Over the past couple of weeks I have been trawling through the footage I took at glastonbury festival and sorting it into rushes, seeing the film again has given me a clearer idea of the documentary that I want to make, and have started making a list of the things I want to capture at next years festival while its still in my head. This year I managed to loose some valuble footage, in one case the tape simply could not be found, having seached everywhere I can only guess it was taped over before been logged and captured! another lesson to be learned 'label tapes clearly' as I found once you have over three tapes it can get quiet confusing, I also had problems with other tapes too this problem I have had before at Uni and that is trouble logging and capturing in final cut (timecode errors) I may try using a different device to play back the tape. As I was going through the footage I realised I had enough material to make a short peice on the clean up of the festival. This is a matter close to my heart as I have witnessed the devestation and gross amount of waste left behind each year. This was not the case this year and the site was cleared in a matter of weeks.
Glastonbury Site Clean Up
I am going to pass the film on to the festival office, may be it will find its way on to the screen at next years festival, with a bit more luck.
Its been a while since I wrote a blog, but I thought that my experiences over the summer were worth a mention...
Way back in the spring around mid May just as uni was winding up for the year, I decided to have ago at making a short film and entering a competition that Mike had suggested I have a look at. Every year at Glastonbury festival a compertition is held for amamature film makers, they give a list of the criteria of films they are looking for and any films deemed suitable are played on some of the screens throughout the festival, they suggest that the films have a strong visual impact as the audio levels can be very poor.
My initial plan was to make a montage of the varying different stages of the festival building up. I intended to film things such as the construction of the fence and staging and also capture some of the creativity that goes in to the festival such as the binpainting and flag making.
Having gained permission from the festival organizer I set about filming. I was initially suprised at the amount of activity on the site so early on, already things were begining to take shape and there were a large number of site crew already living on the farm.
I began by filming some of the construction and people at work, I didnt realy have a plan and found myself going off on tanjents. Where I saw something happening I would go and ask the people working if they minded me filming, some people were not happy to be filmed but most were fine about it, and in many cases people actually wanted to talk about their experiences. What started out as a mission to collect a varied cross section of footage of the festival developing began to turn into a catalog of peoples experiences. Initially I hadnt been concerned about audio as I intended to use music, but I soon realised for interveiwing purposes I needed an external mic and I also installed the help of my freind Liz as the sound lady.
As the festival loomed and the security got tighter we ran into problems gaining access to the site, the result of which left myself and Liz sat waiting by the main gate in the dust and seering heat for two hours while we waited for one very pissed off press officer to come and give us the third degree, after a great deal of explaination we were allowed to carry on but only under the watchful eye of the press office.
One morning I was out filming and was told that there was a suprise parade planned for Michael Eavis, all the site crew had made some sort of an effort to make a carnival like presession, unbeknown to Michael they planned to parade past the farm later that day. I contacted the Press guy and asked if it would be ok to come and film, luckily he was more than happy for me to come along and gave me the green light.
The evenings filming went well and I managed to capture some half decent footage. The next day the press guy contacted me and asked me for 3 minute edit of the evenings highlights. I began work on the edit and caught up with him later the next day, I was shocked when he asked me if I had finished it! when I told him no, he asked if I could turn it around by four o clock that afternoon, as he was meeting the bbc and would give them my footage ( "if it was any good"!)
Heart pounding I raced back home to try to finish it off in the three hours I had. Not been the quickest at editing I had to limit myself to a certain amount of time on each peice, I just managed to do it with no minutes to spare and ended up with my laptop purched on the passenger seat of my van burning a copy to disc as I drove back to the office. The press guy gave it the ok, next it was the boys from the bbc and the Eavis family, I was so nervous as we all crowded around my laptop, every mistake jumped out at me making me cringe, but they did actually like it and asked if they could take a copy. Which I of course was more than happy with...
Here it is ...Glastonbury Site Crew Parade.
