Pitching Day

Today was the final pitch session to see what documentary and drama ideas were going to get green-lit.
I was actively involved in four ideas so pretty confident that at least two of those would get the go ahead.
The ideas were
Hoodies to Heroes  - A documentary about BMX riding and its inclusion in the Olympics
Britains Bionic Man - The story of David Follett who was paralysed in a car accident
Mutilations, The Unthinkable Truth - A Documentary about the APFU and the investigation work they              
do surrounding animal mutilations.
On the Cusp of Madness - A documentary charting the rise to fame of Ryan Keen with madness drummer 'Woody"

All the pitches were really good and most had a strong story and interesting subject matter but there were going to be some that wouldn't get made because we don't have the resources and time to make them all.

In the end Hoodies to Heroes and Mutilations, The Unthinkable Truth got the green light so I will be directing one and cameraman on another which Im very happy about.

Look out for more updates in the coming weeks about how we progress!

Another Idea comes together

I have lots of ideas for television programmes but many of them don't always fit the specific briefs of our modules at uni. For module 150/160 I had two ideas that did fit the briefs and I'm very pleased that today my contributor agreed to be part of my documentary idea.

The brief is BBC3 Extraordinary Me and David is definitely that. He is one of only three people in the country who is testing the EKSO an exoskeleton suit. As well as that he is a world class badminton player and a torch bearer for the Olympics.
He story is very inspirational and his determination and spirit is a credit to him.

I look forward to pitching this idea and hopefully seeing it made in the coming weeks

For david story see the daily mail article written earlier this year.


http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2132059/Britains-bionic-man-Robot-suit-allows-Olympic-torch-bearer-22-walk-again.html

Unit 150 Begins

After the Easter break we are back and starting the research stage of our final major projects.

Briefs are for a 10 minute documentary following the formats of BBC Three's Extraordinary Me or Channel 4 First Cut.


We are only at the ideas stage at the moment but I'm developing an Idea with the team from the Strip Doc about cycling and BMX riding and its inclusion within the Olympics. The cameraman has a great contact Robert Reed who has links to UCI BMX World Championships, events such as Rollapaluza and many many more.
We are looking to focus on the grass routes story of BMX riding and how it has been transported to a new level by it inclusion in the Olympics.

We are also hoping to use the other contacts within competition bike events to make a promotional film for his work with schools and for his sponsors.


Currently I am contacting the Great British cycling team and event coordinators at the UCI to gain access to film at the upcoming World Championship so watch this space!

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.

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

A slight re-shuffle......

After a couple of weeks from the initial project pitch and selection process cracks started to appear as the size of projects became apparent.

Due to a drama having a casting problem and Kernow curfew being deemed out of date we have some changes.
Kernow curfew is now a project looking at single parent dads and I have given my role as cameraman away because I had three roles which was a great deal of work and the cancellation of the drama left four people looking for roles.

This has worked out for the best,  I can now concentrate on my director role on stripping for the kids which is proving to be very challenging and time consuming.

Young and Pissed gains another contributor

Today I had a message from another friend of mine who is a student and works in a bar in Falmouth and he agreed to do an interview for our Documentary. Kevin is perfect for the documentary as he falls into the age demographic for binge drinking culture, he is a student and he has a unique story to tell.

In his first year at university he was, like many, out drinking as part of the uni experience but started to drink more and more until his body had enough and he had a seizure! This was a traumatic time for him and he has been left with permanent health problems which don't allow him to drink anymore.
I was really glad he agreed to be part of the doc as I think he is a very strong contributor and has a compelling story to tell. I arranged some possible filming dates and passed all the information on the director.

This is shaping up to be a really good Documentary with some strong contributors, I look forward to filming this interview later this week!