Commissions Unit - Critical Reflections

Working with Lex has been great. We have great communication skills and complement each other really well. The key to a successful team is to have faith in each other’s opinions. For example, if I didn’t like how a shot looked, even though I am not the camera op for this project, I can openly say that I don’t like something and know that I mean it in beneficiary to the project, not berating the person. I feel we really brought the best out of each other. 

The equipment we used benefitted our shoot with Lex’s knowledge of cameras being more prominent now more than ever. Sam Creamer kindly lending us his tripod slider gave our shoot something that others may not have. We were smarter on this shoot being very lightweight and mobile as some of the construction shots were actuality based.

Our clients were very good in terms of communication. Any information that I needed in regards to the company and sites that we were researching for the video they were more than happy for us to do. Due to time constraints and the office never being in a recordable state because the office isn’t exactly pretty, we couldn’t get the office shots according to the plan. However, we took a different angle on the film and used some small stock footage to make up the difference.

In terms of producing and organisation, I feel competent in talking to people that I don’t necessarily know. I always had bad self-confidence but this project brought me out of my shell and enhanced my producing ability as I have to call and talk to people I don’t already know. My organisational skills have increased a great amount, too.

Overall I am happy with the outcome of the film and comparing it to my first works on the course it really shows the capability even on a zero budget. Hopefully I venture into commissioned works for a production company as I did find working in a small team on a project I procured a nice feeling.

Transitioning my work to the third year, I am ready for it more than ever, I can't wait to round off the course with some beautiful work I have done myself, ready to be shown at a screening.

Commissions Unit - Post Production and Critical Evaluation on Video.

As soon as the shooting days were over, we immediately got into the edit. We edited the film at 1280x720 and we filmed it flat. Our export settings were in prores and our ideal deliverable was vimeo.

As Lex got to work with colour correcting and stabilising the footage I got to work with the sound. Background noise with any microphone is present, however small.  So instead of using Final Cut Pro’s built in noise cancellation (which is pretty poor to be honest) I used Adobe Audition. I used audition before and it’s a great piece of software for pin-point audio editing. After importing the audio tracks, I captured a noise print. A noise print essentially captures a small section of the clip, in this case it’s the static noise in the background. After capturing the noise print, I selected the whole clip and applied the noise print. This took all the static out of the footage and sounded great. All the case now was to re-import it into final cut and press the ‘Synchronise clips’ button which automatically matches the clips with the Canon footage.

After showing the rough project to a first year, he enquired if it was a two camera shoot when in fact it was only a single camera shoot. I learnt this technique from Fergus Moloney when studying the previous unit (studio production). If you’re rendering at a lower resolution than what you shot at, you can zoom in without losing much quality. As I stated earlier, we recorded at 1920x1080, and we set the project properties to 1280z720 as it’s only going to be a small web video. This allowed myself to zoom in after cutaways to get a nice mid close up of the contributor, effectively getting more angles without recording any more footage.

Comissions Unit - Feedback from Rough Cut

After editing a rough video, I got into contact with Adrian to give me some feedback on the video. He loves the video but feels he needed to be tuned up a little bit as he was quiet. The main part is that he loved the video which personally I have fulfilled my aim. Anyway, more editing to do to satisfy the client just blogging to mention that there was initial feedback from the client and amendments were made.

Studio Production - Final Reflection on Being a Studio Director/ Critical Reflections.

To me, this has been my favourite unit on the course so far. I really sank my teeth into the job role In terms of the team I was working with, I could not ask for a better team. As stated previously Vic and I had the chemistry, the communication between myself and Chris was second-to-none, our directorial vision equalled each other’s, as it shows in the production.

I feel that even though others may have had problems amongst their own groups, the most important thing to me was to keep my head down and work to the best of my abilities. My main jobs were to do my camera script and keep it updated to the actual script, keep up to date with the set design, keep constantly evaluating myself in the workshops and of course direct on the day.

I feel I did the role to the best of my ability and so did my co-director. I feel that the communication between the UCA courses (TVP and CATF) was weak, leaving the commissioned set nearly late to the studios because of budget, but this can be ironed out next year. 

Overall I am happy with the progression of myself on this course and I feel I served my purpose as a director. I will no doubt be implementing the skills I learnt through Hans and the technical experience I learnt through filming a television production at a studio into my career in television.

Studio Production - CATF Final Thoughts

After being on edge all morning, CATF really pulled it out of the bag. Aside from the poor communication and tight deadline, they produced a truly outstanding piece of work and should be commended for it. The colours were great, the angles were beautiful and it really strayed far from the typical conventions that UCA television production has always had. The lighting on the flats brought the set out and made it more than just a backdrop, it made it something special and I absolutely love it.

Maybe next year for the development of both courses the schedule should be done much earlier to take into consideration anything that could go wrong, because when you live in a world that when everything goes wrong does, it doesn't make life easy. Aside from that, thank you so much CATF for producing an equally great set to match our content.

Commissions Unit - Ease of Access + Stock Footage

Overall, most of the access we had were great, the only problem we really had was office shots as it wasn't the best dressed office and they were'nt prepared to sort through everything to make it presentable. Also they weren't prepared to show us plans as they were sensitive with their clients, which is understandable. This gave me the opportunity to use stock footage for the first time ever. I bought the music from AudioJungle and some video from its sister site VideoHive. Stock footage might come across as lazy but actually saves you in sticky situations and still looks good. Envato isn't really expensive if you split it in half with your colleague. It has a licenses to use it commercially which is always good.

Commissions Unit - Production

Firstly, we shot the interviews in the base room, with the contributors (4 directors of the firm) shooting 2 on the left and 2 on the right (Appendix 3). This will add variation to the interviews and make the shots less stale. A board relating to Harrisons was placed next to the contributor. The boards were not relative to the contributor in question necessarily but showed a bit of backdrop to what the company has dealt with. I used the Zoom on its basic stereo setting and placed the microphone in front of the contributor to get the best sound. Based on projects I have seen before, a lot of others practise with clipmics in shot. I have an internal logic that you wouldn’t have a boom pole, tripod, lighting kit or any other sort of kit in shot, so this can be sorted with a zoom microphone. We had ultimate control over the room and there was little to no buzz noise in the background so I could get in as close as I wanted, whilst maintaining an eye line with the contributor. Lex prepared and asked a series of questions that we could then edit in post-production later.

Before we filmed the interviews, Lex and I based on the script shot the front of the Harrisons Office in Gillingham. We used a tripod slider to capture the sign for when the promo starts, and a slow track backwards with a GoPro wide angle to capture the ending.

The client was more than happy to drive us to sites to capture footage for the piece. The sites we went to are as follows

·         Eurolink Sittingbourne

·         Redrow Sittingbourne

·         Midkent College

·         Cranford Close, Gillingham

Lex had a shot list that comprised of sliding shots, fixed static and handheld shots to catch a nice variation of shots for the edit. The tripod slider proved great in the shots and really brought the best out of the angles in question. Midkent College was a special shot as it was a GoPro mounted to a suction cup to the side of my car. This allowed us to get a nice wide angle flyover when the road was clear.

Unfortunately due to time constraints and access to the clients main office we were unable to retrieve any office shots, but based on the end product, it didn’t really need to benefit from office shots.