Rationale extended version

The rationale behind my professional work experience…

The underlying principle behind my work experience placement is to gain experience in the media industry become self efficient, initially the work placement I ended up choosing dose not seem to have relevance to the media on the exterior but what has become of this placement has fallen nicely. The whole point of the work experience is to get a placement giving yourself a chance to get a foot the door with a company understand the ‘real world’. I wanted to become involved, do more than the initial and compulsory 20 days of work experience. I wanted more out of my placement, I needed to build relationships and bring together my professional skills in media production and utilize by working for an organisation/company. Although my placement with the AWF was gained through being approached through a guest lecture in effect work off my own back and become self efficient. Because this module is working on building upon yourself creating media and finding doors and pathways towards jobs, by using initiative to find a job I found a placement that works slightly like freelance simultaneously working for the AFW producing promotional videos. I have taken a route that is working with a suggested charity, providing work and promotional videos for them through my own means and ideas. I have the chance to apply and to work with the BBC, university lecturers and my own productions/films but I feel I have found something better. I always have the opportunity to work with my uncle at the BBC and will do so, it’s just I feel what I have opted for is something different, in a new climate in a different country with a new culture. It will not only be a massive learning curve but it is also a self building task to live in Tenerife researching into pilot whales, bottle nose dolphins and other sanitations. This month working abroad is based around my own ideas and as a group developing and evolving promotional material. The trip is to gather the whole month create as much media as possible, work with people and places I have never before, expanding my knowledge around working on the job, exploring locations and gathering the Spanish culture captivating this all through video and imagery.

The reason for choosing this placement is partly because it was more of an adventure, filled with camera work. I felt that this could be a chance to become really involved with the world, providing something to give back, generate some fantastic footage for my portfolio providing an extraordinary portfolio that shows the experiences I have been through, the ideologies and knowledge I have gained through different countries and cultures and climates. Showing my future employee what I can do and the risks and location scanning I do to get the footage I want, not just what suffices the module. Not only that but the footage I capture will be insanely beautiful and what I can do with it between myself and group work will look brilliant. Building up my portfolio with all the work I have been involved with is one of the most important things to me, I want to be able to show my skills in every area and learn new ones as I progress. The whole point of this trip to Tenerife is to show and adapt to the environment and allow myself to learn the elements and find a way to film wildlife and landscapes, eventually leaning towards work in this type of industry. The whole point with work experience is to progress and construct ideas and skills throughout. I see the possibility to return and work fro the same organization more than once; this is even a career choice who knows. At the moment I find my self trying to identify what exactly what I want to do, were is should be, hat in like should I take and what I should leave behind.Since I am spending my time in Tenerife I am looking into diving and finding out how I can become a wildlife documentary maker or something along those lines. I feel that this opportunity with the AWF opens my eyes to  new opportunities with underwater footage, footage around the island and live sanitation footage. The opportunities are almost endless I have the chance to be on the water all the time every day, climb mountains and dive its almost like I have the chance to learn all of these skills in order to build a skill repertoire and become a diver that can film, climb and capture wildlife and/or documentaries in so many climates and situations.  Ideas due to the work I have done out here enabling my future work place to see what I have worked on throughout my time at university. I feel that my time spent at university for the AWF as an organization, a charity could really be a life changing experience. It seemed to all fit into place, the guy that runs the AWF Ed wants to us to work on ideas he has and to bring our own, this meant that we had to bring our own ideas to the table story board and present to the whole of the AWF in one of the daily meetings.

Action plan and reflection

Action plan and relevance

The action plan when in Tenerife was to invent and utilize a strategy to complete all the tasks set by the AWF and our own personal projects, looking back now I can see so much influence from both parties that it is hard to decipher which is were. When we arrived in Tenerife we took on half the project that the previous group were completing, this group left the AWF two weeks in too our time there. Other than this project myself and the group had ideas of capturing the landscape, stock footage, ideal locations and small shorts around the island. I personally wanted to fill my porfoloio with stuning footage of the boat work, the island and the astonishing scenery and tourist points. This plan was more of a rough idea of basis of projects that I wanted to complete when out working for the AWF.

It came to the work to be set by Ed (Manager of AWF) Now this work was a collaboration between our ideas and his own, this is were the idea to fill our portfolios full of marvelous boat and island footage came together compiled with his idea for promotion of the island. He wanted to capture the island in a beautiful and non-commercial way. We asked and where granted the ability to travel on our days off from the boats and weekends to capture all of this. This gave us a massive push to plan out and create a way that we could capture the island.

