Avid Editing, Envy Post-Production and work experience in London!

This course is fantastic, (please touch wood everybody right now!) very hands-on, no holds barred and we are meeting real people in work who know all the tricks of the trade.

Today, Mat Appleton, head of client services at Envy Post-production house, came to visit Tremough and gave a great presentation on Envy, brought us all a drink (bonus!) and offered us work experience; fantastic, I feel very productive all of a sudden and I didn’t even give the talk! 

Envy Post Production
Avid

Over the Tamar to ‘Meet the UKTV Commissioning Editor’

Well to ring in the changes, in Devon that is not Cornwall, our course was fortunate enough to take part in a ‘Plymouth-Media Partnership’ event at the FootAnstey building in Sutton Harbour.

I was very appreciative of the trip for two reasons

1) The FootAnstey building was beautifully furnished, suited and booted also there were biscuits, water and hot drinks on arrival; very good hosts would go there again in a heartbeat!

2) The UKTV commissioning editor, Shirani Sabaratnam was an excellent speaker, very friendly, open to questions and succinct. We were provided with the specifications for programmes for channels such as Yesterday, Dave and Good Food in 2012/14. Also, and more critically she went through some of the process for getting programmes commissioned and the best way for independent production companies to get their ideas heard and well received.

So thank you very much again to our course leader Mel Mackie, it is so important that we are getting out there and meeting people in industry rather than sheltering in the university bubble; pop for jobs please!

UKTV 

Plymouth Media Partnership

“No speak Americano and pizza pie!”

Brief 3= “each group will produce 1x1” of “actuality” intercut with an interview shot in the previous week.”

“Actuality” is the filming of live action, something happening, and when it’s intercut with an interview the contributor should ideally be telling you what’s occurring in the action.

Well you may be able to spot a major problem that production group 4 are going to have with this task! Interview 1: Rob Curnow does not have a trade or an activity, that we know about, the vox pop interview contributors did not provide any details of anything lively that they do other than pasty eating and the interview 3: fish monger footage is unfortunately unusable because of the boom microphone being in shot all the way through and poor audio anyway.

So ‘thinking caps’ on, we went to ‘Belly Timber’ on Falmouth Moor where they make the most fantastic, rustic, and delicious homemade pizza. Shooting on the 5D again we have a really fantastic sequence starting with a general view of the shop, panning shots of the ingredients, tossing the pizza dough adding the cheese, peppers and cooking in the brick oven. However, we booked an interview with the owner Emily for this Saturday and unfortunately she had to pull out last minute due to mass pizza orders.

So dragging our feet, group 4 will troop to the seminar tomorrow morning with actuality but no interview until Monday afternoon or Tuesday, depending on what Dan confirmed with Emily. Let us hope that the fantastic soundtrack to this sequence the original version of ‘We no speak Americano’ will distract them all from the lack of interview!

Belly Timber Pizza, Falmouth

Interview 4: “I got to sit in the driver’s cab of the King Harry Ferry!”

Alongside the briefs that we get set for our ‘Unit 110-Introduction to Production’ module, we also get assignments from our technical workshops so off I went with my good friend Michaela Rose (thank you Michaela) to film an interview on the King Harry Ferry.

Lovely Nigel  on the King Harry Ferry, was one of the nicest people I’ve spoken to so far and a huge thank you to King Harry for being so accommodating; from my past lives I know what a fantastic organisation King Harry are, excellent online marketing and customer service.

Anyway, this homework was focussing on sound and after my past experience with a boom microphone and with Michaela’s good judgement we opted to shoot on with a lapel microphone and a P2 camera. It went really well, I conducted the interview wearing the headphones and monitored the sound levels on the P2 while Michaela filmed and when I took the results back we had got really good levels and great footage.

Only need to tweak the sound in ProTools cut the clips in Avid and I will have a completed and polished interview; and I had two free trips on the ferry in the driver’s cab! I am definitely very easily pleased!

King Harry Ferry

Interview 3: Boom microphones are like seagulls….

I thought that we should interview the fish-monger in Arwenick Street, because I have seen him in the past talking to his customers about fish and fishing. Additionally, I really like the open front to his shop which means the fish are clearly on display and I thought the white box frame might look neat on camera.

However, I did not account for the combination of one boom microphone, one difficult audio mixer and one low ceiling. I say boom microphones are like seagulls because on this occasion ours kept dropping into shot over our fish monger’s head! Additionally, it turned out that all day the boom microphone had not picked up sound of a good enough quality that we could use so I think we all ended up regretting taking the boom microphone along!

To conclude from the three interviews, I learnt the following four things:

1)     Boom microphones are a heavy object to carry around town-centres and are likely to pop-up in shot at any moment during filming especially in low ceiling rooms

2)     Always have your camera microphone switched on as a way to back up your audio!

3)     Cutaways enhance the narrative that your contributor is trying to tell and give you more options in the editing suite; I think with the ‘fish monger’ interview and Rob Curnow, we did not film enough cutaways.

4)     Chatty people do not necessarily make for confident or co-operative contributors

5)     Film as much material as you possibly can because it will give you more options in the editing suite and hopefully will help your interviewee calm the hell down!

Interview 2: “What do you think of the Cornish Pasty?”

