Connor Winfield TV production

Throughout the pre-production and production for my documentary, there are many things that I could have done better, but there are things that went really well. I feel like I managed to overcome the challenges that arose in a good manner, and also made some decisions that led to some very good results. The first thing that I could have done better is doing more thorough research, and trying harder to contact people from the club outside of club hours. If I had done this sooner, then I would have a better portfolio of more people who attend the club. I did manage to interview quite a few people at the club, both volunteer and customer, so I feel like I still had quite a good range of opinions, however it would have been good to broaden the types of questions that I asked them, such as what they did before coming to the club, or how they heard about the club. I feel like this would have been better to do as then the audience could build up more of a relationship to the characters, and

In order to try and contact as many people that I could to be part of my documentary, I posted a brief description of what my film is and what I needed from people in the Facebook group The Gossip Board of Sittingbourne. I did this as it is a good way for lots of people contact you with information. I did get a few replied on my post, but only two that I was able to follow up on, as the others were just saying that they had heard of it or hadn't been to it. One person commented that they had been to it and really enjoyed it, so I tried to contact them a few times, but they did not reply each time. The other person that I contacted was really helpful, as she told me a few things about the club that I had not heard before.  As the club is only on once per month, I managed to go to a meeting with several of the volunteers from the club to ask them some more questions, which was very helpful.  As I knew that the club was primarily created in order to be a place for older people to

On the 28th November, I went back to the Lunch Club to do a camera test. I wanted to do this in order to see how the volunteers and customers act in front of the camera. Depending on how they act would depend on who I choose to interview when I come to film the full length of my documentary. The night before going to the club, I used the camera to see what I could do with it, like changing the quality of the footage, or the levels of light being picked up. I did this in order to have a better understanding on how to use the equipment effectively on the shoot. When I arrived, I managed to set up my equipment easily, as it was only a camera with a microphone attached, and a tripod. The camera that I was using was a Panasonic DVX 200, which is a very good quality camera. I have used this type of camera before, but I have had people with me, so I was able to ask them anything if I didn't know anything, or I got confused by some of the settings. However, on this test shoot, I was

I have been able to secure access to the Holy Trinity Church in Sittingbourne to be the main location of my documentary, as this is where the Lunch Club is held, and is the Church where many of the volunteers go. In order to secure this location, I spoke with the person who runs the club, Pauline, as well as the Vicar, and they were both happy to let me make my documentary there, and to also do a test shoot. I have managed to secure a couple of other locations as well. They are both the homes of two of the volunteers at the club. The first one that I secured is the house of a woman called Barbie, and she is the person who got my nan interested in the Lunch club. I wanted to interview her as she was close to my nan, and has also been volunteering at the club for a long time. she lives along the road from my Grandparents house, so it easily accessible. The second location is the home of another volunteer that I spoke with when I went to the club on October 31st. Her name is Penny, an

On the 31st October, I went back to the Lunch Club which is being the focus of my documentary in order to get some more information about the people who go there. I wanted to go more than once as I wanted to try and talk with people who hadn't been at the club the previous month.  I spoke with one woman called Dee, and she was really friendly and informative. the reason why she started coming to the club was that she had recently moved to the area and did not know anyone, but heard about the club and thought it would be a good place to meet new people. She has not been coming to the club for over 5 years. it is this type of story that I want to show in my documentary. She is also on the ministry care team at the church, so she comes to the club partly for the meal and social aspect of it, but also to interact with the customers and see if they need anything that the care team can provide One other person there was called Jean, and she was a volunteer, but I was not able to talk

On the 27th September, I went to the lunch club in order to get some more information on the club, and the people who volunteer there and the customers that they have. I was able to speak with quite a few people, both a mixture of volunteers and customers, men and women, and was able to gather a lot of useful information, and this is going to help me decide who to interview.  The club starts at 12:00, but the volunteers arrive at the church at about 11:00 so that they can set up the tables and start getting the food ready. The kitchen area is quite small, and not all of the microwaves work, so on days that the club gets busy, it can be difficult to keep up with the orders. The food is prepared at home the night before, and varies from month to month. When I went, the main was a choice of sausage casserole, chicken pie, cheese potato pie or quiche. The desserts are also homemade, and were apple crumble, cheesecake, bread and butter pudding or a sample of fruit. you can also have tea

