And they're off...

Monday the 8th March came and we had scheduled in the all important first full day of filming for the 'ACM Gospel Choir Documentary'. This is how it went:

I was already half way to Guildford on Monday morning as I had spent the weekend at home for a friends 22nd. I was up and eating breakfast (eggs and bacon on toast!) when Cornish Mike and Thirsty Kirsty turned up at around 11am. We downed a quick cuppa, discussed the plans for the day and got on our way to the ACM.

We got there with good time and got straight on the phone to Emily Lambros and Rikki Ancell, two members of the Choir who had agreed to be filmed rehearsing. This was when our first problem hit. Julia, the lady who we needed to approve the filming of the ACM building was off ill and so, after a long discussion, we were restricted to filming only in one of the practice rooms. This was an positive outcome yet it would have been good to get more footage of the ACM and what it is about.

We got our video of the guys practicing, asked them a few questions regarding Mark and the Choir then moved on to Emily's house. We considered filming some of her everyday life in Guildford but decided against it as we already had one hour of footage from the rehearsal alone! Once again, we hit the road...this time, destination London...

We arrived in Croydon just before 4pm. We had a chat about what we were going to do then went in. Having looked around we decided to film in Marks lounge as the lighting was best, it was a more relaxed environment and the sound was better (no echos etc). We spent an hour and a half filming our interview with Mark and even got his wife, Tracy, to answer a few questions.


We hit the road for the last time at about 5.30 and, after escaping the London rush hour traffic made a quick return back to Bath. All in all it was a great day filming and I'm very happy we made the extra effort to go all that way as it will add so much more depth the the documentary...

Storyboard Friday

Friday the 5th March brings preparation for the following weeks filming. Mike has presented us with a script. It is our challenge to go through the script, pick out what we feel are the 'beats', use these as our stills.

We went through our script and chose the 'key moments' we wanted to use for our story board. When we had made our final decisions we headed up to our filming location (the sports changing rooms!). With our camera and took stills of each beat and wrote down what kind of shot is was and what was happening in the scene.

When this was finished we took this information and put it into Celtex:


Following this we decided to use Quicktime Pro make a slide show of our storyboard. This helps us to see just exactly what the shots will look like when edited together:

Sheila Cooks?

We have been set another assessment: Make a 3 minute long instructional cooking video.

The key points of this project are that it is to be aimed at students who are interested in learning how to cook healthy meals for a cheap price. I was put in a group with the simply fascinating Rachel, Mandy and Keiran. We had the idea of cooking a simple veggie curry as this appeals to all people, curry being the nations favorite dish of course!
We looked through our recipe and picked out the important points and the timing. We then did a rough story board of what shots to use and where. We wanted to add a splash of humor to the piece, and so we decided to do it in the style of a Nigella-esque Australian student cook...sounds bizarre but believe me it worked! Not only does it look good and induce humor, it also made our presenter (Rachel) much more comfortable in front of the camera.

The problems we faced were few...the most obvious being timing. We have been used to taking our time over filming, allowing take after take until we get the perfect shot. When it comes to filming cooking however we have a time limit. We have to follow the recipe exactly and hence the food controls the time. For example we had the rice cooking while we cut up the veg and prepared the sauce...before we knew it the rice was getting close to over cooking and we went ready!

We are currently in the editing phase of the process, we hope to have the finished video ready by next Wednesday.

More work with the Z1...

This lecture brings another chance to practice with the better cameras available... except this time we get to work with the audio equipment as well!
We decided to set up a small, very fake, interview. We asked Rachel to be the interviewer and Chloe to be the interviewee. They then came up with a short script about holidays.

The equipment we used is known as a 'boom mic'. Once we had set the levels and got the mic in a good position we were ready to film.
We got many different shots, the standard over the shoulder, close ups and wide angles. It was interesting working wit a sound man for the first time. It adds another variable to the mix. Something else for the camera man and the director to worry about. Like getting good quality sound requires the mic to be fairly close to the subject, but that limits what camera angles we can use.

This is what we produced:

I was happy with what we had produced. It is quite clearly an amateur production but the focus was on the audio, which i feel is fairly consistant throughout. I would have liked to have chosen a bigger space to film in as we had problems getting all the angles...especially as we were using the fairly large Sony Z1!