Dub Pistols

After recently filming some live music events such as Cafe live and Aberfest. I was excited to hear we were covering the Dub pistols performing at the princess pavilions. Tonight has been an amazing experience, the last couple of music gigs we had to film at the side so the shots were quite static, with the exception of pans to make it more interesting as filming music has more freedom with the shots you can film.

We were allowed full access to the stage, and the bands singer Barry wanted us to interact with the band and put cameras in their faces. We experienced what it's like to film for a client as well as improvising in a situation and acting professionally. I even got dragged in the middle of the stage of the band, which was definitely a first for me.

This is some stills from the footage I had shot.

Rob skype

This doc has been quite hard to work on, mainly with the crew not knowing what role they were going to do, the camera man was going to maybe direct which shifted everyone's roles. This put me a little bit uneasy, because I couldn't see a role for me in this crew and have now started to re think what I'm working on and have started to look for ideas for my second role, rather than just doing a camera skills portfolio because I feel I have more to offer.

After the crewing going back to the original team, we had our first Skype call with Rob. This call went well with lots of contacts given to us. My main concern is that they don't really link to the story we are going for, we have a lot of contacts for cycling which is great but not helpful when we want to concentrate on BMXing. He is our way in, which seems he has some contacts but not as strong as I had previously expected after him having calls with the director. I thought we had links to the GB team which doesn't seem to be the case now after the call, Rob is a fanatic about cycling and BMXing but I'm worried he's concentrating too much on nice visuals and not what's television but we shall see what happens.

Ideas are coming

Ideas are starting to flow, already crewed up on one. People are very quick to crew and have back up plans because we are all feeling a bit in the dark. Probably how people feel in the industry when they first pitch an idea, not knowing if it will get commissioned or not.

The camera man on the project I'm working on knows a guy called Rob who competes in BMX races and has links in. I'm producing on this one, in the same crew as the strip doc. I joined this group because the team was so strong last time and I like the idea. The director is starting to develop the idea looking at the story of Shanaze Reade, who was topped to win the BMX Olympics last time but crashed right near the end. Contrasting her story with young up and coming riders showing how this sport has grown from a back yard hobbie to a Olympic sport. Second time in the Olympics we want to tie these stories in with the Olympics being held in London this year. However, whether we can get an Olympic athlete may not be so easy..we got into a strip club so let's see.

Here's Shanaze's story:-
http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/cycling/17527040

Learning from past problems, picking who to work with is important to me. As having a dedicated team is a must. It's our final projects and comparing how far I've come along from the footage I filmed in the beginning to know what I shoot. I want to show something I'm proud of.

Final time round

Our last two modules have now approached and the time again to develop ideas has come. This time round we have 5 weeks to develop our ideas, which sounds like a long time but speaking from what happened last time we were researching most of our production time. The hardest thing this time round is that no one knows what will get green lit until the final pitch, so ideas need to be stronger and the contributors need to be televisual and the best that we can find with all our experience from this course.

I want to develop a documentary idea so our briefs are:-

• Ch 4 First cut- Documentary strand featuring bold and provocative work by up and coming directors
• BBC3 Extraordinary Me- extraordinary young people with extraordinary stories

Both of these briefs will want extraordinary stories, and requires my creative thinking cap on, here are some links to the briefs:-

http://www.channel4.com/programmes/themes/first-cut-all

http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcthree/pages/extraordinaryme