James Whetherley

The media students at Bath College had the pleasure of being visited by Grammy nominated producer, James Whetherley on Tuesday (24th November). He talked them through the whirlwind of a life and career he’s enjoyed so far. From the day he was born and flunking high school, to his major successes like making music videos for Oasis, Beyonce and Robbie Williams. Even to producing at the Glastonbury festival, a series of Later… with Jools Holland adverts starring Daniel Craig.

He gave the students many pointers from his hands on experience. Such as advice on making music videos, to working with a crew and a tip to always getting jobs: Always be nice to everyone. After his presentation we opened to floor to questions, here are a few excerpts:

Q• What inspired you to get into this industry?
A• That would be my passion for music and for film. And I guess this is how I merge them together. I've always dreamed of being in a band, but I can't sing or play any instruments so that wasn't going to happen!

Q• What piece of work are you most proud of, and why?
A• I am most proud of the series of Later… that I produced. I had a great office to come into every morning and I got to meet incredibly talented artistes from all around the world.

Q• What would be your dream artiste to make a music video for?
A• I think that would be Disclosure. Because they're young, modern and relevant. I think they’re really talented and I can't actually believe how they make such genius music yet they're so young!

Q• What was it like to be nominated for a Grammy?
A• Oh it was one of the proudest moments of my life! I remember it vividly. I was working for a huge architectural firm not too far from here in Bath. At that point I had drifted away from the film and music video industry. But my dad got a letter through the post (my mail still gets delivered to him) which he thought looked important. The letter had ‘Grammy Nominee’ typed onto it. I was so confused and excited all at the same time! Inside it said that I was nominated alongside Madonna for a music video that I had made quite a while back for an alternative country singer in America. Of course Madonna won, but I'm still incredibly proud of what I achieved.

Role Pitching

I will pitch myself by speaking to the class without the use of a powerpoint presentation. It will be very natural, I will only have a few visual aids by means of a slideshow projected behind me.

5 Roles of a Producer

• Organised
• Networking
• Business Minded
• Communication Skills
• Efficient

5 Roles of an Editor

• Long Attention Span
• Focused
• Organised
• Creative
• Motivated/Good at Problem Solving

Skills I already possess that suit this role:

Organised: I demonstrate this skill 24 hours a day, 7 days a week! I’m always organised. I make sure to have everything written down in the cloud, i have a reminder for everything in my life.

Communication Skills: I demonstrate this each day when I pick up my phone to text or call someone. Also when I speak to people throughout the day. I make sure to speak clearly and get what I have to say accurately across to the person.

Efficiency: I demonstrated this when I built a website for a business owner, in 2 days and that website was infinitely better than the first one they had that was made by a professional, which took a year to make and £2,000.


5 Skills I Will Develop Whilst in this Role:

• Better People Skills
• Better Paperwork Skills
• More Networking Contacts
• Better Directorial Skills
• Better Communication Skills

Encounter's Trip

We had the fantastic opportunity to attend the Encounters international film festival in Bristol this year! It was held in the beautiful and iconic Watershed theatres right on the harbour in Bristol City Centre. 

It really was a phenomenal experience. We attend for two days, Thursday and Friday. Those days were filled with thrilling speeches and workshop master classes by leading industry professionals, with vast wealths of knowledge.

But I think my favourite class was called 'Directing Actors'. It was taught by a lady started started off from young as an actress, and then transitioned into directing when she was older. Because of that successful background she was able to give hands on experience on how actors act, what their process and insecurities are, and how to direct them to get the best possible performance out of them. 

I also really enjoyed the short film screenings. I did however notice a trend to show male genitalia in the films. I think this is because 'back in the day' woman's bosoms were shown to give films a shock factor. But no they've become commonplace. So penises are used instead. 

I also got to attend a cinematography master class held by a highly acclaimed cinematographer. Working on films such as World War Z! It last a couple hours and we got to see him expertly light a set for a demonstration all short film. 

Idea Pitch

We were tasked to our short film ideas in front of the class and our tuto, Tom Gray. My film
was to be called 'Minius'.

