The F Word

Today I have 2 'F' words, Final Cut Pro and Foot Locker!

This week me and Gus bought it upon ourselves to enter a Foot Locker competition on youtube. After developing an idea for the brief (which was simply "Make A Film About Trainers") and how we wanted to go about it we decided to get a some equipment from uni on Wednesday, film Thursday, and edit on Friday and Saturday. This all went to plan...

This was my first full edit in Final Cut Pro, which I though would be a good trial run to learn techniques before we started on our short. To be honest it went very smoothly, and if it wasn't for the tape corrupting, all would have been great! The one thing I did find a hold back, was my 13" lcd screen on my macbook, which made colour correction a nightmare, as although it looked good on my screen, this changed depending on what screen it was played on! From the colour looking washed out to looking perfect. In the end all prevailed, and looks pretty good, bar the odd tape glitch, and after getting an original soundtrack from one of our friends, the short was looking ready. Youtube on the other hand thought differently, and after our internet being out of service all of saturday, as I was uploading sunday morning it decided to tell me that there was an error the 1st 3 times I tried! 4th time lucky! BUT this resulted in missing the competition deadline, which we thought was midnight tonight... but was midday. F***!

Oh well, in the end it was good fun and I have learnt a lot on final cut. We have emailed, sent messages and made them aware of our problems to get it uploaded and asked if they will still consider our hard work! Fingers Crossed

Man Without A Movie Camera... The Production Weekend

DAY 1: Saturday 14th November 2009

When I arose after very little sleep from the night before planning a shot list and printing out call sheets for everybody on set, I was tired but optimistic. However, when I looked out of the window, I noticed the predicted storms had arrived! At 1st we tried to go out side and weather the storm, but it was all too much, everybody was more concerned with keeping the £3000 camera dry (as another group got the uni's only rain cover, invest people!) than getting the correct shots. The noise from the wind was also awful and for a while I thought that if this carried on the film wouldn't be film-able in these conditions! Luckily we had some shots to do in the interior. Luckily in the afternoon we were able to get down to business and filmed our group shots for Group A, and even though there was light rain and dark skies, it added to the look and feel that I had envisioned for this opening scene. However, the dark sky was a problem later on, as our CCTV scene in the alley-way there was not enough light for the camera to function to its fully capability, and our actor playing the 'security guard' couldn't make the next day.

After we had finished, we logged and captured the footage, and noted that we had to re shoot a pick up of the outside scenes of our protagonist running back and forth from the set to get a camera in torrential rain.

DAY 2: Sunday 15th November 2009

After the horrendous weather from the 1st day, none of us expected to be contemplating wearing a pair of these the next day. However, the sun meant that in comparison to the day before day 2 was a doddle. As a group we had a lot more fun, experimenting with tracking shots with the camera in the back of a car, and generally having fun on set. The bad point of the day had to be the unexpected no show of the actor Bianne organised to come to the shoot, as she never knew that he had to be there on the second day. However, we put our heads together and hatched and added that he was the man with the camera to the script. All in all this day was very successful and fun, far from the stress induced shoot that was day 1.

The car park scenes were hard for me to record sound, as for a lot of shots we were using the boom pole and the dead cat as props! Because the microphone is so sensitive to sound I put it in a coat sleeve to protect it, but when recording dialogue we made sure the microphone was out of shot to get good sound recordings of voices.

At the end of the day we went back to ours had a couple of beers, watched our footage back and watched a couple of movies and played computer games. Here are the rest of our photos from the weekend. For now I can relax after the stressful weekend, but not for long as we are all doing individual edits for next week.

Man WIthout A Movie Camera... The Tempratures Rising

Its is almost time for our filming weekend, and a lot isn't organised due to one of our team members floundering and not taking enough initiative, and is pushing for our filming weekend to commence a week late! This has led to me having to pick up the pieces, as we only had 1 of our 9 desired cast members. However, it is our main character which is helpful.

Luckily, after doing the rounds with a few phone calls, me and Bianne have managed to get a full cast and organised a schedule for them when they need to be there. As they had to be put in to groups I done this by evaluating who could make which days. My planned schedule is as follows:

Saturday:
Protagonist Montage: 10am - 1pm
Group A Shots: 2pm - 3pm
CCTV Scene: 3pm - 5pm

Sunday:

Group B Shots: 11am - 12pm
Car Park Scene: 12pm - 2pm
Pick Ups: 2pm - 5pm

Although me, Gus and Luke compiled a list of every shot needed for each scene we are yet to have a final shot list for the day, which I may have to do if it isn't completed by other members of the group by Friday, especially the director who I'm worried hasn't got a real feel for the film.

I do however have faith in our team as in a practice run in class we worked well together. But only time will tell, and with only 2 days until Judgement Day, everything will be ready.

Cannon 5D Mark II

I really Really REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLLY REALLLLY REALLLY want one. I have spent the last few weeks obsessing over how nice the picture it produces is, the slow motion it can produce because of the fps (frames per second), it being the size of an slr, the depth of field of one and the ability to shoot so well in low lighting. BECAUSE IT IS ONE. These high quality video slr cameras are the future. Heres a video of what Philip Bloom can produce with one without any post production effects, shot in 24p.

Sofia's People: Canon 5dmk2 24p from Philip Bloom on Vimeo.

I just had to get it off my chest... Back to finishing off the shot list.

Camera Demo

Today I had a demo using the Sony Z1 camera's, which are regarded as lower end broadcast cameras, which do have the capability to shoot good video and perfect for our short films. Even though I was not the camera man on this particular shoot, I done the tutorial so that I would be able to get the camera out in the future.

The demo was a good reminder of how to use the equipment as I hadn't done since I filmed Doug Chamberlin's Mastering Hollywood seminar about six months ago. The one thing I did learn however, was to set up two shots and go between them using shot transition buttons.

As I will be doing the sound on my film, the most important part of the z1 to me are the 2 audio channels, which you can see on the left hand side of the picture. When filming is in progress, I am going to set one channel lower than the other so that if the sound peaks and distorts I will have a back up that I can use in editing. Also the settings on the menu have to be set to recording off of the XLR (which is where the microphone is plugged in) instead of the internal microphone.

In other news... We have got our favored car park confirmed!