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

Reflecting on the final outcome

After two days in the edit, one of those days I edited the start of the interviews as they needed to be synced  before I could cut them. The next day the sound man edited the rest of the interviews and started to build a basic structure, the editor had a basic cut but needed to add  the rest of the cutaways and the final tweaks. We helped out as she was busy with other projects.

I must admit, it was not how I expected. It seemed that the storyline still wasn't there which is very disappointing as the script is only just in the 3rd draft, and whilst editing we still needed to ask how this documentary was going to end and what he wanted from each contributor as is didn't seem set.

I noticed how the lack of the script made it very hard to find cutaways, yes we got lots of them but not the right ones that related to the story. I felt like I needed to have known clearly on each shoot what cutaways were needed rather than shoot cutaways because we think we may need them. I used the Canon 1d to make it look nice visually but due to struggling with knowing what to film, it reflected in my work and I needed to know what to shoot as the shots didn't always match up. To get the best out of your crew you need someone who knows exactly what they want and I feel that more thought needed to have gone into the story, which is a shame.

After seeing the final documentary, I was surprised to see some night shots that were filmed by the director whilst we were filming the police in the final edit. These shots weren't framed correctly as horizons weren't straight, were under exposed and were very shaky. I shot for 50 minutes on a tripod so thought that there were better shots that could have been used.

I am extremely impressed by the outcome of the strip doc. I have been working along side the director and together have produced something I would class as not being a typical "student film", therefore no use of local locations or filming around the university. It has pushed me and I know with a strong crew you can get the best out of everyone.

I think this has given me practice for the industry and it is definitely important to make sure you have a strong director to get the story needed and with this it helps out the crew.

Crit time, once again.

Again, crit screening approaches and time to hear feedback on the two projects I've been part of.

Firstly, Stripping for a living looked good on the big screen and it was nice to see it on a screen which isn't in a tiny edit room. Waiting for feedback was tense because of the huge effort the group has put in as a whole. Feedback felt more personal as we had so many let downs when making this documentary and seeing it into an edit felt like an amazing payoff. The feedback from the crit included positive comments about the shots used and general good consensus of it being a strong piece. The downfalls were about the contributors stories. I must admit I felt I needed to defend this as gaining access into a club to film is hard. Twofour did this over months with lawyers and for me and the director to gain access in 3 weeks and being students was a massive achievement. When we heard that home life would have made it better, I agree it would have made it more into a documentary as it is something that would probably be a taster tape in the industry but due to time constraints and lack of trust we made the best use of our time.

Finally, Young and Pissed didn't give the audience enough to make full comments as we only had the opening  sequence. The feedback was again positive and constructive, it said it looked promising which is good because I have wondered what the outcome would be like due to time. However, some comments and questions threw the director as the storyline still doesn't seem set. Working on the edit with the team after the crit finally started to see something come together, we had to be more decisive as we are still way behind of schedule. Hopefully, tomorrow will bring something stronger to the table.

Drunkern monkeys and police camera action!

Last night was lets say interesting...

It started off very quiet as 9:30pm isn't really the time to see a lot of drunk people but gave us time to set up and have a nosey around..oh and also get threatened by a drunk middle aged woman. I felt frightened and did not really expect that reaction when filming last night on the streets.

After 50 minutes of filming, which I didn't understand why we filmed that much but I recorded as the Director needed to capture the night progress to actually becoming quite lively. We got a typical drunk dressed up as a monkey, a couple of waves and the typical guys running at camera.

A bonus was getting to film in the policemans car whilst interviewing him, this was hard because the first two times he got called to split up fights. We wanted the Director to ask the questions to the policeman so his eyeline was at him, but he had confidence in us. It made it harder as the soundman was in the back which meant he didn't know quite where to look and we had so limited time it would have been good with the extra pair of hands. Still glad shooting is over and definitely never expected to be threatened by a middle aged woman I must admit.