160mc – Editing people to people : Evaluation and Reflection

Tuesday 8th March 2011

10:00 am – Getting Camera out of loan shop – Ready to capture.

Once we had got the camera out it was time to head down to the mac room and begin capturing our footage taken in cardiff, using final cut pro.

I personally was not particular feeling very confident about filming in final cut pro because I have not used it before and I also have not edited very much footage in my previous education. However I had got a book out of the libary on how to use final cut to be on the safe side, so that was there for me to refer to if needed. So once we had the PDX10 out and the firewire we made sure that all the settings were correct and then we began to log and capture. As it logs and captures in real time we had to wait for all of the footage to capture that was on the tape. Real time basically means that how ever many minutes are on the tape is how long it will take to capture. Unfortanely this was one of our main problems, as we filmed more then we actually needed and ended up with 35 minutes of footage when we only need 3. As you can see this meant we had ALOT! more footage to work our way through then we specificly needed. This was really frustrating because this meant we had to watch through all the footage and write down the timecode of the shots that worked and we wanted in the final edit but it was rather time consuming and could have been prevented, had we been better organised.

 

Editing in Final Cut

 

Jen Editing :).                                                              Myself having a go.

 

Group Editing

We spent all afternoon sorting through the timecodes because we are a little pressured for time we decided not to transcript, I know we may have made a big mistake by not doing this process but because we felt we had so much editing to do we all discussed what shots using the timecodes worked best and which we wanted to use and began finalising clips.

One of our biggest mistakes is while filming we only had one microphone and as we had orginally planned to just film Richard as our documentary is focusing on his life and how he gets on with things, we also ended up filming Richard’s Wife Jean. We had not planned this but after talking to them both she had a lot of interesting things to say and as we had brought two cameras we had the equipment to film her.  However now that we are at the editing stage this is where the problem has hit us because we filmed her facial expression and reaction shots but the sound was only recorded on the one microphone, therefore when it came to watching the clips back we had to sync the audio to the clips. This was very frustrating and time consuming. We did however overcome this problem but looking back now we should have filmed separately or them sitting together, filming bits and pieces was very stupid and It has definetly been a learning curve.

So now because of having two seperate pieces of footage, we are trying to piece it together. For most of today we sorted through both Ritchie’s clips and Jean’s clips, each of us editing in pairs, first myself and Jenny and then Rhys and Gurraj. This just allowed the other pair to be doing other work while the other pair was editing.

6:30 – Packed up and went home.

After a really long day in the basement, I felt it was time to call it a night. There wasnt much more we could do and everyone was feeling very tired and needed to go home. We will have a fresh perspective to carry on with editing tomorrow.

Wednesday 9th March

As yesterday we sorted out the seperate parts of Jean and Ritchie, It was time to attempt to place the clips in an order. I hoped by the end of today we would have a rough cut atleast however this didnt work out as best as we had hoped. We powered on through it though working through the clips and placing them in an order using the time codes we had written down when working out it previously. This made it much easier when it came to placing the clips together because we could pick out the ones we wanted out of the ones we didnt.

 

Guys working on editing —– Screen shot of the documentary in final cut.

The edit so far, has been very difficult and much harder then it should have been. I feel this is due to the fact we experienced lack of skills with using the equipment. For example before we were ready to film the interview, the camera was left on for no reason or benefit. As the documentary was only to be 3 minutes, I feel this action was unnessarily needed and set us back a lot of time that we could have spent focusing on the main edit. As this happend when we came to capture the footage, we actually had 35 minutes of footage and I’d say 20 minutes of this was pointless footage that we need not need. This was one of our biggest problems I feel because if we hadnt of needed to sieve through the footage and cut all of the pointless footage out we could have had more time to focus on the rough edit and then finally the best edit.

Also another problem I felt could have been resolved, was the fact we didnt have much cutaway material to use. We have a lot of photographs to use but we didnt get much actually footage to use as cutaways, which I was dissapointed about. Looking back now I feel that I should have taken more of a responsibility to of made sure we had enough cut aways to experiment with and use however I left it with the person in charge of that job. As it was there responsibility.

