For this task we were asked to produce a 1 minute film showing a story without using dialog. To do this we had to film a set of sequences using different shot types including close ups, match shots, cutaways and the 180 degree rule.
The story that I chose to tell was about a girl that forgot that she was supposed to be in lesson. The film starts with an establishing shot of the university to show that that is where the story is taking place. The next few shots are cutaways of the girl running to get to where she needs to be, instead of keeping the shots together I cut them up to create more tension and a sense of rushing to tell the story. I added music to the background of my sequences as by using no dialog the only sound on the clips was background noise which didn’t add anything top the story. The music I used was very jolly and upbeat which added to the rushing sensation of the girl needing to get to her lesson quickly.
Things that I think I did well in this task was show a variety of shots which would keep the viewer entertained. If I had just used the same short type throughout the film would just be repetitive and boring and would not hold the viewers’ attention. I also think that I did well at telling the story without using dialog. I did this by using a lot of actions and facial expressions to make an impression on the viewer. Something that I could have improved in this task was in the last couple of shots, the shots show a conversation between a girl and her teacher however I should have used over the shoulder shots to show the 180 degrees rule instead of placing the camera at the side and then behind me as the back and forth shots would have shown the conversation better.
This next task was to produce a short interview for the SU elections. We were split off into groups and each group was assigned one of the candidates to then interview and have that interview shown to the student for them to then be able to have a better insight into the candidate and what they stand for. We were given fixed questions to ask the candidate which included who they are, what position they are standing for, why they are standing for this position, what is their top priority and why we should vote for them. We also had to make sure that during the editing process we added subtitles so that the viewer would be able to understand the candidate better and would therefore not be able to mishear them and could get all the information they would need to make a judgement on whether they would like to vote for them. We also had to use after effects to create lower thirds showing the candidates name, I also decided to use lower thirds to show the question that was being asked so that the interviewers voice would not need to be heard giving the video a more personal feel to the candidate. I decided to place my lower thirds next the subject as she was placed at the left of the screen with a big blank space to the right of her so I decided to fill this space to make the video more visually pleasing. The lower third would normally be placed in the lower third of the screen however this is where I chose to place my subtitles as then I could use the whole width of the screen to get more of the text in each subtitle rather than having little chunks of texts next to the subject as they would then disappear quicker and the viewer might then miss some of the text.
The video that I used to edit was actually the third time the interview had been done, this was due to background noise in the first two videos which would distract the viewer from what they are actually supposed to be listening to which would be the candidate. As we did the interviews a few times this meant that the candidate was a lot more relaxed and the interview flowed better as she had been able to rehearse her answers and then add more to them as she had had more time to think of more details to add.
We used 3 point lighting to light the candidate as this is the best to use in interviews. This includes the subject being in the middle of the three lights with a light placed at the back, slightly to the left raised higher than the subject to provide illumination to separate the subject from the background. The second light placed at the side of the candidate slightly above eye level with a higher intensity than the other lights. The third light is then placed in front of the candidate, slight to the right and above eye level with a white gel filter. This lighting made the shot be perfectly lit with no shadows which made it look a lot more professional.
This task was to produce a topical magazine TV show which had to be presented live in the studio and be exactly 10 minutes long. We were split off into small production groups where everyone had at least one role, my main role was presenting which I found difficult as it was something I had never done before. The VT’s we chose to produce was one which would be voxpops asking the public about their new year resolutions and the second one being about dry January. We planned to ask the public if they were participating in dry January and predicted that there would be a lot more people that were not participating which we could then have the other half of the VT us going around the cocktail bars in York and rating their signature cocktails. Before we could film anything we then had to research the best cocktail bars in York and see if they had any signature cocktails and then get in touch with them to get permission to film in their premises.
When it came to the day of the live show we were given some time to rehearse, our group could’ve used this time a lot more wisely as the director had us rehearse the first half of the show quite a few times however we ended up running out of time and having to go live without rehearsing the second half of the show which made it very hard for me and the other presenter to act natural during the second half as we had to concentrate a lot harder on reading the auto queue. Also by not rehearsing the end of the show we hadn’t realised that we were about a minute short of the 10 minutes, this meant that near the end of the show me and the other host were told via earpieces that we would have to come up with something to talk about to drag the show out for a bit longer. One thing I could of improved on was during the VT I fiddled a lot with my hands and fingers (which I did not notice I was doing at the time) due to being nervous, if I were to do this again I would try and be a lot more relaxed so that the videos would look a lot more natural.
