And we're done! Module 140 is over.....

Today was the hand in of module 140, well at least the DVD's anyway.

This Module has been very challenging and I have learned a great deal and I'm happy, mostly, with the outcomes. I have personally learned a new skill with directing one of the pieces and had a chance to work with some truly gifted people on the stripping documentary.

Stripping for a Living has faced problems with unreliable contributors and long days driving all over the country were great learning curves for us all and will put us in good steed for working in the Industry later this year.....
All that is left to say really is a big thank you to my Producer, Cameraman and Editor. It was a really rewarding experience. All of your dedication, drive and enthusiasm was brilliant and I am grateful for such a good team.

Beer, Brewing and the Britz gave me the chance to increase my sound skills and I'm happy with the outcome of that. Its a shame it got so far behind in the later weeks as I think the concept and original idea was a good one. Ultimately the Director/Producer struggled with the role, but thats why we are here studying the Masters.
The production sound was good and my choices of equipment (rifle Mic, boom pole and zoom recorder) proved to be the right choice and I understand fully why they are industry standard.
Post-production sound was unfortunately non existent due to the doc running way behind schedule. In fact the sound and camera operator were actually the ones editing the basic structure of the documentary.
Music choices were made by the director and editor to save time as they were unable to edit it. In the end it was a four man job to pull it, kicking and screaming, back on time and make it possible for the Director to hand it in on the Friday.
That said I have learned a lot about sound on this project, just would have liked to get a chance to use Protools to tidy it up a bit and set the levels But its all a learning curve!



Next stop final major project.......

Crit screening time again

Today was the crit screening for the two projects I'm part of

Stripping for a living looked great on the big screen and I was proud to show it as a finished article after all the let downs and frustrations of un-realiable contributors. Feedback was mostly good with a few comments about more background from the contributors which was inevitable. Given more time on this project I would have liked to have got more from the dancers. Filmed them outside of the club but this just hasn't been possible with the time constraints, not to mention problems of gaining access into clubs in the first place.

Beer, Brewing and Britz  This was a different story all together, there was only 40 seconds cut so the audience didn't really have a chance to gauge the project very well. Again the comments were positive but I'm shocked that it is so behind considering most of the footage has been hanging around on hardrives for the past three weeks.
Some of the questions seemed to throw the director as well which wasn't very comforting as we still don't have a working script and we are firmly into the edit time!

I think the coming week is going to be a hard on the editor and I'm currently wondering how she is going to edit a drama and a documentary in four days.......

Last bit of filming in the bag.....

So last night we finished the filming for Young and Pissed....


We all meet on the streets of Falmouth at around (.30pm and found, as you would expect, that they were deserted but at least the camera operator and myself had the chance to chat about shots and decide on good locations to set up the camera.

At around 11.30 the night was in full swing and we gained some good footage with a few fancy dressed  people and the obligatory drunk guy running at the camera and shouting.
I interviewed four people on camera to see what they had been drinking and ask weather they used supermarket deals to drink before they came out.
Again I was surprised by the lack of direction and I'm worried that there is no cohesion in what we are shooting for this documentary.

On the plus side we did get to interview a policeman in his car. Again we used the recce questions I wrote 5 weeks before and we didn't get a challenging interview as the questions weren't tailored to the situation. It was made harder by being left with the camera operator to do the interview! This meant that i was asking questions whilst sitting in the back of the police car so the policeman was struggling to look towards the camera as he responded to my questions.
Still this project is all filmed and its time to get these last few pieces of filming added so the editor can finish making the documentary......

We finally made a documentary!

After delays, unreliable contributors and a club owner who went on holiday, we have finally just finished a gruelling two days filming in a Lap dancing club in Bristol.
We had just two evenings to get everything we needed and within that time we had only one and a half hours each night were we had freedom to film when and where we wanted. Its was a very intense way to film and credit goes out to the producer and cameraman for working so well in these difficult conditions.
Last night we got back at 3am in the morning and we are in university at 9am to pitch to Twofour Digital so it never stops at the moment.

