Rough Sleepers Individual Project is FINISHED! The year is done.

Finished DVD cover>

Rough Sleepers

Blurb:
Brian Jones is a rough sleeper who has been living on the streets for more than twenty years. Passed by and ignored on a daily basis while trying to scrape out a living by selling Big Issue magazines, Brian has become a living testimony of hope in the midst of the hardest of circumstances. This short documentary offers a glimpse, through the life of Brian Jones, into the reality of what it is to live as a rough sleeper.

The individual project, last project of the year, is now finished! After finishing the post production process, I then exported it as a QuickTime .mov file to upload it to my YouTube channel online and to burn it to a DVD using Apple program iDVD. I added and named chapter markers in Final Cut Pro before exporting in order for it to have a DVD menu for scene selection. I also added a slideshow of production stills as another menu selection and added music to the menu options, designing it all using an iDVD template.

I then designed a DVD cover using the photo-editing program PhotoShop and a DVD cover template. I took the .psd file to a print shop to have it printed off correctly, and although there were some formatting issues that I had to quickly fix last-minute in the shop, they printed off a professional looking DVD cover that I was able to hand in the DVD in along with the production folder.

I hugely enjoyed doing this last project, as even though it was frustrating or time-consuming at times because of technical issues, it was a rewarding and fulfilling piece that I am happy with the end product of. It's hard to believe that the first year of being a Creative Media Practice student is now finished, but I can honestly say I enjoyed it, have grown in the technical skills of producing media and have learned much from the process. Below is my finished individual project, Rough Sleepers:

Rough Sleepers Post-Production...almost there

The editing process for this took quite a long time to do, but it's finally finished! I edited the final version of Rough Sleepers using the Apple editing program Final Cut Pro, seen below.


The editorial process took a long time to do because of some technical problems with the filming (result of it being the first time I've ever gone and filmed a project by myself!), such as poor audio quality, shaky camera bits, the boom mic being seen in the shot, etc. However, I was able to work around most of these problems to an extent, which took a long time but was worth it in the end. For the shots where the microphone or 'fringe' of the mic on top of the Panasonic were seen, I was for the most part able to edit these out by cropping the frame and enlarging it to fit the screen. As a result some of the framing isn't ideal, i.e. not enough head room and so on, but definitely better than distracting from the content by seeing what's not meant to be seen!

With the audio quality, the reason why it wasn't the best was because although I looked all over the microphone to try to find a place to set the audio levels before filming, I couldn't find it and assumed there was no way to set the audio levels on that particular microphone. It was only afterward during editing with the help of Rich that I found that there were tiny buttons underneath the battery pack to set the audio levels, but of course by that time it was too late! The result of this was a distinct 'fuzz' or noise during the recording of talking, especially in the interview with Brian which was the most important one.

The way I dealt with this, again with Rich's help, was by sending the project to another Apple program, Soundtrack Pro, one that deals specifically with audio (seen below).


After opening the audio tracks, I then had to find a piece of audio that contained only the noise I wanted to remove, select and double-click on it to open a new tab to work on that specific area, then click Process -> Noise Reduction -> Reduce Noise. This then opened a window (seen below right) that allowed me to change the noise threshold percentage (the amount of noise permitted to be heard in the background) as well as the percentage of noise reduction. These had to be balanced against each other as the quality of the sound of the voices needed can be affected by too much noise reduction or not enough noise threshold.









This took a long time as I then needed to go through the project and repeat the same process to every track that needed an audio quality boost. While I wasn't able to cut out the noise completely or bring up the audio quality to just quite the needed level, it did help and made a big difference in the final product.

I was able to use some music that belongs to friends of James that he had gotten permission from to use under the Creative Commons Copyright License. This was a huge help and the tracks worked well with how I wanted to put the story across. The first track, twentyten by the band Colours, worked particularly well with the stop-motion opening sequence I used in the beginning, as I was able to edit the pictures to the music in order to pause on a picture of a rough sleeper and make it coincide with a break in the music to give it more dramatic effect. I used these two tracks as background music throughout the entire film in order to give it more depth and sound, bringing up the music during B roll footage using the pen tool to do key framing to bring the music levels gradually up or down, seen right. The duration of the tracks worked well, as I was able to line up the ending of the second track to the ending of the film with no problem.

