(MP3003) Professional Practice - Don't Blink

"Don't Blink" is a seminar on the creative industry put together by Jake Shaw, CEO of Fire Factory one of the UK's leading production companies. Jakes no nonsense, hard hitting approach has been a hit all around the world and now it was our turn! The workshop was quick paced and I had to concentrate to keep up. Jake's belief is this, all our ideas are valid, but we must believe in our own worth! We must seize each opportunity that comes our way. "Don't Blink" says Jake or we'll miss an opportunity! The thing is though, everyone has to blink sometimes don't they? otherwise our eyes would dry up! But seriously though he does have a point as freelancers or even professionals looking for long term employment we need to focus our energy on our strengths an target specific employers. We need to know what we want and where we're going. There are many people in the media industry that will work for little or no money and if we don't want to be one of them we need to sell ourselves and our skills properly. The lecture was food for thought and got me thinking about my C.V and show reel. are they really good enough to help me get noticed. I'm not sure, maybe it's time I updated them both after all they are often the first thing a respective employer will request in any industry. If someone else's C.V impresses more than mine and I blink, I may miss an opportunity. Check out Jakes website here

(MP3003) Professional Practice - Commercial Radio

I worked in the commercial radio industry for almost five years. I began as many people do, at the bottom. I gained work experience at Star radio, photocopying documents and making tea. What I longed to do was production work and Del who presented the breakfast show was also production manager. Any production job to large for him was farmed out to group production in Bristol. I convinced Del to let me produce the breakfast promos so he could concentrate on other things. I became very skilled at using Cool edit, which was the software the station favoured for production. I was also send out to collect Vox pops for the news desk. At first I hated that job but I discovered I was a natural with the public. This is when I discovered my voice. As my confidence grew so too did my aspirations. I decided I wanted to try presenting and my first assignment was to do a movie segment on breakfast. This was great fun and I enjoyed the interaction between the two presenters, Gazza and Del and myself. I began doing overnight shifts, which is a rite of passage for most presenters. It was tiring but great fun. I would go on air at 2 am and finish at four. A lot of people say they got into radio by accident and this was certainly true for me. I’d been on nightshifts for a few months when I received a call from the station manager, one of the presenters had been in an accident and they needed cover. This was my big chance. Up until now I hadn’t been paid for my work. This was my first paying gig. I did well and started to cover more and more shifts until I was offered my own show on weekend breakfast. During this time I saw many staff come and go from the station. Star radio is considered something of a stepping-stone or launch pad to bigger and better things. That coupled with the low salaries meant that staff loyalty was non-existent. The sales department in particular seemed to suffer from this and despite managements best efforts they were unable to retain staff so although the on air team was strong the sales team was not. All this was at a time when commercial radio’s reach was falling, less and less people were tuning in and less people felt that radio was a viable medium for advertisement. The station made cut backs, staff were made redundant, asked to take pay cuts and people took on more than one role to make their positions within the company tenable. I didn’t escape this and found working at the station more and more stressful. I wasn’t enjoying presenting and hadn’t done any production for years and that was my first love. I weighed up all my options. My belief is that commercial radio is a dying medium. The internet will eventually take over from it completely and although I’m very grateful to Star radio for all the opportunities I’ve been given after a lot of soul searching I decided that it was time for me to leave the station and concentrate on my degree. I hope to marry up my skills as a project worker with my media skills and get into community based media projects with an emphasis on sound recording.