Reflecting back on the filming process on a whole, I feel we made many mistakes and a lot of things could have been done better . I feel it was mainly down to lack of organisation and being prepared. Maybe it was because none of the group members had done much filming before and were not very confident in the process. I have learnt a lot myself though during this project :

* I have learnt that Pre – Production is extremely important and it makes the filming process go much more smoother and helps to avoid any major problems arising because you are prepared for everything.

* That working in a group can be very challenging. I feel that I have learnt to be more organised (atleast I tried pretty dam hard) and that its very important to have good, clear communication with all group members.

* Leave plenty of time to edit and enough time to produce a rough edit, before final showing.

161mc Through The Eyes Of A Proffessional

As one day we will all be proffesional hopefully, 161mc has really changed my perspective on how our proffesional identity can be created using some of the very things we learnt in this module and are already using.

This module has inspired me to be more creative, I feel that with the tools and applications I have been using over the past few months I have developed a skill which I hope to develop futher. I have been experimenting with facebook a lot since we did the first artefact- the banner, in the workshop all them weeks ago. I have been taken more photographs and uploading them in photoshop and playing around with the fonts and colours to create effects. I had used photoshop a little at a-level but I never felt I had a very strong skill in using it. However since the workshop on photoshop, I know feel more confident in enhancing my photographs and I hope to soon have an online photoshop blog where I can publish a few bits and bobs of my work. I have always had a very fond interest in photograph and with the use of all these new web 2.0 software I can now reform this passion.

In terms of a starting point, to be creative you can use past projects for instant one of our 161 module tasks was to re-package three projects into one product and form a narrative. This was interesting to do and I feel for me personally it challenged me and made me really think how I could visually present this to an audience with a new narrative that could be digested easily. Also presenting it a way that identified me as a professional, I think I may need to work on developing my own proffesional identity however I have learnt a lot of new skills which I can now enforce in future tasks and developments.

Reflecting back over 161mc so far in this module…

So far during my time working through this 161mc module, I have learnt how to use many more web media applications and opened my eyes to a whole brand new way of re-telling a narrative. ( To pick just one thing out).

I have become a lot more open to experimenting with new software or websites to create mash ups of existing products or create brand new products. I have become very familiar with screen capture software in which you can record any movement that is happening on the screen at the time of recording. I think its very impressive and to be honest have used it a fair bit in my 161 module.

 

Here a few screen shots of the screen capture software ” Camtasia”

A few really good websites I have learnt and develop new skills in are :

Prezi.com – I was really taken back by prezi, its a whole new way to present your information. It gives a  new,exciting and funky way of show your work off instead of using a powerpoint. I used Prezi several times in this module to show present assignments. I actually used prezi for my add vantage module presentation, I thought it would be a usefull tool to use as no one would much experience with using prezi before and maybe had not seen it in action. It brought a whole new presentational experience to the room.

 

Here a few printscreen shots of the presentation tool prezi.

Twitter: I had used twitter before and I am quite knowledgable on social media however I had never really used it before and was not a tweeter. Since starting this course I know post regular tweets and not have an application on my blackberry. I feel that because we have been using many different new applications it has widen my knowledge on what is out there ready for us to use and how simply and easy it is for us to begin creating our own products and distributing our work online, through various web 2.0 applications such as new media : Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr and mashups such as “bed intruder song” distributed using youtube.

In what also here in this module that I have been introduced a brand new software such as “Dreamweaver”. I had never experienced dreamweaver before and although I did find it difficult to work with, I now have the skills and knowledge that can be developed with practice on how to produce websites. I did not use dreamweaver that much for this module personally because I felt I needed more time to get to grips with how to use the software and as a website wasnt essential for this module assignment term one, I did not create a website for any of my artefacts.

Goodbye Coventry….Hello Cardiff :)

Sunday 6th March 2011

Team Extreme : Myself, Gurraj Sandhu, Jenny Sheen, Rhys Thomas Lindsay.

08:30 – We all headed to coventry station, each bringing the equipment we all took home friday night. We all spilt the equipment up so that everybody was responsible for a part of it. We wanted to give ourselves plenty of time to arrive and meet each other and find out platform. This was a good job really because we ended up moving platforms haha!.

