script for this so I was being very experinemntal with angles and see if it would work. Since I didn't borrow a tripod from college, I borrowed my mum's tripod that is used for her digital SLR camera. This worked out really well. Here's a shot of this happening.

 

 

 There was a time of where I had to think of cuttaways to an interview where there was supposed to be a scene re-enactment. The scene re-enactment couldn't happen because the actress couldn't make it because of work commitments. So I thought I could add in shots of the book cover etc. Also I thought of an idea of addidng a shot of the paper with the repeated text 'All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy'. I wanted to film it on my computer screen but unfortunately it show at all on the camera. So instead I printed out the document and filmed shots of it on my desk. Here is a shot trying to film it on the computer:

 I also had to film clips of me talking to the camera, saying what the next stage was and a clip of me at the end of the documentary. This was quite challenging because I didn't have an assistant camera op so I had to film it myself.


Scene re-enactments

I have recently filmed two scene re-enactments and they were from the stories Carrie and The Shining.

For The Shining, I filmed a shot of one of the interviewees whom I asked if he could act for it. He had to act a scene of where the dad is locked in a pantry, shouting at the door. I filmed this in the black room and Theo acted out the scene really well. I tried to use portable lighting gear to help light the scene better. But then I looked back at the footage and it looked really good without it. Here is a shot of it:

I wanted to film a scene with the main character's wife, by using the femal interviewee. But unfortunately she couldn't make it due to work commitments. So like I explained beforehand, at the end I had to think if cuttaways to film and use.

For Carrie, I asked a friend of mine if she could act as Carrie. I asked her if she's got any dresses in particular that she could wear for a shot or two. I also wanted to use a strong use of red lighting to show the mood of the scene very much like the movie.

I also caught up with all the paperwork that was needed. I scanned all the paper work that was needed and put it all in one document and its all posted.

The recent feedback I had from my documentary is that people have liked it. Also people said it was very interesting and well put together. One person said that it was slightly quiet at times so I'll see what my lecturer sais when he watches it.

With this I think the documentary has come out well. I think I could of improved on one angle where I talk infront of camera because its slightly out of focus. I also think I could of planned out the scene re-enactments better. But it was a good experiance of experinmentation of angles. For the scenes, I wished I could of asked the interviewees about their favourites before the interviews so that I could of had a head start.

Overall I think it came out well and I hope people will enjoy it :D

Through out my Easter break. Sorry that this is late but hey better late than ever

My documentary:

Recently I have made two scene reenactments for my documentary. I have filmed a scene from Misery, Pet Sematary and 1408. I also filmed the second interview with a friend who isn't a fan of Stephen King's novels.

For Misery, I asked a friend of mine Hannah to play the part of Annie Wilkes and she very keen on doing it. I asked another friend of mine to play Paul Sheldon the writer. Unfortunately he declined which was very stressful. So I thought I'll just film all of Hannah's parts and then think of solutions for Paul parts. My solution was for me to play the part but create angles that were subtle so that you couldn't tell it was me. The day went very well. But I changed a few angles because it was against a window.

For Pet Sematary, I asked my little brother and my stepdad to play the roles of a father and my brother to play the part of his undead evil son. Unfortunately I didn't write a script for this so I used alot of experimental shots to see if they would work. The good thing is is that they did and my stepdad and my little brother played their roles very well.

For 1408, it was very challenging to film because my location wasn't very hotel like. So again, I was very experimental with shots and tried to make it work. My stepdad played the part very well but I'll see if I should use it.

My second interview with a friend who doesn't like Stephen King's novels went very well. She came over to my place and I filmed it in my bedroom beside my King collection. She was nervous to begin with so we done three takes on the interview so I'll see what one is the best.

My studio production report

Today I have just finished the report. Yippee!! This took longer than expected because it was very challenging to find the appropriate quotes for my statements. I have three library books on studio production. They have been very helpful in alot of ways but there were times where it was difficult to find the right quotes I needed. There was only one time I used the internet for one quote. All I've got to do now is to add in images and email it to my lecturer to see what he thinks.