Looking forward to seeing all the footage in AVID and starting to work with the editor to turn all the great shots into a documentary.....

Protools

I have been working with Protools this week in preparation for the sound edit on Young and Pissed. For this documentary I' m the sound engineer so once an edit is done I will have the exported sound track from AVID to work on in Protools.
For the swimming documentary, Fighting Chance, I had a brief chance to work on the sound but I feel I need to keep working with this software to be competent in using it, not to mention trying to remember where all the buttons are!

The swim Doc uploaded into Protools ready to be worked on

I reworked the old documentary because neither of the current documentaries have a timeline edited yet so it makes sense to work with what I have instead of waiting to the last minute.

On the sound there were issues with background noise, especially with the interview of Len in the swimming pool. I used the 7band equaliser to search out the frequency of the noise and remove it as much as possible. When using this technique it is remarkable how much you can take out but you need to take a lot of consideration into the person voice. It is very easy to change the sound of it it when you remove the unwanted noises.

London filming abandoned!

So I write this blog entry after a gruelling 7 hour drive back from london.

We should have been spending the day with our contributor, filming her life outside of the lap dancing club and then following her before she went to work.
Instead we awoke to find a text message from Gigi from 11pm saying she had been rushed to hospital with pains in her breast implants!

We have had a great deal of problems with contributors on this project but its all good industry experience and we have rallied around again and phone bashed all the clubs to try and gain some more contributors.....
In the mean time we wish Gigi a speedy recovery and hope that we can get filming in the coming days.

A welcome little break from the course

Its sunday morning and I'm thinking I need to watch some Wallace and Gromit with a cup of tea! Why? Well because Michaela and myself have just returned from a trip to Bristol where we were lucky enough to see Andy's Wild Adventures (CBeebies) being filmed in a giant green screen studio and a trip to Aardman to their offices and studio's.

Andy's Wild Adventures was a fantastic opportunity to see green screen in action, look at lighting set ups and just to be able to watch a production in full swing.

We had good chance to speak to all the team and see how each of the individual roles were working together. The cameraman and lighting engineer even swapped roles for a bit to set a shot up!
The shoot was centred around Marine Iguana's and, like all the series, uses BBC natural history footage and then overlays Andy with clever use of green screen.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b01cbn46/Andys_Wild_Adventures_Elephants/


On Saturday Morning we were able to visit Aardman and have a look around the studio's and offices. it was incredible and I must admit that I got just a little bit excited to see a small studio set up with Morph in it! We were also very lucky to see the model of the Pirate ship from the new feature length movie
The Pirates! - In An Adventure With Scientists. It was an incredible model standing around 8 feet tall and the attention to detail was mind blowing.

The studio's gave us a massive insight into the work load that goes into producing these programmes, the lighting is immense with around 12 lights on a small 6 feet set.
The models and scenes are so detailed and everything looks so real in its miniature form. We were told about one scene that will be used in the upcoming pirates film that is 10 minutes long and took one lady two years to film in the studio. The average time from conception through filming and into edit is around four years!

For more information on Aardman please see the link below and check out the trailer for the new movie

Aardmans Website
http://www.aardman.com/

Trailer
http://www.aardman.com/features/upcoming-features/the-pirates-in-an-adventure-with-scientists/

The pressure is on

Its the first day of the month today and the pressure of this module is starting to be felt by myself.
We had a tight schedule of filming in Bristol planned for three days earlier this week but contributors have let us down. Sending my producer an email from Greece to say she wouldn't be around to film until Friday!

As I write this blog update I'm staring at my phone, willing it to ring with news from another club that we can film this weekend to try and make up for the lost time. We only have one more full week to film and its getting increasingly tight.....

Still we was warned that strippers can be notoriously unreliable