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.