Thursday, 27 November 2014

Work Based Learning

I have recently completed my first Work Based Learning (WBL) task. This task involved editing a number of prerecorded interviews for the Principal of Newcastle College. The interviews focused on a number of students from different courses, and asked them about why they had chosen Newcastle to study at, and what they wanted to do after their courses.

While editing there were a number of tasks that I had to complete to get a worthy product at the end. First of all I synced up audio that had been recorded on an external device when the interview was taking place, this would allow the final video to have cleaner and crisper audio than what it would have had if we had used the camera's on board microphone. Secondly I had to colour correct the footage, this was because when the interview was conducted, it was not lit correctly and therefore would look to dark. So I increased the brightness and contrast within final cut so that the image was clearer, but because of this, there was more grain on the image so I had to balance out the brightness with the grain, to achieve a good look and overall product at the end.

It was worth it when I received this feedback...


Thursday, 20 November 2014

Inspiration

I have found inspiration from a few different sources, the most notable of which however, is the online magazine Vice. I have watched a vast number of documentaries on the vice website as well as their Youtube channel and this has led me to pick up on a few codes and conventions that they use whilst filming factual pieces. One of these conventions is that they tend to report on the unreported, the things that the mainstream media won't, or are to scared to report on. I recently watched a documentary of theirs entitled Suicide forest. It is about The Aokigahara Forest, which is one of the biggest suicide hotspots in Japan. This is the kind of story that the mainstream don't report on and one that I am interested in. Whenever I have any spare time I tend to float onto the website to check out any new Documentaries that they have posted as they tend to be very interesting and insightful.

Vice Website - http://www.vice.com/en_uk/

Thursday, 13 November 2014

Aesthetica Short Film Festival, York

Last Week I had the opportunity to take a trip to the 2014 Aesthetica Film Festival in York. The yearly event is held in York every year and involves a number of venues around the city with a variety of screenings and master classes in everything from directing actors to editing feature films and Documentaries.

We started off the day by having a group screening in the York Theatre Royal where we attended a talk about Camera Operating. It Involved Listening to a panel of 3 experienced camera ops; Peter Robertson, Phillip Sindall and Peter Taylor. And after watching clips from films they have worked on, including Gravity and Atonement, they answered a few questions from the audience.












After this I went and seen a screening of up and coming documentaries. I found this worthwhile as I have always wanted to be involved with documentaries more than fiction pieces as these are what interest me most. Real stories about Real people. This is what I want to continue to be involved with after my degree.

Finally I attended an Editing Masterclass with BAFTA nominated editor Lisa Gunning, who has been involved with editing some well know feature films such as; Goldfrapp, Seven Psychopaths and Nowhere Boy. During this masterclass Lisa discussed how the editing of a product helps to tell the story of the film. She went through how she prepares herself to edit projects and stressed that to be successful you had to learn to take a break and a step back to see the full picture. Lisa then took questions from the audience. I found this to be the best part of the trip as it gave me a keen insight into the world of editing. After my degree I would like to become an editor as this allows creative control of how the story is told as well as how the final product will look.














Overall I found the trip to Aesthetica a really valuable experience as I found out first hand from experts in the field about the problems they face and the best way to overcome them. I also found out the best way to network with professionals and how to get m work seen, and this is invaluable when it comes to progressing on from University.