(MP3003) Professional Practice - Business Meeting

Business meeting at Artswork Media on monday 24th April 2009

Present
Nick Jeane, Lloyd Dunsieth, Adam Boyce, Elana Rose, Dan Hooper, Jona, Kat Davis, Ollie Kensington, Daniel Ashton, Mike Huck.
Minutes
Daniel Ashton is a senior lecturer in media journalism. He’s hoping to find out about the work we do here both in groups and one to one basis.
Liquid soap launch on Wednesday. There will be a live feed covering the event which can be accessed via the Artswork website.
Nick discussed the subject of film festivals in particular Sheffest.com, encounters and 4talent.
Steve May reminded us about the deadline for submissions, which is may 27th.
Jeremy Humphries will be holding a Master class on camera work on June 16th. His website is jeremyhumphries.com
Discussed schedule and format for a screening of our work. I suggested a program of events, which we could achieve by liaising with publishing at bath spa.
We will meet next wednesday at 11.30 am.

(MP3002) individual project

Today I met with my brother to discuss the film. We have decided on a title "the Glastonbury knome". I watched to film, which is now down to one and a half hours. I felt upon reflection that my idea to tell the story of the relationship between the two men, brian and nick isn't going to work well as I don't have enough footage of the two together. I have decided instead to make this film the story of brian and his eccentricities. Hence the title the Glastonbury knome. Our aim is to have the rough cut ready in 3 weeks time!

(MP3001) Group Project - Science Lab

Up and out of the house by 7.45 am I arrived at Bath Spa for 9 am. I was part of the Kat's film crew for the group project that she was leading on. We met outside newton and collected the kit from Ashton.


This was a 3 camera shoot. We had 3 Z1's and as there would be a v.o we decided after some discussion to use a boom mic and the onboard camera's.

The science lab was a fairly difficult location to film in. The natural light caused lens glare and when we lowered the blind's we had to make adjustments to the camera settings, the f-stop and white balance.




I filmed close ups on camera 3, with Kat on camera 2 and mike on the first camera. Once we had set up things moved fairly quickly after which, i shot some B-roll for cut-aways.

(MP3003) Professional Practice - interview

Here is the transcript from my interview with retired BBC Sound Man, Steve Taylor:

I got into sound recording through the NFTS although I must admit I had done years of sound in theatre and music before that, so file and TV was the only kind of sound work I hadn't done by then and it was really a matter of filling in the gaps.
What surprised me when I got into film school and the actual job is how simple the gear is, although it's not cheap, as it has to work perfectly all the time in all sorts of tricky situations. The format that's recorded on to has changed since I was doing it (we'd shoot either on timecoded DAT for film or into a Beta SP camera for TV), but the gear you use before you plug into that is basically the same- most sound recordists have one boom mic, two radio mics and a mixer. The boom mic is still as far as I know a Sennheiser MKH416, although there are others available; then you need a windshield for it (probably made by Rycote but Sennheiser make them too) and a boom (but if you're shooting drama you may need two for those wide shots you can't cover with a short boom). The radio mics in my day tended to be Microns or Audios, but since then I've discovered Sennheiser radios which are much better (in my opinion). The portable mixer still seems to be an SQN, made in the Isle of Man. SQNs are brilliant- they do exactly what you need, don't go wrong, don\t waste battery power, and have the most useful compressor (at least for TV recording) I have ever heard on anything. Even the VU meters seem to be more useful than they usually are on mixers. They cost about three grand or something which seems ridiculous for a four channel mixer but it's worth it when you're standing on a freezing beach doing an interview and not having to worry about the gear.
Since I haven't done this for years I don't know what the gear really costs these days but it's not hard to find out on the net, and bear in mind that I never actually owned all this kit myself- I usually hired it or worked for people who already had it. I bought myself a portable DAT machine and a mic or two for shooting pickups and stuff. Often on a documentary you'll end up with the cameraman off shooting mute GVs (general views) and cutaways (those close-ups of stuff you've already seen in the main footage) so then I'd be wandering around recording the sound of stuff we didn't get particularly clean the first time (background sounds, relevant things like church bells or machinery- editors like that kind of thing to play with) If I'd carried on any longer I would have bought all the proper kit but at the time it wasn't necessary. If you do own you own kit, you add a hire price for hiring it to the production as well as yourself- I've no idea what the going rate is these days.