I'd done my recce the day before filming, Chris had his decks set up in his room so we were to film there. Although he had to fit into a small gap between his desk and the wall, the location checked out pretty well. the lighting was great and there was a huge space to set up my tripod to face the decks. I planned to set the tripod in front of Chris while I filmed from the side to get a closer look at the decks but that's not what ended up happening! Here's a look at the side shot I had planned...
On the day of filming it took me around an hour to set up the tripod camera till I realised that if I left it alone it would tilt upwards, so I had to abandon the use of it. I ended up getting behind the decks next to Chris and filming the decks. This actually proved to be the best method cos the focus should really be on the decks as he's explaining the buttons, features and techniques. I filmed an intro and outro using the tripod because I could actually control it. I placed an Edirol R09 microphone on the desk to record the sound and it proved to be a lot better than the internal mic on the mini-DV camcorder. For all the continuity geeks out there you can blatently see the R09 at the head of the mixer sometimes...
I enjoyed working with Chris, he was quite a natural performer, and although I had asked if he wanted to script his lines beforehand he was much happier to just explain things off the top of his head, which proved to be great because the explanations are very clear, and clarity is the key to a good instructional video!
So it's time for a bigger project, all new responsibilities, and I definitely decided to take this one easy. Our individual projects were to be 3-5mins long and could be a documentary or instructional video.
My original plan was to document the trials and tribulations of my friend Balve as he attempted to set up a radio station at Bath Spa University. A documentary that would involve interviews with several members of the faculty, student union and the members of URB Radio at Bath University. I was curious to investigate why exactly Spa couldn't didn't have a radio station but Bath University did. A bold project that would have never fit into a 3minute video.
The idea I ended up running with was to do an instructional video on how to DJ. Earlier in the year Balve and I had attended a How to DJ workshop held by the Bath Spa events DJ Chris Bibby (aka Mister Bibby). I emailed him a few weeks before the deadline asking him if he was interested and he (luckily) replied saying he'd be happy to help.
After the DJ Workshop I searched the web and found a series of How to DJ Hip Hop videos by DJ Colione. The videos I'd seen all used the same fixed angle but I wanted to use different angles in my video and make it professional looking.
Searching for How to DJ on Youtube leads you to a lot of videos of people taping themselves DJing but not actually explaining anything about the process. This was the only video I could find that had some explanation involved:
Last week I helped Rob out doing filming for Bath Rugby, we got to use their equipment which was refreshing as I found their tripod a lot easier to use than the ones we have at the Uni! They had two Sony Handycams and a tripod. We had to film Kate the clubs media manager interviewing Coach Steve Meehan. We decided to place one camera on the tripod which I volunteered to operate since I was quite nervous, Rob used the other camera to film cutaway shots.
In the editing stage I was quite embarrassed looking at what I'd filmed, I did a lot of panning between Kate and Steve I think it would have been best to leave the camera focused on Steve. None of the zooms or pans that I did were particularly smooth and a lot of times there was no cutaway footage to use to cover it because Rob changed the location of where he was filming quite often.
The final product wasn't bad, David who is the other media manager seemed happy with the footage, however we all agreed that next time we shoot an interview we should use a 2 camera set up, one for each person. There's a work placement that students can apply for to do this job every week, I know Reuben is applying and other people on the course might be as well so good luck to them!
After collecting my 3 tapes of footage for my one minute montage our lecturer Phil put forward the idea to enter the finished products into the Bath Music Challenge. The rules were simple, submit a 60 second video using one of the music pieces provided on their website. I immediately decided to do two different edits, one for my official submission and one to be entered into the challenge.
There was a description about using the 60x 60 theme in your work. After a few days of sitting in front of my project attempting to edit to a song by the Apostates I thought about making the montage up completely of sixty 1 second shots. After a trial edit I decided this would help me since I was in a bit of an editing slump, however I had my heart set on using a split screen sequence, so I decided to incorporate those shots and let them run for longer, for example if i split the screen into 4 shots then i would let the sequence run for 4seconds.
