Work Experience

For the last 2 weeks I've been doing work experience with mycornwall.tv.

Day 1 (1:00pm - 2:30pm): Was a very short day and I spent just over one and a half hours at a meeting with the head of production (who I would be working with). It was quite an informal meeting where we disgust what/who I would be working on/with throughout the week. Although it was also subject to change. We also brainstormed some ideas for possible future programming and different formats of programs for the website.

Day 2 (9:30am - 2:30pm): I spent day 2 at a documentary shoot at Pengersick Castle. I spent most of the day observing the crew working (which consisted of a presenter/director and two camera operators) and helped out with carrying equipment. Whilst I didn't get to operate the equipment I did learn a lot about the way the crew worked together and shot different stuff. The presenter/director was really interesting to watch as were the crews methods of shooting. It will be quite interesting to see the finished piece. However, I don't think it will appear on the website until October.

Day 3 (4:00pm - 6:00pm): Finished off a short documentary at Gwithian Towans Beach that had been started the previous week. It was about how teaching people from the forces to surf can be a great way for them to deal with post traumatic stress, by helping them to forget about it and just enjoy the waves and the ocean and also by meeting other people dealing with post traumatic stress. I ended up helping with sound recording and held the microphone throughout the interviews. Hopefully I did a good job.

Day 4 (10:00am - 11:00am): We were supposed to be filming at Fifteen today, which is Jamie Oliver's new restaurant near Newquay. However, when we got there it turned out they didn't know we were supposed to be shooting there. So unfortunately we'd made a wasted trip. Although I did get a free orange juice!

Day 5 (9:30am - 2:30pm): Spent today filming on Tolcarne Beach in Newquay. We were filming this piece on this girl who won a bronze medal in open water swimming at the 2008 Olympics. I can't remember her name unfortunately but she was the "celebrity" of the day. The event was to raise awareness for the surf life saver organisation which helps young children learn about the dangers of the sea and how to look out for them and avoid them. I helped with sound again and held the mic throughout all the interviews that we did. The rest of the day was spent following the "celebrity" around and filming the different activities and races that she was in. Unfortunately I ended up in the sea as when we went down to film by the sea again later in the day the camera man forgot the mic lead was still attached and so when a wave came he just stood there, and since I was holding the mic which was at the other end of the lead I ended up getting wet too. The annoying thing was I knew the mic wasn't going to be picking up any important sound, so I kind of got wet for nothing.

This marks the end of the first week. Unfortunately I was unable to work the second week because I came down with pretty bad tonsillitis which I'm still recovering from. I enjoyed the experience though and whilst I would have liked to have a done a bit more, as a lot of the time I was just stood around watching, I did learn quite a bit. I'm definitely going to be getting more work experience in the future, but I'm going back to uni this month to start work on documentary making. So expect some more videos in a couple of months.

A Remote Idea

This is the first comedy that I've done. I didn't write the script for this one and just directed. However, the main actor didn't want to learn his lines and wanted to improvise. It terms of content it worked, however a lot of that content we had to cut from the final edit because it just didn't fit in terms of continuity. Arms and heads were jumping around and nothing really flowed. As a result we ended up having to cut all the stuff that flowed together, although unfortunately this wasn't the funniest stuff.

Watching the film back now I don't really find it funny at all. Whilst I did enjoy making it, I'm not sure I'll be having another go at a comedy any time soon. I can't write comedies myself, but if a very funny script landed in my lap then I would definitely do it. Although I would have to be rolling on the floor with laughter, because even at the script stage this film was more of a chuckling quietly to yourself more than a laugh out loud comedy. And those are the types of comedies I hate. If it has been classed as a comedy I want to be laughing out loud throughout the entire film. If not than it's not worthy of the term comedy.

As a result I wouldn't class A Remote Idea as a comedy. More of a light hearted film.

The Cell

The idea for this next film came from another person in my group. However, the idea was very vague and so I wrote it up into a proper screenplay, changing a few bits as I went. The song at the beginning was something that I wanted to add in as the director. This was the biggest directing job I had done to date in terms of working with actors and whilst I found the cell scenes very stressful because my crew was doing fuck all, when it came the gallery scenes they actually had decided to do there jobs and so it went much smoother.

I also had to direct extras for the gallery scene. Unfortunately though the two main extras shots were cut out of the final cut, however, you can still see them in the first cut.

This film is an art film in my opinion as it has many different interpretations. I've shown it to many people, some of them don't get it and others do, but quite often they don't get it in the same way. Even I myself have managed to interpret the film in different ways as well. This is one of the reasons I really like this film.

Unfortunately though this film isn't perfect. There are many shots which are out of focus due to the camera operator. You could say that I am putting blame on the camera operator to avoid putting the blame on myself. However, as the director I never really looked through the camera. For all the shots I would check the framing, but that would be it. I would use my own digital stills camera to find the shots. Take the picture and then show it to the camera operator. I only ever glanced at the camera shot to check the framing. All the technical aspects such as focusing are the job of the camera operator.

