Individual Project: Progress

Having been distracted by the group project, the editing for my individual project is somewhat on hold. Luckily I have completed all the filming (though may take this weekend as opportunity to get some little extras) and have all the animation bits ready to edit together.

Just before coming back to uni I filmed with my Dad who was the driver and got the sequence of him getting in and starting the car. Also in the last week at home I took 450 pictures of a toy car and managed to put them together in Fridays session to make the clips of animation.

At the weekend I am making a trip to Cornwall and may use this opportunity to get some footage of cars on the motorway from a motorway bridge (which I did not manage to get before) and also some footage of traffic lights.

So after Wednesday when all the group work will be finished it will be all good to go on the editing for my project and though I am sure it will take longer than I expect I am going into it with a clear vision of what I want so hopefully it wont be too stressful!

Group Project: Reassessing Our Approach

So with only a week to go before the deadline for our group project we are deep into the editing process. Due to problems with technology and capturing our 2nd tape of footage we only managed to gather all our footage together on Friday.

Up to this point we had edited the interview footage from just one tape and were finding it impossible to match up the cut down clips with this new tape. What else could we do but start over?

We managed to line up the two full half an hour tapes of interview so we could easily cut down and swap between shots. Though this sounds like a massive step back, because I had worked on the interview so far for so long I knew exactly what was and wasn't in it. It only took a few hours to get back to a interview of just over 6 minutes.

To cut a long story short...after a minor delay we are back on track and feel we are still on track to get everything done on time!

And the lesson to be learnt? ... dont rely on technology!

Deal Or No Deal: The Feedback

It's been nearly a week since I had my 2 days with Deal or No Deal and over the weekend my parents got an email from their friend (who organised everything for me and works for Endemol) and they said some really nice things:

"Kirsty was an absolute star this week - she got on incredibly well - everyone at Deal thought she was amazing and one of the guys said to Phil that she asked him some really difficult and pertinent questions (which he had a job to answer!).  They thought she should drop the course and go work for them straight away!"

Yay!

Another Day On Deal Or No Deal

Wednesday was my 2nd day on the Deal or No Deal set, though the day was 4 shows being recorded, annoyingly I had work in the evening so had to leave after 3 shows.

Show One
For the first show of the day I was with one of the camera assistants Jess, she showed me the basics of using the cameras and even let me have a go when they were filming fill shots of audience applause. So if you see an Indian couple clapping on the 10th October show that is my handy work! The main thing to grasp when using these cameras was keeping everything in focus. It was essential to quickly master a crash zoom and focus to keep it all looking good. I also got to have a closer look at the steadycam that I had seen on Tuesday, the operater has his own focus puller who controls the camera focus remotely, and in total the technology involved in the harness, camera, screen and remote focusing was worth around £120,000! During this show I was also listening to talk back through the headset and could further understand the directors control/effect on the camera operaters.

Show Two
For this show I was with the sound department. I was shown the microphones used and how they were set up on the contestant. During this they get the contestant to talk at a normal level and they before they start the show they quickly take them outside and get them to shout as though they had won the quarter of a million so that the sound editor Phil (who's full name I have forgotten...sorry!) knows the levels. Their job throughout the show is to alert Phil who is based in a building next door which of the 22 microphones is about to be needed as the contestants speak, and also to keep an eye out for anything not working correctly.
In the last section of this show I went to see what Phil SoundMan (his new name!) did. His job was monitor and adjust the mic levels out of the 30ish microphones in order to keep levels audible, for example when audiences applause Noel's voice needs to be put up. This process tries to make the editors life easier to give them one less thing to have to edit. The audio file for one show by itself is 17GB! Imagine how big the video file is...

All morning they had been having issues with the lighting, I tried to understand what they were saying but to be honest it was all far beyond my understanding! But whatever it was it meant the start of the 3rd show was about 45mins late.

Show Three
The last show I was able to see for the day I was in with the two guys who adjust the contrast and colour to keep everything looking constant and identical. To do this they used equipment which included vector scopes and wave scopes we have just been looking at on Final Cut Pro. This roll also gives the editing team an easy time as all 7 cameras used will all look the same and little to no (depending how well these two have done their jobs!) colour correction will need to be done. This is a job that requires constant attention and adjustments through the show.

I have had an amazing 2 days on the set and I think it is valuable knowledge and something that can't really be taught or understood at university itself, the co operation and sheer size of the crew needed just to make a game show is a lot more than you would think watching a tea time TV game show. What I did find interesting is that the director and general feel on set (with the exception of the lighting difficulties) was far more relaxed than I was expecting! My favourite parts of my 2 days there was the editing and camera's, oh and of course being in the audience!

Individual Project: Filming/Idea Progress

Over the weekend I did the main bulk of my filming for The Journey on a drive up to Scotland to visit family. As predicted though the weather was awful and I ended up shooting the moving shots from the interior of the car through a slightly filthy windscreen/passenger window.

Having taken into consideration that my footage isnt as good quality or quite what I was expecting it to be (due to the weather which was obviously out of my control) I have been thinking of other ideas which I will carry out:

• A short stop take animation of a toy car going along the route we took on a map
• Adding the driver as a character with a quickly cut sequence at the start of the driver getting in the car and starting the engine
• More photography
• Sequence of traffic lights

The stop motion animation section is most important as not only does it encorporate another skill I have learnt this year but will also aid greatly in piecing the sections of footage together as if I just pasted them together as they are the camera position and location would jump around incredibly unnaturally and look awful!

A Day On Deal Or No Deal

Today was the first of my two days work experience on the Deal or No Deal set at Paintworks in Bristol. As I had not gone through Endemol I got a little more than the work experience they offer, as well as jumping up the long waiting list!

A typical day involves recording 3 episodes/games a day (though tomorrow they will be doing 4) and for each one I was doing something different, this is how my day went...

Episode One
After a tour around the set and other departments, for the first episode I was allowed to be part of the audience so I could first watch how they film it and the processes involved. They use 7 cameras to film with and the one that impressed me the most was the steadycam which was the most complex wireless, hand held set up I have seen! This first game lasted about 2 hours and this will later be edited down to around 35 minutes, each episode can take around 3 days to edit. So look out for me on the 6th of October in the audience!
 
Episode Two
For this episode I was in the gallery sat with the director Richard Van'y Reit to experience what it is like from off the set and also listen to the talk back on the headsets. The layout of the gallery was interesting and my short stay in here really opened my eyes as to the role of a director during filming.

Episode Three
Whilst the third episode of the show was being filmed I spent the rest of the afternoon with Tom one of the editing team. They are not part of Endemol specifically but work for The Farm Group who are then hired by Endemol and also have their offices within Paintworks. Unlike us they use Avid editing software on PC's, this I found the most interesting part of the day and my input even lead to a couple of cuts on a show he was working on that will be broadcast some time in late September/early October.


Tommorow I will be spending time with looking more at what goes on on set spending time with camera's, lighting and sound!