Meeting Open Art - Folders in Premiere

Yesterday i met with my client from the Shire Hall Art Gallery in Stafford so that she could view the first draft of the video i am doing for the Open Art Exhibition.
We watched the video through together and decided to change a few things such as the title colour and change the order of the presentation evening so that the award is given and then followed by the interview of that winner, whereas before all the awards were given back to back followed by the interviews all being grouped together.
I have also found that creating folders in Adobe Premiere Pro is a brilliant way to group footage. as i've grouped all footage based on what day they were filmed on making it easier to find the footage i need when i need it.
Tomorrow i am meeting the client again for another viewing and hopefully the video will be up and displayed in the gallery come this Saturday.

Colour Correcting Open Art

Finished Editing the open art video for the Shire Hall Gallery in Stafford.
I Finished off by colour correcting the video making all shots look very natural as can be seen below.

Before

 

After

Editing Open Art Interviews

Just a quick post as I have just had a revelation while editing.
I know it sounds quite stupid but I have only just realized how important single frames are, I say this because while editing the sound of this interview I realized that by trimming a few frames you can make it sound as though the interviewee, is just talking not answering a question. This is done by trimming the '"erm"s, "well"s and other starting's to sentences making a sentence "erm well I started painting in..." to  "I started painting in..."
Simple but effective.

Editing Open Art

Yesterday I started editing all of the footage from the Open Art Evening at the Shire Hall Gallery.
I went through all the footage selecting the best shots, I then synced all of the audio to match the best shots with the best sound.
I then edited more of the earlier footage I had collected, trimming down clips and in some cases removing clips completely to make room for more important footage from the Evening exhibition.
This morning I have picked up where I left off last night, chopping up the footage of the presenting side of the open art evening, and adding some cut away shots.
I am now going to spend the afternoon editing the winners interviews.

Open Art

Last night was the final night of filming for the open art exhibition at The Shire Hall Gallery in Stafford.
we collected shots of the art as well as interviews with the winning artists and covered the presentation from start to finish.
This morning i have been going over the footage collected last night and have also been editing clips that i had collected previously to fit around the new footage.
I have also sped up a few clips of the hanging process of the art to give a time lapse from and empty wall to a wall full of art. Something that i think works very well.
Music has also now been added to accompany the footage. The artist that has done the music for me followed my instruction and has come up with a very fitting short piece.

Filming Drama

Yesterday i filmed the last scene for my drama.
Filming was a success as i got all the footage i needed quickly and efficiently.
I used my Gopro camera again for Point of view shots something that it is perfect for.
i also played about with pulling focus during shots, this is something that i have been cautious of doing before as i have been worried of messing it up but after a couple of attempts i succeeded with the shot which i am very pleased about.
since then i have edited all the footage together. i had a few minor issues with sound which i sorted through splicing together bits of sound from other clips. i then colour corrected the entire project, some shots were very dark but through some minor adjustments the problem was sorted.

Before

After

Multi-Camera Production

Today and yesterday i have been doing a Multi-Camera production at Staffordshire university.
i performed various jobs such as operating the autocue, setting up lighting alongside the lighting director and the director and i even directed the camera operators while i was operating the autocue.

Art Gallery Video

Yesterday I filmed at The Shire Hall Gallery again. I filmed the whole of the judging of the competition from 9:00am till 1:00pm and then interviewed the judges in the afternoon.
This morning I have captured all of the footage to my laptop and I am currently previewing the footage and organizing it ready to edit it which i will hopefully start tonight.

Filming Drama

Got up at 6am this morning to prepare for filming my drama as part of my course.
I am using a cast and crew of 4 people and filming it over 3 separate days. I am using my Canon D600 for most shots and  my GoPro camera with head, chest and wrist attachments.
I filmed the whole first scene of my Drama and have collected some very good shots although I may have to return to the location to get some more establishing shots of the location.

Open Art at the Shire Hall Art Gallery

Yesterday I started filming for the Shire Hall Art gallery in Stafford.
I will be filming the whole art exhibition from start to finish. This includes the handing in of the art, the judging of the art, the hanging of the art and the viewing evening.
Both yesterday morning and this morning I filmed the handing in of the art.
I am filming the whole project on Canon DSLR's in full HD.

