Today was day of the Little Theatre Cinema showing. We had all decided to meet up for a meal as a 'goodbye to the first year'. When arriving in the theatre, sweets in hand, we all sat down to an introduction by Mike, this is the point where I started to feel apprehensive about all these people seeing my work. Would they see the mistakes i made? would they think its rubbish? does my voice sound terrible on the voice over?
The lights dimmed and on came our stop motion, it looked great in the big screen. I was really proud of all our work being shown. We also got a look at the second years work , it was interesting to see what we would be doing next year and really got me excited for it !
After seeing my documentary in the cinema, although I felt so embarrassed and nervous, I did feel so proud and it seemed all that hard work was worth it!
Today we came back to Paintworks, which I was excited about! As we will be spending alot of next year year there.
To start the day we watched all the group and personal projects everyone had created. It was really interesting to see everyone's different ideas and what all my classmates had been doing for the past few months.
After the viewings we were asked to filter down all these projects into a 45 minute reel to be shown at the little theatre cinema in bath. It was so hard choosing which films to include, we wanted to include a wide range of genres as well as making sure the majority of people has something shown. After alot of 'umm-ing' and 'ahh-ing', we came to our final choices. I was very chuffed that people wanted to include my personal project 'Life on the Allotment' it made me feel all the hard work was worth while and people had appreciated it!
After Lunch Mike and Rich then took as around a studio that we would most probably be doing projects in next year, they showed us round the set of a previous years project 'Liquid Soap' which is still continuing. It was very interesting to see a proper studio and Mike talked us through what working in a studio is like, which was got me excited to work there next year!
Once back in the Paintworks studio we were split into groups. My group created a stop motion introduction for our show reel in which we included all our DVD cases moving into the letters CMP (Creative Media Practice). We were quite impresses with this, it was also a fun activity!
When I was told we were to create a 5 - 8 minute personal piece , I was excited to make something completely my own , but also apprehensive that I wouldn't have anyone to help me with the parts of editing or camera work that I wasn't so knowledgeable with.
The idea of making a mini documentary on Allotments came to me quite early. I've always liked to look of allotments, but have never really been involved in one, so it would be an exciting new project. Allotments had been in the spotlight quite a bit as well, the main topic being the Olympic Stadium Development which was intending to build over allotments' in Hackney.
I looked at some '3 minute wonder' mini documentaries, and although mine would be longer than this, I liked how concise it was but how much they explored.
I like channel 4's documentaries, I looked at one in particular 'My Big fat gypsy wedding'. I liked the way in which interviews were dotted throughout the doc.The story was unraveled through the piece,and as this subject was something people didn't necessarily know about, but had their own opinions, it was interesting to see stereotypes proved wrong as the piece went on.I like this 'story' effect, especially as I don't really know anything about allotments, i'm not sure as to which direction my documentary will go.
I wanted the documentary to be an insight into the culture of allotments, but as I researched them I realised the extent in which Allotments in and around London currently are being built on, yet the waiting lists to own an allotment keep rising.
I knew someone who had an allotment in West London and thought this would be the perfect opportunity to film here as she could let me in and could give me an insiders view on the allotment.
Saturday and Sunday 24th and 25th April
Luckily it was a lovely sunny day , so I packed up my Panasonic, tripod, Rode video microphone, headphones and a packed lunch and set off to Framfield Allotments in Hanwell, West London. My Boyfriend Connor also came along to help with sound, some camera work and genrally to help out. On arrival we set up equipment and Sandra took us on a tour of the Allotments, this settles me in and I decided to film some shots of the Allotment, As I was walking round so many things caught my eye so I had alot of footage of the allotments surroundings. Whilst filming near a family's plot two children came up to ask what we were doing and after asking their father if we could film them , I interviewed them . I realised i didn't have the battery for my Rode microphone so I was hoping once this came back to the editing lab that the sound quality would be alright, as I did not want to risk coming back tomorrow and find out they are not there. This really boosted my confidence to go and talk to other people in the allotment.