Wednesday night at StaffsTV, Friday's Interview and my filming at Stafford Library

Wednesday Night

On that night, I went to the uni for StaffsTV as I usually do every Wednesday. This was the last WhatsNext show of the year because Sophie and Matt  that are in charge, its their last year this year. This week was a special week because we had an acoustic artist performing live.

My role for the night was camera operator (yippee!!). There were times where I had to slowly zoom in on the singer when peforming to create the live effect. It came out really successfully.

Overall the night went very well and I'm returning on Wednesday to help film a live sports event called 'Varsity' at Stoke's campus. I'll be based at Staffs campus as camera op. Not sure what I'll be filming yet but hey we'll see :D

Friday's interview

During the afternoon, I filmed an interview with a Stephen King fan that thought that not all of the his books are good. I was planning to film outside St Mary's church but the weather conditions weren't trust worthy. So we filmed in the library in the college.

During the interview, I chose the angle I wanted to film at but then decided to change it because it was against a window. So we changed it at the opposite sides. When I asked my questions, I was suggested by my interviewee that I could change them in some way, for example, instead of 'What don;t you like about Stephen King?' to 'What don't you like about Stephen King's works?'. This I thought really helped because it made more sense.

Overall, a very successful interview. I'm planning to ask my next interviewee for Friday.


My filming at the Stafford Library (cant remember which date but better late then ever)


During that afternoon, I went to Stafford Library to film some shots of the library and some Stephen King books for cutaways for my documentary. My lecturer helped me by getting permission before hand and they agreed. They even left out some books for me to film which was very helpful.  I got some nice shots of these. Alot of the times I just experinemented on these to see if they would work. Very successful trip.

Recent feedback

Recently, my lecturer looked at my footage of my documentary that I have so far. He said he really liked the shots I have but they don't really explain about the author, it looks more like a corporate video of the library. He suggested to use some of the shots at different times. I have taken these advices on board. My solution is that I have borrowed some equipment and I'm going to take more experinmentle shots of my King collection of books, films etc.

My progress on my documentary and studio module report

Documentary

I have no finished my opening sequence to my documnetary which is great. I will show this to my lecturers this week and see what they think.

My next task is to collect people that arent fans of Stephen King fans, so I can get two sperate points of views from the fans and the 'non fans'. I have had a long hard search for people around the college. I went into 4 classrooms and the library and asked students sepreateley  I have now got 2 people lined up for interviews. I just need one more person and to help this, I'm going to StaffsTv tonight and I will ask people there if they are interested (I hope). If not, I just have to make the most of with the two I have and I will extend the questions I have for them. My first date I have in mind is Friday this week.


Studio report

I have recently written some of my studio report, which has to be about the purposes of studio, equipment, crew, controlled area etc. It has gone well so far so good. For this, again, I will ask my lecturer to look at it and have some feedback. My lecturer today taught us today on how to set out our harvard referencing which really helps.

So onwards ever onwards

Evaluation of my film

As you have seen recently though out my posts that I have made a short film for an editing exam. Here's my evaluation of it.

For the preparation, I thought it went very well. I thought the story idea worked really well but I wish I had more read through's of the script so that I made sure I knew exactly what I wanted to do.

For the filming, I thought this went really successfully. The new angles I came up with I thought really worked and the acting was fantastic. What I need to improve on is to make sure I check which format I film in because I wanted to film in 16:09 format, not classic 4:03 format. My lecturer pointed this out during the exam. And for future reference, every new shot I take, I need to make sure the white balance is correct. But I'm getting better at focusing on the shots before filming.

The film itself, I think it was very successful. I think it is effective and subtle. The acting was great and the cinematography really worked. The only thing that needed improving is the POV running shots but the foli sounds that I made really helped that. Also, I think the white balance could of been better on the beginning of the film and I wish the tracking shots from the front of the boy could of been a bit smoother. So in the future, I will make sure I will book a dolly in advance.

Other than those improvements, I think the film really works. I sent it out to YouTube and put onto my Facebook page and I've had some good feedback so far.

The full evaluation will be within my film paperwork.

