Barnardos training film day 2

Well that's the filming finished! Had a great day using a great piece of kit, the semi-professional Canon XH-A1 again. Everything ran really smoothly today (apart from the odd door slam in the background!) and we finished ahead of schedule. All that remains is the editing, it will be great to see the end result!

Barnardos training film day 1

Today I started work on a training film for Barnado's. The charity is currently in the process of delivering a training course entitled ‘Interview Panel Training for Service Users’. This is aimed at children and young people who access Barnardo's services across North Wales. The aim of the course is to train this group of people to sit on interview panels during staff and volunteer interviews as the charity believes it is important that they have a say in who works for them.

The brief is to to film 4 different interviews each with the same actors. However, for each interview the actors will be focussing on a particular trait of their character. For example, interview 1 would be competent interviewers and a shy interviewee. Interview 2 would be disorganised interviewers and a strong candidate. The mock interview clips need to demonstrate the different ways in which a job interview can be carried out. The clips will be used as a training exercise where our service users will look at body language, dress, use of words and various other things. They will also be learning to access a good candidate and also how they might come across in an interview

The filming will take place over two days. For the first day I have taken the role of 'boom operator'. Tomorrow I will get to be the Cameraman so I'm looking forward to that! It was great working with a new group of people and working for a charity with a very worthwhile cause.

The end is near! (And I'm not talking about the 21st December 2012)

This the last blog detailing my assignments for the final semester. I still can't believe the first year is over already! I know it's an old cliche but time does fly when you're having fun! Yes I've really enjoyed the first year, I've had a great time working on my assignments and have made some great friends. Can't wait for the second year now. But don't worry I won't stop blogging I've got some projects planned over the summer and will provide updates here so watch this space!

So now for the assignments, these were given to us in a pack with a deadline of 16th May (to complete all of them) so it was up to us which ones we tackled first. The Music video (Pink Skies) and Horror film (The Wrong Way) were also part of these assignments so I won't be blogging about those here as I've already done those (see previous blogs).

The first assignment was a storyboard for a commercial. The brief asked me to produce a 6, 9 or 12 frame client presentation in A3 size. It could be produced using photography, images acquired from magazines or the web with development ideas, images and thoughts to be kept in a sketch/ideas book.  The subjects to choose from were Volvic, O2, Kit Kat and Eggs. I initally thought about some ideas for an egg commercial to do with recipes and making food from eggs when there wasn't much left in the cupboard. However, I thought something similar had been done before so I changed my mind. I then chose the Kit Kat brief which said that Nestle had brought out a series of different flavours and wished to bring this to the attention of consumers. The strapline for the campaign would be 'What colour are you?'. After a fair amount of research I decided on a fairly straightforward idea where different types of people would appear in a montage describing their favourite Kit Kat colour and flavour. Below is the storyboard I produced:

The next 6 assignments were all photography based. I had to produce photographic images for the following:

Shooting for Stock

The brief asked me to produce 6 images within a category that I feel empathy with. After some research I decided to go for alcohol. Below are the images I produced:

Joiner
For this one I had to produce an image that turns a 3 dimensional space or object with space into a 2 dimensional image. I actually produced 3 images for this assignment.

Typologies
I was required to produce an A2 wall poster containing 9 images based on typologies, laid out in portrait mode (3x3). I decided to base my on shop signs from Chester.

Street Photography

For this assignment I had to produce a mini portfolio of 12 images in monochrome or colour. For this assignment I took photos from Chester and also some whilst I was in Sydney. Due to limited space I've only uploaded 3 of my favourite pictures.

Whilst walking in Hyde park I spotted a couple of guys playing 'Street Chess'.

This photo was taken on a street corner in Sydney. I called this one 'Ignored Beggar'.

Men at work!

Still Life

I was asked to use commonplace objects to produce a still life image to illustrate the front cover of a book, the opening page of a website or a poster. After spending some time in the photography studio I decided to utilize some tripods. I also mocked up the image as a magazine cover to demonstrate how it could look on the front of a real publication.

Human Landscapes

The final assignment in the photography section of the brief was to produce 4 human landscape images using different lighting effects and viewpoints.

Thunder, Lightning, delayed trains & Romance at Wrexham train station

On Friday I was asked if I would help Jo (a 2nd year Student) with the sound boom on the shoot of her latest film. Filming started at 9 o'clock at Wrexham train station. Jo had arranged for a couple of actors to participate so it was great to work with a couple of professionals for a change rather than being the actor myself! I won't give the story away (as Jo hasn't finished editing it yet) other than the fact it is a romance. Shooting the film was a bit of a challenge due to the weather we had thunder, lightning and heavy rain showers. There were also delayed trains that were very noisy when silence was required! It was great experience working with Jo and I had good fun helping her out.












I'll hopefully post some further pictures in the near future.

Pink Skies

Well we've finally finished editing our Music Video! It was produced for a track written and sang by Tracey Green (a very talented singer.) see previous blog for a photoshoot she took part in. Gemma, Sue and I filmed the outdoor footage on a freezing cold day on location at Caergwrle Castle. Despite the cold weather we had good fun filming the footage. The indoor shots (for the storytelling part of the parallel edit) were filmed at Sue's house (thanks again to Sue for letting us use her house!).

Colin Heron (a Tutor in Sound Production) kindly arranged for two of his students (Jonny and Tom) to provide us with access to the sound recording studio at the main Glyndwr Campus. They 'laid down' three tracks to produce the end result which was a professionally polished song. The track also included harmonies by Tracey and her friend Bryn provided the acoustic guitar track. He also added further depth to the song with his great backing vocals.

 Editing was tricky as we had to match the song to the video but we got there in the end. Gemma and Sue did a great job creating a logo for our groups work.

Below is the a link to the video on YouTube. Constructive feedback is welcome!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=szbKNdMgWb4

Guitars, a new rock star and friends

Another day in the photo studio with Tracey and her friend Lucy. Today I was focussing on low key lighting. Tracey is a singer in a band and she brought her guitars along so we could take some shots of her. These shots could potentially be used for a promo or cd cover.

A day in the studio

Back in January Sue kindly arranged for her daughter Kirsty and friend Myra to take part in a couple of photo shoots. It was a fantastic opportunity to practice my portrait photography skills in both high and low key lighting. I took many different shots with the girls in a number of poses. I also experimented with longer exposures and achieved some creative results (see shot of the dancer below)Unfortunately I don't have space to post them all here but I've posted a few of my favourites.