We sat down with Ed and the head coordinators Joe and Agata to find the ideal locations, planning out the sunsets and sun rises times and which way to face and the rough proposal of the ideal location, time of the sun set/rise, the rest of the location spotting was up to us. We had a map were Ed marked out half of the locations for the week when he was away and the rest to be finalized his return. So the first set of locations were based around the Volcano Teide and the fantastic views above the cloud formations. The first two time lapse sequences were to be based facing away from Teide to capture the sun setting into the clouds. The next day was the sun setting around teide and rock formations in the surrounding area, capturing Teide and the sun licking the rock formations with light. When the sun had dropped we focused on the clear views of the sky, the star formations and the rotation of the world on its axsis. The last step to this week’s time lapse was to be attempted twice purlely to capture the sun rise from 5 till 7 in two different locations. We were just given the locations we figured out what we should capture and on what day. This is were the action plan came into play below is the shooting time table.

Location	Time	Duration	Date	Purpose
The wall/ house	19:00-21:00	2:00	19/04/11	Test time lapse of los chritianos, Arona, las americanos
Rock del condo	11:00-17:00	05:00	21/04/11	Time lapse of bays and Teide
Los christianos bay/ mountain position	10:00-14:00	4:00	22/04/11	Time
Left side, base of Teide	19:00-		26/04/11	Time Lapse sunset
Base of teide desert plane	19:00- 24:00	5:00	28/04/11	Time lapse of sun set in two positions
Base of tiede facing west	05:30-07:00	1:30	29/04/11	Time lapse of the sun rise (in complete)
Test shoot and location scout and horse ranch filming	14:00-18:00	4:00	04/05/11	Test shoot and location spotting
Los Abigos, Taganana, lore forests	10:00-18:00	8:00A great deal of travelling	05/05/11	Location shooting and time lapse, Capture the true Tenerife, fishing villages and classic villages. Stock landscape footage
Candalaria, santa cruze	13:00-23:00	10:00	6th	Location shooting, capturing the black madona, candalaria and the guanche statues, stock landscape footage.Later in the evening capturing the night life and vibe in santa cruze.

Shooting script :

The brief for most shoots were always the same, it was down to us as media producers to film what we see fit, this ment we had total control, in some areas I would take control and suggest exactly what we wanted to capture. Because I was put forward to be our ‘ambassador’ and was asked to meet with Ed, talking through ideas and evolving and understanding what the AWF wanted from what and us. So when it came to the filming and time lapses I had a slight direction that I would portray to the group, give them an understanding what we needed to capture. Of course when a member of the group had input and a sense of direction we would take that because we became a group that had different ideas and incorporated them all into our filming. But it was certainly down to the weather and location, some locations above the clouds and some directly under mountains so lighting and continuity was a tough one to keep together. The idea behind all the locations was to capture the beauty and the traditional Tenerife but of course like al holiday brochures and online videos you want to see the island at its best. Some days when filming we found it to be overcast and dull, others sweltering hot, this became a mix and match when trying to keep everything the same and looking as best as possible.

This was a promotional basis; to promote the island for the AWF find a way to captivate the activities you can take part in, the sights you can see and really to show the island in its purest form. The content was not to be full of boring and stationary shots of the beach and all the sea front, restaurants filled, and a high commercial status. Ed wants something to show the island regardless of Los Christianos and Las Americanos, which is the south sides party, restaurant and beach strip. This was the man made and commercial part of the island, our video was to go further than this, travel and identify the locations that really show Tenerife at heart.

List of places to visit and film to complete the advertisement video, the content needed would be from the locations below. The following locations will be different in every location depending on the location time and what is present, some will be solid film and others would be time lapse all dependent on our judgment of the locations and the content within the shots. Obviously we have to be careful what we decide to do because there is a great deal that we rely on the Macbook’s battery life and the camera’s battery life because we can’t charge them on the field.

-       Banana farms

-       Tagana

-       Lore Forests

-       Santa cruse- festival

-       Kandalaria

-       Pine Forests

-       Villages; Ontatava, Arafo, Los Abigos, Masca

Items to capture within the teneriefe promo

-Fishermen

-Goats

-Pyramids,

-festival celebrations

-Flowers of the island

- Kandalaria, statues, black Madonna etc

- Island life

-Excitement, fun, festivities

-The heart of teneriefe

Quick directions/ Eds shooting script

Today the 5th go to los abrigos , the prettiest village on the island, wnd surfing etc… Capture a quant fishing village, in a bay on a hill, a sense of old Tenerife, also to los christianos taking in the fish and there boats the hourse ridding place, film the horses, on the left to the hourse ridding olace there are thousands of goats, famous goats because their udders drag on the ground.

