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BTS of Finite Time

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Final Major Project

My final major project was to create a 1-3 minute short film based on a MacGuffin. The short film needed to be filmed in one location.

I did research such as finding inspiration on YouTube and No Film School. I made a visual proposal for my short film. My given MacGuffin was a picture frame. My idea for my short film was that someone comes across a picture frame on a bench whilst they are on a walk. The person asks passer byers if the picture frame is theirs and they have no luck. Throughout the day the person in the picture frame grows from a baby to an adult. The story is a metaphor to show how fast children grow up because the baby in the picture frame grows up within a whole day. Parents always say they don't know where the time has gone because their children grow up fast. Everyone uses picture frames in their houses to show memories too.

Ten people's ideas for short films got green lit. Sadly my idea was not green lit but my peer Rachel's was. Rachel chose Courtney and I to work with her. We shortly started pre-production by making production schedules and deciding job roles. Rachel was the director, Courtney was the editor and I was the Assistant Editor. I contacted two of my friends that were thrilled to act in our short film. One of my friends cancelled last minute, thankfully Rachel's boyfriend stepped in and acted.

We started production and everything went well. Rachel, Courtney and I worked well as a team and were always communicating to make sure everything was running smoothly. To keep track of what was happening, I made a production diary. Production went well and my friend Jasmine was a great actress.

Editing took a week or two but the results of our short film were decent. I always find pros and cons with all the films I make. The pros of our short film were good range of shots, good continuity and good acting. The cons was some of the audio and the lighting. If we were to make the short film again I would have tried to make the camera settings identical so the lighting was the same and I would have recorded audio with a tascam rather than use hot shoe microphones.

Overall I enjoyed the project. I enjoyed working with Rachel and Courtney and we got good feedback.

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Interactive video

In March I got given a new project to make an interactive video. An interactive video is a video that includes the audience and allows them to click on things and make decisions about the video.

The interactive video had to raise awareness about something. I raised awareness about animal testing. Animal testing happens around the world and animals suffer or worse die. Animal testing is mainly done for cosmetics, big brands such as Mac, L'Oreal and Avon all test on animals. It is a horrible inhumane thing to do and it needs to be stopped. I got facts and researched animal testing campaigns on Google.

My video is about Maisie going shopping and the audience need to select which shops she goes to. One shop doesn't test on animals and the other does. The audience may not know what stores test on animals but the audience find out if the store tests on animals or not. The audience also learn facts about animal testing throughout the video.

I got good feedback and constructive criticism. The good feedback I got was that one person said they felt happy when the video was going around the shopping centre and then it cut to the facts with sad music and they felt really sad. It is a sad subject and nothing about animal testing is happy so I am glad I got the reaction I wanted. Another positive comment was that someone said they enjoyed my video because it wasn't like anyone elses, it was more like a quiz with all the facts. The constructive criticism I got was that my production values could have been better. Some of my shots were out of focus and some were shaky. Due to the environment I was in there isn't much I could do to make my shots less shaky. I was filming in a busy environment and if I brought a monopod, tri-pod or shoulder rig I probably would have brought attention to myself. I didn't get asked any questions by security or members of staff in shops because I only used a camera and it was up close to my body so it was personal and discreet. If I had the facilities I would have actually filmed animal testing taking place but there was no way I could do so in the time I had.

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UK CineFest 2018

Back in October 2017 I produced my film "My North". My North captures what the north means to me and it shows the nature I live around because when I think of The North I think of nature and a bit of the city. I live around nature but I don't live far from a city.

My teachers let me know about a film festival that is taking place at Middlesbrough College. I submitted my film and it has been selected! My film has been selected for four categories; cinematography, editing, experimental and UK CineFest Student award. I am thrilled that my film got selected and I am looking forward to watching other student films. I think it will be a great way to try meet other filmmakers and get inspiration for new films!

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Newcastle International Film Festival

I took the oppourtunity to volunteer for NIFF 2018. I have always wanted to go or be a part of a film festival so I was really excited.

On Thursday 29th March I was flyering around Newcastle. It wasn't too exciting but i'm glad to say I helped out in that part. On Saturday 31st I was a venue assistant. My job was to sign multi pass tickets and tally up how many people went into Screen B. It was fun and I got to watch a few films which were interesting.

