ACM Gospel Choir Documentary - Continued

Unfortunately I was unable to attend Tuesday the 23rds session. However Mike and Kirsty made a draft of Important scenes to include in our project:

Scenes to include

• Markde Lisser interview - spilt into 2/3 sections
• Mini interviews with choir members - Interspersed
  
• Rehearsal footage
  
• Performance footage
• BBC Archive footage

Interview Q's/Points to cover

• Why you started choir?
• What you ask from members?
• What message you have?
• Any difficultly/struggles and how you have overcome them?
• What is the future?

Act One

• Archive
• Past Tense/establishing interview Q's
  
• Intro to choir and location
• Intro to some elements of conflict/struggle

Act Two

• Interview Q's with Mark about personal life
• Quotes from members about struggles/other commitments
• Some rehearsal footage

Act Three

• Looking to future
• Message of ACM
• Reflection on successes
• Summary interview Q's
• "Live" footage

OH MY GOD!

To finish off this project we were asked to group together with another team and edit our two 'Oh My God' videos together and then film an ending.

We teamed up with Ant, James and Ester and decided to go for a comical ending as it went well with my ridiculous acting.

Here is our Final Edit:

OH MY GOD! from James Harris on Vimeo.

There are a few nice edits we added, that i feel highten the humor. For example the slow motion effect when I drop the phone. My problem is that the two seperate projects dont really relate to each other at all. Individually they work well but put together they just leave the audience confused. That said I feel for a short 3 day project we have produced a good final product.

Day Project: Continuity Editing

This task follows on from our previous lecture about crossing the line. We given a very simple set of stage directions and asked to make a short video following someone running to something in a panic. The title was:

OH MY GOD!?

I was chosen to be the subject. I had to look concerned about something i had seen or heard on my phone and then run from camera right to camera left throughout every shot untill i got to my final destination.

Here is what we created:

Looking back at it there are a number of shots which I would have like to have done again. There is one in particular just after i have jumped over the rocks where the sun is almost completely blinding the camera. I think we should have changed that to be just a still shot looking in direction i was running, with a slight angle. That I aside the film flows fairly nicely and we didnt make any mistakes in terms of crossing the line.

The ACM Gospel Choir Documentary

We have all been doing small bit of research in the last few days for this project. We all felt we needed to get a full understanding of the choir and what they are about. Kirsty looked into the BBC Last Choir Standing website. There was one video on there she found "particularly useful". The video focused on the choir Musical Director Mark De Lisser. Not only was it made in a very similar style to what we wanted to achieve but it focused on Mark, someone we believe could be the backbone behind our documentary. I phoned Mark, asking why he started the choir and how had he found the journey so far...the ball seemed to be rolling!

The Pitch

Tuesday came and it was time for us to head over to Paintworks in Bristol and Pitch our idea to their team. Unfortunately however I was unable to attend. The choir had been asked to go to the ITV studios and be involved in a show called Ultimate Movie Toons. We decided as a group that it would be beneficial not only for me but for the project if I went along, took and camera and did some field research.

I helped make a simple power point presentation for the pitch:

For this we used Google Docs.

Its a shame I wasn't at the pitch, I felt bad that I had left Mike and Kirsty to do it alone when it had been my idea all along! In spite of this i know they did a great job.

Thrown in at the deep end:

Group Project - Initial ideas

We have been set our group project. The task is simple; produce a video between 5-8 mins long in groups of three. We were given the brief and then left a 3 days to come up with an each. We then had to pitch this idea to the class in the hope that two others would want to be involved.

My initial idea was simple. As a member of the ACM Gospel Choir I felt it was a obvious choice to make a documentary based on us. I am passionate about music so the subject is something I love and over the last two years we have been through many ups and downs as a collective.
I managed to get into a group with Kirsty Fraser and Cornish Mike. This is great news as I get on well with them and they both have a big interest in music.

Here is our rough treatment:

We intend to make a documentary following the progress of the ACM Gospel Choir. To Tell the story we will have one on one interviews as well as live footage of the choir, to show the progress we will also contrast the footage by using some archive material and some from BBC.
Though we will not neccessarily have one story running throughout, the choir itself are the spine of the documentary and the use of a voiceover will also help hold the piece together.
the ACM Choir are based in Guilford, Surrey and rehearse and perform regularly including featuring on BBC One#s Last Choir Standing in Summer 2008. Their development has been quite rapid and this is what we aim to give an insight on within the documentary.
Another aspect we will focus on is to look at particular members of the choir who have their own side projects, this will also give an insight on the struggle to become professional, successful musicians.
We will go to Guilford to film rehearsal process and also go to one or more of their gigs to get a good range of footage. In terms of how we film it we will use traditional documentary style filming but will also include some backstage hand held camera footage to add a personal touch (in the form of video diary) as well as contrast.

The ACM (Academy of Contemporary Music) is an school for rock and pop music based in Guilford. Learn more by going to the ACM website.

Pre-Production & Celtx

In this session we looked at some of the techniques behind the pre-production of filming a sequence. We looked at a car chase scene from the 1968 film 'Bullitt'. Our method was to deconstruct the scene, break it down into individual shots with a view to broadening our knowledge of how scenes such as this are put together and the thinking behind it.
To help us to this we used a application called 'Celtx'.
Celtx is a fairly simple program that is specifically designed to assist with pre-production:


"Celtx is the world's first all-in-one media pre-production system. It replaces 'paper & binder' pre-production with a digital approach that's more complete, simpler to work with, and easier to share."

quote from the website.


Crossing The Line:

When filming sequences such as chases or running there is one rule which stands above all; the '180 degree rule'
This rule, in its simplest form, states that when filming a number of shots following a moving subject, all camera angles should have the subject moving the same direction, i.e. camera left to camera right. This prevents our audience becoming confused with the action.


For the work we were put in groups. I was working with Mike and Kirsty. Here is an example of what we managed to achieve:



I have learned a lot from this exercise. Celtx can be used for more than just story-boarding and planning a scene, it can help to deconstruct and understand what we watch. My only issue with what we achieved was that because we were working on an older film the car chase was fairly slow. Although this made it easier for us as our first project of this type, I felt the sequence was too long...the process became repetitive and tedious.