After hours putting the project together and trying to figure out ways to provide transitions from one scene to the next without using a narrative or text but allowing the story to speak for itself, I finished the editing of the project and am happy with the result. I decided to end the film and start the credits with the end shot of Brian walking through the restaurant entrance with the door closing behind him. However, I broke up the credits by putting in footage of Brian inside the restaurant and his reaction to sitting in one of Bath's finest restaurants, ending with a shot of Brian eating and then looking up and smiling at the camera. I slowed down the speed to 50% to give it more of a finality and dramatic effect. I then put in a slug for about 15 seconds and added another extra bit of Brian talking about how he felt being sat in one of Bath's finest restaurants, as well as how much he was looking forward to eating his pudding as it doesn't happen very often! I decided to put this in after the ending to add an extra bit after the viewer thinks that the film has ended, showing a reaction from him that added to the film but wouldn't have fit, in my opinion, with the other shots during the credits as it would have interrupted the music and disrupted the feel of the ending. Since it was filmed inside with low lighting and voices speaking in the background, I felt that it would be better as an unexpected extra bit at the end. This is often done with films after the end credits as an unpredictable addition and one that I felt added to the final project.

Some things I would have done differently in hindsight would have been:

Sound: I would have tried to do everything possible to get a tutorial on the sound equipment before using it and attempting to figure out how it works on my own, e.g. setting sound recording levels and so on. This would have saved me a lot of time in post production trying to get the sound quality better, which I was never full able to achieve because of the loss in quality of the original sound recording.

Visual: I would have filmed more B roll footage to have for cutaways during the interviews, as I only had a limited amount which meant having to use much of the same footage for different times in the film. I also needed more footage of the restaurant itself, as I had to use a section from the actual filming of the scene for a cutaway while Josh was talking about the restaurant.

I also would have made sure that the microphone or sound equipment was never in the shot, as if I had done that in the beginning it would have saved a of time in post production cropping and enlarging the frames and making sure they all were the same size in order to make sure that the mic would be out of frame.

Overall, though, I enjoyed the editing process and was happy with the final result. While there are some technical issues to the film, I feel that the main character and the story speaks for itself and allows a glimpse, through Brian's life, to see what it is live as a rough sleeper.

Rough Sleepers - the filming process.

The filming process for my individual project, a short documentary about the homeless, has proved to be an...interesting experience. The equipment I used was a Panasonic NV-GS250 video camera, pictured left, which is less ideal than a professional video camera such as the Sony Z1 but turned out to have advantages as it was small enough to not be as intimidating, it's not too bulky to carry around and is easily transportable. I will also be using this to film the last scene at a restaurant, which would not have been possible with a large professional camera and tripod as it would have taken up too much room.

I opted for transportability and so decided to use a Manfrotto 679B monopod, seen below, rather than a more conventional tripod that would have been much more bulky and less portable. Earlier in the term we learned about all the different types of ways of holding a camera, comparing the pros and cons of everything ranging from tripods to a contraption known as a fig-rig, invented by film maker Mike Figgis.
The monopod, while can be less stable than a conventional tripod, is much lighter, more portable and can do a variety of creative angles such as high birds-eye shots or, held upside down, low-angle shots while still having a degree of stability. Because I needed to film vox pops on the High Street as well as cutaways which meant I needed to walk up and down streets, I felt the monopod was the best option for my project.

The final piece of equipment I used was a VideoMic Directional Video Condenser Microphone, a professional grade shotgun microphone that can attach to the hot shoe on the top of the video camera so that you can film and record high-quality sound simultaneously. I also used a wind shield since almost all the filming took place outside.



I've definitely learned a lot about the process of filming through encountering first-hand probably every filming-related problem possible at least once during the process of this project, if not two or three times each! Some of the problems I encountered and had to work around were:

- No DV tape included in the equipment as I thought there would be. The first day intended for filming (of course) happened to be a bank holiday and there were no shops open in the whole of Bath that sold tapes. After frantically running over the whole of Bath trying to find a shop that sold tapes, I had to quickly change the schedule around and use the time we met with Brian (a rough sleeper that the piece is centred around, pictured above) that night to get him Chinese and talk to him about his story and his life, prepping him for the interview and finding out the specific things about him that I could use to make the interiew process quicker. We rescheduled to begin filming that Thursday.

- Although I had thought the battery for the video camera had been charged for an entire day after I had made sure that I had new DV tapes and had plugged in the charger to try to make sure everything would be ready to start filming, apparently the charger didn't work that time for some reason so as soon as I set up the camera on Thursday, the battery died. I had to think quickly yet again and since we had been planning on taking Brian to get some food afterward anyways, we decided to quickly go to Burger King and plug the charger in the wall there while we ate. This time I made absolutely sure it was charging and after eating as quickly as possible to make sure we would have enough time to film outside before it started getting dark, we went and found a bench in the empty Abbey courtyard and were able to film the entire interview while there was still enough battery left - crisis averted!

- Accidentally filming over footage. After interviewing Josh, who volunteers with the homeless, I had been looking over the footage to make sure that everything had been filmed and recorded correctly. Unfortunately, when I then started the next filming day, I had forgotten to fast-forward to the end of the footage on the tape, which meant that the entire interview had been taped over. I then had to reschedule the interview to do it again, when I had the next problem...

