Demo/ Rough Music

One of the jobs appointed to me was to either source or create music for the 'As Live' production. This involved creating both 'Music Beds' and 'Stings' which would play during the production.

I was given some sources by the producers as to the type of music they would like to be incorporated in the production and I have taken an extensive look at them as well as other similar styles. I had the choice whether to edit the music that was given to me or another I could source, or to create my own original pieces. For now, I am aiming for the latter.

Upon looking at the demos, I realised they had a remixed style to them with off-beat rhythms and rum machines. I have tried to emulate this type of style and have made various demos of music beds, stings and extra pieces of music as tests. Here are a few examples:

I'm not particularly fond with the pieces as they are so far but theses are still only just rough version and will either need more polish or be reworked altogether. One of the directors for the production has seen these previews and they said that they just need polish but, like me, they didn't feel the stings worked very well. 

I shall try and make sure these will be polished up to good standard and I have agreed to make a group via social media where I can talk to and send pieces to the producers and directors so they can feed back on them and I can improve upon their feedback.

Promo Shoot Day 2

Our second shoot day didn't go as smoothly as the first. To start with, everyone was still quite annoyed about the footage from the previous day and thus there was much more time used to make sure that the lighting and the camera settings were correct and of an acceptable standard.

This unfortunately took up quite a lot of time and the shoot time became for less that the preparation time. I could tell that the presenters may have started to get a little annoyed. Despite this, we were able film everything we needed at the Rochester campus with one of the presenters pretending that they were on the catwalk. After several more shots of the presenters messing about with mannequins for the title sequence, we all went up to the Maidstone Studios in order to shoot the rest of the title sequence.

This included getting the presenters into a lift and filming the doors closing on them, having the presenters walk down a corridor as if getting ready to go on stage and then eventually entering through the studio door where the main title would presumably appear.

Again it was chosen not to have any real-time ambient sound so I was relegated to just camera assistant again. After the shoot, a very quick edit was made and the picture quality was far better this time and the edit itself was looking to a high standard.

Overall I feel this shoot day went well despite a few problems at the start. Now we just need to sort out when we can reshoot the previous footage again.

Promo Shoot Day 1

We shot the first segment of our promo trailer for the live production today. The filming took place in Sittingborn and held the same concept as our first test shoot day. However, we had both of our presenters to work with this time and will show them stealing the mannequin from the shop instead of the stand-in we had before. The director was also thankfully present this time, meaning that there was a clear view and focus as to what the promo should look like.

I was going to operate sound but the director decided that there would be no sound captured in real time and that it would all be edited in afterwards. Instead, I acted primarily as camera assistant to the main camera operator.

The shoot itself went rather quickly due to the amount of focus poured into it and we were done within the hour. The presenters were very happy to follow direction and gave us some great performances. OverallI am happy with the shots that we got and thought it would look great during the edit.

However, our editor came t us with a problem when it was found out that the footage looked very pixelated and the there was a lot of noise due to certain setting on the camera and some of the lighting conditions. This means that we may have to end up reshooting this which is rather annoying.

Behinds The Scenes Filming 1

At last it was decided that we would shoot some behind the scenes material during the studio rehearsal today. We also had our presenters in for the first time so thankfully there were no substitutes needed. I worked as sound operator and assistant camera, as is my appointed job for this production, and thus operated the various microphones we used including the 'shotgun' microphone, clip-on microphones and the boom microphone while monitoring the sound coming in through them.

We managed to get footage of various people doing their jobs, some having a somewhat comedic aspect to them which I am not sure was entirely appropriate. We also spoke to the director, the people operating the VTs and the vision mixing desk and even the presenters. Most people were happy to talk to us while others just didn't want to be shown on camera.

I did honestly get the feeling that we were actually bothering everyone and causing a nuisance to what they were supposed to be doing but this was the direction that our behind the scenes director wanted and thus this was the way it was shot.

