My Personal Project

In class recently we were asked to create our own video projects

Our projects had to be

• between 6-8 minutes long

My Project/Ideas

• First Idea

Initially I wanted to film a promotional video for the Bath Spa Christian Union. My hopes for this video were to encourage more people to join the Christian Union in BathSpa University and come to one of our meetings, I also wanted to let people know more about us as a society and community. To do this I would have filmed one of our meetings and then I would have interviewed some of our members and the president of the society about their experiences whilst being part of the Bath Spa Christian Union.

• Second Idea

My second idea was to produce a documentary on the youth minister of my local church Lloyd Katz. I wanted to interview him and film one of the services in the church. The idea behind the documentary was to tell his story from his upbringing in South Africa to what his personal experiences have been and what made him turn to Christ.  I also wanted him to talk about being the youth minister for Bath City Church and what the church itself does for the community.

• Third/Final Idea

I chose to produce a little featurette on my friend Chioma Ononoju who is also the former president of the  Bath Spa University Christian Union. my reasons for filming this was that my personal project would have been more easier to accomplish due to the fact that as was the only person filming and editing this video project i also wanted to portray Chioma in a very wise and professional manner.


The Aims of the Project

As I thought of  the concepts for each  video I came up with several thoughts in mind that I wanted to display in the documentary...
 
I wanted to educate the non christian community about our beliefs could have a better understanding of our religion and how we function.

I wanted to tell the story of how a devoted Christian was able to lead a civilised life with the beliefs that we shared despite the pressures and temptations in  life 

I also wanted to educate the viewers about the Christian Union in Bath Spa University

I wanted to talk about Bath City Church and the Christian community in bath itself

Disappointing Parts of the Production

Initially due to my poor time managent there were a factor of things which hampered the production.

• Sound

The first problem I encountered whilst filming was with the audio. I used a rode microphone which I thought would give me the best sound quality at the time. When I played my footage back the sound appeared distorted. Chioma appeared unclear in the interview and very monotone the simple fact was that she was positioned (by me) too far from the camera far away from the camera, as I didn't want the rode microphone to appear within the shot. In an attempt to fix the problem I had to normalise the audio using the option in final cut pro and I had to increase the audio levels due to the atmospheric noises in the background which drowned her voice out immensely. The sound still appeared to sound distorted but sounded better in terms of quality.

• Picture Quality

The second problem I encountered during production the video was with the visual aspect of the production. The quality of the image in the film was very bad my as my subject was very underexposed due to the problems with lighting and the camera. As I tried to figure out how to use the camera and set the features and visual settings I could only blame myself for not getting to grips with handling the camera throughout the year. I found that as the time went on I wasnt as fully functional with the video camera as thought and when adjusting the picture quality i.e. the white balance made my subject appear too dark I attempted to correct this problem by using the colour correction feature in final cut pro in a vain hope to hide  the bad picture quality I decided to revert the whole video black and white imagery

• Out of Sync

Somehow Someway I managed to either film or log and capture my footage out of sync with the audio which meant that Chioma appeared to be speaking many seconds ahead of the audio to rectify the mistake I tryed to use the bracket keys on the keyborad in final cut pro whist watching the video and highlighting the audio (as pressing  these keys whilst watching the video help you to align the audio with the video in final cut pro) time on some points of the video the audio is still out of sync but I managed to minimalise its visibility.

• Not Planned Properly

The very big factor which stood out all the way through due to the reviewing process of my finished project was that it simply was not planned properly. There were many opportunities (if it had been planned well enough) to insert cutaways shots into the video for example when my subject was talking about the Bath spa Christian Union and the award that we had recently receieved as a society. my questions cud have been thought through thoroughly before I asked my subject as I thought of all of them in an impulsive manner when reviewing my video I found that the question about spare time bared to relevance to my production. I wanted to ask one of my classmates who lives near me at the time to help me film but due to my bad organizational skills I left everything to the last minute whilst reflecting on other things the framing quality of the video was poor as I gave my subject too much headroom and didn't position the camera properly which when viewing the video did under represent my subject the video itself  was quite boring due to the fact that the video was a basic interview with no apparent footage of any other things which she talked about being in the video i could have filmed her worshiping or praying and i could have filmed her doing social activates with members of my church as well it would have also been nice to speak to a few of her non Christian friends about their views on religion i feel that i had the a greater opportunity to make this film more interesting by filming my subject in a number of locations but I didn't use it.