- The microphone! The second time I interviewed Josh, poor guy, I made sure that I was at the end of the footage on the tape, that the battery was charged and we figured out a way he could hold the microphone underneath the camera shot so it wouldn't be seen, yet still be recorded with high-quality sound. The only thing I didn't think of to do was to turn the flipping microphone ON. The entire second interview was filmed with no sound being recorded, which reduced Josh to a mime and was completely unusable, so I had to reschedule Josh's interview once again. This time, I finally got everything right and was able to use the filming.

- Filming permission. While I was able to get permission to film out on the streets of Bath from the Bath Film Office with no problem, the last scene that we wanted to film in a nice restaurant as a surprise for Brian proved more difficult. My first idea was to try Jamie's Italian, a Jamie Oliver restaurant which is one of the nicest in Bath. The reason this seemed like the perfect choice was because Jamie Oliver has previously done work with the homeless and so we thought the restaurant would be sympathetic to what we wanted to do. However, after days of being passed from one person to another regarding getting permission to film, they finally told us that apparently it would take weeks to get permission because of associating Jamie Oliver's high-profile name with any film. After debating what to do, I was able to contact a friend who is the manager of The Moon and Sixpence restaurant here in Bath who thought it was a great idea and said he would be willing to help in any way possible, giving us the permission to film in the restaurant. However, he said we could only do it when he was working, which wasn't until Friday night - the project was due on Wednesday. I spoke to Mike about it and was able to get an extension to be able to film this last scene, which is all there is left to do!

Now on to the editing...

Rough Sleepers Pre-Production

The time has come to get all the pre-production done for my individual filming project, Rough Sleepers. I had to do all the same paperwork that needed to be done for our group project, such as getting application forms to get permission from the Bath Film Office to be able to film outside on the High Street of Bath, filling out risk assessment forms, making a schedule, the list goes on. I also made contact with the main subject of my documentary, a rough sleeper named Brian Jones (seen below).


A friend of mine from the church that I go to, Joshua Smith, often goes out to talk to the homeless, taking them food and making relationships with them. He's been doing this regularly for quite a long time now and knows all the Big Issue sellers in Bath, and when I mentioned to him that I was doing a project where I would be following the life of one homeless person to break off stereotypes, he said he knew the perfect person for the job. I went to meet Brian with Josh on Monday the 3rd of May and we took him for a meal at a local Chinese restaurant so I could talk to him and hear his story and prepare him for the interview.

The first impression I had of Brian was that he was the most talkative person I had ever met - the first hour I couldn't get one word in edge-wise. The next thing that struck me though was his genuineness - he works as a self-employed Big Issue magazine seller, lives off his own income from doing this and doesn't sign on for benefits from the government since he believes that he should do all he can to earn his own living and stand on his own feet instead of relying on the charity of others. While he does have the occasional drinking set back, he is self-disciplined and works 8 hours a day on his feet selling magazines and hopes to be able to earn enough soon to rent his own flat which could open the door to him getting a good stable job. He's known in Bath for being the Big Issue seller with things to say - his pitch for selling the magazines could almost be a stand-up comedy show, with poignant truths woven in such as 'we're homeless, but not hopeless'.

One of the lines he says often says how he's not expecting anyone to reserve a table in his name at one of the nicest restaurants in Bath, so what we thought we could do would be to actually go in and reserve a table in his name at Jamie's Italian, a Jamie Oliver restaurant that is known to be one of the nicest restaurants in Bath. We got the number of the woman to contact about getting permission to film in there, and we hope to do this as a surprise to Brian, to show him that he's worth enough to sit at the nicest restaurant in Bath.

To try to pre-visualise how the film is going to be structured, I created a non-conventional storyboard using index cards to show the sequence of shots, seen below:

Exposure - The Finished Result!

Exposure
'A photographer with no faith in her own ability
encounters someone who radically changes her future.'

The Finished DVD Cover

For this project we had to create, write, produce, film, direct, edit and even star in a short film which we decided after much deliberation to call Exposure. We had to hand it in on DVD as well as online, for which a friend of Ant's that's a genius with Adobe Photoshop designed a well professional-looking DVD cover (seen above), complete with a bar code, the DVD symbol and even a 5 star rating given by a flatmate!

We used the Apple iDVD program to create a DVD menu and burn it onto a disc. We had some problems getting iDVD to do what we wanted it to do - create a chapter menu, a slideshow of images, etc, but we were able to get a basic menu done and finished it in time to hand it in before deadline. We're all really happy with the final product, which you can finally see here - the waiting is over!

Here is the finished result:

Exposure from James Harris on Vimeo.

