Professional Practice Unit- Feedback

Today I visited Nicholas Ward in order to show him my promotional video I had created and receive my feedback. He seemed very happy with the direction I had taken the video with the brief he had given me and had little to nothing to say in terms of how I could had edited my video differently.

The feedback sheet I was given back.

The feedback given for my video was something I am very happy with, and we addressed a few problems we had with communication. I believe this was due to us not meeting in person an awful lot during the course of this project. I believe this is mostly down to the fact that Nick was often busy abroad or working away from Maidstone, and I was often busy early in the project working on the other Studio Production Unit. 

We also missed a lot of time at the start of the project (about 3 weeks) because Nick was away in Prague and France for charity work.

Overall, I feel I have learnt a lot from this project in terms of being professional in a commission, and how to speak with a commissioner to ascertain all the needed information in order to effectively fulfil the brief.

I feel that I did my best to hit the marks outlined in the brief, and as a result Nicholas seemed very happy with the finished product I presented to him. Nick also suggested that we work together on more projects over summer and whenever I have time, and offered to be a reference for other ventures if he is needed. He also made sure to inform us that he would have no problem hiring us again, and even brought up a project abroad which he would potentially commission us to create a film piece about in the future.

In conclusion, this project has been very beneficial in improving my overall business skills, and I feel a sense of reward in creating a piece of work for somebody else. I also have a new appreciation for others working as freelance commissioners, as I have learnt that building a network of contacts and keeping up to date with information being passed around can be quite stressful and hard to do.

Professional Practice Unit- Final Friday People Promotion Video

This is the final version of the Friday People promotional video I created.

I believe this version of the cut is a very improved version of the rough cut I posted a while back. I noted in  previous blog post that the shots I used were quite long and boring, and as such I decided to include a few things that would give the viewer something new to look at, without being TOO distracting or random. These included onscreen words appearing, and a small section where a visual aid of the world map appears.
I have also selected music which I feel fits the video theme a lot more. I have also fixed the issues with sound levels and as a result the video has a much clearer, more professional style. The upbeat music I have used is something I believe would be beneficial because of the subject of the video.
I decided to also include a couple of things that would make the Friday People seem like a benefit to join to younger people, which include Nick speaking about the fact that the opporunity to travel abroad to learn is available, and that 69 percent of people working with the Friday People go on to find full time work or education.

Professional Practice- Promo Rough Cut

This is the rough cut I created for the promotional video I plan to submit to Nicholas Ward;
I feel that the general pace of the video is something I should aim for in the final version, and the shots I have used are rather creative and suit the flow of the video. However, there are a few things I noticed once I had completed the rough cut which I will seek to rectify in the final version.

• There are several issues with the sound. The music is extremely quiet and the sound of each interview is quite inconsistent in their levels.
• The music doesn't really fit the style of the promo, but will do for now as a place-holder.
• The interview segments (especially the one with Nicholas) go on for quite a while, and can get quite boring to look at. Perhaps I could insert some more cutaways, or images related to what he is speaking about in order to keep viewers interested.

I also noticed that I haven't followed the brief at certain points, which is essential for me to sort out. The brief states that several details, such as the fact that the charities registration number, the logo of the funding association and some details such as a telephone number are absent.

I did not include a telephone number because the only number and email address I have at the moment are those that belong to Nicholas Ward, and I am unsure as of now whether or not they are personal details, or related to his work with the Friday People. As such, it would be very unprofessional of me to publish them.

The Brief and details:

Friday People Media Brief 27.11.14 Draft

Professional Practice- Test Shoot @ Friday People Office and Behind the Scenes of our setup

This video is a test shot we filmed at the Friday People office. In this video, Charlie Ansell was a stand-in who we used in order to adjust the camera's white balance and ensure that he was sat in an optimal position for us to film Nick when he was ready.

 This was an incredibly useful thing to do, as it allowed us to save Nick's time when it came to testing out where he should sit for his interview. It saves a lot of time if head-room and lighting have been taken into consideration before we begin filming.

Here are also some photographs that were taken that show our set-up, the equipment we used, and how we recorded the interview.

The H4N ZOOM that was used to capture sound.

