Consider the consequences

(27.10.09)

We were given the task in class to create a video for a competition, and the title we were given was 'Consider the consequences' - the brief for this video was to demonstrate the consequences of under age drinking, showing the effects and trying to convince underage drinkers to stop drinking, or to prevent them in the first place.

Our video did not turn out how we planned it, and I was not happy with the result at all. I was very disappointed at how our video turned out. I put this down to a lack of planning, but also rushing the story line. We were well prepared at the beginning, we found some actors in the lower school, as we thought the representation of students wearing school uniform was important to show in our video. We felt that it was a good idea because it would help students around the county to relate to the characters in our video.
We planned that we would show a character collapsing at the end to show the real effects, we also planned that we would show students attempting to get someone older to buy them alcohol, and then show them taking it to the forest and drinking it there, as it is a known thing that younger people go to drink out in the streets or in local forests or wooded areas in attempt to drink without being seen.
Because we were taking students outside the school grounds during school time, we had to have a couple of members of staff to escort them.
The day we selected to film, we had to go ahead with, but the weather was awful, and it was so difficult to film. The members of staff were concerned that it was not good to film with the students outside in such weather so they kept trying to rush us to finish filming, and we were under a time limit of 2 hours for our lessons anyway.
With the weather being the way it was and the members of staff trying to rush it up as quick as possible, the ending had to be cut short and a couple of members of our group decided that the ending should be as quick as possible so they said that it would still work if we put the students saying they were going to be sick, and then quickly ringing for an ambulance. This made no sense really when we watched it back, because people are sick everyday and ambulances aren't just called for that.
Overall I was disappointed with our finished product, and drew the conclusion that large groups do not work well together as the more people in the group the more likely there is to be conflict, as there are a lot of ideas. There were several times when a couple of people did not get on well in our group due to such a lot of ideas.
I have also learnt that you need to ensure you have more than enough time to film because when we done ours we found that we did not have enough time to do it in as the day we filmed it was raining all day but we had no option but to get it done.
Even though we did not have an excellent video, I learnt a lot from this experience.

Filming the PSA - Women's safety

In today's lesson we began to film our PSA. Due to unforseen circumstances I did not attend the lesson previously, however my group quickly and efficiently filled me in on the story board and what I had missed in the lesson.
We got to filming, and our first job was to find the characters, we got our main characters, (3 girls and 1 boy) and began filming behind the back of the school.
The original plan was to film at a pub, however due to the time schedules it is difficult to be able to get to the pub, film, and get back in under an hour.
We began filming our first few shots, and these went really well. The weather outside was ideal because it was not windy, therefore the sound was not distorted and there were no distractions.
We managed to shoot about 13/14 clips and it went really well. We will be finishing them next lesson and then beginning to edit them again on iMovie - I found this lesson gave me more confidence in filming because it enabled me to get used to a different surrounding for filming and learn how to film in the appropriate shading/lighting due to the sunshine.
I also felt more confident in filming because after watching my filming afterwards, espcially the panning, I felt that it looked quite good in comparison with the other times I have filmed.

Public Service Announcement - Research

Today in lesson we were told of the upcoming task we have to prepare for. We are to shoot a short film announcment, about Women's safety or Women being raped - and the cautions they must take.
I found out in my research that:

A public service announcement (PSA) s a non-commercial advertisement broadcast on radio or television. They are aimed at either informing, educating or entertaining the public.

This was one video link that I discovered that was informative upon the Swine Flu epidemic that is currently spreading.

http://www.nowpublic.com/world/swine-flu-important-government-public-safety-announcement

I found that this was good as it was extremely informative and educational for the public.
I am currently trying to research for videos on YouTube about Public service announcements, but cannot find ones that are real from the government, so will keep researching and edit this post!

The Phone Call

We were given the task in our last two lessons to go out and film clips for a piece called 'The Phone Call'. This consisted of a given set of shots we had to film.
We chose our first character, and decided we would set him in the common room, but taking note of what happened last time we took note of the mise-en-scene and actually sat him in the corner of the room, where it looked refurbished with all the new chairs, so it seemed a very clean and well created atmosphere with good surroundings.
We filmed several shots, and I took note of what we had 'Dan' say. he said "Hello, You alright? Yeah I'm fine thanks."
It occured to me that the second character would have to respond to this chat, and it wouldn't have sounded right if he was saying the same thing back, so we had Dan say the above, and then 'Jez' said "Hi mate, yeah I'm fine. You?"
It seemed realistic to take note of this because we knew when were going to edit our filming on iMovie, we would have to change the clips round and put them in order that made the filming seem realistic.
I felt that our filming was so much better compared to last time, and I felt I had improved too, because I was taking note of the small things that I didn't realise before, like making sure I did not cut the heads off!
If I had to level myself right now, for that piece, I'd say I was verging on becoming a level 3. I do not believe I have yet had the correct level of experience with filming to be a solid level 3, and I believe practice is the key to being able to film correctly, learning and developing your own technique that works well.
I really enjoyed this piece of work, it helps working in a group too because we all learnt from each other's mistakes, not just our own.

The Phone Call - Our story board

For 'The Phone Call' (overall summary in following post) my group designed a storyboard that we would follow in filming our different clips. We took time on our storyboard and made it realistic so that we would stick by it and make sure our plan went as intended.

The first page of our storyboard:


Our drawings weren't very good! But it gave our plan an overview of what we were expecting our first 4 shots to look like.

The second page of our storyboard:


The third page of our storyboard:



The fourth page of our storyboard:

Overall I think that the storyboard will help us in the filming of The Phone Call as we have been able to plan ahead and already know what is expected to come out of this. I will post another blog in a couple of days to write about how the filming went.

Filming - Wednesday 10th June

On Wednesday 10th June we were given the task to go out again but this time film a tour of the school for prospective new sixth formers.
In our filming we tried to involve a range of shots. For the introduction to our piece we filmed our head of year, and Matt was in charge of filming this. When reviewing this we felt he held the camera still very well, and it was a very good shot of a medium close up, however, the positioning of Mr Taylor was not that good, he appeared to be a bit low and it became evident that we could have positioned the camera a bit lower so he was in the centre of the screen a bit more.
For our next shot we filmed the common room. Overall the shot was well done however the common room may not have been the ideal choice as the room is currently in the middle of refurbishment, therefore it became evident we didn't really think about the setting at the time.
The next shot was a tour of the sixth form block, we thought at the time it was a good idea but it was only when I watched it back that I realised just how long we were filming it for, and it got boring, and there was silence when there shouldn't have been. There were also a few faults such as when we were pointing out the different rooms, we focused the camera on the door and looking back it did not look right and it looked a bit pointless.
Overall I felt much like the last lesson I learnt a lot from this lesson and also feel I have a greater understanding about what is right to be in a shot and that you must consider the scene you are shooting and whether it is relevant or not.

Filming

On Monday 8th June we were set the task to go out and film several shots. We went in a group of 4 and decided to film our shots around the school. During this session I learnt a lot about the different shots involved such as; extreme close up, medium close up, long shot, medium long shot, over the shoulder, tracking, panning, tilting, two shot and many others. For my first real time at filing I don't think I done too bad with getting to grips with what the shots are howevere there were some obvious faults such as when I was filming a medium close up it was not until I watched the footage back that I realised I had cu the top of Matt's head off.
As a group we also discussed the fact that we did not realise it would be fairly hard to even just hold the camera still and a certain skill would need to be developed to be able to hold it still.
Overall I feel this lesson taught me a lot and the next time I film shots I will be able to recognise and hopefully avoid these faults.