Making March LIFE

I filmed my first feature on Sunday with two people who had gone on short term mission to Tanzania.

The first thing I learnt was to be organised; not because I am particularly badly organised but simply because other people are not that organised. One example was with Veritas. To make the interview a bit more interesting, I chose to film it in a bar called Veritas rather than in a meeting room at St. George's where filming normally happens. To check it was ok though, I rang earlier that morning and said they would check and get back to me which they failed to do. I went down before filming to chase them up about it and found it was fine though, but it was lucky that was the case. If the plan had failed I would have had to revert to using the meeting room, so in future I will make sure to organise any external filming well in advance.

Organisation is also key in time planning. Unlike with graphic design where I can be fully flexible as I only require my computer, with video I need to calibrate my time on the Mac, my time when filming others and time to go through the video with others to check it.

The second feature I filmed was a mock up small group at my house. I had been asked to film a feature on 'Carbon Fast', basically what people are doing to cut their carbon and why over Lent. Filming a group in a different setting presented me with different challenges to filming a simple interview, particularly as I had to make it look relatively natural. One mistake was not getting any good establishing shots, but I was quite pleased with some of the cutaways.

Light was difficult in my living room, and I also had two sound areas so had to keep moving the microphone. I'm not really sure how I could have sorted these issues out easily but I am aware of the problems such as over exposure, dodgy sound in places and varying light conditions. What I did do, but could have done more, is colour correction in editing. The first feature was a little blue while the second feature had higher red values.

Another feature I filmed, which I didn't put into the final production ultimately, was a Climate Change summit. I planned to link it in with the Carbon Fast feature, but it ended up being a bit random. I tried to get some vox pops and shots of what people were doing, but on the whole they weren't that successful. This was partly because the only good interviews I got were from a steward and a vicar... not great. Other people wanted to plug their business, and the few I got that were neutral didn't speak clearly.

It presented a network opportunity for me however as I was approached by one company that asked me if I would be interested in doing a promotional video for their company. I gave them my details, but in made me realise I should be carrying business cards.

At the end of the production process, I learnt how to burn it onto a DVD. I have done this before (years ago) but on a PC and using different programmes in a very amateur way. I also learnt how to optimise the video for projection; when one watches it on screen it will appear the contrast or brightness is slightly out, but this is because it has been edited for essentially a poor projector. The person who has produced this before has sometimes produced separate issues for web and projector, and I may do this in future but as this was my first time it would have been rather ambitious!

Production Time
Feature 1 & some editing: 5 hours
Climate Summit: 4 hours
Feature 2: 2 hours
Planned Editing Time: 16 hours
Actual Editing Time: 24 hours

Total production time: 34 hours

Costing
£4 taxi
£2.50 Beachtek battery
Total: £6.50