I have had several ideas on what to do for my third year Major project, which do differ from one another. My first idea was about a set of twins that go out together one day, but one of them accidentally kills the other, so gets rid of their body and then takes on the life of their twin, while trying to live their own life as well. Over time, the living twin would get very deep into the twin's life, even having to marry the dead twin's fian cé. One twist I thought I could make with this idea is that one twin hasn't seen the family for years, due to problems with drug use, while the other twin has become relatively successful. They meet for the first time in years, and it is the successful twin that is killed, so the drug addict twin has to try and sober up and take the role of their twin. Another idea was on the importance of stories, and how passing on stories of your life to people is key in society. I have heard numerous stories from family and friends, and the idea cam

From the research that I have carried out over the past couple of weeks, I now have a better idea of what it means to be an editor, and the jobs that come with being in that role, some of which I did not know about. This has made me a lot more confident in my role. I have thought about how I am going to be able to incorporate the techniques and skills that I have researched into my work, and I have done some test edits for some of the different cuts and effects, and I feel more confident that I can produce a good piece of work.  I have rewatched the two scenes of 'The Wrong Mans'  that my group will be adapting numerous times so that I can have a better idea of what I am going to change in my version, such as maybe different sounds, or changing the colour scheme. Doing this, I hope to create a slightly different atmosphere in the scenes, so will maybe create some different feelings in the audience. This will also give me a better insight about the types of edit that they

There are several steps that an editor needs to take when working on a project, and they need to be taken well so that the work is carried out at the best quality and best ability of the editor. It is always good for an editor to have a good workflow, as this will save so much time and effort in the long run, when carrying out this workflow becomes the standard way that you carry out an edit. Doing this will also cause you less stress inn your production, which can also help your editing, as when you are stressed about it, there may be some things that you miss during the edit. All of this being carried out is what will create a better post-production experience. Through some research into editing workflows, I found that there are 7 steps to the process, which when carried out, check all the boxes of what an editor needs to do.  1. Media Ingestion and Management - Copying your video media from your camera to your computer.  You need to have  an easy to understand, readily searcha

Editing sound can be quite difficult if you are unsure of how to do it effectively. There are some points where you may not be able to make a certain point on the sound track sync up with the video, or have to much background noise that the sound clip seems to be unusable.  As sound hadn't been a key focus of mine in past projects, I bought some better headphones, as my previous pair were not good for sound editing, and I wanted to have the sound in this project better than my previous films. I also felt like I needed to research some techniques that professionals use so that I could edit sound on my current project to the best standard.  I had used BBC Academy before to research various topics, and found them very reliable with the information that they contained, so I decided to try there first, and was not disappointed. Hilary Salmon, who has worked on sound design on numerous well known BBC programmes, offers some tips and tricks that she has learnt in order to capture clea

As I have only edited a few short films before, I felt like I needed to expand my knowledge on editing, so i researched some of the different techniques used, and why they are used to join certain shots together. One website that I found useful was  https://blog.pond5.com/11099-13-creative-editing-techniques-every-video-editor-should-know/ This was because it has numerous examples of cuts, why they are used and also examples of films that they are in. Commonly, some types of cuts are used to signify the passing of time, and this can be done using a cross dissolve,  or it can use the overlapping layers to show multiple stories or scenes happening at once, but shot at different times.  On the other hand, using an extended shot, one which is done in one take, can create different ideas in the audience of what is going to happen. One of the most famous examples of this is the Copacabana scene in 'Goodfellas' . This scene is expertly shot, but the use of it in one take help

