Voice Over Tips

The Voice

An Overview

Without some form of commentary (be it in form of narration of captions) it's hard for viewers to connect with the film. With documentaries it is better to use a voice over as it does not detract from the image on the screen, if people are trying to read captions they will miss what is being said/shown on the rest of the screen.

However, there needs to be space for sound from the film and time for people to absorb what may have been said interviews etc so don't put too much into the voice over. Keep it simple and fresh obeying these 3 rules: simple words, simple sentences, simple grammar.

A voice over should compliment the picture and fit with the images on screen.

When should I write/think about the V/O?

You should be thinking about the voice over the whole way through and if you can go to filming with a draft of the voice over to get all images needed.

It should have a lot of consideration during the edit, so here communication between with the editor is essential. This is essential for shaping sequences and allowing the correct amount of time so voice over doesn't to be rushed.

It is of course important to bear in mind the whole way through about how the voice will fit in the general soundscape and as mentioned before the pictures and original sounds 'need to breathe'

The most important think to consider when choosing a voice is to remember if the voice doesn't fit it will kill the film. The person doesn't necessarily have to have a rich, glossy sounding voice, it's all about the delivery and making the script come to life. It is important that the words on the paper get across the ideas on the screen.

A good voice will be one that sounds interested and like they know the subject matter of the film. The best voice overs are from people who act normally and don't feel self conscious.

The Script

Analyse what you have written to avoid repetitiveness, there is also not much need for lots of adjectives. Make sure you aren't stating the obvious of what is on screen, the audience will feel patronised! For the opening of a film/section make sure you open with a fact or something that will grab and hook your audience into watching the rest of the film.

The layout of the script is also something to bear in mind, of course each reader will have their own preferences but generally speaking make sure your sentences aren't too long and everything is spaced well. Big font is also useful to most. Some people can read better off coloured backgrounds but this is of course different for everyone.

The Recording

There are many techniques to recording a good voice over, they are these:

• Pop shield: not always essential but will prevent explosive and popping sounds coming through in the recording.
• Project the voice!
• Sit up, relax and imagine you are talking to one viewer (your "personal listener")
• Make it more like talking than reading
• Smile!

Risk Assessment

Just found this great video on the Channel 4 website about risk assessments!

Documentary Research

Whilst looking on what I find a very useful website slideshare, I came across this powerpoint on the "Codes and Conventions" of documentaries and thought I would share it here!

Codes And Conventions Of Documentary

View more presentations from Catford High School.

Distribution: The Facts

For our Friday morning sessions we have been looking at all aspects of television/film making and so it is essential that we look at what happens after a programme has been made, not just all the stages before this. This is the process known as distribution.

One definition of the word distribution is "the process of moving a product from its manufacturing source to its customers", so in the context of the media it is getting the finished film/television piece out there to its audience. To do this there are several different routes you can take.

An independent film maker has the choice of going down the profit or non-profit routes.
Non-profit can include:

• The Internet (Own website with showreel, YouTube, Vimeo etc)
• Film festivals (Sheffield, Brief Encounters etc)
• Put up for Award/Specialist Award 

To make a profit you can look at doing the following:

• Sell to a channel via editing commissioner
• Sell to a distribution company

There are dozens and dozens of distribution companies in the UK (though of course their work can cover worldwide), however, the top players in the UK are:

• BBC Worldwide: Top Gear, Life, Planet Earth (£240 million profit 2009-2010)
• Fremantle Media: Merlin, American Idol, Hole in The Wall (£152 million profit 09-10)
• ITV Studios GE: Hells Kitchen, The Prisoner (£131 million 09-10)
• Outright (run by Shed): Supernanny, Waterloo Road, Who do you think you are? (£11 million 09-10)

It is important to remember there the sale of programmes worldwide covers both English speaking and non-English speaking countries. The arrangement of subtitles to sell to non-English speaking countries is known as packaging and is one of the other things distribution companies do. On top of this they also develop ideas and have their favourite producers e.g. Simon Cowell, and also try and establish successful 1st series of programmes.

As we can tell from the massive turnover of just the top 4 companies in the UK it is not surprising that through direct sales only, the revenue in distribution is around £525 million. There is plenty more to be made though in selling formats worldwide.
A format  is the structure of a programme, the most successful worldwide formats include:

• Strictly/Dancing with Stars (sold to 27 countries)
• Britains Got Talent/Americas Got Talent
•  Millionaire
• Big Brother
• The Office
• Footballers Wives

It is important to remember is is not just non-fiction formats that are marketable worldwide, it is also dramas!

Mondays Sessions

Continuing our previous Monday night session we Shaun, we have been split into 2 production teams with the aim of making a 10-20min short film. It is our job to source a script, actors and have it al ready to film by late February over in the studio at Paintworks.

We were pretty much left to decide our roles though both Shaun and Phil gave some guidance on what they thought we would all be best at. So this is the current line up of our team and their jobs:

- Carlina - Production Manager

- Me - Director

- Ant - AD, Editor

- Mike - DOP/Production design

- Keiran - 1st Sound man/Post sound/pre prodution help/Music

- Edem - Sound 2/editorial desicions/AD2

- James - Camera Operator/Music/locations

- Simon - Equipment co-ordinator/Something else!