My Conclusion

Ideally this is in no means how a featurette should look like a featurette should be judging by this poor effort there are many things which I need to improve for the following year .

The first thing I will work on is my time management skills as I found I didn't devote enough time towards this production I felt myself rushing and doing everything in the last minute (which is never a good idea) which showed in the quality of the video by for the next assignment I would view the hand in date and work backwards so I could give myself enough time to produce a rough/final edit.

The second thing I need to improve is my technical ability the simple functions of the camera as to how to adjust the picture quality on the camera and use the correct framing methods are evident in the video as i am not that confident  and how to use it to improve this i aim to book equipment out to practice in my spare time and to get to grips with handling and setting up the camera whether it be Panasonic or a Sony Z1 and to get advanced editorial skills using final cut pro software.

If i were to have filmed the video again these are the things I would have done differently

• More cutaways as my project is too basic and quite uninteresting due to the lack of external footage
• Better Framing not too much headroom
• Better Quality of questions as it would clarify what i was trying to achieve by filming this video
• More footage of Chioma either worshipping or doing something social 
• Better camera shots/angles and visual quality as my subject was greatly underexposed
• Better sound quality as the sound quality in this video was  substandard 

Below is my finished project


the making of a christian from Edem King on Vimeo.

Carlina's Panchetta Del Sausage !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Recently in class we were asked to produce/film an instructional three minute cooking program aimed at students.

I was paired into a group alongside James Harris, Ross Weir and Carlina Flood (Presenter).

Conditions of the film were that the program had to be...

• Three minutes long
• The food had to be healthy
• The food had to be cheap and student friendly  (i.e. not too advanced)

We left our filming to the last minute (which is never a good idea) and the film was edited by James later that evening.

• My experience/Technology

We used two cameras to complete the final piece, the first camera we used was  James' personal camera which is a Sony VX2000. The camera itself offers good image quality and is built with an autofocus, it has a lot of features like a foldout LCD monitor and  it is equiped with very smooth zooming features . James also filmed his footage with an add on Lens which magnified his footage/Subject and that's how the viewer could differentiate between the footage which was shot by the VX2000 camera and which was shot by the regular Panasonic Camera. I found that it was great to work with two cameras as we were able to complete the filming more rapidly than it would  have usually taken due to the recording different shots at different angles, James filmed his footage with the Sony VX200 handheld and the footage with the Panasonic was filmed using a Tripod

• Shot's That I thought worked well with our production

I felt that the opening shot of the title (the introduction) it thought worked well with the whole production. Given the time limit we didn't want to take up too much time and we wanted to get straight on with the filming itself. We also wanted to be creative when introducing the show and didn't want to appear basic by using just the basic credits so we wrote the actual title on a white piece of paper and then got carlina to introduce the show.

The shots which were sped up in motion using the fit-to fill feature on Final Cut I felt worked well with our final production as it helped us show capture the ascendance of time and also worked well with the soundtrack. For example the shots of Carlina preparing the food and the shot of the hands on the clock rotating for twenty minutes clock whilst the food was in the oven it also the fit to fill feature also helped us in reference to stay within the time limit as we were able to stick to the time limit.
The tracking shots which worked well with our production I felt it kind of gave the viewer a hands on experience as if they were actually in the room with her whilst she cooked the food

• What I have learned

We were lucky to have had someone with a large technical brain like James who had access to the most sophisticated video editorial software and had filmed various videos before and therefore had great foresight But if I were to do it again I wouldn't rely on James if he wasn't in our group I would plan every detail due to organisation


I am very happy with our final edit enjoy.

 
Cookery Instructional Video from James Harris on Vimeo.

The Making Of A Fighter

Simon and I finished recently the editing of our group project which is a featurette based on the professional boxer Liam Richards, who is from  Melksham in the West-Country.

The documentary is titled Liam Richards the Making of a fighter and it covers a range of topics which are situated around the sport of Boxing. Liam talks about what inspired him to take up the sport in the first place, to how he prepares for a big fight mentally & physically and finally offers some advice to anybody interested in the sport.


The documentary itself was inspired by the HBO fly on the wall documentaries which are called 24/7. The series have featured the likes of Ricky Hatton, Flloyd Maywhether and Manny Pacqiauo.