During the times I wasn't volunteering I went to a couple of talks and a screening. I went to two talks on Good Friday. One talk was with Sean Pertwee and Craig Conway, the other was with Jack Howard and Ian Ogilvy. The talks were very interesting and I am glad I went to them. As a fan of Gotham I asked Sean Pertwee who plays Alfred what it was like working with the younger actors such as Camren (Selena Kyle) and David (Bruce Wayne) and if he learns things from them and if they learn things from him. He said that they are great actors and Sean gets annoyed when David gives him tips since he is younger than Sean. He said Camren is like a little sister to the whole cast and she is a great actress as well as the street dancing she does when she isn't on set. It was so nice to get to talk to someone I have seen on a TV screen for so long. I am a big fan of Gotham and it was amazing to meet and casually talk to Sean Pertwee. I was suprised I didn't fan girl a load!

Just like Sean and Craig's talk, Jack and Ian's talk was interesting. They spoke about their careers and how they got to where they are now. I mentioned that in one of my college lessons we had to look for jobs in media and when we clicked in the North East of England there were no jobs. All media jobs are in London or Manchester. Jack totally agreed with me and said I shouldn't have to leave where I am now to work and that I shouldn't have to go all the way down to London. Again talking to Jack was so casual and he was so kind and lovely to chat to and i'm suprised I didn't fan girl a load!

On Sunday 1st April I went to the screening of Second Spring co-produced by my media teacher Martin Herron. Second Spring is about a woman who falls in love with a man she barely knows. She gets a brain disease where at first she is totally unaware of then she goes to the doctors and realises there is something wrong after she had tests. Second Spring was filmed on Kodak film. Martin and his team bought the last rolls of Kodak film there was. There was one other person that wanted the film but Martin and his team got them. I thought it was very good and interesting. I did enjoy it, I probably wouldn't have watched it if it was on Netflix as I am likely to be interested in sci-fi films. I know Martin and his team worked hard on the film and it took a long time to well done to them!

The film festival was great and I am looking forward to next years festival!

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Some photos from filming Northern Horizon's music video!

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Audio and Visual effects

Audio effects are used to enhance sounds to make a film or music video look better for the audience. For example, in an action movie, a sound effect could be used when a character uses a gun. The sound effect of a gun would be edited in during post-production.

  Visual effects are also used to enhance films or music videos. A lot of visual effects are done in post-production. An example of visual effects in post-production is colour. If a song is sad the music video for it could be in black and white or have a cold blue tint to it so the visual helps show what the tone of music is.

  Audio effects weren’t used in mine, Courtney and Rachel’s music video. We used a downloaded track from our band and placed it in the premier pro timeline. We inserted our footage and made it look like the singers were singing along to their song. We also included a narrative which is a visual. The narrative helps tell the story of the song ‘Background Music’. In post-production we used visual effects. We put on some doodles which we planned to do. There are doodles such as white lines under their feet when the band members jumped and lines coming out of their instruments.

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Diegetic and non-diegetic sound

Diegetic sound is pretty much sound recorded by the camera or the microphone that was plugged into the camera. We used diegetic sound to edit with but then we put the pre-recorded track over our footage so we didn’t include diegetic sound in our produced music video. When we filmed the music video in the theatre we played the song through a speaker so the band knew when to sing and play their instruments and keep in time for when we edited our video. We used microphones and our audio was distorted so we couldn’t have used diegetic sound in our edit. Diegetic sound is used in many TV shows, films etc. for example when someone is acting out a scene or narrating for a documentary the camera records what people are saying.

Non-diegetic sound is the opposite of diegetic sound. It is sound that the camera did not record. We used non-diegetic sound for our music video because we did not record our music live through microphones and speakers. We removed the audio picked up by the camera and we replaced it with the pre-recorded music track of ‘Background Music’. Our recorded music can be placed in our editing timeline. An example of non-diegetic sound is the theme tune of the film Jaws. When the shark in the movie gets closer to people the music gets faster paced to create an atmosphere. In real life you wouldn’t hear a fast paced ‘dun dun, dun dun’ as a shark moved faster or chased you. Non-diegetic sound is music or a sound effect that can help tell a story in a movie.

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Description of production roles and responsibilities

   When me, Rachel and Courtney got put into a group we assigned production roles to each other during pre-production. Rachel is the director and camera operator, Courtney is the editor and camera operator and I am a camera operator and assistant editor. We did not assign production roles for a sound recordist or lighting. We already had a recording of Northern Horizon’s song. When we filmed a technician helped us out with the lighting.