I wasn't quiet sure what was going to happen to my footage, it was only when fellow student Anthony texed me to say he had seen my work playing on the pyramid stage and then I later saw it for myself, I was pleased to see that they ran the whole peice and the credits were on the end. After the festival the Press guy contacted me to say well done and that the bbc had used some of my clips on T.V. What an exciting month and an excellent learning cerb, I realised how much I had learned in my year at uni and I had the experience of working with all types of people on many levels, from interveiwing to dealing with officialdom. In this sort of media enviroment I soon realised that you need to have plenty of 'blag' a lot of cheek and a certain amount of luck to get ahead. It also became apparent to me that Its not what you know but who you know that hold the keys that unlock some of the doors (or in this case I should say gates)......
Having had a discussion with Ross following the group meeting on tuesday we have now begun to form the structure of our documentary and intend to make Anna and her life style the main topic of our focus.
1st minute Beginning with a short introduction regarding attitudes towards food in the U.K we will highlight the fact that obesity is on the increase in the uk and that the government has set out initiatives on the importance of eating five portions of fruit and vegetables a day. with the use of voxpops we will reflect 2 - 3 opinions from the general public. 2nd minute.
Introduction to Holistic nutritionist and raw food specialist Anna who will talk about her lifestyle, nutrition and describe what it is she does and how raw food can be beneficial to our health and well being. 5th minute Anna will go on to demonstrate in public how to make a healthy dish and we will see if she can convince the public that healthy food can be tasty. 7th minute interviews and vox pops of the publics reaction and a round up from Anna. Below is a slide show of some of the research Ive done and other bits and bobs...
19/3/10
We have begun filming some of the content for our documentary, last week saw us record one of Annas workshops. We used the Z1camera for the close ups and my own camera for the wide angle shots, the sound was recorded using the seniser rifle microphone connected to the Z1 camera , the microphone was set up above Annas head where we managed to get a decent sound quality. I am pleased we made the decision to take the microphone rather than use the mic on the camera, as we had to set up at the back of the room so we did not block the veiw of the people attending the workshop, I was stood next to the window and the noise from the street outside was quiet loud given the distance I was stood away from Anna I think we would have struggled to get a decent sound quality. After the workshop had ended I interviewed some of the guests and asked them some questions regarding the workshop, I was alone at this point and found it quiet difficult to concentrate on all the tasks such as interviewing sound and the camera, the result of which was that the some of the interviewees moved around in the shot and as I wasn't behind the camera some of the framing is out, I am hoping we can resolve some of the problems in post production.
Thursday 16th March
We began filming the second of three scheduled days of filming , The aim of the day was to Interview Anna, capture some cut away shots and interview the restaurant manager and shop owner where Anna supplies her cakes. Ross was in charge of the Z1 camera whilst I took care of the sound and interviewing. Annie was unable to make all of the days filming and although we managed it with two of us, I found it difficult to deal with both the technical aspects of recording and doing the interviewing at the same time. We had a few issues with the framing of the subjects but once again I think we might be able to sort them out in post production. We managed to acomplish everything we set out to and think we have some good interveiws to work with.
DAY THREE
The filming for the third day had us out on the streets of Bath Filming Anna Putting some of her raw delights to the test , are aim was to record the reactions of the general public . Annie took the role of interveiwer, Ross was on sound and I was on the camera we found that most people were happy to record a vox pop interveiw and answer a few simple questions. Annas food created a lot of positive attention every person who tasted it seemed to realy like it which was very good feed back for Anna and easy filming for us, the only problems that occurred on this particular shoot was the weather. We only managed to get around an hour of filming before the heavens openend and down came the rain , we managed to get all the equipment packed away before it truly lashed it down, That finished off the filming for that day but due to the postive amount of responses we had managed to film, we now had enough footage to move onto the editing process.
Myself, Ross and Annie got together in the gate house and began sellecting what to put in the edit, We started with the interveiw with Anna, that been the main spine of the peice on which everthing else would hang.It seemed that once we had narrowed down the the interveiw the rest of video began to fall into place. The main problems we had with this peice was with the dvd authoring. The file exported from final cut would not be read as 16/9 we tried several times using different formats but the same problems occured over again. Mike finally excepted the disc as it were as there seemed to be no solution that any of us could find. After many Problems with uploading the file to the net we have finnally managed it. Here is the finished version of food for thought.