^5th day one, head up to santa cruse, an hour to Taganana find the stunning views, mist around the mountain tops, lorel forestes are on the way to Taganana. Take the tunnel that takes you to the other side, this is the only way to Taganana, don’t go to taganana carry on to benijo when you get here it bends 100m and ends, at a cornoor next to a broken down building, behind this is a black beach… behind the shack is the best resterant on the island looking over the beach, catch peolple eating and chilling to capture the sense of tennerife and the surfing culture, views, the resterant itself, places on the

6^th day two, Friday eve or sat eve, 6:00 santa cruse at night, cobbled sreets the best place to film, near the red light district, old canery islands typical night, sitting in eating out dancing on roofs, on the way we can stop off in candilaria and go to the cathedral in kandilaria… statues of guanche warriors, black Madonna. Park the car walk to the main squre on the squre are all the statues, out side behind the monistry if its open is a cave were the Madonna was housed for100’s of year views are incredible. The cake shops around there, it’s famous fro cake and fish resterants. Guinar the piramyds , two turns before kandilaria. Don’t go into the pyrimads film through the fence. In the lorel forsts on the way to tagana, before thr tunnel there is a tunnel parking to the right, straight into the lorel forests for time lapse.

1^st day, the weather was against us, we ended up searching for the hourse ranch and goats, the only problem with this day is that the island was 95% covered in cloud. I know were are in Tenerife but the weather has really been against us since we have been here, it has its off days and its overcast and cold. So to portray the beautiful Tenerife is a tough one, the sun needs to be shinning with glorious blue water to really reflect the true Tenerife before global warming and karma rose against us. But its not all bad we worked around it and the footage capture is mainly close ups of animals and farm land so the close ups and slight burst of sun light, but there is nothing colour correction can change. The problem with some of the things Ed wanted us to include really didn’t have relevance, the goats and the view behind the goats through a media eye were horrible, just rocks and old shack with very grey over cast sky, it made the difference not placing this within the film.

Day two, this day was much more successful finding all the right places the sun was out and the views were stunning, it was unreal on how high we was and how much we could film. This day was jam packed and full of views that we had to cram all into the short promotional video. This village and the sights around made this trip worth while, seeing the real Tenerife and being able to view it in its true state.

Day three, well this started out a slow day, filming statues and the black madonna this was all very nice but I couldn’t help but feel uneasy when filming in such a religious place, it was a tough call but we had to put it all within the promotional video that Ed asked for.It soon moved on to the evening when a great deal of things opened up, santa cruse light up at night and some of the things we captured on tape were brilliant and well worth the wait.

Reflection on the shooting process

For the beauty of Tenerife task or brief, it was a very fun, interesting and from a filming point of view brilliant, it was just quite limited for one the equipment could have been better we had a great deal of lenses and the d90, you just never knew exactly what you was getting the screen is so small and in high light situations it was almost impossible to see, and adjust to the focus and the zoom. But saying this there were great benafits to this camera, the locations and travel was a great deal easier, inconsicus in size compared to the z1, it takes SD cards and very easy to transfer footage across to the laptops. This was a big thing for us out there because our time was very limited for filming and editing. Because we were apart of an organisation we had to work for them as well as comply by their rules and attend meetings, this meant that our work time would be cut in half on some nights, the result of working on the boats also meant that you would be out all day filming and researching into the pilot whales. When returning home you would have to fill out the research sheets and petitions and enter this all into the database, this meant that we wouldn’t be finished until 9:00. The fact that we had to film on the boats was also a good reason to have the d90 because the size of the camera was less obvious because it looked like we where taking photos, and the fact that we had to capture the boats character made it easy without people waving or smiling directly at the camera, so it made our lives easier when it came to the edit.