On Sunday I came back with the battery for the microphone and spoke to many more others.I again filmed some more shots of the allotment.
The next weekend I wanted to film also, but it was raining and this meant that nobody was really on the allotment, and as this was such a short piece, I wanted there to be continuity in the weather, so this wouldn't really work, I also had wanted to shoot parts of London to show the contrast of landscape, but due to the rain I didn't want to wreck the camera equipment.
Whilst editing this project I was also amidst editing the group project, so I was lucky to have Final Cut Express on my Mac so I could work on the group project in the Gatehouse during the day and on my personal project at home in the evening. When editing my second tape I realised that the cover for the microphone had been hanging down and gave a 'fringe' to all of the footage, I was so angry , but this was the role with most the interviews on and I couldn't just scrap it , so it was a lesson for next time.
I found editing at first quite hard, wondering which bits to use and which order I should put them in , but once i had filtered the footage I wanted to keep down , I started to have fun and really enjoyed making a story out of it !
I wrote a script for the documentary, this really helped with making this have a structure and tied the interviews together well.
Once I had finished I uploaded my film to IDVD, this programme was simple to use, although when I uploaded it the video was stretched, so I compressed it for Quicktime again and changed the dimensions, luckily this worked. Once I had burnt the DVD I watched it downstairs on my television, and although I was pointing out bits I wasn't pleased with , I was quite proud that this was my own work.
We filmed in the Thunderbolt Bristol on Wednesday 7th. Tamakai were involved in a 'battle of the bands'. The prize is to play at the O2 Arena.
We had stocked up my car with all the equipment we needed and my boyfriend Connor came along to help, so we felt confident that we had everything under control.
We arrived , slightly apprehensive, as if this went wrong, we didn't really have another gig to fall back on. We made sure we arrived in plenty of time to set up and talk to the manager Dave MacDonald. We also chatted to Tamakai so they knew the ins and outs of what we were going to film. As we had extra time at the beginning we decided to do an interview with Ricky Poole to set the scene. We were filming in a very small room so everything was a bit of a squeeze, and it took a while to get the microphone working !As usual it was something simple, we were plugging it in the part of the camera!
Once the first interview was over , we felt more relaxed and the rest of the filming seemed to flow nicely , until, we realised we had not brought an edirol which we could have plugged into the stereo output of the sound desk. We used the rifle mic instead, and listening to the music post production the sound quality actually was really good!
We used three cameras, the Z1 which constantly filmed the gig in the same position, of the whole stage. We also used a Panasonic to film different angles and a small Sony handy cam which was constantly moving about filming the gig.
The night went well and we managed to get interviews with an eclectic range of people including the manager Dave MacDonald. Overall throughout the night i think we worked well as a team, although it was a little stressful at some points as we were so adamant on making sure all aspects of our piece were up to scratch.
In class today , we looked at one of the cooking videos that had been made and we used colour correction in Final Cut to create a smooth continuity throughout the film.
We were split into groups and took it in turns to interview and be interviewed, we would then have to edit them. We used a Z1 and a Rifle mic. Rachel and I were on screen for one group. We then swapped over and filmed them. It was a one to one interview in which we used a two shot and over the shoulder shots. We also took time to film a few noddies.
We found that Mike, our interviewee was not that confident on camera and kept laughing, therefore we had to edit some bits out, a good cover up was also to use noddies as he kept moving in his chair. I enjoyed this task as it was fun, but we also gained a good knowledge on recording sound and it was good practice for filming in the future.
Sadly I cant put the sound edit up as it will break copyright rules!
In this exercise we were asked to look at a clip from the film 'City Of God', if you click here and watch from 3:56 to 4:30 this is the clip we used. We were given this clip with no sound and we were asked to create a 'soundscape' to fit it. I created my soundscape on Soundtrack Pro and used sounds from the library on there but I also used sounds from 'sound dogs', which is a sound effects website. I found this very useful as it was actual sounds people had recorded which sometimes fitted better than the soundtrack pro sound effects. Also this would make my soundscape different to others in my class.