Between the group I feel we managed this project pretty well. The comunication and reliabillity was good and everyone turned up on time or gave plenty of notice if they were unable make it. We stuck to all of our filming dates and I feel we planned the schedule well. All of our filming was done by easter and I began logging and capturing over the holidays and we met as a team and began editing, when we returned to university after the holidays we only had to polish up the edits and do some colour correction. During the shoots myself and Ross took turns on the camera and audio giving us both a chance to practice are skills, Annie was unable to help out on the technical side of things (fustrating for her) but made up by doing other things such as the interveiwing, photographs and paperwork. The main problems we encountered with this project was the format problems in the last few days of production. Other than that I would say that we reached our objectives worked well as ateam and used the time we had sencsibly. This project gave us a taste of what it would be like to be working on a peice in the real world, given that the end product was going to go on Annas website. The whole process ran very smoothly and I am personally happy with the end product.
The filming on day three turned out to be the best day weather wise. I had learned from my early mistakes and brought along a Rhode video mic, which I attached to my camera in the hope of capturing better audio.
I managed to capture more cutaways, record an interview with Ray and catch a few unintentional 'magic moments'. The day seemed to be going well until I realised that I had been shooting in 4/3 from the previous day, all the other footage taken over the previous two days were shot in 16/9, nightmare!! Done it again! We had the same problem shooting the group project, on that occasion two cameras were shooting in the two different pixel aspect ratios. Lesson Learned this time I hope. Despite the problems I managed to capture most of footage I had set out to get, I was on target with my schedule and it was time to begin the logging and capturing process.
THE JOYS OF PRODUTION
I wanted to log and capture all the video and begin the edit before the end of April as I was going on holiday for four days giving me just under two weeks to finish the project, I had initial problems in logging certain parts of one of my tapes, I kept getting logging errors I tried different capturing devices but the same problem occurred each time, I resolved not to use the piece in the end.
Once all the footage had been loaded into final cut, the process of choosing what will go in the film and in what order began, until this point I had not had any clear idea of how the narrative of the piece would go, I knew which elements of Rays story I wanted to portray, but the next step of the process is how to tell it. I began trawling through the footage marking the peices I wanted to use and sorting clips into bins.
I soon realised that a lot of the footage I had taken had technical errors in one way or another, some footage was over exposed or under exposed the audio had wind rumbling over it in places. Unlike the group project where we had a controlled environment where it is so much easier to set up and make judgements. I found that filming and recording alone is a difficult task as there are so many different aspects to think about, filming outside has so many changing circumstances i found it difficult to . Once I had narrowed the footage down I decided to hinge the piece around the interview and pick out the audio were Ray had given clear answers or had told a story in full. I wanted to show Ray in a balanced light with both his happy go lucky attitude towards life but also his serious and spiritual side.
I began the project, by setting it to 16/9. Initially I had forgotten the 4/3 footage and began working on the piece. When I did come to offending footage I decided to increase it in size so that it would fit to the widescreen. It was not until later when I saw the quality of the picture that I wished I hadn’t and instead had tried clipping wide screen footage down, I realise either way can be problematic.
Once I had the bones of the edit together I chose the music, A friend of mine gave me some C.Ds of sound tracks that he had composed and produced, the music does not have any vocals and varies in mood and tempo, so it was perfect for my piece The one used in the film is called Whispers By the Sea by Lee Harris. I am fortunate to have the use of professionally produced music, without it I would of been unable to create the same atmosphere and experience that music provides.
Colour correction and trying to sort the audio were the final processes, Having Talked with Richard Wood I tried putting the audio sample into sound track pro and appliying a high pass E Q it helped a little but it also raised the levels of the clip, I over looked the issue and handed the peice in with the audio levels jumping high.