 

09:07 – Coventry to Birmingham New Street.  We arrived at Birmingham New street around 09:30 and we then needed to get the train from here to cardiff, however it wasnt untill 10:30 so we sat down in a cafe and rested. The equipment is much heavier then you think especially when your not used to carrying it around.

10:30- 12:30 – Arrived In Cardiff : From here we got a taxi from the train station to Richards house. They were expecting us and were ready to greet us when we got there. Both Richie (as he prefered to be called and Jean his wife). After we arrived we familiarise ourselves with the layout of the house and discussed where the best place would be too film and where the best camera angles would be situated from.

 

The Guys Setting up equipment 🙂

 

Ritchie with myself and gurraj                   –         Jean reading the paper 🙂

1:15-4:00- “Mock Shoot  + Filming + Bit of a chinwag.

Before we began shooting, although we had everything set up and the camera’s were taped and white balanced. We began just talking to Jean and Ritchie and trying to get them as comfortable as possible, they were a very talkactive pair which was great. They both had amazing things to talk about and were a delight to work with. After myself, Jenny and Gurraj discussed the final stages of the questions, We began filming and Rhys began asking some questions and just having a conversation really. We didnt want it to turn into a question and answer sessions, where Ritchie only answered our questions we just wanted the conversation to flow. I personally think it went very well, mainly down to the fact Jean and Ritchie were amazing to work with and they were happy to talk about Ritchies condition and how their lives are centred around Ritchies needs and his health.

15:30 – We dedicated some time specificly to capture cut away shots of old photographs around the house and of Ritchie himself. Jenny wanted to experiment with a shot of Ritchie where he is breathing in and out with the tube attatched to him, this was very good shot and we all decided it was a worthy cut away shot.

16:00 – We made sure that all of the release forms were signed and up to date, we should have prehaps got them signed before filming but we already had verbal permission to feature both Ritchie and Jean in the documentary we just needed to get a hard copy to support this.

Rhys Thomas Lindsay, Jenny Sheen, Gurraj Sandhu, Myself, Ritchie Lindsay and Jean Lindsay 🙂

I feel the concept for the people to people project was a very strong one and we made the right decision to go with this idea however I feel the visual have possible let it down. There a key shots and cut away which really capture the vunerable of our character but I feel some of the editing techniques have maybe let us down slightly. However I also feel that the things Richard says really captures the emotion and that is what is great about this documentary piece. There are things we could have improved on, Lots I would say however there are also some really great pieces in it. I hope that from this process I have learnt from the mistakes and will enforce that in future projects.

Artefact Two – 161mc (Task Two)

160mc projects : Jason – Creating cabinet of curioisties character, Poetic Eyes, Cabinet of Curiosites.

http://prezi.com/e_qh6t8ggdxr/jasons-photographing-journey/
For my artefact two I decided to present it on a prezi and my three 160mc projects are: My Cabinet of curiosties this is presented in the way in which I have taken one subject from my cabinet and used that as my theme and used it to develop a narrative. I felt that photography was very relevant and be used in an interesting way together with my other two projects.
My second project was taken from the audio drama/cabinet person: In which I used our character “Jason” and as he has a passion for photography this is where my idea develops from and is the foundation for the narrative.
My narrative consists of portraying Jasons journey as he travels the world taking photographs and using different new media tools to display his work.
My thrid and final project was using the poetic eyes concept and trying to develop the poetic concept using photographs that “Jason” had took.
Hopefully combining all of these three projects together has created a brand new narrative exploring Jasons life and introducing a whole new chapter through is photography journey.

–

Using a screen capture tool called Camtasia, I have produced some videos of Jason experimenting in photoshop. To show a rough idea of the tools and effects he used on the photographs.
The photographs are not brillant, but I wanted to show Jason using software such as photoshop to show the development of his work and how he is at the beginnings of editings his photographs.

( Watch up to 3:08. For some reason after that it goes black.

🙂

Artefact Three – 161mc (Task Three) A-B Project

http://prezi.com/niofieockab2/jodie-locks-and-the-three-dares/

For my thrid and final artefact, I decided to present it as a prezi again as I couldnt think of another way to present it and I really liked using prezi’s so I gave it a bash again.