The use of the d90 gave us the chance to film and time lapse. A time lapse is something that I wasn’t expecting to do, the outcome was brilliant and there was no other way to capture the beauty of the landscape and the change throughout a sun set or rise over time. This was a brilliant aspect and skill that didn’t take a lot to do apart from the initial set up. Once the initial set up the time just had to tick away to take effect, the moments were light changed at night started to make a big difference to what was being captured. The program that was running our time lapse had to be stopped and the f stops and aperture would be changed, this is another reflection were different equipment would have been perfect. Because of the circumstances we didn’t know that a time lapse would be an appropriate idea to put forward until we was in Tenerife. This was something we should of really thought about and worked on more so we could have a remote for the camera rather than taking two lap tops everywhere for our two cameras and the time lapse process, this ment we could only time lapse for as long as the laptops battery lasted or the cameras battery, but 9 times out of 10 we had prepared and this was more than enough time as you can see in the final products.

When filming I had a very static idea, not many pans and not many zooms, but I was quite partial to a pull focus on most objects around our filming locations, I liked the feel it brought to the film but only because that’s what DSLRs are good at purely because the depth of field given. The 50mm lense gave a great deal of depth and colour to the film and static shots worked the best, it was obvious that in the landscape and surroundings needed to be taken in and cut between static and moving shots to find the true image. It’s a shame the camera cannot capture what our eyes can because the footage would be outstanding, I feel a pull focus can allow the eye to see the difference in location and understand the sheer size of the locations we where filming within. I did get told form my group members that I was doing way to many pull focuses and sooner or later I would have more pull focuses than film and it started to become pointless, so the focus was slightly changed, other than the odd occasion.

Obsticles, the lighting and continuity with the weather this also tangles in with the location and the cameras ability to overcome the darkness, it really struggled at times t capture some light.

My work experience doubled up as a few things not only work experience and valuable people skills but it allsp counts for life skills. The whole process of living in teneriefe for a whole month may sound easy and fun, I wont lie because it was very fun but it was jam packed with inspireation and a great deal of work. Before the first week of being there I had already figured out what we as to work on, how we could go about it and what tasks or work assienments I wanted to work on. Ive said before but I was almost like two jobs in one, one researching and on free lance part. This ment that the whole month was spent on many different things with a great deal of travel and camera experience. It felt as if we would create two tasks and appoint them daily to get finished by the time our stay was over. The main task to create a promotional video of Tenerife took up a great deal of time and many locations and to capture and edit all that we set out to do was quite a lot since we only had a month whilst working on the boat task. Two projects on the go made it a constant process, we learnt to work as a team and adapt to our surroundings quickly, for example sitting at the bottom of a volcano in a desert or on the edge of a cliff above the clouds in minus temperatures capturing a time lapse are not normally situations to be in. but there were other times with very quick and brash decisions made purly to get on with the work. The ideal locations were hard to find because you never knew what to expect, being in Tenerife you would expect constant sun and a cool breeze on the off day but it really wasn’t like that, totally off that. The weather was mostly sunny, always warm but where we was based it was high up in the mountains so the temperature and cloud coverage would depend daily and the cars where only available from 10 till 5 on most days the only over exception was when we had three days planned to do a filming tour of the island. Depending on the factors of cloud cover and weather it depended on where and what we could film so we based our planning around the weather in certain segments around the island.

Reflection on my personal experience

From the very start of my professional experience, it has been an adventure in more ways than one, the fact the I have traveled the world and met so many people due to being someone with the personality that interacts and adheres with people, finding the way of communication even through language barriers. Living with people from so many continents and cultures all working together in one organisation.

Firstly I feel that this experience has opened my eyes to something I have never really been involved with before so many different cultures and ideas being molded together producing great work as a team at the AWF. Whilst living/working with the organization we had daily meetings with updates of work and future events that are taking place, chances to film and travel opportunities. This really pushed the group and myself to produce great quality work. With a quick turn around time for each assignment. At the same time as working on our own work we worked on the boats researching into sanitations of the sea for the AWF. Our work assignments were separate to the work on the boats. On the days off from the boats we were pro productive taking every chance to film and capture time lapses of the breath taking locations. But this was not raised all on my own, we worked with Ed the AWF Manager/coordinator to create such a task I feel that the traveling the island through tasks being set has really produced a fun and effective work experience and the skills and knowledge I have acquired has been very beneficial. This work experience has given me the chance to work on skills that I have never tried before, the chance to expand my knowledge from others and working off my own back. I feel that I have worked a great deal off my own back the whole time spent in Tenerife trying to find the best places to film, depending on the weather made it difficult to make the island look beautiful with torrential downpours. I feel I have traveled myself, becoming a different person, fearless in the sense of what I wasn’t afraid of what I could achieve and concur in Tenerife, I was quiet prepared and did climb many mountains and explore boats and the docks to get the footage needed. It even came to the point where we sat at the base of the volcano in the desert spending 5 hours of one late evening in capturing a time lapse of the sun setting and the stars coming out. I feel changed and so has my work, honored to of been able to take this opportunity to find out were I want to be in the next few years. Once I finish my degree I want to take the traveling and filming much further allowing my self to land in a job that has the same opportunities and lifestyle choice to become what I need to be.

