So last week we began making the media in earnest - it started early last Tuesday with me pulling out some scribbled storyboards (see pics) and then John and I setting out to film some fairly mundane but crucial shots of cameras, studio lights, laptops etc for a set of media clips that will allow students on the course to create their own DFS T156 Montage in Week 1. We wanted the students to get a taste of editing as soon as possible as this is often the subject that is left until later but some basic understanding of it affects the whole approach you take with your ideas, scripting and filming.
After that though things really got going and the two days in Milton Keynes at the OU were spent in a fairly hectic rush of studio based filming. This ranged from nerve-wracking as both John and I had to present to camera and deliver lines we'd not long written to very comfortable as I read straight from an auto-cue. We also recorded voice-overs and scripted as a team which was good fun and then we convinced Joe Smith from the Geography Department to appear in one of our videos which discussed doing pieces to camera and included Joe's work with Creative Climate. Chris has posted a clip in relation to that.
In between all of this Chris and I managed to grab a bit of downtime and visited Cineworld in the Xscape complex to catch "Barney's Version" which is a lovely film with a great cast and a well-judged script and direction that left you wanting to spend more time with the characters and feeling happy that not everything was spelt out in BOLD letters and underlined twice. I'd recommend it.
Chris and I de-camped to Catcher Media's base camp in Hereford for Thursdays session of course-writing and more media scripting, including the script for the iSpot/Composition media clip which we filmed in the Herefordshire fields just outside of Chris' house in Pembridge on the Friday. Friday was probably one of the windiest days I have ever attempted to film in - the wind was trying to pull the camera out of my grasp on occasions and some of our plans at recording voice-over on the day had to be re-thunk and annoyingly some of the wildlife we were looking for obstinately refused to leave it's trailers for their moment in front of the camera - so a big cheer for pond skaters who were happy to appear at the last moment and save the day. It was great fun to be sure and I feel the footage will have the footprint of that wildness (which is a good thing) even if the camera-work wasn't perfectly composed (my stuff not Johns) - the rhythms of the wind also spurred me on to complete a short story as well at the weekend so I'm generally feeling quite pleased with myself.
Friday was rounded off with John and I filming a cup of tea sequence (including many different angles & lit with three Lilliput lights with gels to balance the daylight from the windows) to illustrate some rules of editing and it's compression of time and finally Chris did a sterling job of delivering his Pre-Production Pep Talk (we each have one to do) with what was commonly agreed amongst us to have contained the least amount of gaffs. Onward…
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