 

The set up we have here was partially put into practice in the evening session where we took a basic shot of a woman being angry at a man and ended up building on all aspects including dialogue, camera angle/shot.

I found directing quite difficult as sometimes I knew what I wanted but not how to achieve this, however as Shaun pointed out to me several times, directors just need to know what they want, it's the crew's job to achieve it! So the problem solver in me will have to take a back seat and let the creative come through!

I am really looking forward to the project and hope we can find a good script soon as most of us tend to do documentarys so it will be good to get a good short film done this year to add to our showreels!

Behind The Scenes: The Filming

Yesterday was our day spent in the office with Media Clash (our behind the scens project), it was a very long day but we certainly got a lot out of it! Present were Brad, Ant and myself, Claire also came along in the afternoon/evening.
The day started arriving at their office near the Circus at around 10am, we were greeted by Greg and due to his schedule of the day we set up our interview with him straight away


Gregs Interview: We had him sit on the sofa chair next to his desk in the office as we did not want it too formal. We had him looking camera left at Brad who was asking the questions. As the office was open plan there was a lot of background noise from the office, I like that we had this going on as background noise and hopefully there is nothing too defined that will affect the edit. The interview took around half an hour as Greg is a good speaker, we asked him the questions we had scripted but he also provided us with a lot more to work with.

Department Interviews: Our next step was to get to know the staff in the office, to do this we spoke to all the department heads. This gave us more of an insight into the different areas (particularly, and most importantly, the magazines). We asked them 3 set questions in in a vox pop style: what is your name and what is your job? What is your daily role? What makes Media Clash different? This last question gave us some really good stuff to work with.

Cut Aways: The whole time we were there, with our second camera, we made sure to capture lots of cut aways from people typing/on the phone to deadline boards, stacks of magazines and lots of logos. We ended up with about 10mins worth of cut aways from the office.

We then took our lunch break and met up with Claire, upon returning the one thing we wanted to get done was to get our interview with Jane (the co-founder of the company). This was where our problems started, she was too busy/camera shy and did not want to be interviewed. We couldn't work out if it was just today she didnt want to do (as they were preparing for a party in the evening) or if she didn't want to be in it at all! Luckily Greg managed to persuade her to give us 5mins so we managed to get some with her but may come back another day to get some more.

The Client Party: We were fortunate enough to be invited to the client party for all the magazines advertisers. After another afternoon break we arrived at The Royal Crescent Hotel around 5.30pm to get half an hour of set up before people started to arrive. To create a time lapse we left the camera rolling for about 15mins while everyone came in in dribs and drabs. Our aim of the evening was to get interviews with the clients (there were aroung 250 people at the party) and find out why they choose Media Clash. We managed to get 6 interviews by the end of the night but it also worked out very well for us making contacts and being offered more projects by people including Farpoint Apple!

All in all a very productive day, but we will have to set up another time to go back and talk to Jane again properly about the process of making a magazine!

A Quick Guide to Multi-Camera Editing!

As mentioned in previous posts, myself and 3 others helped on a music shoot last Monday and edited on Wednesday, and we learnt there are many things to bear in mind when simultaneously shooting with more than one camera.
Here is a few key points to remember when it comes to FILMING multi-cam shoot:

• When filming ensure both camera are in same format and codec
• All rec's must be continuous (e.g. dont break between songs)
• Get a clear sync point when filming (e.g. a clap/shout/flash)

When it comes to editing in Final Cut here's the basics of what to do:

• Find your sync points in footage and mark them as 'in points'
• After selecting clips choose "Modify' then 'Make Multiclip'
• Overwrite the multiclip into the Timeline (shortcut F10)
• Opening the multiclip in the viewer you can simply clip between shots
• You can then go back and adjust any cuts accordingly (e.g. to the beat in music) by 'rolling' or 'extending' the edits
• Once you're finished and wish to edit the clip as a whole such as fade ins/cutting whole chunks out you must again select 'Modify' and then 'Collapse Multiclip'

It is a lot simpler than I first thought, just have to make sure you get a good and clear sync point when filming, will save ages in the edit!
All tips here adapted from worksheet from Mike Johnston.

Proposal/Treatment

Proposal
Train One Save Many (working title) is a short film on the Weston Super Mare division of the RNLI (Lifeboats), it will be filmed as a documentary. There is no specific target audience as I aim to make it so it inform and raise awareness to audiences of all ages, though getting specific it could be argued that those whole live nearer the coast may have more interest in watching it than those who live inner country/city as it could be deemed less relevant.
Train One Save Many will focus on the people that make up the RNLI volunteers and the stories they have to tell, to show that they aren’t just faceless people. It will remind people how much of a vital role they play and how they are just as important as other emergency services. There will be an educational input too in the opening with facts, figures and a brief history to set the scene.