Exposure (the new title of our group project) Post-Production

Exposure

Post-Production

We've changed the title 'So It Goes', since this title went with our first idea of having a storyline that ended in despair and resignation, a completely different theme from the storyline we finally decided on. We wanted a title that was more appropriate to go with the themes of photography that is seen throughout the film and also had relevance to the storyline and theme of hope. After many different ideas, we decided to use the title 'Exposure' since it is a photography term used mainly in the darkroom, which part of our film takes place in, and is also a play on words, highlighting the theme of her being exposed for who she really is.

After filming all the footage over a 3-day period, Ant took the footage to log and capture it and create a rough edit for us to work with. James, Ant and I decided to meet up to do the post-production and editing together. We decided to do this instead of each taking separate bits and editing them in our own way because we thought we all would have different styles of editing and it would have been hard to put them together to make a uniform piece. We still all wanted to contribute to the editing process, so we met up at Ant's flat as he has an iMac desktop with Final Cut Pro, which is the program we chose to do the editing on.


We had to make some changes, such as cutting out footage of a scene
which took place in and near a tunnel in Bristol (seen right) since, although the aesthetic quality of the footage and the style of it made it some of the best footage we had, the location didn't make sense as we had no reason in the story for her to suddenly be in a tunnel in the middle of nowhere (it was a 2 mile walk from James' house in the middle of a forest) when she had previously been walking in the city of Bath. Because of this, in the interest of keeping the story realistic, unfortunately we had to cut the scene altogether.

The tunnel in Bristol

After finishing the editing, we then used Soundtrack Pro to create sound effects and to add the music, one of the most important aspects of the film. We learned from doing a sound effect task before about using diagetic and non-diagetic sounds. We used diagetic sounds ('actual' sounds, ones that match with what is seen on screen) such as a city background from Soundtrack since when we filmed the exterior shots of walking down the streets of Bath, there were aspects from the real sound that distracted from the fim, such as cars being too loud, honking and people talking in the background. We decided to do this so that we could have more control over what was heard and when. We also added a non-diagetic (or non-realistic sounds to create dramatic effect) sound that we used throughout the film every time the protoganist had a flashback to make it more dramatic, as well as an underwater sound we found on on soundtrack to create the effect of it being muffled and distorted during the flashback sequences.

Then it was time to add the music. We decided to use songs from the albums The Slip and Ghosts I - IV by the band Nine Inch Nails, both of which are released under Creative Commons copyright license which makes it free to use as long as we credit the band in the final piece. These are instrumental tracks with a subdued and ethereal quality (Lead singer Trent Reznor calls the album 'a soundtrack for daydreams'), which is the exact type of music we were looking for that we thought would fit best with the dream-like aesthetic elements of film.


After we had done all this and had done some final tweaks, we were finished with post-production! I think we did well on the timing and schedule of production, finishing it well ahead of the deadline and having enough time to really focus on editing it to the best of our ability. We are all happy with the final result and can say that overall this was a great experience.

Exposure final result coming soon!

Cookery show - finished! a bit late, I know.

Student Survival Guide to Food - Creating our Succulent Student Stir-Fry

While I realise this is a bit belatedly put up, I thought I'd share our finished group task to create a cookery show that showed how to cook healthy, cheap and student-friendly food. My last post about it was about the filming, which took a disproportionately long time (4 hours for 3 minutes!) and therefore made the editing and post-production process longer as well.

Post-Production:

After filming, we all met up to do the editing process and, after many problems logging and capturing, were finally able to edit it down all the footage to the three-minute limit. After this we had to find up-beat music that we had free access to, which we were able to find from a friend of James Harris named ... We then needed to add a voice over, which Chloe and I did together using a Snowball USB Microphone from Blue Microphones, seen below.







Looking back at it, I think we could have done better on several things:

• not rush through the voice over too much - this was a result of realising after editing that we didn't have enough time to explain how to cook it as we would have liked, so we had to cut out all the non-essentials and speak as quickly as possible to be able to have it go with the visuals. The effect of this is that we didn't have time to make any comments or have fun with it, so it ended up sounding rushed and, to be honest, a bit boring and not as exciting as we would have liked it to be.
• Left more time for the post-production - because of conflicting schedules and having to find a time when we could all be there to edit as well as the problems we had with logging and capturing, we were pushing the deadline and rushing to get it done in time.
  

Overall, we did enjoy doing it and it was good experience in how to create a practical film aimed at a set target audience and with a specific purpose. We learned from it and definitely enjoyed eating the stir fry after we made it! Here is the finished result:

Cookery Show Finished from Esther Ridings on Vimeo.

Rough Sleepers Stop-Motion Editing: the process

For my personal project, I'm creating a stop-motion sequence for the opening, starting from the top of the High Street in Bath and walking down, focusing on the homeless in the city. I hope to create an impression of the viewer feeling as if they are walking down a busy city street, yet spending time to look at the homeless instead of walking by.