In the tradition of programmes like the ‘One Show’, ‘Daybreak’ and ‘Inside Out’, group four decided to shoot a vox pop for our second interview. A vox pop is ‘voice of the people’ and captures general opinion on-screen so we decided to capture ‘gut-opinion’ on the Cornish pasty. A thanks to Henry Austwick on providing the idea; very generous and ingenious!

In particular, I think it was a useful exercise for Tim, our camera-man, because he had to adjust the camera to different environments at speed so as not to keep contributors hanging around, additionally, it was an interesting edit because the different environments required a quite bit of colour correction and audio adjustment to give all the clips continuity.

All in all, it was a successful shoot and we filmed some interesting responses. However, collecting enough contributors to fill a minute is very time-consuming and it is hard to second-guess who looks confident enough to speak on camera and who doesn’t.

(Although, everyone is happy to nose at the equipment and ask you what you are doing, most people looked petrified at the very idea of being filmed!)

Interview 1: “Just me and my old dog in Cornwall”

Brief 2= “each group will produce 3x1” interviews with three different people you admire for a specific reason.”

It is tough to think of people you admire, who will be interviewed on camera, at short notice, however, it is amazing how many people you attract when you go out on the streets with a boom pole and a JVC camera!

Our first interview happened for exactly this reason; unfortunately our planned contributor dropped out last minute and just as we were panicking about who we were going to interview Rob Curnow walked over! Rob is a really nice guy, who was born in London, moved to Coventry to work as an engineer and then moved to his “dream place”: Cornwall.

Rob proved to be quite the chatterbox; however, one of the more interesting aspects of the interview was Rob’s own editing of what he was prepared to say on and off-camera. It was surprising because he was so open off-camera and then guarded on-camera. This demonstrated the importance of finalising content before the interview and filming for long enough to give the contributor time to adjust; shoot for 10 minutes for every 1 minute you need to capture. More is best not less is more!

“Is Dan really going to walk into the sea? He’ll get wet trainers!”

For our second one minute story, Dan showcases his acting skills again to be lured into the sea by mythical creatures or ‘Sirens’; obviously Dan could have waded in up to his neck but as the story was only finished that morning and Dan had not got any spare clothes with him we stopped at mid-calf fully-clothed!

I learnt a number of top production tips on this shoot; firstly that you must not allow yourself to become to attached to footage because even if you spend ages framing your actor’s reflection in a rock pool or shoot multiple takes of your actor throwing a pebble into the same pool, the sequence still might end up on the cutting room floor!

My second top tip is if you are using shells, seaweed, pebbles, etc. dip them in sea water before shooting. We did this to some shells and seaweed we used for a close-up and it definitely heightened the colours but obviously just dip don’t drown the objects or the result will be unwanted dripping on camera!

My final and third top would be to fit the location to the story rather than tailor the story to the location. We really wanted to film on the rock pools which we all really enjoyed but we rushed the story-writing process to get there and this meant some last minute planning on the beach. Last minute is always less than ideal.

Making Coffee with Daniel

The final story we shot for this first brief, definitely proves the rule ‘keep it simple’ because it really and allows for experimentation.

We shot on the 5D camera again, and the sequence follows Dan making a cup of coffee in the kitchen of the Media Centre at Tremough Campus. Dan fills the kettle, boils the water, fetches out the milk, adds coffee granules, stirs, slurps and gives a cheeky wink! All these actions are timed to sounds we recorded during production on a zoom recorder and the soundtrack is a version of the ‘Spanish flea.’

This was a really good experience, we put the camera in the kitchen cupboard so we could film Dan’s face-to-camera while he chooses a mug and we re-boiled the kettle four or more times to get really good quality sound of the bubbling water and steam. Additionally, it was a good test of our editing skills as the sounds needed to be on-cue with the action and Dan’s movements needed to be snappy but provide enough content to fill a minute.

One misdemeanour in that when Dan opens the cupboard door to the camera, Catherine is caught on the sofa in the shot but this way none of us will forget to “clear the set” next time!

Facebook status: “I can’t sleep again!”

Course Brief 1 = “each group will produce 3x1” stories about a place or a person without dialogue.”

My production group is 'Group 4' and our first 1 minute ‘story’ titled ‘Insomnia’ is a stylish, (I say “stylish” because it was shot in high definition on a fantastic 5D camera) look at the night-time wanderings of an insomniac!

Kudos to Tim Hunt for his camera work, the close up of Daniel Whitehouse on the sofa is very dramatic (!) Also points to Dan for being such a good sport and taking the starring role; not sure he relished climbing all over the railings above Falmouth docks in the dark because it is one steep drop!

A key lesson I learnt from this production, is that voice from radio or television does constitute dialogue not background noise and therefore would have to be scripted in pre-production. Additionally, this assignment has really proved the golden rule of television, “show me, don’t tell me”, because as a viewer watching the insomniac updating his facebook status with “I can’t sleep again” is much more believable and personal than hearing the character say the words.

Switch on: MA Television Production

The first day at University College Falmouth and the beginning of a year studying a Masters in Television Production; I am going to learn about broadcasting, programme schedules, camera, script-writing, audio, editing, how to use Avid software (a mountain in itself!), programme commissioning….etc….

A good thing that one of my childhood nicknames was ‘square-eyes’ so at least primary-research will not be an issue; bring on the remote, sofa and fleece socks!

University College Falmouth- MA Television Production