Treatment
The story of my documentary will be told through a voice over and also be structured around the interviews with members of the crew and (hopefully) members of the public. I will also include contact details of how people can get involved at the end as part of the raising awareness aspect.
The staging of the interviews will be simple with uncluttered background (similar to those used on Traffic Cops) to not distract from message and add professional look. It has elements of an expository documentary in that it will combine a variety of footage, still, interviews and some archive footage to enforce the importance of the story. The tone will not be too serious as I want them to look approachable however of course subject matter is at times very serious. There will also be elements of an observational documentary as I can’t predict all that will happen when I am there.
There are 29 members of the crew and ideally I would like to get an interview with at least 4 people holding different positions or of different backgrounds. All footage will be filmed at their base at Birnbeck Pier. 

As part of tomorrows pitching session we have been asked to create a draft/brief proposal and treatment:

Media Clash

 

Today as development of the behind the scenes project we had a meeting with Bath based company Media Clash. We spoke with CEO Greg Ingham, he was very keen for us to do the project and the ideas were flowing from both us and him about potential lines of interest in the documentary!

Media Clash were established in 2006 by husband and wife Greg and Jane Ingham (previosuly worked at Future Publishing) and are responsible for several publications in the region including BathLife, CardiffLife, CliftonLife and ExeterLiving. Along side this they also do a lot of digital work supporting clients in marketing etc including a lot of work with Creative Bath and various financial groups.

As it is coming up to Christmas they have a lot of deadlines so there would be plenty to film and Greg was even nice enough to invite us to a client party at the Royal Crescent and also to their Xmas Staff party which was incredibly nice of him!
His approachability and friendly nature makes us keen to persue this as our behind the scenes project, however my only reservation is that it is a magazine based in a rather plain looking office is that we may struggle to make it visually vibrant.
We are waiting to hear from E3 as to what they have going on between now and Christmas as if they are doing a shoot or something, on the whole it will make for a more visually interesting project as we can also use examples of their previous work. Fingers crossed we hear within the next 48hours so we can finally get going on something as I am just itching to get this project done!

Filming at Komedia

Last night Keiran, Patrick, Carlina and myself were at Komedia Bath to do some filming with Mike Johnston for some music students.
It was the 2nd year girls doing a showcase of songs in 3x45min sets of 4 or 5 girls all seated and playing acoustic.
The stage was not much about floor level and the cafe venue on the whole was quite small, we had one camera positioned by the bar which was used for close up shots and one on the opposite side at the back of the seating to capture the wide shot. This 2nd camera at the back also captured the sounds directly from the monitor.

The filming went very smoothly, there were only a couple of issues. At one point one the close up camera ran out of battery with about 10mins to go in one set so there was pressure on the wide to capture footage that would look okay by itself. The only other thing that caused problems was sometimes because of the placement of speakers the view of the singer was obstructed from one camera so at times we just had to capture audience shots whilst the other camera focused on the performer.

It was a fun experience and was good to work with Mike again (felt like a first year again :P) and we shall be editing on Wednesday!

Shoes: The Recording

For 5002 we have been given a short film called Shoes which has a very basic soundtrack and no dialogue. There is plenty of room for it to be developed and embellished. And so it is an assessment!


Me and Mike worked together on some of the sounds (we have both worked on sounds individually but for things like footsteps to get a good sounds is easier to work in pairs). We set down the other day and as per usual things take a lot longer than you expect them too and we spent a good few hours recording sounds.

We used (what to me is) a new piece of equipment to the Uni. The microphone is a H4 Zoom Mic. It is a really goot little recorder, though on first look it looks more complicated than the Edirol recorders we have used before they definitely give a better sound quality and are actually really easy to use!

The fun thing about recreating sounds is that you dont neccessarily have to use the obvious to create the sound. For example, there is a section of the film where the character writes on newspaper in a felt tip, but when it comes to recording it sounded clearer and looked better when it was a felt tip drawing on a balloon!

The next step is editing the sounds and also decided on a suitable music soundtrack to go underneath the sounds I have recorded! The first decision I have to make is whether to edit on Final Cut, Soundtrack or Logic? Each has its pros and cons for this type of sound edit. So that challenge shall start next week!

RNLI Documentary: Existing Footage & Research

Having made contact with a member of the Weston Super Mare division of the RNLI they have said that they can give me some of their existing video material.
This will be beneficial to me is several ways. Firstly, I can can use examples of things from the past, secondly, if I choose not to/cant take equipment on board I can use what already exists. Aside from this it will also give me a wider range of topic matter than I can include (and credit accordingly) in my documentary.

I have had a look at what already exists on the RNLI website and what the WSM division have posted publicly on a YouTube page.



This is their most viewed video on Youtube, it is a simple montage of their base and crew at work, it gives a basic insight and overview of what they get up to and the use of music (obviously I wont be using copyright music) gives it a really uplifting and positive vibe.

Looking at the RNLI website itself, they keep a well updated collection from teams all over the country from training to real rescues and celebrity appearances.



Poor woof woof!