The idea is there, but making it a reality is proving challenging. I started out by setting my camera (a Canon EOS 400D/Digital Rebel XTi) on continuous and walking down the high street continuously taking pictures at a rate of about 2-3 photos per second. I tried to stabilise the camera and keep it at around the same height and angle the whole way by keeping it taut around my neck and taking pictures as I walked. After making a spectacle of myself in this way with people staring at me the whole time, I then imported all the 1,540 photos into Final Cut Pro.

At first I tried just banging them all in, setting the
duration (see photo, right) all to a fixed time (.04 seconds) and trying to make it work. My first attempt can be seen below, with no transitions:

esther stop motion intro1 from carlina flood on Vimeo.

I wasn't happy with the result as it seemed too jerky and all over the place to seem natural and served to distract rather than had the effect I was trying to get. So I tried, on Mike's suggestion, importing all the photos again but this time using the Overwrite -> with transition tool, which inserted a cross-dissolve in between each frame. This made it have a softer feel, not as jerky and smoother and I was happier with the overall effect. I also edited many of the photos, cutting out big chunks that weren't needed and weren't the strongest part of it.



I then started to add text, trying to find a way to superimpose statistics without distracting from the visual narrative and added music, the song twentyten by the band Colours which is licensed under Creative Commons, syncing it to the edit. Here is a sample of what I've done so far:

Opening Sequence with Music from Esther Ridings on Vimeo.

Personal Project Progress - Rough Sleepers starts taking shape. Stop motion, statistics, etc.

Rough Sleepers
(working title)

a mini documentary - advocacy of the homeless

Sleeping rough: (definition) 'People sleeping, or bedded down, in the open air (such as on the streets, or in doorways, parks or bus shelters); people in buildings or other places not
designed for habitation.'

For this personal project, I wanted to begin the piece with a stop-motion sequence of going through the main high street of Bath, focusing if possible on the homeless and poor of the city. I am hoping the final product will look a little like the first part of this (minus the strange guy and siren music):

The reason for this is to create the perception of walking through a city on one of its busiest streets, an experience many have on a daily basis - yet no matter how many times we walk down the same street, how often do we pay any attention to those around us that need the most help? The purpose of this would be to challenge the viewers (including myself) to start looking outward, to open their eyes and really begin to see people for who they are and to start taking notice of those that we tend to ignore or pass by every day.

To go along with this, over the stop motion sequence of going down the High Street I would like to superimpose some little-known statistics of people that are homeless. Some examples of the statistics I would want to show would be:

• Over 1 billion (1 in 6) people in the world are forced to live in inadequate housing.

• Approximately 100 million people have no housing whatsoever and are forced to brave the elements and live sleeping on the streets with no shelter or food on a day-to-day basis.

• The UK has one of the highest levels of homelessness in Europe with more than 4 people per 1,000 estimated to be homeless. Source: Homeless Pages, 2004

• In the UK alone there are 10,459 homeless people that sleep rough every night and 98,750 households in temporary accommodation. Source: Department for Communities and Local Government, 2005

• 63% of homeless women in the UK have experienced domestic violence and 40% have been sexually abused. Source: Homeless Link, 2007

• The average life expectancy of a homeless person in the UK is 42 years, compared to the national average of 74 for men and 79 for women. This is lower than the life expectancy of Ethiopia or of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Source: Crisis (1996) Still Dying for a Home

• People who sleep rough are 35 times more likely to commit suicide than the general population. Source: Crisis (1996) Still Dying for a Home

Other Sources:
http://ipsnews.net/interna.asp?idnews=28086
http://www.homelessworldcup.org/content/homelessness-statistics

Using these I am hoping to create a powerful and challenging introduction to an issue that is seldom looked at. I want to juxtapose these statistics with, after the title, going into vox pops of how young, wealthy urbanites view the homeless and some of the stereotypes that they might project. I think the contrast between opinion and reality will be another powerful tool to realising how much this issue needs to be looked at in a different way, to see rough sleepers as real people with real lives and real stories.

I've also started making some contacts of people I would like to use in the piece: one is a group of young adults from Bath City Church, the church that I am a part of, who have regularly been going out to buy food, sit and talk and build relationships with rough sleepers. They do this to make a tangible difference in the lives of those who often are the most rejected, scorned and ignored people in urban society, and I think are an example of the difference we can make in people's lives just by showing kindness. I have also made contact and heard some of the stories of several rough sleepers around Bath that have said they would be willing to be interviewed and tell their stories. From these I am hoping to find one that I can go into more depth and tell a story, the story of an unheard, unseen rough sleeper.

'So It Goes' pre-production and filming

We finished the filming!!!