Whilst I do find these out of focus shots disappointing when I watch the film I just ignore them, because I know that in the future it won't happen. When you work on films with a big enough crew, you have a person who's specific job is to keep the shot in focus, this is called the focus puller.

Another major issue with the film is lighting. I refused to move any of the lights as the director, because I didn't really have time to between checking the framing on the camera and telling the camera operator to change it slightly if it needed changing; and directing with the actors. The film uses lighting throughout it's entirety, however, if you watch it, it only really looks like it is being lit when you get 31 seconds in. The lighting crew were awful. When I told them to sort the lighting out they wouldn't do it. And then when I was ready to shoot after talking with the actors, etc. they suddenly got up off their asses and said, we need to change the lighting it looks shit and so they would. This lost us precious time in our studio shoot (the cell scene). On the other hand, once they had actually bothered to do the lighting it look quite good.

Although this isn't the reason for the crap lighting from the beginning up to 31 seconds in. That was just down to inexperience with lighting. For the shot 31 seconds in, one of our university lecturers came in to see how we were getting on and taught us how to properly do lighting. She then left and we were able to light the rest of the film quite well. It is just a shame we didn't have time to re-shoot the first 30 seconds.

There are a few other minor bad points but these are the main ones.

When ever people watch it they never really seem to listen to the lyrics of the song. I wrote the lyrics myself to the The Well theme from Hans Zimmer's score to The Ring. This is the music you can hear behind the lyrics. There are actually already lyrics to this song and I think subconsciously this is perhaps one of the reasons I chose this song. However, the original lyrics wouldn't have made any sense and so I decided to write my own. Here are the lyrics as written my me.

Oh so trapped, with in our own world.

Why we can't, escape when we're curled

Up so tight I can barely breathe.

Why did you run away and leave

When I was in need of your help?

Please, please, please, will somebody save me.

These lyrics actually sum up the whole film, when sung by Katey (the main character) which they are, and they tell us how the situation she is in and how she feels. Although you might have to watch the film (and understand it) to understand the lyrics fully. Now I'm not a song writer and so I'm amazed that I was actually able to even write these lyrics, as I've never written a song in my life. However, some how it just came to me, even if I did have to google "words that rhyme with world and breathe". I wouldn't really recommend it as a song writing method though.

If you want to see the first cut of the film then here it is. However it is obviously unfinished and therefore it doesn't have things in such as the re-recorded dialogue and the children's laughter when she turns around and looks at the suit case. Although it does contain the full scenes from the gallery, which unfortunately we had to shorten because it made the pace of the film too slow.

I quite enjoy making art films and I'm definitely going to be making more in the future. However, this is the last I can actually show you as I haven't made anymore yet. But I do have a few scripts that I am developing, so hopefully it won't be long before I'll have another one complete.

Next months film is going to be a comedy.

The Snowman Killer

This is a shitty little film that we made. Other than the concept it was all improvised. The camera we used was a down grade to the ones we normally use as it didn't have manual focus. The only advantage it had was night vision, but even that was amazing. Overall I think the film is pretty shit. But it just came from the necessity to make a film.

Gloucester Cathedral

This is the first documentary that I've made. Whilst I did shoot my first film Brave Story like a documentary, it was in fact a fictional film.

I wrote the documentary and did the sound for it. These were originally my only two roles on the film. However, after the director turned out to not have a clue what he was doing and literally was just standing still doing absolutely nothing a lot of the time. I ended up as the unofficial director.

This is the first film where I've had to work with someone who doesn't know how to do there job. If I were a studio executive then I would have fired the person whom was supposed to be our director on the spot for some of the stuff that they did, or didn't, do.

A word of advise to anyone who wants to be a director, make sure you are doing it for the right reasons. Why do you want to direct the film? And most importantly why do you want to be a director? If you don't know, then you shouldn't be doing it. And even if you know the answers to these questions, you have to be honest with yourself and say, do I have the creative vision for this film? If you don't know what you want to do with the film then either take it away and think about what you want to do until your sure about everything; or pass the role to somebody else, even if it means taking on a different role or not working on the film altogether. The most important thing is the film, not yourself.



We filmed this on mini-DV, using Canon XM2's. These are digital film cameras which proved quite challenging to work with inside the cathedral. With digital cameras you need to white balance the camera for the light source that illuminates the space you are in. If you get the white balance wrong then your image can look blue or red. Most of the time this happens only slightly, however if when you come to edit the footage together you have a slightly blue shot followed by a slightly red shot (or the other way round) then you can easily see the change.

This is the reason the cathedral proved such a challenging location to film in, because there were several different light sources illuminating the inside of the building. There was the sun light shining through the windows, as well as two different types of lights used inside. In the main room, the ceiling was lit with one type of light, whilst the rest of the room was lit with another. This meant that we were unable to get a wide shot of the interior of the cathedral that had an accurate colour representation. Either the ceiling ended up very red, or the windows ended up very blue. As a result we tried to film the cathedral in sections.

Saying that, the cathedral is a very beautiful building. However, if you wish to capture the true beauty of such a building, I would recommend filming on actual film stock, instead of using digital film. Whilst digital film does have many advantages, this is one of the areas where film stock shines through.