The idea and progression of time lapse

The idea and progression of time lapse

During the time spent on my work placement it came to my attention that there is a great deal of beauty combined with an abundance of views, tourist attractions and landscape filled with mountains that would fit the brief for something beautiful capturing every aspect that sells Tenerife to the target audience for the AWF’s websites. This task was a combined effort between my group and Ed, I came up with the idea when traveling through Tenerife and the many mountains that surround our temporary home. The views and the popularity of the beaches, ports, volcanoes and mountains this was a perfect to capture time, capturing the beautiful island as the world revolves around it. The culture so full of life with the drastic change in landscapes the higher you climb it just seemed out of this world, something that captured correctly would become something so stunning it would attract audiences far and wide. Originally I took inspiration from time lapses I have seen all over the world and there seemed to be a great deal of time lapses popping up on the internet but there was one that caught everyone’s eye at the AWF http://vimeo.com/22439234

Time lapse is a skill that I have never used before; I have never found the need. The fact that were we are based in Coventry you can see that there is not a great deal you can do with a time lapse their, apart from capture traffic of pedestrians and this is no use if you want to capture beauty and incredible views. This is were the inspiration and ideas kick in, I started to think that since I had seen the previous video I could create something of the same standard or better, the only thing letting me down was the equipment, in the video above the quality and equipment is at a much higher level than the D90 and range of lenses I have here in Tenerife. The camera equipment he has used throughout his time in Tenerife creating this time lapse is very expensive and he had a great range of lenses that suited every location because he had a great deal of research behind the landscape, but we had Ed on our side and we had planned a route and location that we should take in order to try and better the video I have taken inspiration from.

You will notice that a lot of our beauty and promotional uses the time lapse footage purely because of how the days and the earth revolve around in such a beautiful way that I felt the more time lapse the better, allowing the audience to take it all in.

Professional Experience

My professional experience is going to revolve around so many projects, I will have a hand in a few small projects at the same time as my major projects to be worked on. The main projects I am currently working on since I started my profesional experience at the starting around February, this was the first to all my projects and this was a small filming role in the big tennis project, then moving into another part of a project with Ken Fero and his CCTV Terror TV, this consisted of a one day set up and shoot of an interview on the facts and opinions around CCTV in the Birmingham area from an elderly resident that has lived in this area all his life. All the projects I have been involved in and currently working on are:

• CCTV Terror
• Tennis project
• Big band and jazz fusion 2nd year final performance
• AWF Tenerife work placement

The main project and focus is my time spent in Tenerife with working with the AWF and building project and contacts working with the boat crews making short films, documentaries and promotional videos throughout my time spent there. 

To BE continued 

Final montage, process, development, evaluation and reflection

Montage creation

This post is the process I went through to create my final montage; there has been a great deal of effort, research and editing in order to create my final montage. It took over 10 weeks in order to bring this to life, when creating this montage we were given a word a week which included research development and a great deal of work. Looking back now it was well worth the time and effort. I have for one enjoyed the process and secondly the finished product is different, imaginative and a step forward in my media career.

Firstly the creation of the montage; each week one word and one project. I feel this has become a very creative and justified project, it has curbed us into creating a hands on media project in order to get our teeth into media rather than learning the theory behind it. A different word each week meant that the whole class should produce many items that should reflect as different at the same time researching for inspiration to learn at the same time. I for one liked to step outside the box every now and then, take the word a different way to most. I did not want to film a light bulb for the word light or film/photograph a clock for the word time. I liked the way we were allowed to look into anything and everything to draw in inspiration to create these projects as we please. It felt as if we were trusted to create, develop and respond to these words with a film as a response. Some of my responses and videos tied in with the blog may seem weird and odd but that’s the way I think, for shape I endured the long process of stop motion purely to create the word shape. I used packs upon packs of sweets to create that project and I still feel it can go further.