Myself Interviewing Nick Ward

Showing the setup of the interviewer and interviewee

The questions and note sheet I used to interview Nick

Something I discovered while I interviewed Nick was that it was very useful to sometimes sway away from the listed questions that were on the paper. This allowed me to engage in a big discussion with Nick about his various ideas and projects. This allowed him to fully explain his intentions with his project ideas, and in turn allowed us to collect a lot of material to work with when it comes to creating our commission videos.

A problem we encountered during this shoot was down to the shirt Nick was wearing at the time of our arrival. He was wearing a very stripy shirt- and these kinds of shirts are notorious for being very distracting through a camera lens due to their affect on them. Therefore, we asked Nick to change his shirt to something plainer.
Although this wasn't exactly something we could have foresaw, it was a problem that was able to be rectified none the less.

Professional Practice- Test Shoot @ Age Concern

This is the footage we collected of establishing shots and cutaway shots from the Age UK daycare centre. Unfortunately, none of this footage is usable because the organization we wanted to work with decided that they no longer wanted to be a part of the project. As such, this footage cannot be used for anything.
However, it was a nice experiment in shots and recording in conditions where we had to be careful about what we got in shot, as we didn't have permission to record any particular person at Age UK, but we did have permission to collect footage of the building itself.

Professional Practice: Problems with Age UK Shoot

Unfortunately, Age UK (the organization we originally wanted to liaise with) has decided to no longer be apart of the project. I found this out through Gill of the Friday People, who informed me that the idea of all the paperwork was something that Age UK found quite unattractive, and as such we have had to move on with the project without them.
Unfortunately this means that the establishing shots Mike and I captured of the Age UK daycare centre are now pretty much useless, unless we find a way to incorporate them into our work somehow (whether this is through a brief interview with Nick about some of the charities they work through or otherwise).
We are remaining optimistic though, and believe we can still tell a coherent story about the younger generations struggle to find work without the aid of Age UK.

Professional Practice- Shooting Team-building exercise

Recently myself, Charlie and Mike attended a Team Building exercise at a place called "confection perfection" in Maidstone. The aim of the shoot for us was to capture footage and cutaway shots of youth working in practical situations and show they building skill-sets, which would aid in our film piece about Friday People's "working journeys" project.
 Mike was our main cameraman, Charlie was capturing cutaway shots and other behind the scenes type shots, and I was collecting foley sound. We made sure that we made use of the skills we had attained as part of the Studio production Unit, as we had been working with the equipment we used for that unit in this shoot too.
Here are some shots from the shoot:

The equipment I used to record sound was a H4n Zoom, which is both portable and high quality. The reason I chose this form of sound recording in particular was because it allowed me to get up close with what was happening and capture the best possible sound.

Professional Practice- Researching Other Charitable Videos

I have decided that it would be very beneficial to this commission project if I spent a bit of time researching pre-existing promotional charity videos so that I could get a better idea about how effective they can be in promoting charity groups and their cause.
Since promo videos are usually quite short, I was able to take a look through quite a few of them and get a bit of an idea about how the charities information is relayed to the viewer.

One video I looked at was the "Find Me Charity" video.
Although this video isn't promoting a charity itself, it has a very particular style to the way it is presented. Appearing to be almost like a music video, this promo takes the approach of wanting to appeal to young people, using loud, bombastic music and many vibrant colours in the edits.
The theme also seems to be "fashion" which is of course relating to the charities cause, which is to convince younger people to spend their money at thrift shots.

Although I don't believe the promo videos we intend to create for the friday people will be made in the same style as this particular promo video, I do fee that it is necessary for me to research these kinds of videos in order to understand the creator's thought process and how they try to target their particular demographic and how they spread their message.

Professional Practice: Scouting the Age Concern location.