After alot of thought, I finally went with an idea that involved using the story of Goldilocks and the three bears but hopefully we a modern twist on the storyline. My story is called Jodie Locks and the three dares. I tried to include images and screen captured material to add visuals to the final product.

I feel the narrative could have been better and be stronger development, unfortanely I was running low on ideas and plodding along to see what the final outcome would be. I like the idea of using the play on words with the name : Jodie Locks and because I wanted something to rhyme with the “three bears” part I jotted down a few notes about what I could replace it with. I came up with:

• Three Stares
• Three Cares
• Three Dares *
• Three Fares
• Three Hairs.

They are not great play on words, however I really wanted to get something that resembled the “three bears” part of the wording. I decided to roll with the first idea for the name and I think overall it worked quite well. I feel the narrative and possibly the web media tools could have been used more to support the narrative but I gave it a good shot.

I used images I found on the internet and via google and videos via youtube. I also used a screen capturing tool called Camtasia to help embed the google map into the narrative. I wasnt sure the best way to achieve this therefore I used Camtasia, as Ive used it previously on this module.

My Google Map – I decided to place a google map into my prezi. Its fits in with the narrative quite well as Jodie Locks goes to pick up her friends ready to go to the party. I placed a few bookmarks on the place: Jodie’s House, The Party, Getting the bus, Just to show a rough snippet of Jodie’s day of the party.

Off To Cardiff We Go….

Richard Lindsay

When we first started this “People to People project” and chose the subject to be on Richard, Rhys’s grandad we had discussed about travelling up to Cardiff to film there as Richard lives there. We felt it would be better for him not to have to come all the way down to Coventry when we could go up. However the idea never really got off the ground and we just began planning and organising for the trip he was taking down here to see Rhys. We figured as he was coming down we could film then.

After discussing all of the groups ideas in the workshop friday (25th) afternoon the idea of travelling to Cardiff and filming there arose again and after much consideration we decided we would go to Cardiff.  Everything from then has been a bit of a panic, its all under control of course but I just want to make sure everything is organised and ready, so nothing goes wrong.

So far :

Tuesday 1st March : We had another group meeting situated in the ET mac room, where we discussed train tickets. I also spoke to the loan shop to ask if there would be any problems booking out equipment for sunday/monday. I had a feeling it would be okay but I wanted to check first. Rhys booked his and Gurraj ticket and I did mine and Jennys, We thought it would be easier to book in twos as it wasnt fair on the one person who had to buy four peoples tickets in one go.  We are going from Coventry station to Birmingham New Street and from there we are going straight to Cardiff Central. We are going for the 9:07 train sunday morning and coming back 11:45 monday morning. Rhys has spoke to his Grandad and he is more then happy to put us up for the night in his house, Jenny,myself and Gurraj were happy to stay over in a hotel but Rhys said it was okay and they had plenty of room. However as a plan B I have looked into hotels we can stay at, it just means we will have to spend more then we had ancipitated on a room.

I also booked some of the equipment out from the loan shop, for friday afternoon due back monday afternoon. However there was a problem with cameras and I am yet to have booked out a camera which I am alittle concerned about but I will try again tomorrow morning and discuss it with my group members and find the best solution to this problem. Rhys and Gurraj spoke to Paul and Bex about equipment and Gurraj did a list for me so I booked out what they recommended. We also have a tape.

So thats everything up to date up untill now. Roll on sunday. 🙂

I Shall post a production post as soon as I get back with images and lots to talk about.

Here is a video using Camtasia software of the developments of our group discussions using a group we created on facebook.

Friday 4th March : 16:00 – ET Loan Shop.

The time had finally come to get all of the equipment out for our trip to cardiff. The list of equipment consisted off :

2x PDX10. They were not the cameras we had orginally planned to use, but unfortanely we found it very difficult to get any Z1’s or Z5’s therefore we got what we could out as we needed a camera and I personally didnt want to risk leaving it any later then (thursday) to book out the equipment.

2x Manfrotto Tripods – As we had two cameras we felt it was only right to take two tripods. Even if we used one of the cameras to do held hands shots it was a “better safe then sorry” situation to take both.

4x XLR Cables – We got more xlr cables then we probably should have but again as we were traveling down to cardiff we wanted to be safe even it meant carrying more equipment atleast we had it on us to begin with.

