Camera & Lighting Assessment

I was so scared before going into the assessment on Tuesday. Not because I did not know what to do, but just of the time limit i had to do it in.
Me and Ada were doing it at the same time time - so at least I wasn't alone. We both went in at the start and got told what we had to do and where all the equitment were.
The clock had started and we only had an hour to set up the camera and light a manicin that was standing in the middle of the room.
I quickly rushed over to the camera equitment and took it over where i started taking it out. I felt i was really comfortable doing this part and managed to get the tripod and camera up in no time at all. I then plugged in the monitor and starting cofiguring it. I sometimes get stuck on this as to which bits i have to line up with each other, but overall i thought i did okay and only needed some of Rays help. But after Ray had shown me how to do this I realised I had been matching the wrong collumns up, and was easily fixable for next time. I then went on to doing this viewfinder. I have always found this hard for some reason and can never get the contrast or brightness right. When Ray came over to check, he explained what was wrong and changed it to show me so I knew how to do it in future. I then did backfocus which I have also been struggling on but with Rays tutorial made everything much clearer. The last thing to do on the camera was the timecode and to do bars, and i easily did this as i freshened up my memory the day before in a tutorial with Ray.
After all the camera stuff was done I moved on to the lighting, I rigged up the lights and started working on how I was going to light the manican. I used the key light on the right hand side of the camera. I then placed the fill light on the opposite side with 2 diffs over the top to make the light less bright. And finally placed the backlight opposite the key light shining over the manicans head with 2 diffs also, so that the key light was the most bright.
When Ray came over to check he told me my brightness was far too bright and was deleting all my detail on the manican, but when turning this down it solved all the problems and my manican was successfully lit. I then shot the lighted scene twice.
By this stage there was only 10 mins to derig - so quickly had to put everything away. I managed to do this only 2 mins after the time which i was quite pleased about as i was worrying so much i was going to be way over this.
Overall i thought my performance was quite good, and have learned a lot by doing the camera and lighting by myself.

Reflective Blog - Television

I really enjoyed this module a lot. I am really interested in television so I enjoyed learning about all aspects.
I never realised how much television is used as a social tool and actually how much television i watch!
We started to look at different tv formats.
We watched I love Lucy to show the format sit com. I had never watched this before, and i really enjoyed it. I couldn't believe this was made in 1951, as this could of been any program now a days.
We then went on and spoke about Cop Shows - and we watched the Shield.. I loved this and couldn't believe I hadn't watched it before. I was so engaged by this first episode and just wanted to go and watch the rest of the series.
We started looking at Corrie - and even though i am not a fan - i went in with an open mind and it was really interesting on how these types of programmes all having strong independent women in it which i never reaslised before.
After Christmas we spoke about Authorship - but even though it was quite heavy - I enjoyed learning about the different types of Authorships and how it all works.
For the end assessment we split into groups. Our group was to argue that televsion is just a box of lights and wires. I felt it was so hard to agrue for this, so we decided we would take the approach on how television is bad for society. I felt this was quite easy to do, and hopefully done well in the debate.
Overall, I really enjoyed this class - and learnt a lot that I didn't think was important in television.

3 Point Lighting Class

I was really looking forward to start our lighting class and was hoping it wasn't going to be too difficult! I was quite scared to actually work with the massive lights - and thought that might be a struggle, but was okay in the end. We had to do an essay for Ray about 3 point lighting - so i had already a good idea how to do the three point lighting without having done any pratical work with it.

We had a group discussion first about it - and while 5 people in the class went up and did the three point lighting for the whole class - we all looked on at the monitor while Ray helped them all the way through guiding on how to do it. We did this again with the other half of the class to see how when other people light it looks completely different but is all okay. This made me feel better as there wasn't a certain way it had to look, but had to look good to your eye and use the basic technique of three point lighting.

We got shown how to use the different sheets for the lights - diff and ND. This changes the look of the camera completely different and is needed to control the light the way you want it.

After all this, we split in to two groups and had to - in turn - light the three point lighting and record it on the camera. We all got a shot at using each light and moving it about and also using the camera. I felt i learnt a lot by watching everyone doing their own 3 point lighting and how they over come the difficulties of shadows. When it came to my turn i was pretty confident on moving the lighting about so just concentrated on how it looked. I used different diffs on the cameras to get different shadows and intensity of lights. Dilara was my model - she was wearing a red top which contrasted lovely with the blue background. It was quite hard to see the monitor as the light was shining from the other teams lights, so was also lighting up are set as well. There was one shadow that i couldn't get rid of, but i ended up leaving it as i knew i was not going to get rid of it. I tried my hardest and then recorded my few seconds of my lighting.