I suppose if you were to categorise what I plan to make for the project I hope it will fall into the combination of education, histroy and heritage and (hopefully!) rescues!

Two pages I have found useful with facts and figures and a history (not too brief but not too boring) can be found here and here.

Mary and Max

Last night was potentially the highlight of the Film Festival for me, though I did love Freetime Machos this was something completely different.
Mary and Max is from Adam Elliot (also the director of the multi award winning short Harvie Krumpet) is an animated film that brings animation to a new audience.The story is a story of overseas penpal friendship between an unlikely pairing of 8 year Mary in Australia and 44-year old Max who suffers from Aspergers from New York.
Their written relationship in the film lasts over 20 years, sharing their life experiences and advice on eachothers difficult situations. This spreads over marriages, break downs, manslaughter charges and other obstacles that come their way.

The film is both uplifting and meaningful as well as very entertaining and at times hilarious. It features the voices of Toni Collette, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Eric Bana, Barry Humphries and was a sell out last night at the Little Theatre.


Though I feel I have overused the phrase this week, I HIGHLY reccomend this film to everyone as there is something for everyone in this beautifully portrayed story.

Film Festival Feedback

Another film festival post! Will be one of the last :(
I finished being a 'runner' at the film festival earlier this week (have two more films to steward) and after emailing to say thank you to them for letting me help I got this really nice feedback from Caroline, the head of Admin, who I was doing most of the work with:

Thank you Kirsty, it's been brilliant having you around, couldn't have done
it without you. I think the A board posters look great. It's been an immense
help to have a reliable, hard working and resourceful, calm person in the
office in these pretty hectic times. I can't tell you how important that is
when you're running against the clock in pretty difficult working
conditions.
 
I'm glad you've enjoyed your time with us, I hope it wasn't too stressful an
environment. And that you'd like to volunteer for us again next year we
would be very pleased to have you again,
 
So big thank you and good luck with the rest of your course,
 
Best
 
Caroline Thibeaud

I truly enjoyed my time working with them and think the whole helping with organising be it events or 

translated to television as working as a producer or something similar is really up my street!
 

Freetime Machos & The Arbor

I was very fortunate this week as part of Bath Film Festival to see the film Freetime Machos and The Arbor.

Freetime Machos is a documentary by Finnish director Mika Ronkainen (who was at the screening) about a Finnish Rugby team who happen to the most northernly and 3rd "most lousiest" team in the world! The coach was English and worked for Nokia, so it was probably two-thirds in Finnish with subtitles and about a third English. It is a hilarious documentary that I think would appeal to all (not just to male rugby fans!) which makes it unfortunate that it wasnt a sell out screening.
Having a question&answer session with director Ronkainen was interesting, and provided a great insight into professional documentary making. For the 90 min documentary, he shot 300 hours of footage! Though some was multi-camera (he used 5 cameras at a 90min rugby game so that brings it down a bit) it is still a hefty amount of footage filmed over around 8 months.

The Arbor is a British film funded by National Lottery and directed by Clio Barnard based on the life and relationships of playwright Andrea Dunbar who died in 1990 aged 29. The film uses actors lip-synching to interviews with Dunbar and her family, and concentrates on the strained relationship between Dunbar and her daughter Lorraine. It is the kind of thing I had neevr seen before and is a unique approach to film making.
The story spans over several years and features the audio lipsynched filmed in interview style, acted scenes from Dunbars play and also real archive news footage of the stories surrounding Dunbars life.

Bath Film Festival Volunteering

Over the last couple of weeks I have been volunteering with the Bath Film Festival. Originally I only signed up to steward some events, but when I went to the first meeting I decided that being a 'runner' for the festival was something I was also interested in! So what was going to be a couple of evenings work has now turned into over 35 hours of helping out in just under 2 weeks...and thats before the stewarding!

Being a 'runner' has ranged from your simple admin tasks, photocopying posters, filing things to running errands such as collecting/delivering things to and from all over town. A lot of it has obviously been more film related, I designed the advertising posters for venues and have been proof reading film notes.

It has been a really good experience, on a personal level it has made me more confident at approaching people and talking to people I haven't met before, increased my confidence on the phone and I think it has helped me a great deal in learning how to multi-task, prioritise and other skills that will prove useful to me in my career!

Oh yeah, shameless plugging...I highly reccommend everyone goes to some of the films over the film festival! And if you can, volunteer! Without the volunteers, the festival would not be able to run in the way that it does!

:)

Soundtrack: Shoes

For one of our 5002 soundtrack assessments we have been given a short film (of which we have heard the original sound) and given the task of re doing the soundtrack using our own recordings (and some library sounds).

The original film dows not contain any dialogue which makes things easier and there is definitely room for a music track in the background.

Having watched the film I now have a list of nearly 35 sounds I need to provide.
They include the following: things:

• footsteps (various surfaces and paces)
• cars driving by (various speeds/distances)
• coins dropping
• china/glass placed on bar
• doors (opening/shutting)
• TV background noise
• car washing

The biggest challenge is going to be thinking of/finding a suitable backing track so that there isnt massive gaps of silence.
Hoping to record in the next couple of weeks!