Originally when creating a snippet of my montage each week I never put much thought into the finished product, I knew the mix between still and moving image was something I was never a fan of. I always feel that if you switch between moving image and stills then it seems like a power point presentation, which I find annoying. I seemed to have a few rules that I followed each week, this also tied in with group projects as well; no stills, short and sweet, well lit, well thought out, planned and always filmed on a high quality camera. With this in mind it meant that I could go each week using this as a basis to plan and evolve my ideas in order to get the best result. I needed to film in such a way that the quality and content was ‘beautiful’ this would result in my overall montage to become beautiful and have a great deal of thought behind it. This montage needed to reflect me as a media producer, like other montages I’ve looked into you reflect the best work you’ve done thus giving a good reflection of the work you have done.

So to decipher what projects I would and would not put into my montage was a tough decision because I liked all my projects I have created alone or within groups but at the same time a montage has a narrative of sorts, it needs to have a flow, a sense of direction. I knew that a few of my projects were very green, scenic and beautiful in that sense but I have a jump to my shape or symmetry piece, totally different to what the rest of the montage looks like. Looking at the creation process this way round it would of inspired me to link the pieces a bit better, give more meaning behind every montage segment. In reflection there is no reason why I shouldn’t of done it how I have because I’ve tried things I wouldn’t of originally, I’ve never been massively into stop motion purely because of the process, it looked too long and the editing process is so different to what im used to, but reflecting on that I really enjoyed it. Even the projects I didn’t like entirely I’ve found a love for them and I personally am pleased with the finished product, its just the final tweaking process I am going through now.

The Montage in its full was difficult to piece together, this was down to how undeceive I am when it comes to editing, I wanted the best part of every instalment, at the same time I didn’t want it to become boring. The audiences interest is my main concern, finding their interest is the most important because after 30 to 40 seconds they will switch off or skip in more so the key was to have every aspect of this montage interesting and gripping. I wanted to have some music that related to the images, some are quite relaxed and chilled, other are aggressive and fast. Other clips like impurity are quite still and relaxing and on the other hand the shape project ‘sweet tables man’ are completely different again. To start with the music I have been going in and out of my iTunes library and I have eventually come to terms with that I’m going to stick with the foals for now, I have gone through so many songs of all genres trying to find something I liked and I felt fitted the narrative. So Blue Blood is the track I have gone for and I feel all the montage pieces can relate to this because they all have different pacing involved, different tempos to work with. The same with the selected track, it starts quite gentle and works it way up to being quite erratic and loud. It works with the combination of image and sounds included within the individual montages. Another sound issue that I didn’t like and took out was the sound form each montage but as the edit went on I started to hate the snippets of sound, it made the project feel unprofessional, odd and didn’t fit with the genre of montage work. If you look at the montage work below it shows the every piece of work she is proud of, the music is the same track all the way through, nothing changes in the respect of audio, so I will use the same idea to keep a level of professionalism.

http://vimeo.com/14441326

http://vimeo.com/19790238

Both videos different in their entirety but the point is the same, the same audio with brilliant visuals really works, the higher the quality work you see the better it becomes. As long as the audio is fitting and works to the beat of the edit then it works really well.

These show reels have taught me a few things;

• Visually amazing attracts viewers
• Content and narrative as important as the quality
• The tighter the edit the better the narrative and overall feel
• Visual effects and graphics bring an extra dimension to your work
• Camera continuity, the same quality throughout
• The bigger the budgets the bigger the project
• Time and effort pays off
• The Montage sums you as a media producer, it shows the audience what you are capable of

In comparison to mine its on a completely different level, I feel that reflecting back now it would never look as good as the above two show reels. The cameras that I have filmed on are no way near as high quality, I filmed on many different cameras throughout the montage process and reflecting back now it would have been better to use just the one camera.

I know the content of the footage and the montage has had a completely different brief but all the same the description of my montage was of beautiful things, and the better the camera the more beautiful objects look.

Z1 footage

D90 footage

JVC footage

60 D

Looking at these screen shots the difference in quality is massive; it becomes more obvious the more you look at it.  Reflecting on this point has made a statement, something that I should of considered when initially making this product. Stick to one camera of a high quality don’t settle for second best if its not good enough. I know that the loan shop only has three JVC 700s and we can’t use the 5D’s so for the time being I have to make do with what I’ve got.

Another reflection I would like to make was the edit, although it works and it’s a smooth consistent edit it doesn’t have the same feel to other members of the group. If you look into Alex Hacking’s final montage his is very different compared to mine.