Minius is a henchman in a human trafficking ring, preying off vulnerable migrants. But his heart grows heavy with the guilt of seeing these migrants being treated poorly. He eventually snaps and kills the head henchman just before he killed a poor migrant woman. This causes the migrants relief, however temporary. But it just adds more guild for Moses. He now has the emotional burden of having blood on his hands. And having to run away for the human trafficking ring leader.

In my short film idea, I take inspiration from the account of Moses killing an Egyptian slave driver to protect an Israelite. I want to focus more on the emotional impact on himself due to his actions. I want it to show how a normal human being would feel after killing someone, because after all Moses was just a human, and felt the same emotions we feel. So the film revolves around the themes of compassion, anger and guilt.

It follows the story of Minius who is a henchman in a human trafficking ring. Their aim has been to fool vulnerable migrants who are in desperate need of a better life into think they’re going to get one with them. When in fact they’re being trafficked as modern day slaves.

Although Minius works for these horrible persons he can’t help but feel guilt when seeing these migrants being treated worse than animals. He eventually snaps and kills the head henchman just before he killed a poor migrant woman.

In the story, this head henchman, who is a really horrible character deserved to die, and everyone knew it. But it is said that no matter how much they deserved to die it still changes you forever, killing someone. And Minius find himself in turmoil over this, having blood on his hands on top of everything else.

His act caused the migrants relief, however brief. But Minius now has to run away to the authorities to get help to uncover the human trafficking scheme before the ring leader finds him. And that’s where I plan on ending it, with him running for his life under heavy gun fire.

Bible Connection
This short film is takes inspiration from the account of Moses killing an Egyptian slave driver to protect an Israelite. He hated to see the Israelites being treated horribly and even though he was raised as an Egyptian he had to take action. The ending focuses on Moses’ guilt of killing the Egyptian slave driver, and then Moses running away for his life.

How It Went
I think the pitch went fairly well. I was able to be myself which I think is important and also incorporated pictures to help the panel visualise the universe my film is set in and it's characters. 

What I Need To Work On

For my future pitches I need to work on being more comfortable on stage. I tend to get very awkward when in front of people and I think that showed, especially in the beginning.

Also I need to work on giving a fluent delivery. As a few times I stumbled over my words, mainly because I was just talking faster than my brain could output words!

Position Pitch

The other day I pitched to my class and tutor for the roles I wanted to pursue for our upcoming IMP, a producer & an editor. I pitched myself by speaking to the class without the use of a powerpoint presentation. I tried to make it very natural, and only had a few visual aids by means of a slideshow projected behind me.

5 key responsibilities of a film producer:

• organised
• networking
• business minded
• communication skills
• efficient

5 key responsibilities of a video editor:

• long attention span

• focused

• organised

• creative

• motivated/good at problem solving

Organised

I demonstrate being organised 24 hours a day, 7 days a week! I’m always organised. I make sure to have everything written down in the cloud, I have a reminder for everything in my life.

Communication Skills

I demonstrate this each day when I pick up my phone to text or call someone. Also when I speak to people throughout the day. I make sure to speak clearly and get what I have to say accurately across to the person. I also take a weekly class in public speaking which trains me in all the skills needed to be confident, fluent, and engaging in front of a crowd. Something in front of thousands!

Efficiency

I demonstrated this when I built a website for a business owner, in 2 days and that website was infinitely better than the first one they had that was made by a professional, which took a year to make and £2,000. I never take the long way to do things. I think it's my impatience that makes me so efficient, as it drives me to very quickly think of an easier, quicker, and more efficient way to do something.

5 skills I want to develop whilst in this role:

• Better people skills

• Better paperwork skills

• more networking contacts

• better directorial skills

• better communication skills

In my pitch I was able to keep calm and collected despite being very nervous inside. I was also able to express my passion for the roles which I think really worked in my favour. Having a good introduction I find really helps with this. If I am able to nail the introduction, once I get that out of the way, I find I'm much more relaxed.