Commissioning

So, it's reading week...and I've actually done some reading! Have been looking at Broadcast magazine to do some research about programmes recently commissioned to present in Friday mornings session.

From my research mainly in the magazine but some online I have found the following programmes that have been commissioned within the last couple of months:

Title: Popatron
Channel: BBC2
Company: Zeppotron (Endemol)
Commissioning Editor: Commissioned via BBC Switch (soon to be scrapped)
What is it?: A 6x30min sitcom series featuring latest bands and celebs in a 'Larry Sanders' style where production staff and presenters are played by comedy actors.
Who is the audience?: Aimed at teens/young adults

Title: London Zoo (working title)
Channel: ITV
Company: Wild Pictures
Commissioning Editor: Ordered by ITV Controller of Popular Factual Jo Clinton Davies and also Alison Sharman
What is it?: A 3x60min series investigating all areas of the worlds oldest zoo, to feature exotic animals and some of the 800 staff. Viewers will get a definitive look at a national institute. Aims to explore the quirks or animal-staff/staff-staff relationships.
Who is the audience?: Early teens interested in animals/people who have been to or are considering going to London Zoo

Title: Living With Elizabeth Hurley
Channel: Sky Living
Company: HCA Entertainment
Commissioning Editor: Sophie Wurzer-Williams
What is it?: A 1x60min programme looking at the likfe of Elizabeth Hurley, will be a "sneak peak at Elizabeth Hurley how you have NEVER seen her before", will involve her running her 400 acre Gloucestershire farm.
Who is the audience?: Fans of Elizabeth Hurley, mainly "housewife" women interested in gossip/lifestyle programmes


Personally, I think that the London Zoo programme will probably be the most successful of the 3 as it has the most interest and will be likely to pull the most viewers. It would be both factual and entertaining and probably educational too. Though programmes like it have been made before they have always proved popular so there is no reason why this one shouldn't be the same!

Behind The Scenes Progress

Time is ticking by and it's getting to be crunch time for sealing a 'Behind the Scenes' project. So far we havent been having the best of luck, that combined with time just seeming to slip away it's getting tough!

Our initial and group favourite idea was to approach Aardman Animations as it would be both visually interesting as well as an exciting story. Brad had researched the idea most and could see from their podcasts that the creaters themselves wanted to be better known, this would have been our approach. After attempts to contact them it turns out their work is so confidential that they dont even offer studio tours, so our chances there were blown.

The next potential idea was bought to the table by Claire, which is to to do a behind the scenes on the man who provides stunt horses for films (most recently Warhorse), she has made contact but as far as I am aware there is no conrete response for them. Though again this would be a visually appealing idea with plenty of past work to be spoken about (including his work on Gladiator), it would require a lot of travelling and I think ideally most of us would prefer to do something a little bit closer to Bath.

Ant had the idea of doing a behind the scenes of Little Theatre Bath in conjunction with the Bath Film Festival and even spoke to the manager in person and he seemed really keen. After sending him an email (as requested) he then realised it would be difficult with health and safety and just wouldnt be possible.


My idea originally was to look at local news, on how a story comes from an even to script and then to screen. Later on during a discussion with Lesley, she suggested looking at the local input to Children in Need (much of the same Points West team that do the local news). After a phone call that was them directed to an email address lead to no response.


So where do we go from here?


Our current lead is with Venue Magazine based in Bristol, Ant has a contact with someone there so that is something we really hope we can get. After having the conversation with Ant about this potential idea I thought if it doesn't go anywhere we could look into a similar thing closer to home in Future Publishing.

Individual Project Ideas

It has come to the time of year to put pen to paper on ideas for the individual project and I am quite comfortable in saying I am not the best at coming up with ideas! Give me an existing idea and I can do something with it but recently I have been struggling to come up with any ideas (that have potential!) of my own!

However...this is what I have come up with so far...

My first thoughts were to do some sort of promotional video for two businesses I know who would be quite up for having something to put on their websites. These are an estate agents and an extreme sports retail shop...and I straight away I thought probably the same thing you are, despite things I could do in Motion and the service I would be providing, lets face it, its not a very interesting subject matter and is something better saved for my own spare time.

My 2nd (and so far only other) idea is a documentary on the RNLI, a friend who I used to go kayaking also is a volunteers for the Weston-Super-Mare branch (he acts as Helmsman). I think a lot of people over look how much of a vital role the RNLI play in society and it would be a good chance to raise awareness.
In terms of content I would aim it as if the audience don't really know anything, so cover a brief history, what they do, who they are etc. I would also look at the more technical side such as the boats and lifesaving equipment. Also there would be room for interviews with their volunteers and I would also appeal to anyone who has been saved/had experiences with them to share their stories. In an ideal world I would also spend some time with them and potentially see them have to answer a call (from dry land of course!)

So far, I have simply done research on who they are via their website, one thing that could hinder my chance to do this is they already have a YouTube channel set up with films, however I hope to offer them something they dont already have. My next step will be in contacting the guy I know and take his advice on the idea, I would then contact their Press Office.