Over the Easter holiday we spent the first week coordinating schedules, emailing to get permission from the Bath Film Office to film, preparing the props and tweaking the plot and storyline - that we finally decided on after changing it completely about 5 times - until we had something we knew we could work with. We then did all the filming in Bath and Bristol in three 8-10 hour days, filming outside through rain, mud and even freak hail storms (twice!) until we were finally able to say the three words that every film crew cannot wait to say: it's a wrap.

Pre-Production

We had to a do a lot of paperwork before we could actually start filming: permission forms, release forms, application forms, risk assessments, storyboards, a schedule, a shot list, the list goes on. We had to write risk assessments for every location, thinking of every possible risk and how we could prevent it - here is an example of one we filled out for filming in a stair well alley in Bath.

We also had to push back the schedule for filming to make more time for creating props needed, etc. One of the main props we needed was a photobook of the photographer Maynard's photos, which we created by taking photos of the locations we would be filming in black and white, then putting it all into a book using at the last resort a shoelace to tie it all together, courtesy of Ant and Seonaid Aitken. Here are the photos we used, all taken by Ant and James at locations around Bath and Bristol.














































We also changed some of the locations of the filming: instead of filming at James' house for the first scene after the title sequence, we were able to use a flat belonging to some friends of mine, Tim and Rachel Chapman, that was located in the center of Bath right next to one of our locations that had a spectacular view of the city which worked perfectly for it.

The Filming

So at long last we were able to begin the filming, starting Day One in Tim and Rachel Chapman's flat and working our way down the high street of Bath filming in the different locations in chronological order. While we had some setbacks mainly due to the weather and having to run to get a photo done for the cover of the photobook at the last minute, the filming overall went well. James was the cameraman, using his own Sony DCR-VX2000 and Ant and I did the acting and making sure it all run smoothly. On the first day we filmed all the Bath locations except for some shots of Maynard in the flashback sequences, which we filmed the third day.

The second day of filming we all went to Bristol, did a two-mile hike to get to a tunnel to do some more filming that unfortunately we were unable to use most of due to it not working in the story. We were able to use the part of Maynard in the flashback sequence of the tunnel, which we used in the beginning in the dream she is having of the photographer. We then went back to James' house and filmed the end of the film, in his garage and his father's darkroom.

The third day we did the rest of the shots needed, which were some of the dream scene when Maynard is taking photographs around the city of Bath. After we finished all the shots needed we then were finally able to call it a wrap, finished with all the filming!

Overall the filming and pre-production went really well, it took a long time to get permission and we had to change the schedule to push it back a bit, but in general things went smoothly. We did well sticking to the time line needed, finishing all the filming with plenty of time for post-production. The only things I can think of that we could have done differently would have been to be more prepared with getting the props ready, perhaps meeting more beforehand to have more of a handle on who was doing what and applying to the Film Office for permission much more in advance then we did. We also probably should have thought through the schematics of the story more, for example we should have made the decision to go to the tunnel only after we figured out a way we could have it fit in the story instead of going without thinking it through first.

Overall though it was a productive, fun and challenging task that we thoroughly enjoyed and got loads of experience in filming, constructing a storyline and plot, acting, producing, directing and doing all the pre-production out of! I personally enjoyed doing the acting as that's something that I love to do and while I've done professional acting jobs before, I hadn't done any acting in a while and I loved getting back into it. I also really enjoyed the writing of the plot and storyline, developing the character and thinking of different ways we could carry out what we wanted to achieve through it, as well as making sure there were no continuity errors on the day of filming and that it all would work to make sense to the viewer.

Here are some production photos:

Proposal! Personal Project time

I propose to make a mini documentary about the lives of homeless people on the streets of Bath. I would follow the stories of one or two people, delving below the surface to show the real lives and emotions of people that most often go ignored or are scorned simply because of their circumstances. I would like to find a story of the reasons why a person can end up destitute and on the streets struggling to survive on a day-to-day basis, how they are treated and what they go through every day. The purpose of this would be to change perspectives on how we treat or view homeless people, contrasting vox pops of middle-class people saying how they view homeless people with the reality of how it is to be living on the streets.

I would also like to perhaps find another person with completely different reasons of why they are homeless and contrast their lives - one, a stereotypical 'bum' that has no reason for being homeless other than being a junkie and too lazy to get up and find a job, and the other one that has it together, is intelligent and can hold a conversation yet has had hard circumstances that have resulted in him being unable to live any other way. I want to do this to show that, although there are homeless people who live that way almost because are simply too lazy or addicted to drugs or alcohol to get a job and a place to live, there are also those who have stories and reasons that break the stereotypes of how we often view them, challenging the 'scum of society' stigma.