A Grave Matter
The authoring of the dvd looked like it might pose problems, I had the same issue as with the group project, for some reason when I export the file from final cut into I dvd it sees the file as a 4/3 not 16/9 (pixel aspect ratio again) I decided to use dvd pro as it exported the file as widescreen, one other problem I encountered was that I had left some media in the time line which made the file lenth some thing like eleven minutes instead of seven. I had used all my DVDs so Mike accepted it as it were, given that I had already identified the problem I will not loose any marks.
I realy enjoyed making my personal project from working with Ray to the editing process the whole journey has been a learning cerb, I think that most things that can go wrong did go wrong especially in the filming department. It gave me plenty of work to do in the editing process From the lessons learned during this project I will now move on and spend some time on improving my camera skills. I need to think more about camera shots and angles and start to think of the camera as more of a creative tool rather that just a window from which to veiw through. I also need to practice with exposure, white balance and generally operations of the camera in order to produce more professional material .
Recently I was asked by Glastonbury FM the local radio station I have been volunteering for, If myself and presenter Liz Janaway would help out at the emerging talent competition, which is an annual event held by glastonbury festival and is designed to unearth unsigned bands and give them a chance to win a slot on the main pyramid stage. Previously the competition has given prominence to winning bands such as Scouting For Girls and Stornoway.
Twelve bands compete in the finals which are held over two nights at the Pilton Working Mens Club six bands compete each night in front of a panel of judges. Our job was to interview the bands back stage in the waiting room before they went on stage, Most of the bands had already had a main interveiw during the day with Worthy Fm ( the festivals official radio station who join forces with Glastonbury Fm to cover the event) We were asked to do an in formal interview which most band members were more than happy to do, although there was one band who wanted to 'have some space' before going on stage, with those guys we waited until after their performance.
We had a few technical issues one of them been that one of the stage crew kept walking in out of the room, everytime he opened the door we got a loud blast of noise come in from the stage, which ruined parts of some of the interveiws and resulted in me having to cut out large parts of the interveiw during editing. I was only given a couple days in which to edit down all the material, I kept it short and each band interveiw was narrowed down to approx 3 minutes each. I was pleased to hear that Steve bilborough used all the material in his show and was happy with the results.
The line up was of a high standard and I would of struggled to pick between some of the acts. The winning band was Ellen and the escapades (one 0f my favourates). Ellen was a sweet little girl with voice of an angel, she was very shy and we didnt manage to get much of an interveiw with the band but we did get a live recording of them warming up just bfore going on stage.
The whole experience was enjoyable and very rewarding, there was talk of us working with worthy fm during the festival as roving reporters, they will be following up the six winning bands that earned themselves slots on the smaller stages
For my personal project I intend to make a documentary a bout a local man who lives in my village and by trade is a grave digger. Brother Ray as he known to all the locals is a colourful and earthy character with a very bright attitude towards life.
I intend to film Ray as he goes about his daily work and record his attitudes towards life and death and how he feels to be gravedigger. I also intend to do a little research on the history of gravediggers ( fossers as they were once known ) and give a list of famous people who have been diggers.
I feel that the character of Ray is a strong one. He's a bit of a rouge and is best described as a real life Steptoe in the 21st century. I Hope to encapsulate the true nature of Ray, if he comes over on camera as he does in life I think he will make a good character to base my documentary on.I intend to make a documentary about a local Somerset man, known as Brother Ray. Ray has earned his living from working the land since childhood his main occupation is grave digging but takes on a whole host of jobs from tree felling to stone wall building. I intend to tell a little of Rays story, how he came to be a grave digger and his attitude towards his job.
Ray will be the main character I may also include his young apprentice (his nephew) lukerow Scarecrow as Ray calls him, and possibly a vicar from one of the churches whom Ray works for.
I will show the day to day life of Ray and look at what is required of him as a gravedigger. As the decline in burials gives way to the increased number of cremations Ray finds himself turning more and more to alternative sources of income, I will show how Ray lives from workingwith the land and the various jobs he under takes in order to make his living.