I understand health and safety will be a big issue with this project, but I would probably rely heavily on "dry land" footage and some of their own archive, however I do know people who have filmed kayaking on rivers and have access to waterproof/splashproof equipment that could help me out!

BBC Films and Film Four

BBC Films is the feature film-making arm of the BBC. From its first production in 1994 up until 2007, it was run and funded privately whilst still under full control of BBC but it has now been integrated into the BBC Fiction department. They produce approximately 8 films per year.
The most recent productions from them on the big screen were Made In Dagenham and Tamara Drew. A list of their previous releases can be found here.
Many of their productions get co-produced with bigger companies which means a lot of them get far bigger exposure, for example Revolutionary Road (co-production with Dreamworks) and Edge of Darkness (co-production with Warner and Icon).



Film4 Productions is a British film production company owned by Channel 4. The company has been responsible for backing a large number of films made in the United Kingdom. The company's first production was Walter, directed by Stephen Frears, which was released in 1982. The company was originally called Channel 4 Films but was re-branded in 2002 in conjunction with the launch of the digital TV channel Film4.

A list of their productions along with short clips can be found here.

UK Television Production Companies

TalkBack Thames

Talkback Thames  is one of the UK's largest production companies who in the last year have created over 500 hours of television for a range of channels. They were founded in February 2003 and are owned by Fremantle Media (a division of RTL Media). The current CEO (as of 28th October 2010) is Sara Geater who replaces Lorraine Heggessey.

Productions Include: The Apprentice (BBC1), Family Fortunes (ITV), Green Wing (C4), Never Mind the Buzzcocks (BBC2).




Endemol
EndemolUK  is the UK branch of Endemol (which covers 26 countries) that were founded in 1994 and annually produce over 2000 hours of output. They encorporate a number of production companies including Remarkable Television, Initial and Zeppotron. They have offices in London and Bristol and employ up to 1000 people at any one time.
Productions include: Big Brother (C4), Charlie Brookers Newswipe (BBC2&BBC4), Deal or No Deal (C4), Secret Diary of a Call Girl (ITV2), Total Wipeout (BBC1).



Hat Trick Productions
Hat Trick productions were founded in 1986 by Rory McGrath, Jimmy Mulville and Denise O'Donohue. In the history of British Broadcasting (with the exception of the BBC) their entertainment and comedy programming has won the most awards.
Productions include: Fonejacker&Facejacker (C4), Outnumbered (BBC), Bodies (BBC), Whose Line Is It Anyway






 

Behind The Scenes Video Research

Just as a bit of research linking to our Friday morning 5001 session I have decided to take a look at and compare a couple of 'behing the scenes' videos that I have come across on Youtube and another website.




This first video is for a music video. I like how the director explains the concept behind the video (particularly useful when it comes to an obscure character like Lady Gaga!) which you would not learn from just watching the video alone. The story is the main focus of the video and you also learn things about it such as the location where it was filmed which again is something you cannot learn from watching the music video by itself. There is very little focus on the stars, just a brief bit of talk from Beyonce at the end.

ROBIN HOOD: Behind-the-Scenes Featurette. Watch more top selected videos about: Mark Strong, Cate Blanchett

This seconds video (found on Metacafe) focuses on the stars of the film telling us about the story. All the footage is from the movie itself and there is little extra to be learnt about locations etc. It gives very little about the story away which makes you want to go watch the film so it seems like this film was made assuming it would be used before/upon the films release as use as advertisement.

South West Screen

South West Screen is a company based within the South West of England whose main role is the fund, support and campaign for the creative industries in the region. They in turn are funded from larger partners UK Film Council (which has been going for 10 years), Skillset and South West of England Regional Development Agency.

They are linked with film festivals such as Encounters in Bristol andin the last year have achieved the following things:

• helped 4,639 companies directly
• registered £66 million in inward investment through filming in the region
• created / safeguarded 482 jobs
• registered 1,912 filming days
• leveraged £7,152,852 in total funds
• made awards worth £685,558 and direct investments of £789,245
• kept 3,300 people informed of the latest relevant news and opportunities through our e-bulletin
• reached 75,000 people through our website

So, in reality if it werent for organisations like these nationwide a lot of the smaller companies/individuals wouldn't get the opportunity to out let their creativity.

Graphic Designers

Saul Bass
Saul Bass had a 40 year career mainly working on posters and movie titles with directors such as Hitchcock, Preminger and Kubrick. What has been argued as his most notable work is what he did for The Man with the Golden Arm.
"Design is thinking made visual."






David Carson
David Carson is best known for his experimental typography and is said to be the most influential man in his area of work in the 1990's. His work is primarily used in magazines and also in adverts for global companies.




Neville Brody
Neville Brody is a British graphic designer, typographer and art director. He initially worked in record cover designs and went on to work with magazines and newspapers as as well as being one of the founding members of FontWorks.

Looking Forward...