As part of our commission, Nick Ward suggested that we try and get the charitable group Age Concern to assist us with material for our film. In a segment of one of our videos, we would like to have young people interacting with the elderly, and us visiting Age Concern would be a way in which we could find some elderly people who would be willing to be contributors in our film.
We were informed that the people we would be visiting (at an age concern centre), were suffering from dementia, and as such it would be up to us to gain their trust. This is an acceptable part of documentary film making, and as such we were careful not to charge into the centre with our camera equipment, as this would probably make the elderly people feel uncomfortable,
Also, at this point in time, we do not have any consent forms for the carers of the dementia sufferers, and as such, we weren't going to film anyone in order to avoid any legal action being taken against us.
Instead however, we made sure to collect whatever footage we were allowed to get, which included establishing shots of the age concern building and surrounding areas.
This was simply to make our actual day of filming a little bit easier, but also this particular day was a very pleasant, sunny day. On our actual day of filming the age concern people, we aren't too sure what the weather will be like, and as such, we felt it would be best to collect footage while the weather was nice to avoid disappointment on the actual day.

Professional Practice: Keeping in touch with our Commissioner

Keeping in touch with a commissioner is something that I have learnt is a very important part of the whole commissioning process. In a commission, you form a relationship based on trust with your commissioner. They trust us to deliver a good quality piece of film to them based on the specifications we were given at the start of the project, and we trust them to do everything in their power to make our job easier, and deliver any changes to their ideas to us.
As such, I have made sure to have multiple ways to contact my commissioner, Nick Ward. These include a telephone number, two email addresses and I also have him added on an instant messaging application called Whatsapp.
Based on this, I should always be able to contact my commissioner with any news or suggestions for this project.

It has also come to my attention that Nick Ward is often abroad on business, or unavailable. In this case he has appointed somebody that we will be able to liaise with in his absence. This contact is called Gill, and she will be working closely with us while Nick is away, and will act as his replacement when he cannot be around.
I believe this can only benefit us, as we will always have someone handy that can relay information to Nick, and since Gill is also a high ranking member of The Friday People charity, she will be more than able to make executive decisions if need be.

Studio Production Unit- The day of the Production.

Recently we have completed our studio production. It was especially difficult for myself, as we were suddenly introduced with a massively different sound board, which we were expected to use to mix the sounds for the production,
Previously, we had only had experience using this old soundboard:

I have been told this soundboard is very basic, and is analogue. I found this board very easy to work with and easy to set up, but admittedly it was a very old piece of equipment, and probably wouldn't have sufficed on the day of the actual production.
Instead we were using this:

Of course, this is a much more advanced sound board, and looks extremely intimidating at first glance. I was very worried at first because this particular board is digital, and has more switches and dials than I care to think about. However, as complicated as it looks, through trial and error, I was able to fully understand what switch does what.
I also began to understand how important the sound job is in a studio production unit, and this was mostly down to spending a lot of time with Paul, who would be overseeing our sound work.
Paul has a wealth of knowledge and experience in the business, and it was very interesting to pick his brain about what he has done in the past in terms of sound work.
From what he has told me, it is a very thankless job, but one of the most important. Paul summed it up with the statement; "No sound means no show."

All in all, despite having less than 2 days to learn how to use this digital sound board, I feel that I did a great job in mixing the sound for the show, despite one or two mishaps (which I put down to nerves on my part) nobody complained about any problems with the sound which makes me feel that I did my job correctly.

Studio Production Unit- Finding Music and Mixing VT Sounds.

Once the VTs had gone through their final edits and were submitted to me, I prepared to insert the music I had found and change the sound levels so that they were consistent. Here are the completed VTs:

Luckilly the video editors had done a really good job editing the videos, and so I found them very easy to work with. I did make a small change in the body image VT however. I wanted the music I had chosen to sync up with the action that was happening on-screen, and so with the original editors permission, I shifted some of the clips around which gave a really nice effect with the clips changing to the pace of the piano music.

Altering the sound levels was actually quite a laborious task. Although not particularly difficult in any way, a lot of time had to be put into the task and a lot of re-watching the same clips over and over again until they sounded correct. Fortunately, once I had finished editing the sound levels, our producer, Sophie was happy with the end results, and so the clips were ready to be submitted on time.

From this experience, I have learnt the importance of having good quality sound. it doesn't matter if the video itself is perfect, if the sound that was captured is too quiet, too loud or distorted in any way, the viewers watching will immediately switch off and no longer be intrigued by what is happening on-screen.
This is also evidence that not everything can be "fixed in post" and highlights the fact that having good quality sound recording equipment on the day of the shoot is an important aspect in film making.

Altering the sound in Final Cut Pro.