How I edited my film in the exam

On Thursday I went through my editing exam, editing a short film I recently made and on Friday I finished it.
Here are the techniques I used through out editing the film:

First of all, I captured the footage I needed from the camera onto the computer. I did this by pressing the FILE icon and then onto the CAPTURE icon:

On then came on the screen that will show for when capturing the footage. I then pressed the PLAY icon. While thats playing, I press the RECORD icon which records the footage from the tape, onto the computer:

After I recorded the footage I needed. I had to name the clip I just recorded. After it is named, the file then goes onto the left side in the sequence pile, ready to be dragged to the timeline. This I did through out all the footage I collected:

After this is done, I then dragged the footage onto the timeline, ready to be edited:

With this footage, I played through out the footage, I went to the CUT tool icon that's on the right, bottom corner of the timeline. I clicked on the part of the footage that needed to be deleted, for example, when I say 'action'. I then clicked on the part of the footage I wanted to get rid of and pressed DELETE:

For the film, I first of all wanted to make the opening sequence. So I imported the production logo I created on After Effects. I did this by going onto the FILE icon then onto the IMPORT icon. A short cut to this is by pressing CTRL-I. I then chose the file I wanted to import by clicking on it and then pressed the OPEN icon. After that, it then goes onto the sequence pile beside the the timeline on the left side:

I did the same thing with my other production company logos I made on Photoshop. With the icons, I cut some of the footage out because it would last a long time if I left all of it on. I used the CUT tool for this:

I also wanted add in titles to my film. I did this by going on the TITLE icon. Then on to the NEW icon and went onto the DEFAULT STILL icon. This brings out the methods you can use to create the title. I then dragged out a text box to type in the title I wanted. I then pressed CLOSE on the top right hand side and then the title was on my sequence pile. This I also did with the end credits aswell.

While editing I had to keep saving the work I have done. And I also had to render of what I've done. So I went onto the SEQUENCE icon and went onto the RENDER ENTIRE WORK area icon. This will render everything you have captured. A short to do this is simply press ENTER. This I did on many occasions:

I then wanted to add in effects of the editing though out this piece for example, a cross fade. You can find this by going on the bottom left hand corner of the timeline. I went onto the VIDEO TRANSITIONS icon and clicked on the DISSOLVE icon. I then chose the ADDITIVE DISSOLVE icon and dragged it on the clip I wanted:

For this piece. I filmed some foli sounds of footsteps and sounds of me taunting. I captured this footage and put it onto my timeline. I only wanted to keep the sound and not the image. So I pressed the LOCK icon on the left hand side on the timeline. This way, you can delete the area you want. See above.

I wanted to fix the volume on the sounds. So I then went on the EFFECTS on the left side and went onto the AUDIO EFFECTS icon and went onto the VOLUME icon. I then dragged the effect onto the audio I wanted. On the screen that's on the left hand side, this is where you can sort out the volume:

During one point of editing these sounds, I wanted to slow down one of the footstep sound effect so that it matches the footage of when the stalker is walking to the young boy. I did this by right clicking on the audio and chose the SPEED/DURATION icon. This way you can slow down the footage you want. You can choose 100% , 40% etc. I slowed it down to 90%:

After most of the footage was collected, I then wanted to collect the establishing shots to go at the beginning. I collected them successfully but the picture quality needed improving, so I went back to the EFFECTS on the left hand side. I went onto the VIDEO EFFECTS icon and then went onto COLOR CORRECTION. This way you can fix the image of the footage. I then went to the CURVES icon. On this, you can change the image by sorting out the colors of red, blue and green. This really helped to make my footage look better. This was the last thing I edited:

On the cross fade effects, I wanted to shorten the effect for the beginning of the film. So I clicked on the effect on the footage and dragged out back to shorten it. Because if I left it, the effect would last a long time:

Before I fixed the color correction, I wanted to add in the royalty free music I downloaded. This took some time because I downloaded more than one track. I imported the tracks in, put them on the timeline and listened to each track to see which one would fit the film.

I chose parts of two tracks that would fit the film. For the end track, I went onto the AUDIO EFFECTS tool on the left hand side. And then went onto the CROSSFADE icon and chose the effect called CONSTANT GAIN. This effect makes the track quiet at first, the volume increases and then the track plays normally. I chose this effect because the ending of the film, the stalker catches up with the boy and the track itself builds up more and more and then jumps. 