I will present the documentary with the use of interviews photographs, cut aways, and music.
The issues I will be exploring are one mans attitude towards life and death and his role in the burial process of a person as they passage from this life on to what comes next, and also how Ray has managed to support himself all these years by using his initiative and contacts throughout the community in order to secure work.
I would like to portray Ray as the down to earth, comical and spiritual man that he is, in the face of his work Ray still maintains a constant cheery attitude to life. In the low budget Austrailian film Kenny Clayton and Shane Jacobson created a mocumentary about portaloos and plumber named Kenny Smyth the character was a funny, likable and a down to earth chap. As one reveiw read.. A mockumentary with a dash of corporate video that treads a fine line between fiction and reality, a film that is hilarious but doesn't ridicule its subjects or subject matter, and one that makes a hero out of not just an ordinary working bloke, but one who's working in something most of us shy away from: the pumping of poo. That is that very same essance I want to capture in Ray, although in my case the subject is real life, I want to capture Ray as he is, I personally feel that documentarys ought to document their subjects as they are and I dont wish to stage my film in any way.
Filming Begins
Last week I began filming Ray, Using my own camera a cannon xm1 and a labec tripod from uni. I started shooting Ray digging one of the two graves he had to work on that week, the weather was fine and I managed to get some good footage of the grave been dug both by hand and with the mechanical digger, I also interviewed Ray as he worked and again later whilst driving around in his truck, I had a few technical problems in both of the locations.
At the cemetery the audio recording was very poor as I didn't have the right external microphone, so I had use the internal Mic which picked up wind noise and the audio levels were really low in places, In the truck I had problems with the light changes and I was unable to see the veiw finder as there was very little space, I had to point the camera and hope for the best. I found that interviewing Ray whilst driving around seemed to be the most relaxed for him , I am hoping that I am going to be able to do something with the footage in post production so I can use some of it in the final piece.
The second day of filming was thwart by heavy down pours of rain and sleet, I managed to film about the first ten minutes of the grave been prepared for burial then the heavens opened up. I did manage to get a few interviews with Ray in the truck whilst he waited for the funeral to leave. I have asked Ray to allow me to come with him again so I can once again follow the process from beginning to end and capture the moments I was unable to catch, I do hope that the weather is going to be better.
Was to make a 3 minute short self contained instructional video, that focases on cheap heathy food for students.
Our group decided on making a vegetable curry, the ingredients cost us £5.80 and we managed to feed four us and could easily of stretched to five decent sized meals. The idea for the curry came from one of sainsburys feed four five recipes the food was healthy, tasty and cheap to buy. We adapted the ingredients a little as some of the vegetables were not to our liking.
I watched several cooking programs on you tube and television, to get an idea of how they set out the cameras and what camera angles they used. From the hairy bikers to master chief they all seem to use a variety of angles. Using celtex we broke down the stages of the recipe and sketched out each shot needed to explain the process.
We decided to use two cameras to film, one to take the wide angle shots and the other for the close ups. We nominated Rachel as the presenter a good choice as she took to role instantly, and kept us all highly entertained with her Australian student role.
Technically we had a few hiccups one camera filmed in 16 by 9 and the other 4 by 3 which is going to cause us problems in post production. The lesson to be learned there is ALWAYS check and make sure both cameras are set the same. We also didn't take into account the short time limit of three minutes and may have to use a voice over to explain each stage when we come to edit it all together.
Finished
We finally edited and finished the demonstration video. It took us a couple of hours to record the voice over and finish the editing, we had a few headaches with file formats and FCP, which resulted in having to render the film as a quick time movie, import it into Adobes Premier editing suite and add the audio, it seems that Premier is compatible with WMA audio format.
This was a fun and productive task, it made us think about camera angles and shots. Was I to take on a task like this again I would consider the time factor and work the shots and narrative around the time, rather than record the piece and then try to cut it later. We got around the problem by recording a voice over afterwards , which worked out quiet well in the end.