The role of an editor is one of the most important roles in the creation of a piece of film, as this is the point which can make or break the quality of the final product. A good editor can turn mediocre footage into a masterpiece, whereas a bad editor can create a mess out of some of the best footage ever shot for film or television. Therefore, when undertaking the role of an editor, you need to have a very clear idea of what you are doing. Despite what people may think, being an editor doesn't mean that you are only part of the project after all of the footage has been shot. The Editor works closely with the director before shooting begins, deciding how to maximise the potential of the screenplay. This is in order to create a mutual image of what the film is going to look like. There would be no point in shooting with the intention of making a comedy if the editor creates a love film from the footage. Editors check the technical standards, as well as the emerging sense of st

The edit for this unit was

Our second shoot was at the Maidstone Studios in the car park. We were shooting at night for an interrogation scene, and night time would give the scene some more depth and feel.  We encountered quite a few problems during the shoot. On the day, at about 11:00, our actor who was going to be playing the villain dropped out, so we had to find someone else for a 8:00pm shoot. Fortunately, we were able to find someone by 12:30, which was a relief. The next problem we had was that as we needed it to be quite dark for our shoot, it was staying light for quite a while. due to this, we were late to start filming. This had a knock on effect with our schedule, as the actor who was playing our villain had to get a train back to London at 10:03. This problem, accompanied by some more technical problems with our equipment, forced us to cram a three hour shoot into just 50 minutes.  we just managed to do it, but if I were to do this shoot again, I would try and make sure that the equipment is

Our first day of shooting was at a hotel called Bridgewood Manor, located on Bluebell Hill in Kent. It is a luxury hotel, so we were lucky that we were given permission to film there, and were not charged anything either.  The room that we were given was quite small, but we managed to make it work by changing some camera angles, and also being creative with the angles. We were hoping to take roughly 2 hours to film what we needed, however there were some problems with the camera at the start of the shoot. Due to the lights in the room being what they were, the picture on the camera was looking to unnatural in its colour. We tried to use natural light, but the window in the room was quite small, so could not illuminate the room enough. When we decided to use the room's lighting, with the LED light panel that we had added to it with a slight yellow tinge, we eventually managed to make the display on the camera look right.  Due to there only being three of us in the group, along w

In order to improve my editing potential for this project, I needed to do some research into various editing techniques. This was interesting to do, as I had not done much advanced editing before, and I also found out the names of various cut types that I had used before, but did not know the name of them.  One website that I found useful was a website called The Beat, which was really helpful due to the information being in bitesized chunks, while including quite a lot of information, so was easy to read and understand. Plus, thew videos that accompanied the points made were very useful, and some of them included well known examples, like Fight club and Skyfall.  https://www.premiumbeat.com/blog/8-essential-cuts-every-editor-should-know/ I also watched some youtube videos to help me understand the editing process more, which was also very helpful. One idea that George Wing, the Director of the project, had was to have a transition to another shot within the eye of one of the cha

With this new transition unit, we had a choice on what to focus on for our project. However, we had to make sure that the role that we were in for the project was the role that we would be undertaking for our third year project.  We could either choose a piece of television or film to re create in our own style, or if we wanted to be a script writer, write a script, which could be something new, or added onto an existing piece, for example write a script for a new episode of a television series.  We had to base our project off of some already existing work to draw inspiration from it, such as techniques used in the shots or script, and try and use them in our own projects. The role that I wanted to undertake for this project was a camera operator, as I had grown to enjoy that role more due to my time on a camera for our 'As Live' Studio Production unit.  However, I asked several people if they needed a camera operator on their project, and they said that they had already go

Overall, I have learnt numerous things over this course, both about being a camera operator and researcher, and how it feels to work on a live studio set. It has been a great experience and it is one that I have very much enjoyed, and it has also made me lean towards pursuing a career in being either being a camera operator or a researcher.  If I were to do this project again, I would maybe try and change some shots from my camera, but other than that, I would not change anything that I have done, as I feel that the work that I put into the project greatly helped the rest of the group

The day of the show was a nervous one, due to the pressure everyone was feeling. We were all prepared, but it was the fact that the day was finally here that was unreal.  The show went off without any problems and was a success. The live audience, made up of parents of the crew and contributors to the show, all loved the show and had many good things to say about it. 