Below is a trailer for one of the examples of one of the featurettes

• Reflection on the project as a whole (what worked and what could have improved the standards of the documentary)

I felt the project was edited well although,  I  felt that in the terms of a modern day documentary there were significant standards which we could have improved to make the documentary more interesting and appeal to a wider audience.

The owner of the contender gym is a man named Mark Kent. Mark is a certified trainer and a former boxer, he comes from a very detailed boxing background  and as he has an influential presence within the boxing community, at the moment he trains Liam for his up and coming fights and has worked with many professional boxers such as Mike Tyson and Joe Egan. It would have been good to get his views on Liam as a fighter and what he thinks it takes to make it in the sport I also think it would have given our documentary some stability in terms of more of a varied opinion on the sport rather than just Liam's views.

While reflecting back on our documentary I felt that Liam could have given some demonstrations of the basic boxing skills to the audience i.e. the stances/positioning how to punch all of these things would have taken the viewer away from just the interview and would have made the documentary more advanced in terms of content.

I felt the photo sequence worked well with the soundtrack and also the shots of Liam warming up for a day at the gym where also aligned with the soundtrack for a good effect.

We were able to find one of Liam's Fights but weren't allowed  to use it in our final video due to copyright issues. I personally would have loved to put some of the footage in our final documentary I felt some footage from one of Liam's fights would have made the documentary more interesting as I feel it would have taken the viewer away from the scenery of the contender gym and onto the professional world of the sport. When Simon attempted to film one of  Liam's fights he was unable to due to another production company having bought the rights to film the final fight

I recently saw a Spike Jonze documentary titled Torrance Rises. The documentary was based on the Torrance dance group  the documentary was based on the dance crew who featured in the  Fatboy Slim music video praise you. it followed the dance crew as they prepared for their performance at the 1999 Mtv Video Music Awards.  As a pair of documentary makers when reflecting on our efforts I felt we both could have employed these techniques on our documentary. Simon & I could have followed Liam around  so the audience could have known him more on a personal level we could have filmed him in his day to day life through work as a Plumber and as a family man at home with his long term girlfriend and children and how he prepared mentally and phyically in the weeks leading up to the fight.


I would have liked the featurette to have been more presenter lead with a voiceover as i felt this would add a better structure to our documentary and it could have told the story in a more professional manner it also would have given the audience more of an understanding of the structure of the boxing workouts.

• Things I have leaned during the process off production

1. Planning, Preparation and Production = Progression

Always to plan our work in advance. That way if anything goes wrong we will have enough time to rectify our mistakes. Our featurette was very basic and if it were planned accordingly we both could have been more inventive with the storyline. We would have had more footage to play with and wouldn't have used one of the same cutaway shots twice due to footage becoming limited. We also would have been able to add a storyline element to our production.



We could have filmed

• Liam at work
• Liam at home
• Parts of his outdoor workout routine
• Liam demonstrating some signature boxing moves
• An experts view's on the sport even one of the female trainers/boxer to show equality in the sport

• The Final Fight

As we were unable to get the rights to film his final fight due to copyright restrictions, to get around this I would have taken one of the edirols to the fight and recorded the sounds, the commentary and the ring announcer. Then we could have added the pictures which were taken by Patrick Bethel over that way the viewer would have still been able to get a detailed description of the highlights of the fight due to the audio. Then  I would have recorded the post match interview/reaction with Liam afterwards.

In my opinion its good that  we were able to film such great guy as and I think it was good to make these mistakes erlier on in that way we (Simon and I) know wot to avoid doing and what to improve for future refrences.

Below is our finished production


Liam Richards - The Making Of A Fighter from Simon Partington on Vimeo.

Christian Union Documentary

My idea for my own personal project is to make a documentary/promotional video about the Bath Spa University Christian Union.

The city of Bath has a growing community of Christains.
The Christian union in Bath Spa University has been running for five years and has a very big influence on the students in the university.

I propose to make a five to eight minute video which will explore and promote the Christian union in Bath Spa. I will interview some of the members and speak to the presidents of the CU as well as filming one of their sessions. my aim is to educate students in the university about the Christian religion as well as the the aims and goals that the christian union in the university has set out to achive.

As I am a member of the Christian union and being a member has inspired me to make this video
I will use music that I have composed myself.

