lauras participation in the magazine show

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Editing Everything Together

Wow, I really didn’t think it would be this complicated!

As I aspire to be a professional editor when I leave University, you can understand why I was eager at the chance to edit our 15 minute tv show. As not only would it give me a specific role in our production, it would give me an accurate taste of what it would be like to edit the sitcoms, talkshows and even dramas I so badly want to work on in the future.

I knew it would be difficult, don’t get me wrong, I was not oblivious to the fact that it would not be plain sailing, I just didn’t expect it to be this strenuous.

The idea was to edit the individual segments then compile them all together, some tweaking might have to be done, but other than that, I thought that’d be it!

WRONG!

Of course because this is a class project I wasn’t doing this all solo, thankfully Heather helped me edit different sections which took a huge weight off my shoulders. However, despite use both agreeing on not colour grading our edits, thinking it would make things easier in the long haul, other problems arose instead. Nothing we couldn’t get round, it was more so the fact that it delayed our progress that was annoying.

However, at this point we were used to being delayed and having work. that didn’t go towards our grade or our multi-cam piece, being thrown on us last minute. So this was nothing new either.

After about a week of editing everything finally started coming together... with one problem- our 15 minute show had been turned into a nearly 30 minute one. This wasn’t an issue per say as it just further proved how capable we all are at  creating industry standard, television worthy, content. The issue came from the fact that our module specified 15 minutes not 30, and we had to prove we could work to certain constraints (including time) because even though we had just made an usual length tv show for the likes of bbc and itv, that's no good because if you’re hired to make a 15 minute show they only have time for 15 minutes, they’re not just gonna push EastEnders back by 15 minutes because you produced double the content you were contracted to.

So, understanding why we had to submit a 15 minute version, we got to the chopping block... what was going to be sacrificed?

If we thought our previous endeavour of editing everything together was difficult, this was a whole new level. We had all worked on segments together but some segments were moreso one persons than the others. For example, the adverts, I directed, wrote, produced and edited them so of course I didn't want them gone. But I had to remember other people felt the same about their segments, so we had to be fair.

In the end, we ended up cutting segments we considered lesser worked on, not in the sense of effort, or editing put in, moreso pieces that hadn’ t took people days to write or hours to direct, so pieces like the social experiment and vox pops looked heavily eyed to be cut, alongside some vision mixing pieces.

Overall, obviously were going to favour our longer edit. It showcases EVERYONES work and not just those we’ve picked and chose. I loved working on this module, as I said earlier I’d love to work on a tv show (specifically sitcoms) and being able to produce our own show is phenomenal as its always been my dream. I’m sad its coming to an end, I could easily keep making these for a few more years and make a series out of it, we never know maybe BBC, ITV or Channel 4 might see it and pick us up for a Saturday Night slot... I’m getting ahead of myself, gotta get that degree first!

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Film Review

“I’d give it a 23. Out of What? 100.”

The final edit of the film review is something I am very pleased with. I had left it a while to edit as I felt uninspired and knew if I approached this edit with lack of motivation I wouldn’t create something I was proud of.

We had done a few different improv takes and in the end I edited them together to combine the best jokes and one-liners, this worked well as I could use the cut takes and make them into transitions using posters and clips from our real and fake movies. 

The editing looks simple, however, do not be deceived as it took me forever. Transferring photos from my iPad to to my laptop took a while as I was taking my time to edit them. 

All in all, I really like this edit and I’m very proud of how it turned out as I didn’t over do it with the effects

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Film Review

“I wouldn’t call it a masterpiece, it’s more so a piece.”

One of our final segments in our magazine show was the film review, an element we thought our film project would feel incomplete without. 

I was inspired by generic youtube film reviews, with over the top presenters making the whole thing unbearable to watch making you wonder why you care about their opinion anyway. Here is an example of what I mean:

We thought it would be funny to exaggerate this concept even further and make it more self-aware and almost surreal.

To do this we enlisted Matt and Nathan as our quirky co-hosts and let them improv and riff off each other. Along with a simple green screen set up, we went for a few takes and got some amazing content. 

The shoot went smoothly and easily as I took control of the set and made sure it was kept clear of non cast or crew members, so we could go from take to take swiftly and efficiently. 

After the shoot, It was the up to me to edit the shoot, with my ideas being quite creative it has taken me a while to collect all the media I need to complete the edit to my standard, so because of that the edit isn’t complete just yet, but is close to the finish line. 

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A Summers Day in Liverpool

Capturing the Cityscape

I thought that for our music video it would be quite nice to have an intro/outro in the Saturday Night Live style

I thought as our show is alike to that of Saturday Night Lives it would be a good homage to the show, however instead of having the cast make cameos, it would all be cityscape clips with our names over-layed. 

As, a lot of of the class were filming with our musical guest and since the day was lovely for that of early March; Josh, Tom and myself took to the streets of Liverpool to get our cityscape footage.

Our first location was atop of the John Lewis carpark, this location gave us a great aerial view of the entire city, enabling us to get shots of pretty much all the iconic landmarks of merseyside: Radio City Tower, The Anglican Cathedral and the Liverpool Eye.

