(MP3002) Individual Project Log

I final have a rough cut of my film. It has evolved again to be the story of Brian and Nick, the druid and the witch. I'm happy with the shape and direction the film has taken.

(MP3002) Individual Project Log

I'm in London to work on my documentary, According to Brian and it's day two of what I have decided to name the edit-a-thon! We spend all day sunday watching the assembly and discussing themes and where they fit. I want to keep this film simple. A portrait of Brian's life and some of the people in it. There will be themes woven into the film like spirituality, death, nature, relationships and Ghosts. Having done that we began to trim the assembly into a rough cut. The film now seems to almost be at the point of editing itself. Lines of dialogue suggesting cuts and scenes ordering themselves! Even though things are going really well I don't think the film will be of a festival standard by hand in day but at least i'll have a rough cut to submit and something to send the organizers of Sheffest. Hopefully the film will be complete by november, which is when the festival takes place.

(MP3001) Group Project - Meeting minutes

Production Meeting on 6th May 2009 Artswork Media -

Present - Kat, Adam, Freddie,Mike, Kirsty, Nic, Dani

Minutes - Dani - let me know if you need anything changed.

Nic - We are meeting to discuss event to showcase peoples work.
Freddie - the - best locations seems to be the Chapel venue - near the Lamb and Lion. - www.chapelarts.org - Audience would be invited group of people to view display of the works
Nic - Would people like to have a screening or spaces with films to watch in different spaces? I can have a conversation with you each introducing the films.
Kat - Some of the films are boring because the are commissioned works for specific purposes
Kirsty - we could have them in the background and have name badges
Dani - maybe the context form the conversations will help to reflect the diversity of work being made at AWM/
Freddie - the talking will break it up.
Mike - We could start the presentation with a promotional trailer
Kat - shots of the space working people intercut with showreel items.
Nic - You are all busy
Kat When will it be?
Freddie - Early June
Nic - There is a mini festival at the Chapel. A variety of events in one space - 16 May - mini festival - bands, multimedia, samba, new audio, manga factory, a greaty big melting put of funky jazz.
Nic - Does the venue have projection facilities?
Nic - What would be the value of doing something like this?
Mike - I would like industry professionals to see my work
Nic - target creative bath list and sws list as people in the area
Freddie - will ask contacts, should get exposure though uni.
Nic - Can we use goldbrick house? - Bath vs Bristol - we are bath based, but media professionals are mainly in Bristol
Nic - Watershed
Kirsty - Cube cinema 150 - 1000 pounds
Freddie - Is everyone leaning more to wards using a cinema.
Dani - what about a Bathspa band
Kat - Band from Bathspa - Kill it Kid, Boycon
Nic - I am not happy with the way the films are being screening
Mike - Explains the NFTS screening with program time table, and gave out diplomas. People came on stage.
Freddie - As long as it sticks with timetable
Mike - Food, then Screenings, then band then music
Nic - there is another way of doing this - We could screening things at AWM.We could use a second space next door, do BBQ outside on the decking. Can do music in space next door.
Mike who is cooking?
Nic the space next door is empty
Kat - two floor spaces open
Nic - How about three screenings during day and and evening in AWM?
Space opposite AWM too small.
Mike - What films do we have to show?

List of works to show -

Elana - 3 x 1.5 minutes
Ariel two shorts
Jona - ???
Kat 5 Mini micro bio shorts - 10m min
Noise - 10 minutes in all
Lloyd - minutes
Mike - 25 minutes
Fiends - 10 minutes
Kirsty 2 minute trailer for 'Squatters'
10 minutes event talk.


Freddie bottom line is a chance to showcase the work
Nic Chappel designed for bands. I am interested in it a s a marketing.
Freddie - can we show other work .
Kat I think its us
Freddie - why are we unique.
Nic People making a commitment to come and see us.
Fred 50 percent faculty.
Nic -there is no point of the doing it at 11am at the watershed.
Dani - how about tagging it on to the side of cinemfomation
Mike Media Tuesdays
Dani - thats a social event
Nic - spaces to see different things. Get baffles between eahc display.
Kat it would give it a more relaxed thing. Less scary.
Freddie - People can come and go at different times
The draw back would be people would not see your film
Nic - we would have a brosure, program, with the students in and info about the film.
There are people here who can come and see stuff
Freddie - we would have
Dani we would need headphones, where are there any.
Mike - at western - we had a station for each person, prizes and buffet.
Freddie -This site is a bit out the way.
Kat- think people would come,
Nic - my anxiety about the cube is that it says something different than some of our material. A bit of a gear change.
Essentially a lot of what you are doing is corporate work, where would I want to show my stuff, would I want to go to the cube. I would do it at the watershed rather the cube.
Freddie - of the Nokia stuff the attitude is that it is a party, but you have the opportunity to see thing while you are there.
Kirsty - the Boca bar event space - they would make money on the bar.
Freddie - the design of the boca bar.
Nic - we going for the event is the thin
Freddie we would like around 100 people , but our space will only hold around 50 people
Are people liking the 'art gallery' style event?
Nic - What are the dates for the event?
Dani - The UWE similar events last year where around June 10. Are you people going to have the time to do this after 27th May?
Freddie -we need to do this after we have had time to relax
Dani Putting on the event will not be relaxing, it will mean putting on the time
Mike - I can only put in 1 evening only.
Nic - this is not the right time to discuss this.
Nic - Freddie - you need to share this with other people. Can we do another Wednesday meeting.?
Kirsty - we have a deadline next weds. - fiction script writing.
Nic Freddie your obligation is to make sure everyone voices an opinion.

ACTIONS -

Freddie to write up options
Meeting 11am on 13th May
Decide on which space - Bocabar, AWM, Watershed, Cube, Chapel
Make Program
Material for display at event

Other business -

8th May - Student televisions Workshops at Barbican.
5 and 6 January Script factory Event.

(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.

(MP3003) Film Festival

From conception it has always been my intention to submit my documentary in the film festival circuit. Today I began researching which Documentary Film Festivals would be appropriate for submission of my film. There were many suitable festivals all over the world from the sun-dance documentary festival in california to festivals in our very own Bristol. The majority of festival submission dates had closed for this season leaving me no choice but to apply to those next year, although I have found two festivals that I'm going to submit to. Amsterdam International and Sheffest. Sheffest documentary festival is perhaps the biggest and best in the UK. I have registered as an applicant with them on their website. Submission closes on June 14th, which gives me plenty of time to get the film ready. My ultimate aim would be to sell the film to a film company or television channel but I also hope this film will raise my profile within the media industry - and - a win would look pretty good on my C.V!