I tried to make my piece quite realistic using diegetic sounds, for example when the football hits the wood I used a 'bang',also I used police sirens when there was a shot of the police cars. Aswell as using diegetic sound I thought it would be interesting to include both non-diegetic and meta-diegetic sound. When the boy looks up and sees the police and the gang I used a high pitched sound as if to portray the fear he was feeling. Finally I used non diagetic sound for when the camera span round him. I used a 'whish' of a baseball bat and the sound of a jet plane to emphasize the quick spinning edit. I found all these sounds fitted well.
I really enjoyed this task as it felt as though I brought another dimension to the piece, and I found it very interesting that with different sounds that I used a different atmosphere was created.
Today we watched the Mocumntary by Spike Jonaz called Torrance Rises. Spike had created the video 'praise you' by Fat Boy Slim and this was a mocumentary looking at the aftermath of this video and the 'next step' as it were. Although this was a mocumntarty and we are doing a featurette, it was very useful to see the content they included. This made me think about our feturette and what we should include.
I browsed the internet in search of inspiration for our featurette, looking at interviews and live shot gigs.
I found this T4 music special with Mariah Carey. I like in this feature they have changed locations, and done many different interviews so you can see different sides of her. I thought the ending rounded the feature off nicely as after the show he catches up with her to ask how the show went. I would like to include this in our featurette.
Click on this link to see another documentary that has inspired me.
I really like the switch between performance and interview in this short programme. Also i think the lack of presenter works in their favour. The show seems toput the band in question in the spotlight more and you feel like you are watching something completely about them.
Although we loved the idea for escape to sea, due to the inconvenience of traveling to Brighton we came up with another idea.
Patrick's housemate Ricky Poole has started to play gigs in which he raps. Recently he has joined forces with the band Tamakai. It is still to be arranged when their next gig is but as they both are situated around Bath and Bristol this is much more convenient.
We have been in contact with them asking where they think they might play next and there is a strong possibility that they are going to be playing at the Thunderbolt on the 14th April. This would be a great storyline as this would be the first round of 'Surface Unsigned' in which there would be many rounds, creating a possibility for an extended story. Lets hope they get through!
Today Patrick and I made a powerpoint for our pitch later on in the day at paintworks. We included all what was discussed and decided on from our last meeting.
I really enjoyed the day at 'Paintworks' in Bristol. We were taken on a tour around the building , and we could see where we would possibly be working in the third year ! also we were told Noel Edmonds was near by filming 'deal or no deal' so that was very exciting.......
We were last to pitch , so i was a bit nervous after seeing all the other presentations. It was really interesting listening to all the other pitches as we hadn't actually fully heard each of our course mates' ideas! There was a really diverse mixture of genres for example some were making short films, spoofs, and documentaries.
Once we got up in front of everyone, I actually really enjoyed pitching, and I think all of our group did really well. It was really useful having Nic Jeune ,We received good, useful feedback form him which helped to indicate which parts of our featurette were too complicated/ didn't work etc.
After we had finished our presentations he said that he thought they were well thought out and he was impressed by our professionalism. Hopefully this indicated that we would act well in work after university if we are pitching to a company.
We were put in groups. My team was Rachel Sowden, Keiran Jones and Tom Charnley. We were given a brief script called 'Oh My God'. We were asked to shoot around 15 shots for this short film. We had been asked to film right to left.
We also had been taught about the 180º rule, in which you have to stay on the same side of the invisible 180º line otherwise it will confused the viewer once the shots are put on screen because the left to right/right to left rule wont apply. For example if a train is shot on both side of the 180º line the train will look as it has changed directions if the shots keep changing.
The basic outline for the film was : A girl gets an important phone call in which she immediately sets off to try and help. The film ends with a reaction shot after she has opened the door of our classroom.