We were quite swiftly told to move on from our second location of the Albert Dock as we didn’t have permission to film there, however, I had collected a lot of good footage and we were not told to delete it so I still considered it a success. The final shoot was that of the Liver Buildings, and this was done quickly. 

Within a few days I had the edit done, despite struggling to find an audio similar to that of Saturday Night Live’s I soon stumbled upon one and I was set.

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Compensation Advert

First Time Directing? You Could be Owed Compensation!

Once getting my script down to the T, it was time to film. I had experienced sets previously that were just far too chaotic for my liking. So, with myself working better with little to no stress I decided to have my shoot be a closed set, with just a minimal crew consisting of one camera operator, one boom operator and one sound operator, alongside myself and the cast. This worked brilliantly well as I felt like the pressure was off, as usually people linger around the studio and do nothing but watch you work which is deeply unsettling.

How I wanted these adverts to play out was like a mick-take on a Trivago advert, essentially having these obviously set up situations but trying to play them off as completely natural.

This style worked perfectly and the actors I worked with, Pat, Danielle, Tom and Jack executed it so well! 

It took a few takes to get exactly what I wanted but those repeat shots were definitely worth it as it gave the actors chance to get a feel for their character, perfect their lines and figure out their marks so the separation between foreground and background was evident. 

With all the scenes shot, I got Paris to deliver my voiceovers and then it was onto editing.

Something that we were unable to achieve during the shoot was a focus pull as the depth of field wasn’t large enough to separate the foreground from the background, so this was something I was going to have to edit post production. The editing was fairly simple to as I wasn’t planning nothing extravagant, however, being unable to achieve the focus pull in the filming process added a strain onto the editing as we had to mask around the layers to make sure that the person in the foreground and the person in the background didn’t clash and blend together, when adding in the blur. 

It turned our rather well on advert one and three, however advert two had a lot more people in the frame so the blur did not work as well, however I was able to push the mask as far out as possible so that at least their faces are blurred.

The only other trouble I had was with speeding up the voiceover and lowering the pitch, as the pitch shift effect decided to glitch and not change pitch when I set it at a different level, this was an annoying struggle because it was just the software misbehaving so there wasn’t much I could do. I then added a cheesy background track and just like that it was done.

Overall, I am very happy with how my adverts turned out and how I approached making them. This was definitely one of the most well planned out things we have shot, not to massage my ego, it just helped us work as swiftly and as calmly as possible. As it was my first time directing people other than my family and friends I think it went marvellously well, however, I do still prefer the process of editing more. 

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Compensation Advert

First Time Directing? You Could be Owed Compensation!

When discussing our segments, I knew that I wanted to write a skit/sketch. I’ve always loved comedy, when done right, it can be extraordinary. The idea of making people forget their worries, having them laugh and smile even for a moment is what drew me to comedy in the first place. With shows Saturday Night Live being my escape through tough times, and still to this day, it was them who inspired me to want to create something like they did for me. 

So, to get inspired I decided to watch a few of my favourite sketches:

Beginning with my favourite long-running sketch Gilly a mischievous school girl, getting up to no good. I really like this sketch because it’s something everyone can relate to, a key thing in comedy. Whether in primary school or high school, there was always that one kid who couldn’t behave if their life depended on it. Of course Gilly is meant to be an exaggerated version of those children, but honestly I remember kids who behaved much worse than her.

The next one I decided to watch was the 3am Phone Call I really love this one for it’s unique editing, I adore how it’s all done via photos and voiceover, something so simple yet so unique and it works so effectively with the tone of the sketch with it being a political advert in Hillary Clintons favour. Plus, the choice of doing it in black and white works perfectly to dramatize the piece. I also really like the fact that Amy Poehler’s rendition of Hillary Clinton, has a face mask and her hair in rollers, a side to the real Hillary you never see and is hard to imagine existing because she is always so stern.

The second to last sketch I watched was Oprah: 50th Birthday Presents I love how SNL take normal things everyone knows about and exaggerates them to the max. This Oprah sketch works so well, as you can imagine these middle aged woman in the studio audience, being bored to death with their lives and nuclear family's, so Oprah is their only source of joy, hence why they go insane when they’re the ones getting treated and somewhat looked after. The cherry on the top of this cake is definitely the ending, where it’s made out that these women are the ones causing the natural disasters just from their screams of excitement and terror.

The final sketch I watched is my most favourite sketch EVER. It’s the Black Eyed Peas Ad skit. This sketch is just brilliant, I wasn’t old enough to know whether or not the Black Eyed Peas were considered cheesy when the skit aired in 2005 but I'm going to take a wild guess and say yes, otherwise this skit has little relevance. My favourite thing about the entire sketch is how they’ve changed the lyrics to the songs and because I’ve watched it so much I now sing SNL’s lyrics instead of the Black Eyed Peas. This is the sketch that inspired me to make my own advert sketch, only thing I had to do now was find something just as funny and relatable to make an advert about.