All through summer I have been putting thought into what sort of projects I would like to do next year.
For starters, I would like to try to not do anything similar to what I have done in first year, though I have enjoyed the projects and would be happy to do any of them again I feel the whole point of progressing to second year is development and variety.

Modern Day Silent Movie
This is the idea I have been putting most thought to and am most curious about making.
What I have been thinking about here would be a project that would test/improve my Final Cut skills as the way it is edited is essentially. I have not got as far as producing a clear cut story but what would be basically involved would be a silent movie, edited to be black and white and the "grainyness" associated with the original silent films. It would also include the caption screens and a piano soundtrack. However, the twist is that the story would be set in modern day and this would be made obvious by costume, setting and storyline (which would involve use of mobile phones/cars etc).

I would also like to make a music video (for a song, not live footage/documentary) as music is something I am very interested in and I would love to be able to provide something that an artist/band can use that is different from the performance footage that myself and others worked on last year.


There is also a script written by a friend of mine on Creative Writing course last year that I think would make a good film. So far I have got as far as storyboarding it. The story involves the appearing and disappearing of a genie who grants wishes. This would be a good test of editing, continuity and looking into special effects.

Spartacus Festival: The Edit

It's been a while since posting on here because of term ending, but there is one more thing to update! As mentioned before Mike and myself helped out Nathan in the 2nd year doing some filming at Komedia.

Mike has been working on the edit for a few weeks now and this is what he has come up with:



It feels really good to have my name on something that involves a professional musician and is also a credit to the musical talent at the uni!

Spartacus Fest: Get Cape Wear Cape Fly

Last night was the Spartacus Festival at Komedia featuring 3 student bands and headlined by Get Cape Wear Cape Fly.

It was the first time I had been to the venue and when we arrived the venue was a lot bigger than I imagined! We had four camera's between us and they were positioned one either side of the stage, one at the back on the upper level by the bar, one handheld and one fixed to the balcony upstairs for a garunteed wide shot.

The student bands Trick the Fox, Avius and Goodnight Jupiter all played sets of around 20-25 minutes and Get Cape played for around 1 hour and 15mins so in total each camera used 3 tapes. Unfortunately the camera left on the balcony failed on the first band and the wide shot was lost. However, the camera operated by Nathan was positioned well enough to get a good wide shot.

I found the filming quite tiring as in total the gig lasted about 4 hours, however I did really enjoy the experience of working in a bigger venue with a range of bands involved. The one thing I have learnt from the 2 times I have filmed in crowds is that you cant control a crowd and if for example you have a very tall person stood in the shot, there is nothing much you can do about it! This is the advantage of multicamera work, one shot filled by a tall persons head can be covered by something from one of the other cameras!

One final reflection...

It has come to the end of the year, what feels like a very quick year, and a lot has been learnt in this time. Lots of fun and lots of hard work!

I would say that the main thing I have learned from the filming experience especially during the group project was that there is so much more paper work to be done, you cant just go out and film. From permission to film to release forms there are many things to complete to do a project!

I have also learned that time management is essential, if you don't assign and plan when you are going to achieve something by, chances are you wont get it done on time and before you know it, it is a week before the deadline and there is still tonnes of work to do!

My favourite "day" project from the year has to be this one:


OH MY GOD! from James Harris on Vimeo.


Not only did it make for an entertaining mini project but it also involved working in quite a large group and making creative decisions all together!

The one thing  I would change about my year was to re-do my individual project as technically it was not my best piece and if it were for a few checked camera settings the whole thing would have turned out far better.

Thank you everyone for a great year :) bring on the next one!

Filming at Moles

 Last night I was fortunate enough to help out Nathan in the 2nd with filming the bands at Moles. There were 4 of us filming in total using:

• 2 Sony Z1 Cameras
• 1 Sony A1 Camera
• 1 JVC HDD Camera
• 2 Digital SLR Cameras (for the headliners only)

Originally Nathan had only been asked to film 1 of the bands but we ended up filming all 3 of the student bands that performed: The White Hart Gang, Alyse in Wonderband and Audrey Costello.
The headline act were Esteban for which Nathan and Mike took pictures.

We set one Z1 up on the right hand side of the stage, the JVC camera was hand held on a gorilla pod and the other Z1 and A1 were both handheld. It was a great experience and I hope that I can lend a hand doing this kind of thing again soon.

The valuable thing that I learned from last night is that you need to expect to do more than you think. For example, Nathan had only been asked to film one band but obviously the others had seen what we were doing and asked us to film them too, it is obviously a very good way of making contacts and from the gig Nathan managed to get another booking in a couple of weeks at Belushi's.

Paintworks

On Friday we spent our session over in the Bristol Paintworks studio where we will be based for the 3rd year.

The aim of the day was to look through all our final group and individual projects then collectively come up with a running order for our showcase on Wednesday night at The Little Theatre  cinema.

After reviewing the videos we had to then narrow it down to around 7/8 videos (depending on length) to creative a show that lasted around 45mins. Our way of narrowing down the videos was to consider the following factors:

• Ensure everyone present at the session on Friday had a piece included
• Have a variety of both individual and group projects
• Have a range of genre films

Once we had narrowed down our films we also put them into what we all felt was an appropriate order. Now that we had our films we had to make an intro and outro to make the whole piece run smoothly and look professional.