We watched all the classes lighting back and made pros and cons about each. I liked watching everyones back as I saw all the different lighting that you could do - with more contrast in others and more brightness in others.

Overall, I learned a lot from the day of lighting, and hopefully fingers crossed i will be okay with my assessment in two weeks.

First Sound Class

Well, i was so nervous for this first class with Cammy as i have not done anything to do with sound in my entire life and was just thinking to myself - oh god, this is going to be the most scariest thing i have done! But Cammy came in, and was so nice and introduced the kit to us very slowly - and it wasnt scary at all!

We started off with the basics - how to turn on the mixer, and how to plug the battery in to get it working. He passed the mixer round, and we all got to have a real good look at it, and how to plug the battery in so we know for the future. He then went over all the different channels and inputs were, this was quite scary at first because there was lots of different inputs, but again Cammy went through this slowly and made sure we understood by thourghly going through each different one, one by one, and handing the mixer round the room letting us having shots of plugging in different types of cables to the mixer.

We then learnt a little about the different microphones there is - and what one we will be using most. Cammy showed us how to connect the microphone up to the mixer, and what the cables were he had to use to do this. Again, we all got a shot of plugging the cables into the microphone. We the split into 2 different groups and started to learn how to pick up sound from the micophone into your headphones we had just plugged in. Cammy was brilliant and never rushed through anything and let us all get a turn of putting on the headphones and getting a feel for what it is like. He then gave us a demonstration on how to then plug the mixer into the camera. I felt here i got a bit more confused, but knew we were picking it up again the next day so tried not to worry.

The next day we were straight into it and got all the equitment set up straight away - camera and mixer. We split up into two groups again and started having a mess about with the equitment. As a group we had to set it all up - returning the sound from the camera to the mixer - but after i had done this, i understood how to do it, and realised it wasn't the difficult. We then messed about with the different sounds we could get on the mixer. One by one we got a turn by holding the mixer and boom and using the headphones to hear. I didn't really know what i was doing when i was pressing all the buttons on the mixer - but i definetly knew it was changing the noise and volume of the boom. I felt this was really good to do as you could try it for yourself and could have a wee play about.

We then got the camera set up so we had one person (flick) sitting on a chair while the camera was pointing at us. We all got to see how far the boom could go above her head without going in shot - and is closer than i thought you could get. Also we got told how to hold it without hurting yourself which was also very useful too. We all listened through headphones to hear the different ways flick spoke like when you held the boom different ways above her head. This was really interesting to listen to the different ways it changed by just moving it a tiny bit.

Overall, the 2 days with Cammy was excellent, and much less frightening then i thought! i learnt a lot by only having 2 classes with him, and definetly think i would be able to do sound if i had to do it for a shoot which i didn't have a clue how to do before hand.

Precious

I went to see Precious last week.. as Meg had seen the trailer for it and said it looked really good. I knew i had a tutorial in the middle of it, but thought i might as well sit in the cinema rather than waiting in the cafe bar.
We were a bit late and had already started before we came in (we actually never knew if we were in the right cinema as it was pitch black and no noice) but we found are seats and started to watch the movie.

I really loved this film, it was so different to anything else that i had seen in the cinema before. It was about a girl who gets raped by her dad and has children by him. Her mum is also really abusive to her and does not treat her like her daughter. Her mum does not want her to do good in school, but precious goes behind her back and enroles in a "each one, teach one".
It was a very serious film and this is the only film i have seen where i was like "omg..", it just felt all so real, and you felt so connected to the characters. Its a very dark film - with a lot of violence towards the children.

I had to miss half an hour of it near the end as I had a meeting with Adam, which i really never wanted to go to as i was so engrossed with the film and wanted to know what happened. But i came back just for the last 5 mins, but i will proberly never get to see that half an hour again (i know what i am like!)

It was a very shocking peice of film - and it was very straight to the point, and never hid anything and showed things to the extreme. I couldn't even think how i would feel in that situation and you dont realise that things are that bad for people these days - but they are.

I thought the teenager was casted extremely well - and was really couragious to put someone of that size on the screen, but i think thats what made the film so unique, it wasnt about a skinny blonde girl, but about an overweight black girl which i thought made the film what it is.

Also you dont realise that this is a women driven film - the only time you see men is when she is getting called names on the street, and when you seen horrific images of her dad having sex with her.

Overall, i really did like this film as it was shocking and different - and actually couldn't believe your eyes you were watching this abuse in some parts. I really do hope i can watch the 30 mins i missed again, as it is truely a film you have to go and see in 2010!!

