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.