  Rachel’s production role is important. She was director of the music video. She had to come up with many ideas and converse those ideas with me, Courtney and the band. When I did research and did a presentation about job roles within media I learned that directors need a good creative vision and they need good communication skills so they can talk to everyone in the production team. Rachel was responsible for communicating with the band and getting equipment such as cameras and microphones taken out. Rachel did a great job at being a director, she communicated with me, Courtney and the band well. She acted very professional and suggested her ideas and allowed me and Courtney to suggest ideas that we had.

  Courtney’s production role is an editor. Editors have a lot of responsibility because they have to work closely with the director. We all had a lot of ideas about how we would like the music video to look visually so they needed to be done when we were editing our footage in premier pro. Courtney has had a lot of practice at editing and she is very good at cutting to the beat of music videos and she knows how to edit things at ease rather than being under pressure. A lot of editors feel pressure and need to know how to work under pressure.

  I am the camera operator and assistant editor. I had the responsibility of operating the camera. I needed to make sure the camera was in focus, change the f-stop to let more light in or let less light in and change the ISO of the camera if it was needed. I used a monopod and track in the theatre and I used a tripod when I was on-location. As a camera operator, I needed to think of various shot types to make the music video look interesting. I enjoy editing and I knew I was going to miss a week at college so I didn’t want to have the job role of editor. Some days Courtney was absent so I and Rachel put together a rough edit to get the music video started.

  Rachel and Courtney were camera operators too and had the same responsibilities as me when using the cameras. We got a lot of shot types to edit with on-location and in the theatre.  

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Music video: Pre-Production

In class we have gone over various exercises to help us get an understanding of music videos. One of these exercises was going into a venue and recording live music.

I got put into my official group with Rachel Hedley and Courtney Lewis. We have worked on previous projects before and agreed that we all work very well together. When we made a 30 second music video we didn't properly assign job roles we just took turns using the camera and when it came to edting we took turns of that. For this project Rachel is the director and Courtney is the editor. I am a camera operator and I have been suggesting ideas but we have been using three cameras sometimes so we are all camera operators in a way.

Me, Rachel and Courtney are using a song called 'background music' by Northern Horizon. In college when we first heard the song we couldn't make out the lyrics were but we found a spotify version which was much better to hear. Rachel coincidently knew who some of the band members in Northern Horizon were so that was a bit of an advantage for communication purposes. Shortly after being given the song we made a facebook group chat with the band. They send us the lyrics and told us about the narrative of what the song is supposed to be about.

Me, Rachel and Courtney struggled a bit to find a good narrative to fit with the song. We got the idea of having a couple arguing and the 'boyfriend' not doing too well. We are also planning to film the band in the college venue and on location for the music video.

On 08/02/2018 me and Rachel went out to do some recces. We visited some venues such as Think Tank and O2 Academy. We also visited some multi-story carparks because we had the ambitious idea of filming the band on a car park rooftop. We took some pictures of the places to be used as our recces and to maybe be included in our digital storyboard.

On 12/02/2018 me, Rachel and Courtney did some filming. We used two of our college friends to act for us to create the narrative. We are worried that our footage may be too short for the music video but we are going to review it and see if we have enough.

We filmed Maisie ane Josh to be our 'couple' in Rachel's house and we filmed near metro radio in Newcastle to film a scene of me stealing Josh's phone. The plan was to originally 'punch' Josh in the face but it was pretty clear that I can't act at all. Instead of me 'punching' Josh I stole Josh's phone. We both wore black for mise en scene and to create a negative emotion.

I will upload photos of pre-production after this task has been complete so things such as request forms, kit lists, shot lists, story board, release forms etc.

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London 2018

   People from my media course and I took a trip to London. We went down there to go see a screening of Downsizing and A Beautiful Planet. 

   On the 25th January we travelled to Chiswick on a coach. We got seated in Paramount studio’s theatre. We sat in the theatre that previews of films took place so it was pretty cool to get to see Downsizing in there. We got a presentation from two men who work at Paramount and they discussed what they do and what they did during the production of Downsizing. 

   Downsizing is a movie that took 4 years to be made! It is about people who shrink aka downsize. A scientist found a way for people to become small. The scientist realised that people becoming small can help the environment a lot because smaller people means using less energy and less products. Paul Safranek playe by Matt amon and his wife Audrey decide to downsize. Audrey got scared and did not downsize. Paul met a lot of new people and found a new meaning in life. 