Meeting for Art Gallery Video

Today I met with the client from the art gallery for the first time.
We sat down and spoke about what she wanted from the video, which was that she wanted a video that documented the Open Art Exhibition from start to finish. The Open Art Exhibition is split into sections which are; Handing in, Judging, Installation of winners in the gallery and the Prize giving evening when the winners are given their prizes and get a chance to look at all the new art hanging in the gallery.
The client has stated that she wants the video to be between 5 and 8 minutes long.
Based on my research I feel that this video would work well accompanied with some original music for the bits of the video where the sound of the video is not important. luckily i know some musicians so it should quite easy to find someone that is willing to do the music for me.
I feel that the handing in and the installation of the art in the gallery will be the 2 shortest parts of the video as i feel they may become boring, so i have decided to concentrate on the judging and the prize giving evening.
I will also interview the judges and winners of prizes to mix the video up a bit and make it more interesting for viewers.

DVD Menu for Foundations to Employment

Today I authored a DVD menu for the Foundations to Employment video that I am doing for Staffordshire County Council, I used Adobe Photoshop to design the menu and then used Adobe Encore to author the DVD and burn it to disc.
My DVD is complete with Working links for different videos that I have done for the council and can be seen below.

DVD Cover

Today I have been creating a DVD cover for the Foundations to Employment project i have been working on.
I created the DVD cover using Adobe Photoshop and used images that i have used in the video. one of the most useful things i used when doing this DVD cover was the guides to make sure all pictures and text were in line.
I took my inspiration from from other DVD cover such as the DVD cover for the film Samsara and a couple of David Attenborough DVDs, i chose these as inspiration as they are both informative, non-fiction style DVDs and i thought it would be fitting for my DVD cover to look similar to them as the DVD cover I am creating is for a factual documentary style program.

The above image is of my completed DVD cover with guides.

Showreel/Progress

I've decided to start collecting footage for a showreel from past projects that I have done. I have found footage that shows both my skill with the camera and my directing skills.
Another thing I have noticed is how much my camera skills and editing skills have improved since last year. My most recent projects contain no camera jerks and the composition of my shots has improved a lot. Editing wise colour correcting has made a big improvement to the quality of my projects. In addition to this I have also improved from 3 years ago in the sense of using After Effects which i have used when necessary this last year and a half.
I now am also more capable of setting up and checking equipment something that has let me down when I first started studying video production. I noticed this as in a video a made 3 years ago the footage was glitchy due to the camera having dirty tape heads when filming and capturing.
Overall I didn't realize how much all aspects of my video production have improved the last 3 years due to experience and what I have learned from college/university.

Editing foundations to employment

I have now done everything that i can with the audio. I found that the best solution was for me to lower the volume of the clip and put a constant grain sound on the clip which masks the annoying background noise.
Another thing that i have found very useful which I had not used before is the RGB Curves tool in Premiere Pro for colour correcting. A tool i will be using again in future with the Levels tool.
Below are before and after pictures of the colour correcting I have done.

Before

After

As you can see in the second picture the shadows on the subjects face and background have been reduced and the light in whole looks a lot more natural.

Editing (foundations to employment)

My Edit for Staffordshire County Coucil's Foundations to Employment is nearly complete
one thing I am tampering is editing the sound in Soundbooth as there is an annoying dog barking sound in the background. unfortunately isolating the sound and deleting it leaves me with choppy unsynced footage.

Filming for Staffordshire County Council

Today I have filmed at a children's nursery in Oldbury, an Equestrian center in Tamworth and a car mechanics in Hednesford, this was for the project I am doing for Staffordshire County Council's Foundations to Employment program.
Below are some pictures of both me and Ashley taken throughout the day including pictures of us setting up equipment and filming.

Pre-Production (Foundations to Employment)

Finished pre production including proposal and shooting schedule. In addition to this i have researched corporate videos online which I want this project to look like, to give me more of an insight in to how I want to go about production and different shots that I may want to use.

Meeting with Client

Met with Alan from Staffordshire County Council to talk about an upcoming project I am doing for him.
set the outlines of the video including the style and length that he wants the video to be as well as setting filming dates of the 5th and 6th of March with a rough editing being done for the 12th of March.

Location Recce The Old Court House

Today Olly and I did a location recce for an upcoming drama we are filming on the 8th of November as a group. While at the old court house we decided conduct a risk assessment for the location. We decided to take pictures of the location to show to the rest of the group and so that we could document some of the hazards such as a high balcony, sharp railings on the set, narrow spaces to work in and steps.

picture of one of 2 plugs located on one side of the court room

sharp railings which are part of the set in the court room

shot of Olly on balcony

Olly on balcony 2

Narrow walkway which we will have to use equipment in

small space could be used for filming

steps up to the balcony a possible hazard

Side stalls as seen from balcony

shot of the court from balcony

As the pictures of the court house show lighting is going to be an issue in this location. With big windows one side of the room and florescent lighting attached to the high ceiling. This means we will have to experiment with lighting in the location before filming.