Audio Editorial

In my short film 'Malfeasance' there was quite a bit of audio edits that I had to make. For example in many scenes the weir overpowered the dialog audio. To counteract this I used a nose reducing audio filter on the Weirs audio. I thought long and hard about it but came to the conclusion that the filter actually made the dialog audio worse, making it sound 'tinny' so I decided against it and just turned down the volume. As seen throughout the scenes screenshotted below.

I also played around with the audio effects levels on the different clips to try making the sound even throughout the film. This was because in some scenes depending on where the microphone was, it would picked up different volume levels.

In the final orchestral piece, I chose to sample a piece from a song I fell in love with a while back and had to use in a film (You & Me - The Flume Remix). I also chose to have all diagetic sound fade out to silence when the song starts, isolating just the song, giving it  a more dramatic affect.

I made sure to remove any loud and random disturbances in the audio, like a car honking its horn. I did this by detaching the audio clip, cutting the sound out and then layering a background audio track under it that I recorded on the day.

Malfeasance Reflection

• Was my project successful?

For what it was, yes I think it was successful. I did not set out to create a Hollywood level film, that would be very unrealistic. The perfectionist i me had to convince myself of this over and over again. I didn't try to cram an immense plot in that short time frame, resulting in a complicated and rushed film. So instead I set out to make something three minutes long that used context clues and broken dialog to give the audience a vague idea of a bigger plot, leaving the rest up to imagination. I was proud of what I produced, definitely a far higher standard of production for me. I was able to apply what I learnt about cameras, microphones, script writing, and directing over the last few months all into 'Malfeasance".

• What feedback did you receive from your peers?

What my peer had to say:

"Wow that was so epic, it's a shame about the noise of The Weir but that's just a problem with the location, the rest of it was epic, I loved the use of extreme close ups and the music, also the story was really good!" - Tom Arthur, 19 (YouTube)

• What would you change/do differently?

I would definitely try to improve the audio next time. The weir is far to overpowering most of the film. I thought I had the right microphone set up but maybe Lavalieres would of been a better choice over directional microphones. Or I could of overdubbed all the dialog.

• How will you improve for your next project?

I will use more interesting camera set-ups and movements in my next film. Like crane and tracking shots. Also I will get better audio and costumes.

• What did you enjoy/not enjoy?

What I Enjoyed - Directing, I love directing! Getting to film in such a beautiful location. Also I enjoyed every aspect of editing the film as I find it fun and incredibly relaxing.

What I Didn't Enjoy - My cast letting me down. They all forgot their costumes which I thought, really broke the characters. Jillian is supposed to be a hugely successful and influential politician, but is wearing ripped jeans, and our private detective is wearing a t-shirt under his blazer, instead of a shirt and tie.

• How effective was your production team?

At times they were very productive, and we were able to get a lot of filming done quite quickly. But at other times they completely switched off and no matter how frustrated I got or how much I begged they wouldn't cooperate.

• How effective was your planning in terms of execution?

Pre Production was definitely the most important part of the filmmaking process. It was critical that every aspect of the production is thought out and psychoanalysed Doing that saved us a lot of time and money. It also made the filmmaking process as smooth and hassle-free as possible. On the day of filming, besides them not having their costumes, everyone had their scripts and knew their lines and what they had to do, and where they had to do it.

My Week at the Bath Cronicle

Day 1 - Friday
We got to meet Alex on our first day. Due to the Bath Chronicle's new room being quite quiet my group and I were able to work on the spare computers in the office. We were tasked to rewrite some newsletters into a newspaper article. Fairly simple and menial job but good experience none the less. 

Day 2 - Monday
Today we got asked film a news video on police officers that were going to the Royal High School to show the students their police horse and dogs. It was a lot of fun filming the videos and then coming back to the college to edit it! I learnt a lot about team work and communication from this experience and would love to do more of it.

Day 3 - Tuesday
Alex asked us to scan the city of Bath for various landmarks that we can screenshot and put in an online gallery for people to guess where it is. This was quite a fun thing to do and I enjoyed doing it. 

Day 4 - Wednesday

As it was a bank holiday the following Monday, we were asked to come up with a list of activities around Bath that the family can do on the holiday. Going to the Clavedon Weir for a swim (pictured) was one of the 19 ideas we came up with.