By the end of the video I hope it will interest people and I hope people will be inspired to come along to one of the sessions I would also like to post the video up onto the Bath Spa Su website if it is done to professional standards.

City Of God Remake

 

Recently in class we were given an exercsise by our tutor Mike. We were given a thirty second clip from the film the City Of God to Edit.

 

• What the film looked like

 

The clip, which had been muted, was a sequence which was lasted for thirty seconds. It started off with a young boy being chased by a mob and police officers, midway through the clip the scene transformed into the same boy a few years younger playing football in a park with some other children

 

• What I attempted to create

Using the Soundtrack Pro software I attempted to create a realistic soundscape for the scene using the most natural and artistic sounds although I sought advice from Phil one of the lectures in the university who lectures creative media and he liked my idea but thought i should go for the simple option instead of complicating my video by saturating it with a lot of sounds.

 

• How I found using the Soundtrack  Pro software

I found the Soundtrack Pro software very easy to use when adding the sounds to a particular motion displayed on the clip. I enjoyed being creative with the software especially when using the multilayering and keyframing format as the software was very easy to adapt to.

• What would I change if I were to do it again?

If i were to repeat the exercise, I  would add more of an atmosphere during the crowd scenes as I don't think the crowd noise I added to that particular sequence was strong enough to merit the actual picture in that present time but more or less I am happy with my finished edit.

Treatment for fightback

This is the treatment for Simon and I's short production. I have segregated the treatment into specific parts Beginning Middle and End

• The Opening Scene

The opening scene of our production will be set in Apollos office. Both characters will be listening to the radio broadcast of the fight, the camera will then zoom out to reveal Stocky and Apollo. After a short conversation about the fight  Apollo will agree to train Stocky. After Apollo phones Stocky excited about a DVD he has found the next scene will see the two main characters watching the actual rocky training sequence on television this is symbolic as at this moment both characters will nod their heads and agree to try and emulate the famous montage.

• The Middle

The middle of the storyline is where the bulk of the story takes place. There will be a first training montage where Stocky the main character will attempt every method of training woefully including a sparring session against one of Apollo's up and coming fighters BORIS. After a few negative incidents which will range from derogatory things being said about Stocky and Apollo from his worst enemy the intimidator, to people laughing at him on the street and at a press conference outside Stocky's house. He will begin training with more determination and it will be successful, if there is time Apollo will deliver a motivational speech before the big fight

• End

The Big fight scene Stocky is victorious. He knocks out Intimadator in the 4th round. The scenes will be sped up to 4 seconds a round lasting a total of 12 seconds.

Final scene Stocky and Apollo relaxing performing the Catta lakeside. Using dissolves as cuts.

Character Personalities & Traits

In this post I will be exploring the traits of our lead characters Stocky and Apollo. It is important to establish personalities of characters before we start filming as the relationship between the 2 is essential to the story and the humour of the film.


Character Profile - Apollo Miyagi
 
Intresting facts about Apollo Include


Apollo Miyagi is a former boxer, supposed actor and is now a trainer. He owns his own boxing gym and has trained many professional and amateur boxers. He is very experienced in the field of boxing and has competed in many tournaments. He is of Ghanaian Descent and is always seen to be wearing a cap or some sort of headgear. He is very defensive when his methods are questioned and believes that his tactics are the best way. He often lies about his past experiences to impress those who are around him. he is seen to be a womaniser. He was previously in the army and once fought the ledgendary Mike Johnston (Stocky's former trainer)  to a no contest verdict (something he is very proud of). He is much older than Stocky. Aplollo agrees to train Stocky after his disappoinitng loss to the intimidator

One Shot Film

Recently in class we have been studying the art of making a film in one take with no editing.

In our session on friday we watched three films which have employed these techniques in their productions 

The films were called....

• Timecode

• Russian Ark

• Surprise.

One director whose work we looked at in particular  was the work of Michael Figgis (who directed the film Timecode). He designed a device called a figrig the figrig is very useful because it helps the person handling the camera to get a steady shot when filming.


We were then set a minature task by our tutor Mike for the following week. The task was to to create our own one take films for the following week, we used a Panasonic Camcorder and a Figrig to hwlp us film our short film.

In a group of Five Mandy, Simon, Ross  and Rob went to th lake on wednesday afternoon and filmed our one take film.