We split into 2 groups, with one working on the outro which consisted of a collection of photos of everyone in the group and acts as credits for all those involved.
The group I was in were left to work on the intro, we finally settled on the idea of using stop motion with the project DVDs and with the help of Mike and the technician Danny we created a 30 second introduction credit.
Everything was put together today by Ant with the help of Rich and is now ready for screening on Wednesday...hope to see you all there!

The Journey: The End!

Today I finished my individual project The Journey. I am ready to admit it is not my best piece of work, but considering the technical problems I have had it hasn't come out too bad and has definitely taught me a lot of lessons.

The first and most important thing I have learned is to check that the camera is set up properly at the beginning before pressing record. If I had checked that the image quality was set to high rather than standard my feelings about the whole project would have been different and the finished product would have looked far less amateur. The plus side of me not using the uni's Panasonic cameras meant I saved a lot of time not having to log and capture though. Another problem with camera set up meant my footage came in in 4:3.

The composition of sounds I think works very well and I think that the variety of landscapes I managed to capture keeps the film engaging. I did try to make the film a little bit shorter, but to keep it in time with the music it works better at the length it is. The music used really keeps the film moving and having edited the clips to the music beats they work well together.



I accept that technically my film is by far not of high quality, but I am hoping that the idea and the range of media (including animation) used will remind/help show how much work I put into it.

Individual Project: Editing Process

 

After taking a whole evening of after finishing editing the group project it is back to work on editing the individual project.

I began by bringing all my clips in chronological order from filming I began to piece together the clips to give a variety of landscapes and scenary. My first concern was at how samey and boring the piece looks, so I tried to keep the use of the animation clips I had put together equally spaced out to break it all up.

The next step was to put the music in, this gave me far more faith in my film turning out okay as there is something about the music I have chosen that just seems to work. It seems to make the whole film go by faster and keeps a pace to it. The composition of the song also allowed lots of opportunity to practice fade in/outs with the beats which also helps reinforce the passing of time on The Journey.

Individual Project: The Search for a Soundtrack

Now that I have all my footage together I am ready to start editing but need to find a music track to go with my project before I start it in order to get beats with the music etc.

Here is the criteria I have in mind:

• I am looking for something ambient and electronic so straight away I know I am looking for something without lyrics. 
• I want something with a strong pace but nothing that has overly strong bass as I still want to keep it quite light.
• Something that gives some sense of movement or travelling
• Something with a defined start and end
• Nothing that will distract too much from the images

And so the hunt begins!

After trying to find music online and not having great success, I looked a little closer to home and found music by a friend who is studying music here at uni. Toby Kaar makes electronica music and he has given me permission to use his song Bread which I think will go perfectly with the feel of my piece

Group Project: The Man Behind The Music

After starting the project almost 4 months ago, the time spent with Ed and Mike working on the ACM Gospel Choir Documentary now known as The Man Behind The Music has come to an end! A copy of the final piece will be posted shortly!

Overall I am really happy with the film we have managed to make, we went out filming with a certain aim and during editing I think the way we had intended to tell a story was lost slightly and not all of our original ideas were met but what we have ended up with is still a good, informative, entertaining piece. 

For example, we had aimed for an equilibrium-disequilibrium-equilibrium type of narrative through Marks interview bringing up many struggles and how he overcame them, this was lost in the editing process due to the sheer length and usefulness of everything he said.

 The one thing I would criticise about the piece is that from the way we filmed the interview does begin to get a bit boring to look at after a while (but maybe that's just because I have watched it about 100 times!) and if we hadn't lost that first tape Ed had filmed we would have had more useful cut aways.

 The other thing that is a shame is we could not find a way to include the interview with the 2 choir members Emily and Ricky, although we have made sure they are included in the out takes.

 The background music used throughout the interview really compliments it well I feel as we have used mellow/sad sounding music when he is talking seriously and/or negatively and have used really upbeat songs in other places particularly when it breaks into the credits at the end I feel it works really well!

If I were to do this project again I would have made sure that Marks interview audio was recorded at a higher quality and also that we hadn't for one reason or another lost a whole tapes worth of really good footage! I think considering the technical difficulties we had which did lose us a lot of time we did still make a really good film which will hopefully be liked by all those who watch it and also all those involved in the The Man Behind The Music. =]

Using iDVD

 

The final part of the group project was to make a DVD to hand it in on and present. We chose to use iDVD as it is simpler to use than other software but still give you a professional looking DVD.

We kept the theme that we had used within the film of the ACM colours and used moving images of them on the home screen.

As we had a outtakes section we made an extras section and so the DVD map looks something like this:

I think it is very important to have a clean professional looking DVD as it is the first thing the client or audience see and if it looks amateur the expectation of what is to come in the main feature may not be very high!

I really like our layout as we have personalised it to keep it in tone with the film and it doesn't look like one of the pre-loaded themes within the programme.