Due to the poor quality of the footage from the first shoot day, we were given the opportunity to re shoot that scene, which was very lucky, as we were only supposed to have access to the presenters for those two days. We used the same camera that we used at the University shoot, as that footage came out at a very high quality.  We went back to Empire and basically filmed the exact same shots that we had done a few weeks ago, as we had been told that the film was good, except for the quality. Due to us all knowing what we were going to be filming, we managed to get all the shots that we needed in just over an hour

The second day of the Promotions shoot took place at the Rochester campus of UCA. This shoot started off really badly, due to the amount of problems that we had encountered. The first of these problems was the fact that for some reason, the footage from the previous day was very poor quality when it was transfered onto a laptop, despite it looking fine on the camera display on the day of the shoot. Because of this, a member of the Promotions team needed to go to Maidstone Studios and pick up another camera, as we did not want to use the same camera again just in case the second day's footage turned out the same.  The second problem of the day was the fact that as people arrived late, due to traffic and having to go and get another camera. Because of this, we missed our filming slot in one of the fashion design rooms, as we were planning on shooting a quick scene before lectures started at 10:00. Because people were late, we couldn't film in time. When we were all fina

The actual promotions shoot took place today, with the presenters for the show being the focus of the film. We again used Empire, the shop mentioned in a previous blog post. We also had the mannequin for this shoot, as it was the core piece of the idea. We had the mannequin dressed in the clothes that the female presenter, called Adeline, was going to be wearing for the show, as the idea was that she was going to steal it from the shop to wear on the show.  The manager of the shot was really nice and helpful in allowing us to film in the shop, which made filming there a lot easier as we could talk to him really easily.  As mentioned before, we did not need to spend any money to be able to film in the shop. We had an agreement that if we were allowed to film in the shop, then we would provide some free advertising, as the promo was going to be going on social media, which the shop owner, the manager's brother, agreed to.  The filming went very well, and we were done within an

During this rehearsal, we had the presenters in so that they could get a sense of what the show is going to be like, and to help them visualise what is going to be happening in the show. We had also bought a mannequin for the show, which I was in charge of.  By this rehearsal, everyone was becoming very comfortable in their roles, and we were all working well in our teams, which for the camera operators was having a camera assistant, and then swap roles half way through the show. This rehearsal ran very smoothly, and we managed to make it through the whole show without stopping, although we needed to be a bit more sudden with our timings between the segments, and we need to be a little bit quicker when we reposition the cameras. 

This rehearsal day was very fun, as we had some people to be the live audience, which added a sense of realism to the show. We also tried shooting this with the set marked in a different position, in order to see where it works better, and how easy or difficult it would be for the cameras to get the shots that they need. As my camera has been on wheels for all of the rehearsals, it makes it very easy to move to a new position quickly. This was useful, as there were a few shots that my camera needed to do that were very different to each other in terms of angle and framing, so the wheels on the tripod helped greatly. There were some problems during the rehearsal though, but they weren't technical. It was the fact that the camera operators were having a hard time trying to imagine where the audience would be, and how far the seats would be going back. There was also the problem of the cables connecting the cameras to the gallery screens. As we did not have a full audience lay

For this rehearsal day, we were not just going to be learning how to carry out our jobs as best that we could. As well as that, we were going to be having a go in all of the other roles there were on the set, both on the floor and in the gallery. This was to get us to understand the roles better, and to know what it is like in case something goes wrong, as we need to act professionally and not yell at anyone if they make a mistake.  This was still a great experience, because I'm a camera operator for the show, so it was really good to see in detail how the roles in the gallery worked. I quite liked being a vision mixer, and was actually quite good at it. I was the only person in my group who the tutor threw a curveball at, which was to have a transition between shots instead of a straight cut. Of all the roles that I tried, I think the one that I lest liked was being in charge of the sound, as I could see that for a live show, it would be to complex for me, as you need to be kee