5. (and 7) Workshop Outputs (Test Shoots)

One of the workshop challenges that we were to face was we had to make a 1-minute short story and we could choose the genre, I decided to do mine about a young woman finding something in her grandparent's war memorabilia box, the link to this video is below:

The unit's workshops were our test shoots and throughout these workshops, I had the opportunity to try out many different roles that I was interested in, these consisted of the following:

• Floor Manager
• Camera Operator
• Vision Mixer
• Graphics Operator
• Director
• Script Supervisor
• Cable Basher

Out of all of the roles listed above, I really liked being the Director and the Vision Mixer as I felt a lot less stress being in the gallery given that it was very quiet. Another reason why I liked these two roles specifically because I liked the feeling of being in charge of what comes out on screen and I always have a clear vision of the visuals I want for example what shots go where, I also enjoyed talking to the team over the communications as I felt very listened to, making our team even stronger. One trait that I think I need to work on when being a Director is that I am very impatient and I felt like I was rushing people to resolve all of the problems when I just needed to be patient and wait for the crew in the gallery to tell me that they are ready. Dr Thomas Barbian, a doctor with a PhD in Clinical Psychology, states that: "Patience allows you to persevere and make more productive decisions, often leading to greater success." (Barbian, 2017). With this in mind, I would take this into consideration when doing directing in the future.

I liked being the vision mixer because I also liked the idea of helping someone's vision of the shots come to life and I liked working with the Director as I could openly suggest some shot ideas to them and discuss this to aid in what the show would look like. I also liked the Script Supervisor role and for the same reason, I liked the Vision Mixer role. So to summarise, I preferred to be in the gallery than being on the floor. I also would've loved to try out being Sound Operator, however, because it was a very popular role in the class I never got the chance.

The roles I didn't really like doing from the list above were Floor Manager and Camera Operator, I didn't like these specifically because of the added pressure of being on the floor and in charge of something. For the Floor Manager role, I understand that it's quite similar to the Director with the only difference being one is in the gallery and the other is on the floor of the set, I felt an unnecessary amount of pressure and if something were to happen on the floor I'd feel that I would be to blame, even though I wouldn't. It is kind of the same reason for the Camera Operator role, if I was to press a button wrong on the camera, I would feel the same amount of pressure to fix the problem, I am also not that caught up in the camera terminology, for example, 'loosen' to zoom out and 'tighten' to zoom in.

I also didn't really like the Graphics Operator role as I'd think that I would get confused with the graphics and press the graphic an irrelevant amount of times, making the graphic flash on and off the screen. The Cable Basher role was also fun because I enjoyed helping one of the cameramen out by making sure they did not trip over the wires, however, I didn't see it as an important job like the Floor Manager, so I don't think I'd be happy to do this job on the floor of future productions.

Bibliography:

Barbian, T., (2017). The Skill of Patience - Columbia Metropolitan Magazine. [online] Columbia Metropolitan Magazine. Available at: https://columbiametro.com/article/the-skill-of-patience/ [Accessed 28 February 2022].

Sequencing & Actuality Workshop - 14/4/21

 

Today was our first day back at the Maidstone TV Studios, and we learned about actuality and how to structure questions for our interviews for our documentary and the best techniques to use when doing interviews. We were taught that there are three different types of interview, these are:

1. Hard Exposure - This type tends to be quite investigative and pushes the interviewee out of their comfort zone and forces them to come up with the answer that the interviewer wants or the company wants to hear to capture the audience's attention about what the interviewee is saying about a particular subject.
2. Informational - This type involves putting the audience in the picture of the interview. This includes making the audience feel like they can relate to the interview or feel like they are in the room when the interview is taking place.
3. Emotional - This type requires engaging with and revealing the subject's emotions about a particular topic. This is great to make the audience feel a certain emotion towards the interviewee, for example if the interviewee is having a rough time and is emotional in the interview, it would make the audience feel sorrow or empathy for the interviewee.

We decided that when we interview Zoe and Karl we are going to use a mixture of both Informational and Emotional. We decided this because we want the audience to relate to Karl and Zoe's stories in a way and we want them to feel inspired by them and their actions that they've gone through throughout this pandemic. We then practiced our questions on each other, with me pretending to be Zoe, filming the interview if we were to be filming the actual interviews, which you can see in the video above. However, it was our first time using the clip microphones and we didn't know what frequency to put the microphone on and when editing the footage and looking back at it, the audio was very pitchy and loud. So, when we film the actual interviews, we will put the microphones on a lower frequency and try angling the clip microphone to be less direct to the interviewee's mouth to make the audio less pitchy.

According to Marie Gardiner, a writer and photographer from North-East England says:

"Turning an omnidirectional lapel mic upside down is a useful trick in a studio environment or ‘dead’ space for reducing popping and sibilance. If you’re ‘in the field’ or somewhere where you’ve got an echo or lots of external noise then you’re better off using a cardioid and having it the right way up, taking into consideration mic placement and proximity to the speaker’s mouth." (Gardiner, 2015)

This technique was also suggested by my cousin who works in the Media industry and he has his experiences with microphones as he was on this course before I was. Since we are filming in a dance studio we will make sure that Zoe's and Zara's, the ex students, clip microphones will be facing downwards. However, we will have to have Karl's microphone facing upwards and we will consider the distance between the microphone and Karl's, Maddie's and Lewie's mouth.

Bibliography:

Gardiner, M (2015) Quick Tip: When to Turn Your Lav Mic Upside Down. At: https://photography.tutsplus.com/tutorials/quick-tip-when-to-turn-your-lav-mic-upside-down--cms-22408 (Accessed on 14/04/2021)

180 Degree Rule - The Wrong and the Right Way - Camera Workshop 13/11/20

These clips are shown as to what counts as crossing the line. We had filmed two, one following the 180 degree rule and one 'crossing the line' and not following the 180-degree rule. This is to show what it is like to follow and disobey the rules of the 180-degree rule.

Camera Workshop 6/11/20

 For this workshop, we were only given one instruction and choice of 3 to 4 locations. The instruction was the skit or scene had to have a chair in it and we had a choice of our two classrooms which we were based in and two lecture rooms that was on the same floor as us. My group decided on one of the lecture rooms. We then had to decide who would be the director, the cinematographer, the actress/actor and who wanted to be on audio. We then came to a consensus with my classmates that I wanted to be in front of the camera. We then had to decide what the short was going to be about. We decided that it was gonna be about a chair tester testing chairs and her getting annoyed because the chair is not up to her standards. After filming we started editing and we noticed that we did not get a shot of me without the pen in my hair, this made it a bit noticeable in the final edit but it was a very small mistake and it could've been resolved if we had more time to film and edit.