The purpose of this would be to create a challenging, thought-provoking piece that would follow the lives of two homeless people in order to show their emotions and feelings, focusing mainly on their personalities in order to show them as a real, normal person that perhaps has had harder circumstances than most. I would like this piece to show humour, reality and views on life that could challenge the norms of how we see the homeless.

The piece would be aimed at young, upper-to-middle-class adults that live in an urban environment and would come into contact with these realities every day. The tone would need to informative, yet I would like it to be more informal and down-to-earth, showing real life, that this is a reality that needs to be looked at differently. I would also try to make sure that the tone is not condescending or patronising in any way and not too heavy or depressing, but is frank, challenging and uplifting, carrying an ultimate message of hope that we can play a part in changing lives of those around us.

Cookery team filming day - 4 hours for a 3 minute instructional video

For this assignment, we were put into groups to make a 3 minute instructional video of how to do student-friendly cooking that is healthy, easy and cheap. Our group (Chloe, Mike, Tom and me) decided to do a healthy stir fry with peanut butter and sweet chilli sauce and lots of vegetables. We decided this because it contains 4 of the 5 a day, it's easy and cheap and we had the ingredients and appliances needed. We filmed in Mike's kitchen as he lives on campus and has a stellar wok from Ikea that worked perfectly for it.



Pre-Production

When we first arrived at 2:00 we started setting up Mike's kitchen for filming - cleaning, clearing space for the actual cooking, setting up lighting (we had to put up makeshift curtains to block the bright sunlight coming in from the side, as can be seen in the photo above) and making a living food sculpture to film the first shot of the ingredients, as shown.


We then had to set up the equipment, which included a Sony Z1, a Manfrotto 503HDV tripod and a Rycote pistol grip and gun mike.


After all the equipment was set up, we set up the white balance and focus, and then got the first shot of the ingredients over which we want to superimpose text saying how much of each ingredient is needed. We thought this would be the easiest to go with a voice over, which is how we want to present it. We then started the cooking, showing the chopping of the vegetables (with me and Chloe tag-teaming it) with the rest of our beautiful food sculpture in the background to make it a bit more interesting and less antiseptic-looking than just a plain white wall. While we're going to get the sound of the voice over later separately, we wanted to get the sound effects of the chopping and cooking to put in to make it realistic and to use these to support the visual.


So, after some chopping mishaps and falling veg and chicken but still getting a successful take of what we wanted, we went on to the stir-frying part of it. We fried the onions, making sure to get the sizzling sound effect, then added the chicken and vegetables. We were able to get some good birds-eye view shots by raising the tripod to its highest setting, as shown in the photo below!

After getting a wide range of shots of each step of the cooking, such as close ups, pans, wide shots, etc, we finished the cooking and all tried the final product, which turned out not too bad, if we say so ourselves! we were definitely all made hungry enough for it by missing lunch and waiting four hours longer than we thought we'd need to, but it was worth the wait.


A few things we would have done differently in retrospect might have been:

- Be more prepared, maybe make a storyboard and list of everything we would need. At first we did a shot of the cooking utensils we thought we'd need, but ended up using much more than we thought we would. This made the day longer than it needed to be because instead of being able to the shot of all the utensils before we started cooking like we wanted to do, we needed to wait for the food to be finished, eat the food, do all the washing up, dry everything and set everything up a second time with the added utensils we had forgotten about.

- Started earlier in the week. Trying to sort out all our schedules to figure out a time for us all to meet proved harder than we thought it would be, and it made us go behind schedule with editing. We also had problems logging and capturing it, which if we had given ourselves more time we might have been able to sort out before the lesson.

Overall though, we all enjoyed this project and it provided important experience in the technical aspects of filming, in recording sound using a boom microphone and knowing how much to prepare for pre-production. We gained knowledge and experience and we'll be beginning the editing process next week.

'OMG!' Short filming exercise and collaboration...and it all comes down to the 180 degree golden rule of filming.

In preparation of our short film project which we will be directing, producing, editing and perhaps even starring in ourselves for some of the groups, we did a mini filming exercise last Tuesday in our groups. Ant, James and I went out to film around campus using a script written by Mike Johnston himself about someone who receives a phone call that brings mysterious bad news. We did this in order to get used to filming in a way that doesn't break the cardinal rule of filming: the 180 degree rule.
Each of the groups were given a different direction to keep true to, ours was to be shot going from left to right, making sure that we never broke the 180 degree rule. Here is our finished product (which was heavily edited by James at the end to make me sound like I was making some sort of animal noise!)

After this, Mike had us do a collaboration with another group that was doing the opposite direction to us to show how the continuity of direction would be broken if we did ever pass the 180 degree line. We linked up with Ed, Mike and Kirsty to do our joint collaboration, shown below:



This is good to know since it's the small details like this that make films work. We don't realise how much needs to be taken into consideration so that the finished piece will make sense to the audience, so this exercise was good for hammering the golden 180 degree rule into us for the future. It was also loads of fun filming it and gave us some directing, filming, producing, editing and acting experience.