This piece of work included quite a few health and safety hazards, the main one being the consumption of alcohol while filming. During the VT me and James drank a lot of cocktails making us intoxicated this creates a lot of hazards such as over intoxication which could potentially lead to death. Being intoxicated changes the way you think and your ability to move, if too intoxicated we could’ve fallen and hurt ourselves or as we were in town we could’ve easily got lost. To prevent any of these happening me and James had a director and camera man with us at all times who didn’t touch any alcohol, they were able to watch our alcohol intake and view how it was affecting us, if they felt like we were getting too drunk and could’ve hurt ourselves they would’ve stopped us from drinking however this did not become an issue. Another hazard while filming this task was tripping hazards when filming in a studio due to the amount of wires going from all of the equipment, to overcome this we made sure that everyone was aware of where the wires were and made it so there wasn’t a lot of movement around the studio.
This task helped me to understand learning outcome three which is to demonstrate an understanding of health and safety in a production environment as there were a lot of hazards that we had to make sure were recorded in a risk assessment and were then prevented to make sure no one was harmed.
The next task I produced was a seasonal video that would be posted onto Instagram. The video had to be engaging to an 18-24 year old audience and must follow the existing styles of videos on Instagram. I chose to make my seasonal video a Christmas Bauble DIY as DIY videos are very popular on Instagram and it was close to Christmas so that went with the seasonal theme. I started my production by creating a shot by shot plan of what I would include in my video, this included the steps I would in the DIY. I then went out and bought all the crafts I would need including baubles and Christmas related decorations to decorate them with. I also wanted my shot to include Christmas related décor to make it look more exciting to the viewer, this included a small Christmas tree and some Christmas confetti.
When it came to production I set up my shot to show the lower half of my body and placed a square bit of paper in the middle of the shot so that I could keep the baubles I was decorating central to the shot. I used some wide shots so that the Christmas set could be seen and close ups so that the viewer could see the decorating in more detail. I kept the camera rolling the whole time while I decorated the baubles so that I would have enough footage to work with.
Post production was the hardest part of this task as I had to stick to the Instagram technical requirements. This meant that I had to cut down over 5 minutes of footage to 1 minute as that is the longest a video can be on Instagram. The video also had to fit the square aspect ratio as that is the frame size allowed on Instagram. In premier I had to change the frame size to 600 x 600 which then cut out the a lot of the shot, as I wanted the whole shot in the video so I could include the set I had created I then had to change the settings so the full shot fir in the frame. This meant that there was now a black bar at the top and bottom of the screen, instead of leaving them blank I decided to use the space to write Merry at the top and Christmas at the bottom making the video even more seasonal. I could have improved this video by including a step by step text on the screen of what to do to the bauble, I chose not to include this as with the small frame size it meant that the text was either too big and took up too much space preventing the viewer to see what I was doing or the text was too little to read. I included some jolly Christmas music in the background so that the background noise didn’t bore the viewer and instead they would enjoy the video a lot more and would then be more likely to share it.
This task helped me to reach learning outcome two which is to Work individually and collaboratively in the production of media artefacts, in this task I worked individually in the pre production and post production while during production worked collaboratively with Megan who helped me film discussing different shots with her and then helping her shoot her project.
This next task was to produce audio vox pops interviewing students on campus about student life. We were to work in pairs alternating roles between interviewer and sound-recordist and had to interview a minimum of 8 people, we only needed to include 4 of those people in the finished artefact however by interviewing 8 we then had a lot of audio to work with in case some answers weren’t that good or if back ground noise ruined the audio. The questions I chose to ask the student were, what made them come to university, what is one of the best things about being a student and what they would change about the university if they could. These question produced a lot of different answers which was good for the content of my vox pops as there were no repetitive answers keeping the audience entertained.
One thing that weakened my audio was that it was very windy and although we used a wind blocker on the micro-phone the finished audio ended up having quite a few crackles due to the wind, to overcome this I added music to the clips to distract the audience from the background noises. I thought that I faded the music out well throughout the piece making it quieter when there was speech so that the voices were not overshadowed and then making it louder at the beginning and the end of the video. The hardest part of this piece was editing it down to be less than a 1 minute 30 seconds as a lot of the answers I was given were quite long but I still needed to include a few different people and their answers, to overcome this I took the best parts of the interviews and edited them together.
Another hard part of this task was that we were given it at the beginning of the year when we didn’t know our classmates very well and were a lot less confident in approaching people so I found the production quite awkward which meant that I held back on trying to get better answers out of my interviewees. Another thing I could have improved on was to not include my own voice in the finished audio however when editing my work together I found that the answers didn’t flow well together without the questions being present, to improve on this I could have asked the interviewees to include the question in their answer before starting the interview. Some of the interviews were a lot quieter than others which If I did this task again I would make sure that I held the microphone the same distance away from each interviewee and if I thought that the interviewee was speaking quietly I would stop the interview and start it again asking them to speak louder or try to get the microphone closer to their mouths.