Commission Unit- Updated Script

This is an updated version of our script, which we used when creating our documentary film piece.

Commission Unit- Finding Royalty Free Music

As a final stage of our documentary film-making process, I have begun to collect the final pieces of royalty free music that I think would be suitable for use in our documentary. We are hoping to collect some upbeat, energetic music, but we may also collect some more relaxed, ambient music for areas of the documentary which require them.
It is of course important to ensure that the music we used is unlicensed and that we credit the creators of the music so that we do not run into any problems at a later date. One of the websites I used to listen to some music on was a site called Beatpick (seen below.)

A screenshot of BeatPick.com, a website which provides royalty-free music with a Creative Commons license.

Beatpick allows it's users to select a license to use the music for. As long as the music is being used for a private or non-profit reason, it is completely free.

Commission Unit- How We Recorded Voiceovers for our documentary Film Piece

The video below shows exactly how myself and Andy recorded the voiceovers for our documentary film piece. 

Commission Unit- Permission to Use People's Images in our film

I recently began to contact the members of the NoToMob so that I could get permission from them to use their images in our documentary film piece. Unfortunately, I forgot to give them permission forms on the day of filming and since it was quite difficult for me to see them in person and simply ask for them to fill out a new one, I had to email the only contact I had from the group, "Bald Eagle" and ask him to get each member to email me back giving me express permission to use their image in the film piece.
Below is an example of the permission emails I received from each person that appears in the film piece. Although it is not as detailed and straightforward as the permission forms, it is still a worded documentation of the permission the person has given us to use in our film:

Please note, the real name of the email sender and email address has been blurred for their privacy.

Commission Unit- Showing the rough cut and Improving our film.

Today we showed the rough cut of our documentary film piece to our course leaders. We have previously shown the documentary to them when it was in very early stages of being edited together, and we made sure to carefully note the feedback we received so that we could improve upon it. This is an important part in any film-making project, as constructive criticism gives the creator a lot to think about, and certain mistakes or inconsistencies with the film which might not have been noticed before quickly become apparent.
One of the criticisms we received originally was that I don't appear in the documentary enough. This is an understandable gripe, as it can be quite confusing for the viewer to have a presenter that appears once or twice and isn't seem at all throughout. It can make it difficult for the viewer to feel a part of the documentaries journey, and as such they may quickly lose interest.
We improved upon this problem by recording a few more scenes of myself explaining what was happening, and also just had me appear in some cutaways. That way, I become more established as the presenter of the documentary, and also become a character of sorts that the viewers follow throughout the film.
Another, more technical problem we improved upon was the sound quality of our film. When we originally showed the rough cut to our teachers, we had not disabled all of the sound channels in each clip, meaning that a lot of traffic could be heard in certain scenes, which often drowned out the person who was speaking.
Since then however, we have improved upon the sound quality by messing with the channels and trying to produce the best quality sound possible.

I have also discussed with Andy the possibility of recording some kind of informal directors commentary for this blog, so that we can explain what is happening in our film with visual aids. This commentary should hopefully be completed this coming sunday and the blog will be updated.

Commission Unit- Problems Uploading the footage with XDCam Transfer, and a Masterclass on Editing

Today I began uploading all of the footage Andy and I have filmed so far using XDCamTransfer, a piece of software used for exporting footage from a camera and importing it into a piece of editing software- in this case, Final Cut Pro X.
I wanted to get all of the importing out of the way today, but I came across quite a major problem during the import process. It was really slow for some reason and each clip was estimated to take around 30 minutes to import into the editing software. Since we had around 80 clips to import, this wasn't going to be an easy task, and as such we had to enlist the help of our equipment and software technician; Fergus.
Although this delayed our work slightly, we were actually ahead of schedule, and so we weren't too worried about the lost time.
Another thing that happened today was I attended a masterclass in editing. Although I have previously attended workshops which show how to use the Final Cut Pro software, I had yet to actually have the correct way to edit scenes together demonstrated to me.
I found the entire experience to be a very useful one, and felt that I learnt a lot about actuality editing from it.

Commission Unit- Test Shot

Here is a video of one of the test shots we collected when we had our 26th April 2014 shoot. This was a test of the brightness outside,as well as an opportunity for Sam Creamer (who was operating the camera on this shoot) to adjust the white balance and sound setting of the camera.

Commission Unit- Risk Assessment Forms and Shooting Schedule.

Below are some of the forms we filled out for our shoot on Saturday 26th 2014 with the NoToMob.
1- Risk Assessment Form

Here is a call sheet I used on the day of the shoot. (Note- in the interest of privacy, phone numbers have been blurred.)

Also, here is a map of the area where we filmed, which will always be attached with the above call sheet.