Short Film Task – Applied Production Skills

For this task, I was the director and I thoroughly enjoyed being part of this team as we all worked together very well. The idea creating came easy for us as we all had similar ideas and were able to bounce ideas off each other. There wasn’t much disagreement during this time and we all developed the ideas very quickly so Andrew could write the script.

When filming day arrived, the weather really played into our hands as we wanted overcast and rainy and we got just that so we didn’t have to colour grade in editing. one problem we did run into was the public ringing the police as there was “a body down by the river”, despite us having full filming equipment. However, they were very understanding and let us get on with the filming.

The actors were part of our team so they understood the concept of the film and how we wanted them to act and perform in the film.We wanted to be careful as the main character was suffering from mental health problems and didn’t want to portray it badly but Andrew played it perfectly and played it very respectfully.

The final edit came out really well and it was exactly what we wanted. it’s very dark but tells the story very well. The title is very fitting for the film as the story is that the main character kills people to make the voices in his head be quiet , thus being called “Killing for Silence.” The story is very dark and very mysterious so we wanted to reflect that in the edit and in the colouring of the footage, we were very lucky that the day was dark when we filmed so didn’t have to do much, in terms of colour, in post production. 

Instagram task – Applied Production Skills

 

This is the instagram task. I worked in a small team to create this. I feel like we worked well as a team as we all had the same idea and knew how to create it in the time we had.

We used the fitness idea as the university offers a range of facilities for a healthy lifestyle. We filmed in the canteen and the gym.

One problem we faced was filming in the gym as it was a female only gym session so some members of our team had to stay out for that part. It took a while to negotiate for us to get in the gym in the first place. We made sure we didn’t film peoples faces and made sure we were in and out very quickly. 

As part of the team I was able to shed a light to people on fitness and wellbeing as that is something I am very interested in and we used this to create our final piece.

 

Photography Task – Applied Production Skills

 

This is my photography task, this was one of the tasks that I struggled with. I have never done photography before but it was really fun to learn about different photography techniques. 

The first picture was the easiest and it is my favourite one. I took this in the peace garden in university. It is a picture of the orchid tree. I kept the editing basic and just changed a few of the levels of the picture. 

The second picture is my frame within a frame and I thought this looked really good through a phone. It is a picture of a picture of flowers in the museum garden. This day was quite overcast so it was really hard to find good pictures but I feel like this came out good.

The third picture is outside the art museum. This turned out really well and it is such a nice picture. The water was in a fountain and looked really good the way it was moving. It took a few times to get the perfect picture but I really like how this turned out. 

The silhouette picture is in the quad at university. I wanted to keep a focus on the flowers and the arch made a perfect silhouette.

The final picture is a reflection on the river ouse. As I said, the day was very overcast so it was hard to get the right lighting but this worked really well in terms of getting a reflection from the bridge.

 

 

Student Union Task – Applied Production skills

This is my student union task. I worked as a team with people from my Applied Production skills workshop group. We were lucky enough to already have the camera and sound set up for us but as a group we made decisions about the lighting and the questions we were asking. We ran into a major problem quite early on in the day as our original subject didn’t turn up. We had to find someone to fill in and luckily George said he would help. 

we had about an hour and a half to wait around on the day but as a team, we talked about we could improve on after our first interview. This really helped our next interview run smoother and we worked on what questions we could ask. The original questions were made for Students Union candidates but we ended up with two candidates who already worked at the SU, including the President and the leader of the SU campaign. 

The Angels of the NHS – Storytelling

Before I start this story, I really want to emphasise how hard this career is for students to nurses who have been qualified for years. In a recent study, it was said that one in ten nurses will leave the NHS this year. Why is this? I decided to talk to a student nurse to understand their struggle. For reasons, she asked to stay anonymous.

It’s 5.30 in the morning and she’s getting up for University. “I decided to commute to university, I get up really early and I won’t be home until 4 or 5 in the afternoon.” For many of the students, this course is like a 9 to 5 job already. Long days will really take it out of them, and they’re expected to do this every day.

A massive part of the job is the placements that the students are expected to undertake. Day and night shifts that can be 13 hours long. A student nurse is expected to work these shifts unpaid since the government scraped the bursary a few years ago. It is really hard to understand why the government would scrap the bursary when nurses are so vital to the healthcare system that we have today.

“One shift”, the student nurse said “I had to work, and I was the only nurse on shift. It was just me and two healthcare assistants.” This is shocking, the NHS is having to let a student nurse work a shift on a ward by herself with the number of cuts being made. This sentence really shows us what the NHS is like and how much it is struggling.

Can the student nurses shed a light on why the NHS are struggling? The stories I have heard definitely show us the struggles that the nurses and the NHS struggle.