Raggs: April 2012

Thursday, 26 April 2012

Reading Material

Some of the reading material I am going through to help me with my work on this project and get inspirations from...

David Bordwell/ Kristin Thomspon (2010). Film Art, An Introduction. New York: McGraw Hill. 193-213.

Bernard Clark (2002). Reality TV: How Real is Real. The Box of Tricks. Abingdon: Hodder & Stoughton.

Editing Suite: Day 1.

Today, we have started on our editing. We managed to meet and talk about ideas after watching all the footage again. In today's session, we managed to log and capture all the footage ready for edits but also get the introduction for the show ready.
We experienced some problems with the news/ traffic section; there were some clips we had to cut in between therefore the rough cut so far of this section is a little edgy. We agreed to leave it alone for now and think about ideas on how to approach it to smooth out the jump cuts. Shannen suggested dissolves and fade ins/outs as a way out, or perhaps a move of the section to another part of the show, this would mean going against our show structure but would allow us to get the problem solved. The next step is to get a first cut of the whole show with correct takes and put them in order we think will be best but also, begin on adding the virtual studios and Google images as our backgrounds.
We are using Final Cut Pro Studio 7 software to edit our project on.

Ideas for 'Mr. Fit, Summer Shape Up'

The idea for 'Mr. Fit, Summer Shape Up' is a short 2 minute clip with a fitness instructor giving tips on how to get fit and healthy for the summer season.

Due to a last minute cancel from one of our actors, we have managed to find a personal fitness trainer who does it professionally. We have arranged to film this section on Saturday morning with a new face added to the show. Because Carys will not be able to do this presenting as it isn't local, we managed to find substitute presenter for this section only. It doesn't necessarily have to a problem, as it will give the show more a variety, enable us to work with different personalities and try to add something new as well.

This is an idea suggesting the route we want to take with this.

Re - shoots

Whilst reviewing all the footage we have managed to gather up over the last couple of weeks, we have decided on few re -shoots. Looking over some clips, I thought, in comparison to the rest of the footage, certain parts were poor quality, with sound level problems.

To tackle this problem, we have managed to gather up our actors again and set up for a re-shoot.

The interview between a journalist and a student with an opinion on the student fees going up starting September 2012. I am glad we have managed to recognise the problem and see through it to improve the quality of our work but also be able to use our skills we have gained over this module to put into work again and do a better job.

During the shoots, I am going to run through the script a couple more times with the models than previously, we're going to take 'practice takes' following with a couple final takes for us to decide as a group on the best one.

I believe it will also show a variety in our filming, this time I will step in behind the camera and play the role of director/ producer for a change. During previous takes, I did the interviewing, therefore this will also allow me to gather up skills on how to use the camera but also communicate with the actors and try and give them an idea of the vision I have personally for this particular section of the show.

Friday, 6 April 2012

Filming Details

I thought I would write about the filming process in some more in greater detail.

Whilst filming in the green screen and due to the fact that we had one camera, in a way our shots were limited however because we are working on a morning TV programme, a master shot of one position made sense.

We had used one camera and with that we focused on getting takes with close -ups, medium and group shots mainly. Those shots were the ones we had managed to recognise during our research time when looking at other programmes already made.

The composition of the shots were the actors and the models were to be centre focus of the camera when walking towards. This was to fulfil the aim of 'live television' where our presenters would be talking to the audience through the camera, therefore a metaphorical 'eye contact' through the lens.

Virtual Studio Ideas

Here are some ideas for our virtual studio background. There are different colours and layouts. Originally we would like to have a few standing backgrounds, a sitting one for the news section and perhaps a talk show.

There is one fashion runway, which we'd like to use. The colours agree with our theme and the target audience we are aiming our final product at.

(fashion show runway)

References:

http://www.cg4tv.com/news-virtual-studio-set-for-two-anchors.html (accessed: 06/04/2012)
http://www.anachronistic.co.uk/tip-details/23-free_virtual_studio.htm (accessed: 06/04/2012)
http://hollywoodcenterstudios.blogspot.co.uk/2009/06/create-network-quality-programming-with.html (accessed: 06/04/2012)
http://www.bristolfilmstudios.com/virtual.html (fashion) (accessed: 06/04/2012)
http://www.virtualset.com/platforms/Globecaster/Products/AnimSet-Studio80-C.htm (accessed: 06/04/2012)
http://vtknowledge.com/ (accessed: 06/04/2012)
http://www.google.co.uk/imgres? (accessed: 06/04/2012)
http://www.cg4tv.com/ (accessed: 06/04/2012)

Wednesday, 4 April 2012

Introduction Script

This is the introduction script, Sophie and Shannen have worked on it to make it short and to the point. It has been re-read and edited, this is the final draft we have used whilst filming.