Although I felt I'd taken a massive leap in the editing process, I found I had to recapture shots completely because now I had to come up with 60 unique shots and for some reason there were about 15 of Mike, the Apostates' drummer! This was extremely time consuming but once that was done all I needed to do was create my split screen sequence using a youtube tutorial video I had found earlier, which you can check out here:
One of the biggest problems I had was that after capturing my footage most of the shots were in different aspect ratios, even when some of them were done in the same session. I spent days trying to recapture and reconnect the media with no luck whatsoever. Eventually Phil helped me by creating an EDL (Editors Decision List) and using that to source a new sequence and connect to the relevant media clips, through this method my work was saved. A solution to a problem neither me or Phil could quite understand.
I'm quite proud of my montage, the footage is cut so quickly that it fits with the up-tempo punk song I chose. I was also happy that at a couple of points some of the footage matches in time with the song. I feel this has so far been the most rewarding experience of using Final Cut Pro because I had to deal with certain problems I'd never encountered before such as rendering media, using multiple tracks and the overwrite key and motion tab to create split screen sequences, and exporting EDL's which I don't quite understand but saved me from having to re-edit my montage completely which was a really tedious process of finding sixty 1 second shots that looked good!
The easter break was filled with festivity, drinking and chocolate and by the final week I needed to get my head down and do some work. I had previously brainstormed ideas for a montage which included concepts such as transportation, travelling, food preparation, dancing and musical instruments. None of these involved a specific narrative but instead would be an experimental collection of shots.
I decided to go with the musical instrument concept and got my main inspiration from music videos that use montage to show different live clips, sometimes showing energetic performances played to slow songs, I was particularly interested in the Strokes music video for Reptilia in which the majority of the shots are close-ups of the bands instruments and shown in a split screen format, I was keen to emulate this video using lots of experimental shots of the instruments, but I ended up simply capturing the bands playing instead. I was mainly looking forward to this exercise as a way of experimenting with shots and becoming more confident using a camera. I managed to do two different shoots for my montage, one which involved me filming my friend practicing on drums and playing guitar on his roof.
Since filming the footage I have only reviewed it once but I am happy with some of the composition for the shots of him playing guitar and on some overhead shots of him playing drums where I stood on his window ledge and pointed the camera downwards. I also consciously did crane, panning and tracking shots at this point.
The second film shoot was of a friends band practice where i collected an hours worth of footage. Problems arose with lighting, as I had left the white balance on the outdoor preset from filming on the roof so the majority of the shot looks quite dark and slightly brown. After changing the white balance to indoor the colour looked a lot better. I had a lot of trouble getting any two of the band members in shot at the same time as the room was too small, even standing in the very corner didn't help much. I've definitely learnt that recceing a location with a camera before shoot is the best thing to do, and the more open the space the better the shots will be.
I had planned to film the Apostates at band practice however they had to cancel at the last minute, luckily I already had footage of a gig they played a few weeks earlier so I decided to use that. The venue is far too dark so I had to use nightvision which gives everything a green tint, during this shoot I moved around a lot to get different shots and found that there were some decent shots of the band and they are very energetic performers which made it interesting to watch and provided a contrast to the previous bands laid back band practice.
Our first exercise in the Introduction to Video module was to create a 60-90 second video montage. We were given mostly free reign to experiment with different shots and clips. A quick check on the wikipedia page for montage sequence will define it as " a technique in film editing in which a series of short shots is edited into a sequence to condense narrative." Montages in film are almost always used in this way.
Sergei Eisenstein is the most well known figure when discussing montage, he has been noted for his use and academic writing on montage techniques, contributing to what is known as soviet montage theory. This theory describes 5 different types of montage sequence which differ in the complexity of the meanings its trying to communicate and of the cinematic techniques it uses.
Upon reviewing my finished montage my work falls into the "metric" montage category.
In early March our class took an impromptu trip to the egg theatre, a small theatre that is part of Bath Theatre Royal. We went to recce the theatre in order to film a performance of 'A Midsummers Nights Dream' which was part of their two week Shakespeare season. Our lecturer Phil made inquiries about the sound, which was a smart move considering sound is often the main aspect of filming that is neglected. The egg theatre was small and well sound proofed which would work to our advantage.
We decided on using a Sony Z1 and placing it at the very back of the theatre facing straight at the stage and to use two handheld panasonic cameras to make up a mult-angle film shoot. At the time Balve, Reuben and Mike volunteered to be cameramen while Phil would be the sound recordist setting up a directional mic to record the sound.
