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!

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.

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. =]

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!

Group Project: Progress Update

 

We are deep in the depths of editing now and have been spending lots of extra time in the Gatehouse working through our footage trying to edit it down into something that resembles a structured documentary.

 We have divided the roles of editing up between the three of us, I have been looking at what we have filmed and looking at editing Marks interview footage whilst Ed and Mike have been looking at the archive BBC footage from the DVD's Ed was given a while ago.

I have been able to take the half an hours worth of footage with Mark down to around 10 minutes and after ruthlessly going through what he has said and structuring the narrative we want to end up with we are aiming to edit this down even further to around 5 mins. This will allow plenty of leeway to add other footage.

Over Easter we are hoping to film a rehearsal with the choir but with only 2 days left and other commitments with the other 2 modules, this is about where we leave it for this term. We are well on our way to having a finished product as we have structured our narrative, have near to all of our required footage and a strong idea of how we want to styleise the documentary :)

See you after Easter!

Individual Project Time!

For the 4002 module we are required to make an individual project, it takes the same nature as the Group Projects in that it must be 5 to 8 minutes long and we pretty much have the choice to do whatever we want.

I want to go back to an idea covered earlier in the year of montage and develop this into moving image which I have not looked at before. As I like the idea of looking at traveling and taking journeys I have come up with the following proposal:

“The Journey” is a short (between 5 and 8 min) short film which will be a montage piece about a journey in car between Bristol and Scotland. It will be a majority of moving image but will also include some still photography.
The narrative of the film is already written in that the journey has a beginning and an end. The aim of the piece is to focus on aspects and scenery in our country to remind the audience of what we have in this country as the common assumption is that traveling involves going abroad.
I am as yet undecided on whether or not to include the driver as a character as nature is the main focus of my piece.
There will be no dialogue or diegetic sound and the footage will be accompanied by appropriate music to reflect the locations filmed and will be very atmospheric/ambient.
I have chosen to do this piece as this particular journey is one I have done several times and I find the changing of landscapes over the time it takes to complete the trip visually impressive. The differences in locations and also time of day over the length of the journey is something I wish to focus on.

Group Project: Team Progress

So after last weeks filming we are left with over 2 hours of footage and the 'what next?' scenario...

We have managed to log and capture one and a half of our tapes (can never rely on technology!) and now we have to figure out what to do with the stuff we have.

Our approach now is to cut down the footage we have, we are going to take the half an hour or so interview down into somehting around 6 minutes worth of narrative. The logic behind this is that if we can structure Marks interview into around 6 minutes it gives 2 minutes either side to add or take away other footage.

This is our aim to be done by the easter holidays so that we have the main body of the documentary done. We are going to have one more filming session and then we have archive footage to encorporate in with what we already have.

Instructional Video: Final Edit

 

As promised here is the final edit of our instructional cooking video filmed last week:


1..2..3.. cooking show from Anthony Sahdev on Vimeo.


Overall I am really happy with our video but if I were to approach the project again I would experiment with using a voice over as the projects I have seen by other groups have used this really well. I feel as though we have met the criteria of the task.
The thing I found difficult as I'm sure the rest of the groups did was many of the recipies could take anything up to or over 10 minutes to make in real life and having to condense that down into instructions of 3 minutes was quite hard.


I like the style we did our video in as if I were to be making the food I like not having the distraction of having a presenter and delivering short, clear instructions with simple visuals that are easy to follow.

Instructional Video Filming

For the 4002 module, we have been asked to complete a short instructional video lasting aournd 3 minutes, aimed at students covering cheap and healthy eating.

I worked in a group with Ant, Harry and Simon, we filmed this afternoon in Ant's kitchen making a pasta dish.

The stages we went through in planning how to film the video was as follows:

• Break down the recipe
• Decide which order to film stages (e.g. all chopping to be done in one go)
• Pre-plan certain shots
• Work out timings of food being cooked
• Film!

The frustrating thing about trying to film a video cooking food is that either shots had to be rushed and several filmed in a short space of time or there is a lot of waiting around depending on what stage of the recipie you are at.
For example, we were cooking a pasta dish but preparing everything else within the recipe first, this meant that once we had done all the chopping and prepared all the sauce we had to wait just over 10mins for the pasta to cook before we could continue with filming. This does give time to review the work done so far but the waiting around can be annoying!

Also, depending on the type of recipe there is a pressure to get everything right first time. For example when filming ours we only had enough spinach for one 'batch' so if we had messed up or something had gone wrong with the shot of cooking spinach it would have proved rather difficult.