And these are the stages of editing this film. The evaluation will be on the next entry

Foli sounds and establishing shots finally done!

Monday

During this time, I concentrated on creating some foli sounds for my film. All I wanted was footsteps because the footage that contained running footsteps didn't work because of the ratteling of the boom mic in the background. So I though I could add them in.

I did this by going outside in my back garden and using the Z1 camera. I used the boom mic and pointed it straight at my feet, moved them and recorded them at the same time. To help this, I put on my boots to create a loud footstep sound. Here is an image of me getting prepared:

This day I thought went very successfull because I created some sounds that could be useful for my film.


Yesterday

During that afternoon, I finally finsihed creating the foli sounds and also filmed some estblishing shots for the beginning of the film.

For the foli sounds, I went back to using my trainers because in the film, I used my trainers for the stalker. For all the background sounds, I actually went back to the brook and filmed my footsteps there. This was slightly challenging because there was a rubbish truck in the background. So I had to wait for a bit. But then when the truck was gone, time was mine! The foli sounds came out really well through out the footage, which is great because they will really work for the film.

For the estblishing shots, I went near the end of Chestnut Road (near where I live) and filmed a shot of the street there. It took some time to prepare because I wanted to make sure that the image looked good. I wanted to use a shot of where the image would be zoomed in and then it would zoom out to view the whole of the road. I used the manual zoom to begin with but I wanted a particular speed to the zoom, so I found out how to switch it back to automatic. Here is an image of the switch to change to manual or automatic:

 

I finally got the shot I wanted and it looks really good on the footage. I wanted to refilm these shots to begin with because on the previous footage, the weather was brighter than the previous footage. This would mean bad continuety. But these shots that I have refilmed look alot better.

 

Also, I have now caught up with the paperwork that is needed for the film aswell so now I feel prepared for this upcoming exam.

 

Yesterday's filming of my short film for the upcoming editing exam.

Yesterday, my younger brother and I went filming my short film. We managed to get it done in one day and went very successfully. Even though the temperatures were freezing, it still went really well.

I made sure the focus was right at all times and made sure the white balance was correct. I think the shots are going to be very effective and my younger brother did a great job at acting. There was a time where I did change shot because I thought this one would work very well.

Overall, a successful filming day. Here are some images of the shoot:

I forgot to mention, there was a time of where I wanted to use my brothers bike for a dolly for the camera. I wanted to use this for a smooth tracking shot but unfortunately this didn't work because it was hard to keep the bike balanced and there was a slight creaking sound as the bike moved. I tried this by holding the camera on the seat of the bike. So in the end I had to keep the camera as steady as I can and walk with it. Here is an image of me trying to do this:

Re shoot of shots of my documentary + my camera assisting role at StaffsTV

On Wednesday during the day, I spent some time re-shooting some shots for my documentary. As you saw before, I have done the tracking shots of my King book and film collection in the previous entry. On this day, I re-shot the panning and still shots of single King books I mention. For example Misery, Salem's Lot, The Stand etc. I really focused on making the shots look good and this time I used the Z1 camera and a tripod instead of a digi cam. Here are some images of the shoots taking place:

 As you can see I even moved some furniture around so that the shot will only be on the book. Also you can see I concentrated on the lighting because one of the curtains are closed.

Overall, I think this went successful because the shots look more clear, the movements are smoother and the lighting looked clear.

My camera assisting role at StaffsTV

During that evening, I went to the uni campus to StaffsTV for the WhatsNext show. This time, my role was being camera assistant. This week was music week and the band came over to play a live show. The band was rock/pop group called Neomantix. I met the band in person before they played and they were really nice. There were times where I didn't have anything to do so I was always asking if help was needed. Here are some shots of the set being prepared:

Before going live, John the camera operator i was assisting, wasn't there at times. So I had a little experience on using the camera on setting up shots. This I really enjoyed because camera operator is the role I actually wanted. But whatever role they choose for me, I'll do it. Here is an image of this happening:

Overall, very successful night, even though there wasn't alot of crew members. Also, the band are worth a listen. I couldn't help but nod my head while we were filming.