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.......

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.