   I thought the film was very funny and I feel like someone had one idea and the ideas just grew to create a crazy but great movie. Paul gets himself into a few problems which he eventually solves along the way. Personally I thought the film went on for a long time however there were many funny parts of the film to keep the audience entertained. My favourite part of the movie has to be when the men are finished downsizing and they are ready to be scooped up. They shrink and some people were at the bottom and side of the bed rather than in the centre which was very amusing. I heard a few people discuss it being racist but it was clearly a misconception. Ngoc Lan Chan played by Hong Chau was a Vietnam refugee that crawled into a TV box. As Ngoc Lan Chan was from Vietnam her English wasn’t great so some people thought it was ‘racist’. I don’t think it was racist considering if an actual Vietnam citizen refuged over to America they might not have a lot of knowledge on how to speak english. If Hong Chau personally thought it was racist i’m sure she would have never auditioned to play that role. 

   The following day we went to see A Beautiful Planet in the BFI IMAX. I had never seen a film or documentary on an IMAX screen before. I walked into the theatre and I never expected the screen to be so big. It was like the size of 4 double decker buses! It was amazing. 

   A Beautiful Planet is a 40 minute documentary narrated by Jennifer Lawrence and filmed from the ISS aka the International Space Station. As well as having a passion or media I also love science and I have done since I was a child. To see high quality footage filmed from the ISS was beautiful. The most amazing part was seeing how dark North Korea is at night. They have a curfew and there were no street lights on it was almost total darkness compared to South Korea and other countries. Since the screen was so big it gave you the feeling that you were actually in space looking down at Earth. 

   After the screening we were lucky enough to see the projector room. The projectors for the IMAX screens were huge. There were shelves of big reels for films such as The Dark Knight and The Maze Runner. We were given some film which was really cool. It looked like a weird gnome next to mountains. I’m guessing it was a weird animation someone tried out and decided to scrap the idea of. 

   The whole London trip was amazing and I hope to return in the future with my media group to visit other amazing cinemas oor film companies. 

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Mainstream, niche and independent films.

   In December 2017 we learned about three different types of films. Those three types were mainstream, niche and independent. What are these three types of films you ask?

   Firstly mainstream films are sometimes labeled as ‘Hollywood films’. They are big films that go into a lot of different cinemas around the world. Mainstream films that get shown all around the world and get advertised everywhere will make a lot of money. A lot of money will have been spent to plan, film, edit and produce the film but they will make a lot of profit. Mainstream movies can estimate how well their movie is going to do on opening weekends. An example of a mainstream film is Justice League. Justice League came out in cinemas around the world in 2017. On Justice League’s opening weekend it made $94 million. It went under the estimate by a couple million dollars but it still made a lot more than what an independent film would.

   Niche films are made for a specific audience but not a mass audience. Niche films won’t get advertised as much as a mainstream film would be because niche films aren’t made for everyone to go see. Where do we go now? Is second on IMDB’s list of Niche films. It was released in 2011 and I never saw it advertised. The description of Where do we go now? is ‘ A group of Lebanese women try to ease religious tensions between Christians and Muslims in their village. ‘ It wasn’t advertised a lot because it isn’t a film a lot of people would go see however it did make a gross of $0.53M. It made about half of what Justice League made which is great even though it was not widely advertised. 

   Independent films are usually low budget and aren’t made in studios that Justice League would be made in. Although they are made differently they are still very popular. Reservoir Dogs is an independent film. Independent films can do extremely well. Reservoir Dogs was directed by Quentin Tarantino and it made 2.8 million USD in the box office.

   I am someone who watches many mainstream films but I have seen some independent films. A lot of the films I watch on Netflix I imagine are independent films such as Fangirl. I think they are al great ways to make money and make a film for certain audiences. 

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08/01/2018

   On our first day back at college from our Christmas break, we watched the groups TV shows. As well as watching the film review TV shows we did peer assessments. 

   Some of the TV shows were very entertaining. I must admit if I was sitting at home and I wanted to watch a TV show I would have chosen ‘Off Topic’ to watch. Off Topic was made by Josh Robinson, Maisie Carter, Louisa Robson, Chris Falcus, Rachel Hedley, Rebecca Stott and Max (credits to any others I may have forgotten). Josh was the host of the TV show and I have seen Josh’s previous work and he is very comedic so he is always very entertaining and keeps the audience engaged. During Off Topic the guest of the show Maisie kept getting cut off because the show was all about the attention on Josh which was a great idea. 