I have learnt that cooking videos are not as easy as they look and they take a lot of scheduling when you cant afford to or dont have the resources to make multiple versions of the dish. Programmes like Ready, Steady, Cook! and the live sections of Saturday Kitchen have the pressure of getting everything right for live audience, but a pre-filmed cooking video has the same problem and requires a lot more preparation than I originally thought.

Stick around for the edit!

Group Project: Progress

 

We are at the point now where we feel ready to film the main bulk of our footage, Ed has already filmed some research footage which has infact turned out to be quite useful and I'm sure we will make use of it in our final edit.

Monday should be the grand day of filming in which we need to acheive 3 things: the interview, the singing and the mini interviews with choir. To do this we will have a Sony Z1 camera, and at least one Panasonic camera.

Before Monday we need to research techniques behind filming music (specifically choirs), sort out our travel arrangements and make sure we have scripted enough interview questions in order to cover everything we have been planning for the last few weeks.

In the mean time we have come up with what we want to include in the content of our film and an outline of the structure:

Scenes to include:

• Mark de Lisser interview - split 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

Group Project: ACM Gospel Documentary

Research


I have been looking at videos from the BBC's Page  on ACM Gospel Choir for further research. The one which I found particularly useful was the one about Music Director Mark De Lisser, this is more of a profile video on him and proves useful as it is pretty much a short excerpt of the type of thing we hope to make.

In terms of other research, Ed conducted a phone interview with Mark and found out his vision and views on the choir, this has given us some basic material to use in order to start thinking about structuring an interview for the documentary.

Pitch

On Tuesday we took our pitches for our projects over to Paintworks in Bristol which is where we will be based in the 3rd year. As Ed was filming with the choir it was up to Mike and myself to represent the team! For our presentation we created a Google Doc as it made it easy for us all to edit it in our own time in separate locations. We saved it to a memory stick as a back up (though the YouTube video would not have worked in this case), however the good thing about Google Doc is that you don't need to rely on them and all you need is the internet access to get to your file.

This is the presentation we created:

Group Project: Initial Ideas

We are staring work on our group video project and our task by the end of the day was to come up with an idea, find groups and submit a proposal.

I have chosen to work with Ed and Mike, Ed had the idea of doing a documentary on the choir he is in called ACM Gospel Choir. I myself wanted to do something either documentary or music based so this idea really appealed to me. Here is our treatment so you can get an idea of what we hope to work on:

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.

For more info on our chosen topic please visit the ACM website.

Radio Production Progress: Final Piece!

Today is the hand in date for the Group Radio Project! Our radio as you have read on previous blog entries was about Banksy, we included and introduction/history,  interview and finished with a concluding section. The music we used was Teardrop by Massive Attack.

Here is the MP3 version of our group radio piece:



Here is the link to download the original WAV file

In comparison to professional pieces, I think it is clearer that we recorded in different locations as the same voice sounds different. The other thing that could be better about ours is the levels, as at points the music drowns the voice.

Other than that I am really happy with our piece, especially in terms of content. I think we chose an interesting subject and conveyed it in a manner that appeals to young people who would listen to student radio.

Soundscape Assessment

I chose to do my soundscape of shopping, through my recording I found it leaned more towards supermarket shopping.



Here is the link to download my finished edit.

The problems I found during the recording that as I was always recording in crowded areas there was a lot of background noise and I found it hard to get clear cut sounds such as till beeps.

I found the editing stage quite easy to do once I got into it, but it was most difficult knowing where to start! I wanted to tell a story in that it starts by someone getting out cash, their trip to the shops (fom quiet to quite chaotic) and ending with them leaving. I did not aim to make it sound realistic which is why the middle section is a jumble of sounds.

Hope you like it, comments welcome!
=]

Warning Photomontage Final

The excercise was this: Your montage should demonstrate an understanding of the narrative affect of combining images.  Duration 90 seconds to 120 seconds.

 

Using Final Cut Pro, I put together my photomontage which lasts around 1min 53secs. My pictures were taken on a day trip to Bristol and the song I have used is Warning by Green Day.

I found it difficult to decide which transitions I wanted to use, as I thought simply using straight cuts between photos would look rather amateur. Also with using a song that is quite well known I didn't want it to look too tacky.

This is my final piece uploaded to Vimeo, comments welcome =]

Warning Photomontage from Kirsty F on Vimeo.