2x Mic Stands – One short and One long- this was my decision to take both as I felt we wouldnt know which was more suitable untill we got to richards house and planned where we would film from.

1x Microphone.

2 x Battery Charges – Incase we needed to charge the batteries over night or for a period of time.

1x Dedo Lights- As we wont know how much lighting we will need untill we assess the location.

Talking to richard. Skype Call + Phone Call

25th February

After our 160mc lecture, we set up a group meeting in the basement of ellen terry where we tried to set up a skype call to richard so we could talk to him more about the project. Rhys suggested we do a skype call because it was half term and his family would be down with him and could help set it up for him, plus rhys has it on his laptop also therefore it made talking to richard a lot easier. However unfortunely due to technoloical problems we had to bail out of this and change to a phonecall instead. Before we rang richard back we made a list of key words to help promt us on the things we needed to discuss. We also read some of the questions we wanted to ask him so he could get a feel of the type of things we would be disussing on the day of the shoot. We will also be emailing the questions ahead of the shoot day to help familiaise himself and have time in advance to think about his answers.

 

Here a few photographs I took using my Blackberry phone to document the meetings. They are not brillant and hopefully for the days of the shoot I will be using my Canon 450D which should produce a better quality of pictures.

During the phonecall we talked to Richard and began to discover his character and develop an understanding. It was not as successful as it would be if it was a face to face meeting but unfortanely due to the fact he lives in cardiff, at the time we felt It would be the next best thing as We wouldnt be talking to him untill he came down. Richard seemed very up for the documentary and didnt have any issues or concerns and was very friendly on the phone.

We finshed up the meeting and planned to discuss more on our facebook group over the weekend and following days. The plan was to start to get things ready for when Richard comes down on friday the 4th of march and discuss storyboards and what shots we wanted and how we were going to visual it.

Artefact One – 161MC (Task One)

The Banner

For my banner, I decided to present it in a style using frames to portray a gallery look. I chose to have the background a light, natural colour as this represents the gallery/ museum feel. Also with the frames I kept them a similiar colour to colour co-ordinate with the wall and to keep the theme.

Having three frames in total, two either side displaying images and the middle with a quote. I read this quote “The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams” and is inspired me and I thought it would be a good postive quote to have on the banner. Either side of the frame are two frames with inset images, I was trying to express my few of my ambitions using the images etc cameras = photographer, passport = wanting to travel, inbox/email = developments of technology. I do feel the images could be better as they dont indicate a clear theme which doesnt give an significant message to anyone entering my blog. As the header is the first thing people will see when going onto my blog, Its a good postion to set out a clear message or to display an representation of either my proffessional ambitions or personal life.

The Photoshop Development.

• Firstly I opened a new page with the measurements 960 x 198 which were the requirements for the header. This would allow me to create on the page and upload it as the header simply and easily.
• Using the rectangle tool, I drew a rectangle to fill the whole banner and made it a earthly sandy colour from the colour panel.
• After finding a picture of a frame from google, ( I was going to take my own photograph and use that but I didnt find a frame that looked right). I uploaded it onto the page and using the free transform tool I adjusted the size and postion to where I wanted it to go. Doing this two more times to present three frames in total.
• When the frames were in postion, I uploaded the images into each frame and using the free transform tool again, I slotted them into place and resized them to look right.
• For the middle frame, I used the text tool and selected the size I wanted the font to be in and then double clicking on the layer then brings up a box called layer style, this is where you experiment with how you want the text to look. On the left hand side there are different sections, I clicked on Stroke. Here you can change the size and the colour which produces a colour blob around the text to double the word and add an impact to the word. I went with a blue font and a black colour around the text, as contrasts against the background.

 Heres a little video I did using Camtasia software, illustrating how I made the banner in a screen capture of myself working in photoshop. It helps to visual it better 🙂

 

Prezi On Fairytale Research

http://prezi.com/t1eivbzswxoz/fairytales-where-did-they-come-from/

– My prezi displaying some research I did into the background into where fairytales orginated from.
However I cant seem to embed the prezi into this blog post at the moment, therefore I have just posted the link. I hope to resolve this issue as soon as I have figured out the solution.