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.