Music Soundtrack/ Background

Sophie, our sound supervisor has managed to find some music clips for the show. She has so far found the background music for the fashion show as well as the News Headlines intro.
The music for the fashion show is, Lady Gaga - Beautiful, Dirty Rich and the news headlines music intro is Kraftwerk - Dentaku (The Mix)

Cooking Tips Suggestions

Our director Shannen, has managed to find some short clips of Gordon Ramsey with cooking tips, we had all gathered to watch these and came to a conclusion that we could edit and cut them so they're roughly around a minute long and include them in our show. This could be our 'celebrity guest' suggesting easy and quick ways to make student meals.

First Day of Filming Part II

For the second part of filming on the day, we focused on the News Headlines. We had to make some small changes in the green room; setting up a table and chair covered in green cloth so it'd work in the post production process. With our technician's help, we adjusted the lights so they were centre focus of Carys presenting.
The filming went very well and no troubles at all, we followed through with our pattern of taking a few takes for this part as we did with all the previous sections. Whilst reading the traffic section of the news, Carys improvised and cut some bits out, to keep it short yet to the point, we found this worked better than the original script and kept the take.
This was the first time Carys did the presenting without our other presenter Bradley, therefore the pressure was on her, however she managed to do it perfectly, at the end of it all we were very happy with the takes we had taken, we all watched the clips back and agreed on the best ones.

We have yet to film a couple more sections 'Mr Fit' being one of them, however this can be done easily as we want to change it a little bit and have this section filmed outside.

For the cooking tips and weather we are going to rip these clips off YouTube, to show variety with the final product. We have found a few good choices and agreed to narrow them down and pick the best in the post production process.

First Day of Filming Part I

On Friday the 30th March was our first official day of filming. We started at 9 am and worked in the green screen throughout the morning until the afternoon.
We had planned a structure of filming prior to the day therefore everything went according to plan, our models turned up which meant we started no problem.

The night before shooting, our male model pulled out of the project stating he wasn't comfortable doing it. This left us at a short notice to find someone else, however i managed to find Dominic Bird to model for us without hesitation.
On the morning of filming, we had him model two outfits for us, one day and one night outfit. This went smoothly without any mis-haps. We did four takes of Dominic walking down to ensure we had a choice when it came to post production.
We had a few problems with the green screen itself as we had to create a green floor for models/ presenters to stand on because as a group we had decided to use virtual studios and google images for the editing process to use as our studios.

Once we had the male model filming done, we moved onto the female model. Due to problems with finding a willing female to model for us, I stepped in a modelled two outfits as well, one for the day and a night outfit.

A couple of days before filming, we had decided to add another presenter, Bradley. We thought it would be interesting to have a male presenter as well as a female one. Carys managed to find a volunteer who was willing to help us out with the introduction, entertainment section and the fashion show.
Due to the last minute changes, on the day before we began filming, I tweaked the script a little and divided the script so Bradley would present the male clothes and Carys would present the female outfits. It looked great when we watched it back afterwards, we took a couple of takes for us to then be able to decide on the best one with editing. The technician which was helping us out with the equipment in the green screen room suggested that we could cut them out and place them anywhere we wanted them when editing, so their positioning on green screen didn't matter too much.
Another change which we had to be quick to make was the script for the male model clothes, as our model pulled out we weren't able to read the script which read a different outfit to the one our new model was able to provide for us.
Bradley was wonderful and was able to quickly learn the new outfits; we kept the shops and prices the same as we thought it didn't matter too much on the little details on prices.

After we finished filming the fashion show, we quickly moved onto filming the entertainment section, which went really well. The script was again divided into tow between Carys and Bradley.
Carys focused on the film section, introducing the new releases and Bradley presented the festivals and music. Because of time restrictions (1 minute entertainment update) I decided to take out a couple of things from the script in the film part, we avoided the Titanic re-release and the Lucky One with Zac Efron. Everyone in the group agreed that it'd be best to keep it shorter and more to the point. Carys suggested to keep the Beauty and the Beast 3D re-release for a bit of variety in the films presented.

Male Model:

Female Model:

Here are some photographs I took to document the filming progress, Carys and Bradley filming the introduction, the entertainment section and the fashion show.

The entertainment section took the quickest to film out of the three main parts we did. Our presenters split the script between the two. After the first take, they decided to improvise a little to make the show seem more real and relaxed whilst filming. They decided on a friendlier take with the introduction to the show. It looked like they enjoyed it more and it fit with the feel we wanted to achieve. I'm really pleased with how the filming went. As a pair f presenters, they looked as if they had been working on this show for years rather than hours, which worked in our favour. I believe the takes for this part will be the easiest to edit in the post production process.

Entertainment News

This is a script I wrote for the one minute update on entertainment. Due to time restrictions, I decided to focus on upcoming festivals and new releases in the cinemas.
I looked at festivals such as; Creamfields, Reading/Leeds Festival, TomorrowLand.

The films I decided to focus on where the mainly talked about. I thought of talking about films which were under the radar, using film festivals such as Sundance, Tribeca and Toronto by using their websites and looking at their new stuff, however this proved to be a lot more complicated and we thought our target audience wouldn't be able to relate.
As an alternative I used a website called FirstShowing (http://www.firstshowing.net/) to look for well heard of material to use when writing the script.