The edit seems crisp in the way he has used effects and different transitions to move throughout the montage. I feel that mine resembles a simpler edit, I’m not saying ether are good or bad I just feel that Alex’s shows a great deal more of attention involved within the editing effects department. When it came to the edit of mine I was working on the pace and the timings of the shots. I preferred my camera work and footage in greener and still locations; on the other hand Alex uses faster paced shots, different angles and movement all the way through his montage. I have a relaxing simple start and it gradually builds up into the more fast paced and experimental shots. Although we worked together in a few montage pieces as you can see both look very different. Although some of the shots are the same, the two montages look and feel completely different, the concept of each is different. Its hard to place them in the same category as both are beautiful but for different reasons, my montage has a lot of still and photographic shot, reflecting and studying. Alex’s is at a faster pace, shots with different interest involved different camera styles and a completely different edit, the shaky effect, a slight tint of grading. The edit also feels a lot quicker, you don’t feel that the two the interests cross and I find it hard to reflect and place the same two videos in the same category, both at a high standard of work just two totally different pieces of work. A high standard of editing and attention has been paid to the timing and effects used. I’m not sure if mine would fit in with the same editing techniques but they feel slightly more processed, in a good way. The time and effort has been taken to place the effects over the top of the montage to allow each scene to fit together, showing that he has the capabilities to edit in such a way. The shake effect placed on the early parts of the montage just would not fit in with mine, the camera work is too still and static in comparison so it would be a hindrance to my work creating an effect of the audience being unsure of why this effect was placed over the top. Since my montage is a great deal slower and based around different content I feel my edit is ok, its something again I feel could be worked on but at the same time every project I do there is always something you could change and I feel the quality of the footage and the edit is one of them.

Overall I felt that I edited my final montage to the pace of the music, I polished what footage I had and experimented with what was placed and were.

This process shows the amount of edits that I did go through, finding the best sequence that fits all my best work into one product. I felt it had to flow, the music had a nice gradual change and so the footage. It changed pace about halfway through matching the music. I set myself the same transition for each different project, I didn’t want anything cheesy, nothing too complicated or odd. I wanted the whole piece to flow one from another with no real visible transitions meaning portraying a professional edit; the less you notice the better.

To evaluate and reflect on my piece I have compared it to others, looked into other work that makes mine different. Used other group members to compare what should be in the same category to show how two pieces can look completely different through an edit. I have identified ways I could improve my final montage, working on effects and different editing skills. Looking back to the professional work you can see a great deal of difference with camera quality, the difference is massive, the continuity of the same camera makes a big difference in a way that two different cameras and completely different formats from a DSLR to the JVC 700, the quality is completely different. But its what I’ve worked with, I have made the best out of many different pieces, I have included all the work I feel appropriate to be placed within this module and excluded the parts I felt didn’t fit as well. I would never include a whole section of my montage piece into a final montage based purely on length, the audience need to be entertained, show them your full potential by filling your montage with as many objects as possible. Remember not to over fill keep the best in and the filler footage out, this way you can entertain, inform and gain a great deal of interest.

Looking back at the whole module you can see that I have dipped my hands into many areas of media production; I have tried a different set of cameras, styles and final products. This brings the evaluation onto myself as a producer, what I have put into the course reflects what I have got out of it. As a process over the period of ten weeks I have learnt a great deal in every aspect – editing, uploading, blogging, research, filming and stop motion. It has been a part of the course where it’s pushed me into areas I wouldn’t of explored before, who would of thought I could make a song or a stop motion piece made out of sweets and overall a montage that I happy with. It has opened my eyes to a bigger world where there is so much more to explore, I feel this project has made me a better producer. I can successfully evaluate myself and be self critical picking apart what I do wrong and then improve on it. My montage is not the greatest of all time but its an attempt, just like this process  is an attempt to better my self, gaining control and creating something powerful and better every time you revisit. The experience and lessons learnt along this montage journey have been valuable and fun, and the factor of fun helps you produce something better each time because if you enjoy what your doing the better the outcome is. Thus giving myself a great deal of expansion into programmes such as After Effects, Final Cut Pro and a range of cameras. It has been a constant flow of additives to my media CV filling with knowledge and experience that is valuable for my future in media.

My final ‘Montage Of Beautiful Things’

A Montage of Beautiful things: TEXT

The weekend shoot gallery

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