We were shown this video by Robert Rodriguez, which explains in 10 minutes how to make a good low budget film. This was useful for this project and also will come in useful for our future.
Whilst making our mini film, we used a tripod which kept the camera steady and at the correct angle, this gave it a professional feel. I was the 'actress' in this film , and i don't think i looked particularly professional. We managed to get lots of different shots from different angles, obviously using the correct health and safety procedures. When tom was filming me running toward him , keiran held his back to prevent him failing over.
Tom lived in student accommodation near by, so we took this opportunity to use the copious amount of stairs to get some interesting shots. Whist filming a few times we got confused about right to left, and had to think through what it would look like once we were watching it back. We also took into account how professional films used close ups, and used closeups for such moments as the phone ringing, we filmed a close up of the phone, and we also did empty screens, where you run into shot. Other techniques we used were over the shoulder, panning, and high angle shots.
When we have logged and captured our film and edited it together I will put the film up on this blog.
So far, as I haven't seen the finished product yet, I feel our filing went well and we worked well as a group, I feel that our shots looked steady and professional , and we used a good variety.
We were given the short script for 'the wrong day' We were then asked to write a shot list as if we were actually going to film this. This shows us which order we should shoot the film. For example if throughout the film it is scripted that the same location is used on different occasions, it is best to film all those scenes together, this is much more logical than going back and forward in the order of the film.
We used Celtex to storyboard 'the wrong day'. We wrote the shots, included a birds eye view sketch of the shot, including camera angles etc. We then took quick photos to illustrate what we want the camera to actually see.
This would be really useful when filming as it would minimise the amount of instructions you would have to shell out, making the filming quicker.
Making a cup of tea
After story boarding for this short film, I made an instructional storyboard for making a cup of tea. I think I learnt alot by breaking down each scene and thinking where the camera should be etc, it helped me to really think about each of my shots in detail and how they should be laid out. This will help me later on when we make our own film.
'Bullitt'
We watched a scene from the film 'BULLITT'. It was the car scene in which Bullitt ( Steve McQueen) was in a car chase with two baddies. In our groups we were asked to take a screen grab of each new camera angle/shot, and then write the camera shots i.e Close up/ Wide shot, and then to give a brief description of what happened in the shot.
This really helped to break a film scene down, and made me notice certain things alot more, I saw how often shots changed, as when you are watching a film as you are involved you dont seem to notice. Also it helped me take into account how nothing is a 'mistake' and all the shots are positioned that way for a reason, and there is always mise en scene and cinematography behind each of the shots. For example there was a low angle close up on the face of the baddie, the baddie was wearing black signifying evil, and the low angle creates power and fear toward the baddie, on the other hand Bullitt, (the good guy) the camera is angled at eye level making it easier for the audience to relate to him, you can also see his whole face, rather than the shadowed baddie, this makes the audience feel as if they know him more.
TEAM TOPCAT PRESENT: Patrick Rachel Myself (moi)(Chloe)
In this first group meeting , we went deeper into what we wanted to achieve from this featurette. We want to follow more of a story. For example leading up to a gig.
We have chosen to use Patrick's friends for the band. They are called 'Escape to sea'. They are from Brighton.
We have decided that we want to include presenters to help along the featurette, they will be informal though and interview the band.
We would like to include shots of brighton in the 5-7 minuets, giving the effect of a road trip.Also a montage/stop frame animation would be used, with maybe one of their tracks on top.
We are meeting up on Monday to finalise our ideas and make a pitch for tuesday, where we will pitch our idea to 'paintworks'.
I decided to take some photos of a bowling alley near me: Charington Bowl. I found the location although bright and fun, also had a sense of tackiness and dispiritedness.
I don't think these photos are very professional, I think I could have shot with better angles and had more of a focal point in some of the photos, but some I also added for comic value, or to show the particular atmosphere.