Screenwriting

YAH... Richards back! *do Adas welcome back dance... as some of us grateful people (including Adam) got to witness!*

So i was looking forward to this since.. well since he left, as i do really like Richards class.
On the first day, we got started by doing the statue game - where we had to make stories out of posistions our class mates were in. We realised since Richards departure, we have no idea what a theme was and definetly had to do some work on that. And also Richards suttle way of saying no it isnt, is "is it??", which we got a lot of during the day!!
After the break we then played a more advanced game of consequences. We had to each write on a piece of paper the character description, then hand it to the next person, then you had to do the characters internal flaw and hand it round.. this kept going on and on, until you had a complete story with a basic 3 act structure in it. Well, i have to say, our stories never went to plan, even though we were all serious and concentrated while doing it, once the stories started getting read we couldnt stop laughing. We had such stories with a clohstraphobic submarine worker, and a man who stole someone elses petrol to get to the hospital in time... just to name a few!! So after that disaster of an activity, we decided to focus more on theme - and by the end of the day we had cracked it!
So Richard gave us a task for the night - and we all had to make up 2 premises for an idea for a short film, with a theme in mind and the characters goal.
We all came in the next morning raring to go again, and went round the class saying our ideas and what ones we liked. We then picked a handfull of them and discussed them. In the end we decided on two, and then discussed them further.
We started to speak about the first idea - a party having to get tidyed up - we realised the idea was too basic, and we were untidying the mess, rather than making more mess - so the excitment was decreasing through the film. So we went on to our second idea and discussed that - a lilo, a blow up doll and a man - we discussed the basic idea, but came up with 2 story lines. So we have to go away now and make an outline for one of our ideas. I am really excited to do this, and after Richards lessons this week, i am much more prepared to start writing this second script.
For our homework of the night, we had to go home and write three things we hate about ourselves, and would like to change.
We came in the morning looking tired from the past 2 days of intensive writing. I never felt scared at all to share my hates with the group as I know i can trust everyone, and i am glad i have opened up. After our hour of sharing we got to eat cookies and chocolate before we got on to the rest of our lesson. We watched a few short clips and discussed the theme and what happened in the film - just breaking down the clip to its basic goals etc. I really enjoyed doing this as it has made me look into structure a lot more when i am watching a film - and even found my self pointing out in the cinema what the inciting incedent was etc etc.
We then learnt about how much you can know about a character even before you describe them to the audience - and we did this by looking at photos of people and describing what kind of job they did, what was in their fridge etc. I found this really interesting, as i didnt think how much you knew about a character before you even knew anything about them. This has made me describe my characters more now in my scripts i will write - so that the reader can get a feel of what the person is really like.
To round off the three days, we had an individual tutorial about our scripts and just went through it saying what the flaws were.
Even before going into the tutorial i knew exactly what was wrong with my script after having the three days with Richard - which means i did learn something, and i pleased to say the classes will defo change the way i write my next script, and hopefully it will be even better next time.

First Ever Shoot

Okay, so maybe I wasn't filming, but i definetly learnt alot from the experience and can't wait to do another one as soon as possible!!

We came in to the academy all ready to go at 12 o'clock. After lugging all the equiptment along the corridors, we started to set up the cameras. It felt really strange to actually be part of a film crew - and to be responsible enough and trusted to use the cameras on our own! Even though i did miss Ray not being there - incase something drastic happened - it was really good, as we had to do everything on our own, and if there was a problem, we had to fix it.
Me, Meg and Chris were assigned roles as the "editors", so we never really had much to do on the actual shoot its self but was great to go along. We watched closely as the camera assists set up the cameras - so we knew what to do the next time we will be camera assists. After watching them i realised i definetly needed to get the cameras out - as i reckon without my notes, i would forget how to do something, but i think after time i will be as good as everyone else as it needs practice.
So after everything was set up, we got to go for our break. (made a nice dinner for everyone back at halls!)
We then went back to the event at 6, so we could get final checks done and to get the tapes ready for the performance.
Once the crowds came in, we never had an important role, but sat next to a camera so we could see what the cam assist and cam opp was doing.
I reckon it was good that we went, as we got a sence of the style of music and what the personalities of the guys in the band were like. So we could have a better idea how to edit when we come to it.
We have just had a tutorial with Gav about how to capture (which was much easier than i thought it was going to be) so hopefully we can get all the footage on to the computer and get editing as soon as possible.
I think the whole shoot overall was very benifitual for all of us, as most of us had never done something like this before - so was great to get out there and do it.
The shoot was a success, and we really did learn a lot from the performance - and as Meg said in her blog, we learnt some of the words too, so we will have great fun editing when it comes to that!
Will keep you updated on how the editing goes :)