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.

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!

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!

Action!

On Monday we set out to do the main bulk of our filming for our group project. This is the story of our day filming...

We set off first thing in the morning and headed down the M4 to meet Ed at his house and head into Guildford and to ACM. After a quick cuppa and meeting Ed's dog we jumped into the car and made our way to ACM.

This is where we encountered our first problem, the woman who was meant to give us permission to film was ill. This meant we could still film but we couldn't get any of the exterior shots or anything containing logo's or much of the interior. We were allowed in a rehearsal room though which was where we spent some time filming 2 members of the choir Ricky and Emily.

We got some footage of them rehearsing a duet they had been working on which will be useful when it comes to reflecting on the choir members, this took quite some time and we probably wont end up using much of it but it does make good footage. The 2nd part of our time with them was an interview with them focusing on similar questions that we had written to ask music director Mark, this will prove more useful as we can use soundbites of their interview.

After this we headed over to Croydon to Mark's house, we chose to film here rather at ACM as it gives a more personal up close approach to the interview and being that the documentary is effectively his story we though it would be better. As it turned out his living room was all neutral colours and had good lighting which made a very good 'studio' for the filming.

During filming we had 2 cameras and one tripod. The way we set this up was to have one static camera, and one camera moving and changing angles to provide what we hope will make 'arty' shots for the interview sections. If we were to do it again we definitely would take a boom microphone to get better quality audio from the interviews to use as narration.

Though it may not seem like we did much we got a lot of useful footage and it is most of our filming done. Ed will go back in the next couple of weeks to film a quick few exterior shots, and we are hoping that the footage Ed took before will show up after being deleted off the computers.

On top of this we have plenty of archive footage to work with which will probably be included in the opening section of the documentary.

Though it was a long day filled with service station food and rush hour London traffic it was a very productive, useful and fun day!

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!

Z1 Camera & Interview Practise

 

Friday has come round again and today we got more use of the Z1 cameras in preparation for filming our group projects for 4003. Instead of using just the camera itself we used external recording audio microphone connected through XLR lead.

After spending some time looking at how to set up the camera and audio combined and all the settings required to capture the audio and video with desired preferences, we made one-on-one interviews in our groups. We used Rachel and Chloe as our willing subjects who talked about holidays.

The problems we came across were continuity as they both moved quite alot when talking. At one point Chloe looks into the camera, this was easy to cover up with a 'noddy'. Though the excercise was focused on improving out audio recording skills there are several points within the edit I wish we could have edited to be a bit smoother. 

However in terms of matching up audio I think it is quite seamless which was the main idea behind the exercise.  The one thing I have learned from today is that even if your interview footage may not be as useful or as good as you expected it is easy to have fill shots and 'noddys' to make up for it.

Not these kind of nods though...

Oh My God- The Finale!

It took 3 weeks and 2 groups with 2 angles but tpday we shot the final shot to our 'Oh My God!' films. We chose to go for a comical ending as we thought it would be more fitting with Ed's reaction face that the film ended on last time.

OH MY GOD! from James Harris on Vimeo.
Can't really give much explanation as to why we did this ending other than it was a random thought mainly courtesy of Ed to see Ant dance!

We added credits to the end to finish it off and used the following song by Tom Jones as our soundtrack:

Different Methods of Camera Handling

In Fridays session we looked at the various ways in which to handle a camera in order to get a stable picture. The main 3 methods of this are:

Tripod
The tripod (as it suggests) works with 3 legs, each can be adjusted to varying heights, many come with a spirit level to just the level of your shot, they are very sturdy and stable.

Advantages: most stable, provides spirit level, can be adjusted to various height, strength/endurance of cameraman not an issue, pan shots can be very smooth, good for panorama and multi angle filming, support from wider base
Disadvantages: heaviest and bulkiest, not good in tight spaces, slow to adjust/move, heaviest to carry to/from location

Monopod
A monopod uses just one 'leg' to support the camera, however it is not just to be used as a 'leg' but the monopod can also be used as a lever to hold the camera up off the ground as well as stabilising it on it. As with the tripod its height can be adjusted easily.
 
Advantages: smaller and more compact than tripod, light and easy to set up, takes up less space so can film in smaller spaces, multi purpose, can allow minimal physical stress on cameraman (depending on how it is being used.
Disadvantages: only has one point of stability, can get sideways shake, not alot of flexibility in shots

Fig Rig 
The 'fig rig' was created by director Mike Figgis at the time of the making of one of his films. The fig rig works by providing the user with a control similar to a steering wheel for controlling the camera. The controls of the camera can be linked up to a device on the wheel itself. Further info can be found here.


A
Advantages: easily portable, easy to use and set up, relatively light, distributes weight of camera, allows fluid camera motion
Disadvantages: cameraman could have limited space, hard to put down and leave safely, once camera is picked up must be continuously held, doesn't eliminate and side to side shake motion