In the first photo, I like how the shoes in front are in focus and the others in the background are slightly blurred. From seeing this photo you immediately know it is about bowling, even without seeing any of the alleys or bowling balls, because the shoes are so distinctively specific to bowling.
In the Second photo I like how the bowling pins are right in the centre of the frame, drawing us to the main aspect of the game. I think the photo would have looked better if I had photographed the bowler was more to the left, but I do think the photo is more interesting with him in it.
I like how in photo three there is a distinct contrast between the sparse floor and lanes, to the busy seating area. I like the use of lines in this photo,but if I were to do this photo again, I would like to make the bar on the ceiling more central , making both sides of the photo equal sizes.
The sixth photo I took was purely for comic value,he wasn't the most suave man I had seen,in fact he seemed quite awkward and clumsy and his t-shirt stating "read this whilst I check out your tits" just added to this comic image of a character.
In photos eight and nine I took a picture of the small arcade, there was only a few people in here, yet all lights were blazing and there was loud gaming music blasting from all the machines simultaneously. I love the array of clashing colours in these images.
The atmosphere in photos ten and eleven was very lonely and bleak. These were areas which seemed as though they should be filled with conversing families and friends, but instead they were sparse and abandoned.
I requested to be a volunteer at the 'BBC West Sports Personality'. This was situated in the sports department in Bath University. I was given the role of 'Arena team' in which we were to usher spectators through the venue, and we were also expected to operate the ticket desk.
I found the experience insightful, as once we had shown everyone to their seats etc, we were asked to stand by the side lines, here I got to experience the backstage. I saw all the technical aspects of the show. And it was interesting seeing all the production team telling the presenters to go on, also seeing the presenters practicing their lines behind stage, it was funny to see them being so different when they were off camera, to when they were on. I also sneaked over and touched one of the awards, just to say I had ! whayyyy!
If the chance comes along again, I think I would take it up as not only is it a good experience, but I also had a feel for what working in that type of area would be like, and I had a fun night in which i met lots of people.
Given the task to take these 6 photos I knew just the place which would be photogenic and would be atmospheric as well. I went to Buddahhapadipa in Wimbledon.
When I arrived it was just getting dark and had been snowing,snow was also still failing, this really added to the temple and grounds looking mysterious.The whole of the grounds were empty and extremely quiet. The lakes were frozen and it felt very serene
I used a Nikon D3000 Digital camera SLR, I found this camera really nice to use, but as it was getting dark it was finding it hard to focus. Although I then played with the shutter speeds and made some of my photos slightly blurred to give them a more eerie effect.
I liked the colours that have stood out from the photos. For example photo number 3 has a predominant wash of purple over it, I like this effect. Also picture number 2 looks as though it has been shot in sepia, but this was just the warm lighting from inside the temple shining through. I really like the effect I created in photo 4 in which I have slightly shaken the camera and it appears that there is a ghost there, I think this looks particularly atmospheric.
The first photo I have taken, I feel, looks as if it were in a fairy tale or magical land. As it had been snowing all the grounds, as well as the sky, were the same colour as the temple.The golds and oranges really stand out, giving a richness to this photo. Photo number 5 really reminds me of a Japanese painting. I like how there is a natural gradient, from the white snow turning yellow, to orange finishing in a deep red at the top of the photograph. The silhouette of the tree looks very lonely and ghostlike. I used the flash , I hadn't in the others, but I think the lit up leaves in the top right hand corner help to bring another aspect to the photo and giving it more depth s you can see the fore and background.
The last photo in this set I think looks very grand and important. I like how the lighting on the top right has created a shadow. Also I have taken this photo from a slightly lower angle, this creates a feeling of importance and as the door is in the centre of the image it feels as though you are being drawn inside.
Although I am pleased with the outcome of the photos, I think that they do not look like they go together as a 'set'. They have different feels to them , for instance the strong crisp staircase has a very different style to the purple ghostly house.
Also if I were to take these photos again I think I would have spent the whole day there to get photos in all different types of light.