   When I was watching mine and my group's TV show I knew it wasn’t very engaging. I thought the idea of getting other people to be on the TV show was a great idea at first but I don’t think it went as well as I thought it would. Holly the director got some second years she knew to be on the TV show. Although we had a good set, skits and an advert included the show was pretty boring in my opinion. The three second years that we had weren’t very entertaining. I think the reason for that is they were sat for 3 hours repeating the same information over and over again so they would have been getting very bored. I think the show could have had some more humour added to it as it was very ‘monotone’ as said by a person in the audience. The skits helped with the entertainment but I think if the people who were doing the TV show looked a bit happier and more enthusiastic then it would have been much better. 

   For the peer assessments, we rated members of our group out of 10 for commitment, technical, professionalism and communication. I think I was pretty fair with the ratings and I included sentences under each rating. 

   Our next task is going to be to create a music video! I am both nervous and excited to create a music video. I feel like the weakness of it will be to get the person lip-synced to the music correctly.  

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20/12/17

On 20th December 2017 it was the day to film my teams TV show. We had 3 hours to practice and two chances to record the TV show that lasts 15 minutes.

The rehearsals went well apart from a few issues. The first issue was that there were a few times where the camera angle would be perfect then the camera operator would move the camera when they were not supposed to. Another issue is the host of our TV show was reading straight from the script, swearing or just didn't look interested in the TV show. I think after three hours of rehearsals you would get bored and very hot under lights and repeating things over and over but the issue got sorted. I did make the mistake of when we were recording I accidentaly hit the 4th button which was a black screen on the vision mixer but thankfully the editors could fix it.

I think the TV show was a cool experience. The team I worked with was okay. What worked well was we had two people on our team with very strong personalities so they could tell the team what they wanted which was good for a director and producer role. It would have been even better if more ideas were involved and if there was more communuction. I know that in the real world if I was a vision mixer I wouldn't know everything that was going on but for this project I had to ask a lot of questions about things such as what the script looked like, the timings, what the set was going to look like etc.

In the end the TV show went well and as a team we created a professional looking TV film review show.

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Vision Mixer In the TV show production my job role is the vision mixer. A vision mixer looks at footage coming from live cameras. All of the buttons on the vision mixer look confusing but it is pretty simple. I control six buttons overall. There are three red buttons on the top row for Camera 1, Camera 2 and Camera 3. The red buttons instantly change what is going out live so I don't use them unless it's nessecary. The way I change what camera is live is by using the three green preview buttons. I can use the preview buttons to see what the footage looks like. So if the director tells me to put camera 1 live, I would be previewing camera 1 and to put it out live I would hit the cut button. I expected to feel a little under pressure on this job but I feel like I have got used to it quite quickly and whoever is working with me has told me I work well on it. I enjoy being a vision mixer and I am able to change cameras quickly.

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13/12/2017

Today there were only 5 members of our team in college today. We typed up a script, we made a running order, we wrote down on paper who has what job roles, we got a risk assessment and we developed ideas for what the set is going to look like. We were as productive as we could be for the day and we communicated well together.

Job Roles:

Director - Enya Dupree

Floor Manager - Jade Walton

Camera 1 - Huma Gill

Camera 2 - Holly Proctor

Camera 3 (static) - Matthew Pomfrey

Cable basher 1 - James Coyne

Cable basher 2 - Jordan Lee Jamieson

Script writer - Matthew Pomfrey

Vision Mixer - Laura Moscrop

Editor - James Coyne

Editing Assistant - Jordan Lee Jamieson

Sound Technician - Jade Walton

Light Technician - Jade Walton

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11/12/2017 - My team 'The Brunch Club' did another practical. It was to practice and let us get the experience of how things will run when it comes to us recording our TV show. Me and Enya were in the production room. I am the vision mixer and Enya is the director. I enjoyed being a vision mixer. The buttons look quite complicated but it really isn't. I use 7 buttons at the most. So we are using three cameras, two will be moving and one will be static recording our establishing shot. So there are three green buttons I use on the bottom row of the vision mixer which are my preview buttons and on the top left of the first TV I can see what the shot looks like. So for example if Camera 1 is live and the preview is on Camera 2 if the Director wants to change to Camera 2 thn I can simply press the button 'cut'. That cuts to that camera, I can hit cut or I can use the fader which is quite retro and no one really wants to use.