The overall sound quality I found sounded of good quality. On the headset, during recording, there seemed to be an abundance of background noise but thankfully this didn't seem to be picked up nearly as much when we put the footage onto an editing software for review and each interviewee could be heard clearly.

We were told to make sure that the footage captured would not show anything that might reflect badly on a particular individual or group of people as people from the industry may be looking at these and watch how certain people act in a working environment. We took note of this an wuld never intend to mae anyone look bad, meaning that we would review all footage to make sure it is suitable before editing.

Overall I thought today went well and we hope to get more footage during future rehearsals and also during the actual time of production.


*This has been added after writing but unfortunately I was marked down for not being in attendance this day. Hopefully this blog and also the footage shot can help prove that I was indeed in attendance.

Transition Unit Briefing

Are you a...
-Writer?
-Producer?
-Director?
-Director of Photography?
-Editor?

Do you want to make...
-Documentaries?
-Drama?
-Current Affairs?
-Entertainment?
-Experimental?
-None of the above???

Transition is aimed at enabling you to select how you want yo spend your 3rd year as a creative...

You are not choosing a project you will do in the 3rd year, you are choosing your role and type of output.

Second Studio Practice

Today was the second day of studio practice and the first day of rehearsals for our actual show. While everyone involved with the studio side of the production went straight downstairs, the rest of the promo team and I were still slightly confused as to what we should as we are not involved in the studio side. It was decided by the promo director that we should use this opportunity that we should use this opportunity to work on our blogs despite being told that we could start filming behind the scenes footage during the rehearsals. I wasn't in complete agreement with this plan but stayed with them anyway as the decision had been made.

Soon enough the producers had come back from the studios and asked us if we would step in as either talent or as temporary presenters. Tough the others refused I decided that it would be a much better us of my time to help the studio production and went along with the producers.

I was eventually given the job as temporary presenter and was fitted with a microphone and given the script. Unfortunately there appeared to be two different versions of the script so there was alot of confusion caused by this. At last we started rehearsals after a lengthy preparation time and I was paired up with a third year student as a fellow presenter.

I stumbled several times reading the script on camera but this didn't appear to bother anyone. However, there were also plenty of mistakes made within the studio such as cameras not doing what was intended or something going wrong with the director, sound and the visual mixing desk. Thus we had to keep restarting every two to three minutes room the top.

This did become quite annoying though everyone handled it in a very professional manner with little to no complaint. However, by the time it came to having our lunch break, we had only reached page three on our twenty-nine page script.

After lunch I did hang around back in the base room to work on some of my blogs as it was something that needed to be done personally but I did anticipate that I would be called back down again. I wasn't in the end, so  my guess is that they were able to work without my help, though Ido feel some guilt if help was actually needed.

According to some others when the day had wrapped up, the session did go really well although they had to skip to the second half of the show to let the other director work as they were still stuck part way through the first half.

Studio Practice

Today was our first official day of practice within the studio working environment. This meant that we were each able to have a go at using some of the different pieces of equipment such as:

-Operating multiple cameras.
-Operating the sound desk
-Operating VTs
-Operating the mixing desk.

We were also each given a go at being the director for a small segment of a mock-up show created using students as stand-ins. I felt I wasn't particularly great as a director here as I lacked the confidence to tell people what to be doing over a microphone but I think it still went rather smoothly and thankfully there was a lot f help to avoid big mistakes.

Areas that I felt I did succeed in more than others were operating the sound desk. I had little to no problem using the sound desk and was able to easily mute and set each individual (wearing a clip-mic) to the right level so they were neither too quiet or too loud and distorted.

The other was operating the cameras which most people have become quite accustomed to by this point and I found that following the instructions through a headset was easy and the instructions were clear and easy to understand.

Its a shame that the snow during the previous week meant that we were a week behind on practice but we thankfully managed to get up to speed, almost doing two weeks worth of session. Now we can start properly rehearing our show next week.

I, along with the promo director and main promo camera operator, are unsure as to what part we shall play during these rehearsals as we are not involved in the studio part of the production. However, we should be able to think of something.