Day 5 -  Thursday
for our final day we were asked to go all around Bath and compile a list of places that offer lunch specials for £10 or less. We tried our best to come up with a list of very popular places like, Wetherspoons, but also places people might never of heard of like a quaint little Thai restaurant in the back streets of town.

Step Brothers Overdub

For this assignment we had to pick a scene from a film as a group, and then try to recreate all the audio as exact as possible.

Here is the scene we picked:


And here is our overdub:

So as well as all those who were part of the cast having to learn our lines, those on the crew also had to figure out the best way to make the most accurate recreating of all the foley sound. Such as the cutlery clattering and the phone camera's shutter going off.

Walking Sequence

This is my walking sequence! As you can clearly see, I was not able to produce a working one. Don't know exactly what happened here, don't even know why the background is that colour as it existed no where in my project. I couldn't for the life of me and my tutor work out why it refused to export, but I like to think that there is a little walking man hidden in this picture, and if you stare for a really long time and believe (and have a few pints) you can see him!

Things I wish I had done:
Created a walking sequence that actually worked when exported. I also wish I had backed everything up onto the server, or another storage device, because the computer I was using at college got sent away for repairs and has been gone for weeks, with very little chance of coming back with my data. So I can't even access the Flash file and try to work on it more.

What I want to do to improve next time:
Get to the bottom of why all my animations seem to export solid blue screens. I also want to be more diligent when it comes to backing up my work, because situations like this happen all to often, and I can't afford for this to happen in the industry with a client!

Phones Shouldn't Be Used In Class

I have been tasked to create a 15 seconds or less public safety video on "Phones shouldn't be used in class." The animation shows a phone game being played and then it cuts to a zoomed out shot with the same game being played but the classroom the character is in is on fire. Plot being that he was so focused and distracted by his phone that he didn't even notice what was going on around him in class, which is why it's important to not use phones in class.

The plot of the video has changed dramatically from the original script and storyboards. I find this always happens in all my productions though, I always bite off more than I can chew. I do really love what I was able to produce though. Considering I cannot draw to save my life! I was most proud of the elastic rope on my slingshot, it took hours of tinkering to get that to stretch out and then bounce back, and I'm really proud of it. I created it by using a number of different tweens, motion and shape, on different keyframed sections.

What I would of liked to do to improve it is add some background. For example in the phone screen while the ball is whizzing past, having clouds and landscape slowly rolling in the background would of really added a nice sense of depth.

Large Pepperoni with a Side of Racism

This Just In:

A group of professional footballers claim that Pizza Hut forced them to pay upfront for their meals due to their race. The claim that no other customers had to pay up front and were being discriminated.

Pizza Hut apologised for the way the footballers were treated, but reassured them that it was nothing to do with their skin colour.

It could be said in Pizza Hut’s defence that the reason Pizza Hut decided to ask them to pay upfront is because they were being disruptive or engaging in ‘hooliganism’ and didn’t want to risk them running off without paying, as they have probably experienced before.

But if this whole situation has discrimination at the heart of it, then Pizza Hut seriously need to focus on retraining their staff in equality issues.

As the football club’s spokesperson said, “In this day and age, it is upsetting to hear that people are treated differently because of the colour of their skin.”

Research Methodology

Define The Research You Will Undertake

Primary:

The primary research  methods I plan to utilise for this project are;

Audience Questionnaire - To be done at the beginning to get basic information about who’s answering the questionnaire and what their views and opinions are on politics and design concepts.

Textual Analysis - Based on a pre-existing and successful multi-page documents. This will allow me to understand why the designer chose to do what he/she did in the document. Why colours, fonts, styles, etc were used. I will be able to incorporate this information into my work, and inspire my work.

Interviews - This will be conducted one-on-one with the interviewee. This method of research will help by extracting crucial information on my research topic. The information I plan on receiving will be very specific and personal.

Secondary:

The primary research  methods I plan to utilise for this project are;

Looking to Twitter to see what young people are saying about politics by searching various politically inspired hashtags.