• The Storyline 

The film was directed by Mandy. the storyline was basically a transaction which had been unsuccessfull
After completing the film heres my reflection on how the filming went on that day and what I have learned

• My reflection

I felt that it was a good exersize as the five of us worked well together in a team. I also had an insight into the amount of work timing effort and precision it takes to make a one shot film, for instance if there were any mistakes we had to start the whole scene again as we could'nt edit out any useless peices of footage or intercut scenes. Another reason why there were numerous retakes was because people from the university would walk along the set when we were filming. Due to the whether conditions sometimes there was too much  light exposure on the camera lens.



scene 1 from mandybriggs on Vimeo.

10 Minute Film School/Bedhead

 

 

Today in class we were shown two very interesting videos by the critically acclaimed director Robert Rodriguez .

 

Here are some of the films which he has directed

 

• Spy Kids 3D
• Desperado
• Sin City
• The Faculty 

The First film we watched was called Bedhead and it was one of his earliest pieces of work and it was made whilst he was a student at university. For the film itself Rodriguez cast his younger brother and sister for the roles of the main characters and used his family and friends were part of the film crew.

 

The plot was centred around a young girl who seeks revenge on her older brother, after he defaces one of her dolls.

 

The film itself won many awards for its clever and artistic editorial techniques and depictions of moving image on camera

 

 

The reason why we watched this was to give us an insight into how short films were made, it also gave me a chance to analyze the style of filming.

From watching the film I noticed that it used.

 

 

• Zooming shots to emphasize a particular emotion of a character

 

• Montage Editing techniques similar to those of Lev Kuleshov

 

• Panning Shots to signal when tension was building up between the two characters

 

• A Voiceover to tell the story rather than having spoken dialouge between the characters

• Stop Motion When aggression was being displayed in some of the scenes

10 Minute Film School

After Watching Bedhead we watched an instructional video which was made by Robert Rodriguez called the 10 Minute Film School. The video was made by Rodriguez to show all the budding film makers out there how to make a film without spending too much of a big budget, Rodriguez himself stated anyone can learn everything you needed to know about the fundamental basics of making a film in 10 minutes.

Here are some of the things he talks about in his video

• Intercutting sequences with motion

• Using Props

• Using actors as part of the film crew

• The use of zooming when appropriate

• How to make editorial decisions when filming

• How to get five shots in one take

• he use of syncing dialogue to the film separately

I found the film itself really helpfull. Especially since we are going to be filming our own short peices of films soon and by watching this I learned a few filming techniques that will help me in the future.


To view part one of the 10 minute film school click here
To view part two click here


After doing some research, I found that another instructional video was made by Rodriguez called the 10 minute flick school. The video talks about how to make special effects when filming with a low budget. here is the video.



  

Compression

Today in Sound and Vision we learned about compression and its advantages/disadvantages.



We learned here are some of the things which were covered in the lesson .

• Gamma Settings (which are colour settings) Computers use 2.0 and Macs use 1.8 (Although these setteings can be adjusted to whichever maching your working on) .

• The uses of field stripping

• European Televisions operate in DV PAL which is 25 FPS 

• US Televisions operate in NTSC which is 29FPS

• Television Footage needs to be Interlaced 

• VDU Footage needs to be Deinterlaced  

• When working with DVDs there are regions Europe uses Region 2 and US uses Region 1

• The most compatible blank discs are DVD-R format discs 

Interlation is vital if your viewing a VDU with interlaced footage then you will not get the best quality picture if dinterlaced footage is being played on a Television the same will apply. The picture quality will appear jumpy during scenes with motion.

The picture below shows two images from a television. One has been deinterlaced and one has not notice that one image is more visible and one image is slightly blured.

Celtex 2.7 Excersize

In Class today we took part in a pre-productive excersise, using the new Celtex 2.7 software. We downloaded a shotlist from Minerva for a small film titled "Wrong Day". We were asked to create a storyboard using the software.


The new version of celtex has a feature, which allows you to sketch your scenes, when using the storyboarding feature, which wasn't included in the original version of the software. Below is my sketch of the opening scene using the brand new sketch feature in the program




The new feature also allows you to add images to the storyboard feature. Below is one of the images that I have added to my storyboard.






After my storyboard was completed. I used the play option to my play my whole sequence back with my uploaded photos.