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.