I will also do research on verified articles on the specific subject, as well as multi-page documents found across the internet and in the local library.

Describe How You Will Do It

For the audience questionnaire, I will compile a list of close and open ended questions based on my research topic and distribute them throughout my college and social circle. In addition to that, I will post an online questionnaire on various social networks such as facebook, twitter, and blogger.

The textual analysis will consist of dissection and break down of each individual aspect of a particular multi-page document. From the graphic design style used to the fonts used.

For the interviews I will

Outline What You Hope To Discover

Plan The Dates & Makes A Timeline

REVOLT Magazine

This is my multi page document for the election connection, consisting of a cover photo and a two page spread. 

Sound in Adobe Flash

Just when I didn't think Adobe Flash could get any better, I'm taught how to add sound into Flash projects! We were given a flash project of a carnivorous plant eating a pesky butterfly. It was then up to us to add the appropriate sound effects. I really enjoyed this lesson and will be able to use the very handy tool of adding sound in Flash projects in the future.

Malfeasance Soundtrack

Today in class I was finally able to finish the climactic ending soundtrack for my upcoming short film 'Malfeasance'. I went for an atmospheric mood. My only problem was that the audio clip I had acquired, although being perfect in sound, was far too short. So I had to do my best to make it a good twenty seconds or so longer. I did this by repeating the first chord and then fading it back in the original clip so that there was an inaudible difference between the clips.

Magazine Analysis

For this post I will be analysing the October 2012 edition of Empire Magazine

Font
For the magazine cover for Empire, we see the sole use of sans-serif fonts. This is to give the magazine a modern and clean look and feel. All the text has been made bold, and simply the different font sizes have been used throughout. Also the same font is used throughout the cover, to maintain its unity, and make it easier to read.

Empire Magazine Recreation

For this project we had to pick any spread in any magazine and then recreate it in InDesign. By the end of he class I was able to get pretty close to it. 

Close Captioning

For todays class our tutor, Tom, talked to us about accessibility for films. Especially focusing on close captions. In the class he showed us a quick and easy way to close caption a video on YouTube. As demonstrated in the screenshots.

Recce UPADTE

For my new filming location I will be using the public footpath around the Bath Weir. As it is a beautiful location and makes for a very interesting background. Here are some of the pictures I got from our recce:

What I learnt From The Talk

Today we had former students of Bath College, from the level 3 course in media speak to us about life after the course. I found them very interesting, especially the two guys who started up their own production business, centred around wedding videos.

Article Synopsis

Are politicians overlooking you?
In the United Kingdom, and many other countries today, the vast majority of teenagers feel neglected by politicians. They feel disenchanted by the many lies and unfulfilled promises assured to them. Subsidised, or even free transportation. Extended health care. Cheaper university tuition fees. Constantly waiting, but always in vain. Politicians are quick to pass laws and legislations to keep the middle-aged and senior citizens happy. Why? Because they can vote and we can't. But very soon we will come of age, and how likely is it that we will vote for any of them? So what will it take for them to win over the generation in which the future lies. 

Print Size Calculations

The dimensions of this image are 2025 pixels by 3000 pixels at a resolution of 72 pixels per inch (ppi).

Screen Size in Inches
So the screen size of this image would be:
2025 / 72 = 28.125 inches
3000 / 72 = 41.667 inches
Ans.= 28.125 x 41.667 inches

Print Size in Inches
As print density is 300 dots per inch (dpi), the print size would be:
2025 / 300 = 6.75 inches
3000 / 300 = 10 inches
Ans.= 6.75 x 10 inches

Print Size in Centimetres
Now to find the print size in centimetres, knowing that there are 2.54cm per inch:
6.75 x 2.54 = 17.145cm
10 x 2.54 = 25.4cm
Ans.= 17.145cm x 25.4cm

Print Size in Millimetres
Finally, to find the size in millimetres, we simple multiply by 10, as there are 10 millimetres (mm) in every centimetre (cm). 
17.145cm x 10 = 171.45mm
25.4cm x 10 = 254mm
Ans.= 171.45mm x 254mm