Here is the finished product, with our own twist on the ending...enjoy!

OH MY GOD! from James Harris on Vimeo.

'So It Goes': The Pitch! at Paintworks Studios in Bristol.

On Tuesday we all went to Paintworks Studios in Bristol, where much of the 3rd year work will take place, to pitch our ideas for our short film projects to the director of Paintworks and Mike in a semi-formal setting (at least more formal than we're used to!). We created a PowerPoint presentation to present our proposal, treatment and influences of our piece, shown below:

This was a good experience for us since it prepares us for what we might do in future jobs if we go into this sort of work, pitching ideas formally and preparing every aspect of the story. Some pointers that we were given were that we need to definitely decide on who will be the main character of the story; we need to make sure it's doable in the 5 - 7 minute timeframe and not complicate it too much; and our presentation should have been more legible and appropriate for presenting - less words, more impressions. All these things are good to know for the future and will definitely be taken into account for the next time.

Short Film Project 'So It Goes': the ideas and the process

Our next group project is making a short film. We brainstormed our ideas and put ourselves into groups depending on which idea we wanted to use and after some deliberation I joined with James and Ant. We decided to do a short psychological thriller piece entitled So It Goes, following the last few days of a schizophrenic man's life through his own journal entries, found by a mysterious woman who seems to be obsessed with finding out about this man for reasons we only find out at the end.

It took us a while to get all the details of the plot and storyline down, since we started with a much simpler idea but have since modified it to try to make it more original and avoid the trap of predictability. We decided after speaking with Mike that if we only made it centred on the man, it would follow a storyline that's been done many times over. By introducing the mysterious woman though and making the film mainly about her and why she's trying to find out about this man's life, we hope to put a twist on the plot and make an original, interesting and thought-provoking short film (full details of plot, proposal and treatment can be found in the PowerPoint presentation in the blog about our pitch at PaintWorks Studios).

When we spoke with Mike the first time about our idea, he suggested we go by an acronym used in script writing: CDOG. He said that we need four elements to make a good storyline: we need a Character, there needs to be a Desire, there then needs to be an Obstacle to them getting that desire and finally there needs to be a resolution, reaching the Goal. This helped us in forming our storyline below:

Character - We decided to put a twist on the story and instead of the man who is narrating the piece be the main character, make it the mysterious woman seen in the beginning of the film.

Desire - This character's main desire, that we only realise at the end, is to try to find out what is wrong with her mentally by following the footsteps of the man she suspects has the same mental condition.

Obstacle - The obstacle will be that as soon as she realises that there is someone else that is suffering from the same symptoms that could be able to help her, she starts following him attempting to find a way to approach him. However, she loses him in the city and finds out later about his death by reading about it in a newspaper. This shatters her hopes of finding out what it could have been they both shared in common, but she is determined to still find out all she can - hence the obsessive collecting of anything to do with him we see scattered across her desk in the title sequence of the film.

Goal - After stumbling across his diary of his last few days before his death, she finally realises after reading the last page that he had a split personality - and leaves with a newfound hope realising that this is the condition she had as well, knowing that now she can finally get help for it now that the mystery is put to rest.

We would like to shoot this film in a style influenced largely by a music video shot to a song by the band The National, called Daughters of the SoHo Riots:



We would like to film the main part of the film which takes place in the past through the man's narration in black and white as shown above, using specific lighting to highlight certain areas and black out others. We want to emphasise the contrast of his different personalities by using high contrast in the filming and make use of silhouette lighting as much as possible.

Timeline -

Proposal and treatment for group video project 22/01/10
Pitch for group video project 02/02/10 at Paintworks
Complete peer assessment of group projects 23/04/10
Complete group projects 04/05/10

Celtx Storyboard: How to get from sheep to a rug, the complete DIY process

For this assignment, we had to create a storyboard for an instructional video using software program Celtx, which allows you to sketch out the positions of cameras and equipment for each shot. After trying to decide what to do for it, I got inspired when I was away for the weekend in Devon and decided to do a step by step storyboard of how to get from a sheep to a household rug, showing the complete DIY process. My fiance's mother is a weaving extraordinaire and does this on a regular basis, so happily enough she agreed to model each step for the photos.

Below is a Google Docs presentation of the finished CeltX storyboard presentation.

I found that there are many advantages to using CeltX, as it provides a way of being able to visualise and lay out exactly how the process of filming will take place. It makes planning much easier and the process itself is simplified, since the shots are already completely laid out and all that's left to do is follow the story board on the day of actual shooting.