The OK Go One Take Mystery

One of my favourite videos is OK GO's music video for their song "This too shall pass".  It's not a bad song either.

The whole thing takes the idea of a labour of love to new heights.  Here's one of the band talking about all the things in it.  The question is - was the whole thing done in one take?  That is, did a single camera follow the action all the way through, in a miracle of timing?

It's certainly meant to look that way, but according to FreddieW, it's not quite what happened:

A little more digging has one of the band members confirming the edit, though claiming there's just one in an article for Wired.  A nice collection of behind-the-scenes interviews there too.

So the verdict is: Not one take, but it was clearly meant to be.  They did such a great job that I'm going to accept the story that the whole machine worked three times, and that the camera did actually manage to follow almost all of it through at least once.

Red letter day

Looks like we'll have to finish making the course now, as we are now officially on the OU website at http://www3.open.ac.uk/study/undergraduate/course/t156.htm.  If you're interested in studying it, have a look.  The fee is likely to head upwards from next year as the changes to higher education funding start to bite.

Given that it's going to happen now, it's lucky that we've made good progress today, finishing up the text for our first handover - weeks 2-4 - on time.  I wish I had time to tell you some more of the nice little twists we've built in as we went along. Instead to celebrate we commissioned a special panel of photographs.

I've been living in Rick's house for pretty much the whole week and spending my days sitting in this corner. Nice to have a break for the weekend, even if it only means sitting in my own corner while I get on with things for the next handover.

A week ready for handover

Another milestone today, with the second week more or less ready for handover to the editor.  I'm a little nervous of letting it go quite yet, because the way we've set it up may prove slightly constraining as we move through the rest of the course.

On the other hand, we've spent as long on week two as most of the rest of the text so far, and it's paying off as we're getting quicker and quicker, with a strong model to work against.  Week 3 is not far behind and I'm up late with week 4 tonight after Rick's first pass today.

We've not got the media and pictures ready, and we're indicating place holders for now, but we have managing some bells and whistles like glossary terms as we go along, so I think karma is about balanced.

Coming up soon - our course description goes live and you can sign up to study the course :)

Working with professionals

In last week's shoot we drew in a whole bunch of friends and contacts as cast and crew.  Some were there for experience, others were doing us a favour and I hope that everyone enjoyed a break in their daily routine. Our central character was played by Therese Collins, an actor friend of Rick's who has worked with him on all sorts of projects.  It was very interesting watching how she approached the shoot - not just in terms of her role (in which she was fantastic), but her effect on everyone else.

Another of our heroes was Jude, who fitted two appearances around her working day as a researcher at the OU.  She was more than willing to help, but I suspect felt a little ambushed to be pushed in front of the camera straight away in the infamous bus stop scene.  She was great in that, and came back later for the 'friends in a bar scene', which we filmed in the old Venables cafe.

It's cranberry juice, honest. But Therese lifted the energy levels until they were laughing their heads off like two old friends.

Filming activity to try out

I've spent part of the weekend tweaking the first week we're going to hand over.  Well kind of.

We pass what we've done on to the course administrators who style it and dress it up in a set of XML tags called structured authoring.  This is then passed on to the editor who makes his changes and then renders it out to the course website.  There're a few other details, but it's late and you'd do better just to come and study the course if you're really interested.

As a taster, here's the first filming exercise to have a look at: Activity 2.1

It's minus some of the bells and whistles the students on the course will have, like a glossary and the opportunity to find and share relevant resources with other people.  But if anyone fancies having a go, we'd love to know how long it takes you and what you make of it.

Filming - Walton Hall, 9/3/11

We spent Wednesday filming the main piece of media for the course - a publicity film that we will also take to pieces to show students how we made it.

It was great, we pulled in all sorts of contacts and had a big cast and crew to play with.  Everyone was fantastic, but the biggest stars were those who were with use for the whole day: Therese, a great actress who works with Rick a lot, and four lads from the local college who came along for some experience for their media studies course.

We managed to pack an awful lot into just one day and managed to cover the script.  I'm really looking forward to seeing the first glimpses of the edit now.

Glossaphilia

As I love words I know glossophilia doesn't just refer to glossaries, but I think I'm allowed a near-miss meaning.  We're racing to get the first week (week 2) completely ready to hand over for styling on Monday morning.  Today I set up the glossary and made the first entry:

We're going to use the glossary to hold some of the 'theory' for the course.  In general we lead with an activity - part of the preparation for that is checking the list of glossary terms that will be used in the activity to see if there are unfamiliar ones.  If you don't understand those, students are encouraged to search for and share relevant resources (such as this fantastic one on film grammar).

Activities are followed by the course team's reflection on what has been done, allowing us to make teaching points.  The idea is that these will be more interesting and make more sense once students have something to build on.  Once again, the glossary is important, because it helps us to keep those sections light - students who want to know more can follow the trail into the glossary, which also helps them to build up a functional vocabulary for working with other people.

Drafts

Got going on writing course material again today after a week that focussed more on admin and the media.  Deadlines are tight, but we have the advantage now of having sketched everything out before the halfterm break, as D0 (D-zero or D-nought) outlines and now we've got something solid to work with as we race to get our full draft done.

So for example in week 2, the introduction has gone from:

Introduction

• Meet and greet

• Report back on wk1 ‘homework’ – If you had all the time and money in the world what film what you like to have made

• Share and comment and rate

• In this week we will take a step back and look at the building blocks

• We’ll still hold on to the idea of driectors vision – but applied to individual elements

• We’ll work on getting the best shot 9or best piece of sound with the equipment you have in the conditions you have

• Sound is just as important if not more so than video

• Something about motion?

• Your most basic equipment is what you were born with

• Look ahead at the activities and think about how they will fit into your week.  Can do ex 1 and ex 2 in the same place, for eg. But make sure have equipment for both.

• Description of tasks and what they need to accomplish them

• Choosing which warmup to do…

to

Introduction

There are many steps in the long process that culminates in someone watching a piece of media and enjoying it.  Creativity is important all the way from the first glimmering of inspiration, to the director at work on a set realizing their vision, to the editor assembling everything into a final form.  There is a challenge in getting everything to work together well, but a good film is one where all the building blocks are solid.
Think back to the homework we suggested last week.  Is it realistic for you to set out to make that piece of media that you liked?  Even if as a whole your choice looks beyond your reach, what can you learn from breaking it down into its parts? A good simple image like a train leaving a station or a fleeting smile can be very powerful. A few well-chosen notes of music or a door creaking all carry meaning.  How do you know which choices to make when you record something? In fact it’s easier than you might think because you do have the experience to make good judgements about the building blocks.  Living in modern society means you’re exposed to audiovisual media all of the time and you can trust your gut feeling about what works – it’s based on a lot of experience.
This week we’re going to look at the sound and vision in very simple terms. How to set up and capture individual shots, and how to record clear, natural sound.  We’ll come on to assembling these later, but a basic proficiency in shooting and recording is fundamental to expressing yourself in video.  So we’d like to give you the time to explore how your equipment works and how to find all those magnificent shots that are out there waiting for you.