The idea of making a spoof compensation advert, found me rather than I finding it. My Mum and I were driving home from a day out in Southport, and within that 40 minute journey, we had heard around 3-5 payday/compensation adverts. So, unbeknownst that this would become my skit, I started joking around with my Mum about the insane things you’ll be able to claim for soon, for example:

Are you stuck in traffic? You could be owed compensation!

Have you been given homework you don’t want to do? Well, you could be owed compensation!

and finally

Have you been born? Well, you could be entitled to compensation!

It was through this genuine comedic moment with my mum that it all clicked into place. I had been given my advert skit on a silver platter.

Moving swiftly onto the next step, I needed to write my script. I decided that three adverts would be enough to keep our fifteen minute show running smoothly. I could have used the gags I came up with in the car with my mum but they didn’t seem relevant or funny enough to translate onto the screen. So, because of this I began brainstorming again. I came up with a few ideas but eventually settled on,

- Have you suffered a first world problem?

- Are you stuck in an endless lip sync?

- Are you not rich yet?

I felt that there was a natural progression of insanity between each specific ad, the first world problem being something everyone can relate to. The lip sync being a nod to our introduction, and the Are you not rich yet? really pointing out the stupidity of it all. 

Of course I couldn’t just rely on the one compensation gag to make my script effectively funny, I needed other tid-bits that were a bit harder to spot, but when you figure it out you feel very satisfied. 

The first hidden gag is the companies name Connor Pennstate when said fast enough it just sounds like Compensate, simple yet effective. The second gag, is in the terms and conditions, You must be over the age of minus nine months old to apply, once again reinstating the silliness of it all. The third gag, is that of the Connie Pennstate Embezzlement scandal, when said fast enough it just sounds like it’s their company that is involved, not his sisters company. The final gag is my favourite, the Are you not rich yet? follows two men who are going to kidnap Liz’s corgis when they’re on their nightly walk down the mall, and then sell them back to her at ransom. On the cover it just sounds like they’re kidnapping some random persons dogs to hold them at ransom, when really: 

- Liz is Queen Elizabeth

- The corgis are the Queens dogs

- The mall is the long road that leads to Buckingham Palace

So, in reality they’re kidnapping the Queens dogs.

Once I had wrote my script it was then time to get it filmed.

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Vox Pops

Fun or Failure?

We were introduced to Vox Pops early on, I had never really heard of them before, however, the name did sound somewhat familiar. So because of this I decided to look up the definition of the words, this is what Oxford Dictionaries provided:

vox pop 

vox pops (plural noun)

popular opinion as represented by informal comments from members of the public, especially when broadcast or published.

So straight away I knew what it meant, my brain moving towards the likes of diet shows when they take to the streets and ask the general public to taste test two foods to see if they know which ones branded or not.

Here’s one Pizza Hut UK made to advertise their The Edge pizza (which has no crust), so they ask the general public the simple question of: crust? or no crust?

In groups we had to come up with questions that we would ask the general public. Turns out, it’s harder than you think! I mostly just came up with This or That questions which wouldn’t allow for much communication from the person getting interviewed, so we put those ideas to the side. We knew we wanted something relevant to us, there was no point us going out and asking people what they had for breakfast because that's boring. But, what we can ask them is what they order from ‘Spoons or as its really called Wetherspoons. This seemed ideal because we could lead with the initial question of what do you call Wetherspoons? As it’s known as ‘Spoons in our class. The brilliant thing is it was all relevant to us because we’re in Wetherspoons so much we might as well call it our second home.

This however, got us thinking harder because we didn’t want to ask the same question to everyone, we needed some variation. So, what we came up with were some film related questions, ones such as:

- If your life was a movie what genre would it be?

and

- Who would you cast to play you, in the story of your life?

So, with that it was time to hit the streets.

I had made it very clear that I wasn’t going to ask anyone any questions, in fear of embarrassing myself, and it seemed like everybody else had the same idea... so someone had to man up and it was not going to be me. Thankfully, in our group Rhys took the job of interviewer! Saving us all from an afternoon of misery.

However, despite his enthusiasm we struggled to get anyone to take our cause. I blamed it on our group size, we were a group of seven. When in reality we only needed three people, so I thought it was our group size and the fact not everyone had something to do made us look intimidating... I mean if I saw a group of seven young adults hanging about with a camera and a boom I'd probably turn and run the other way too.

I the end our group got a grand total of (drum roll please)……….

1 vox pop!

However, we did end up with a great selection of failed attempts that would be perfect to create a spoof with. Luckily, the other group was more successful than us, and managed to get a good few vox pops in, so we weren't a complete lost cause. 

All in all, I didn’t really enjoy this experience. Whether it was the fact I didn’t have anything really to do, or whether my fear of social interaction had me doomed from the start, I guess we’ll never know but what I can say is, there’s a reason I like to edit and you can probably guess why.

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Lip Sync

Do You Love Me?

The first part of our magazine show we were definitive on was our intro. Together we were inspired by The Office US cold open in which they lip sync to  Nobody but Me by The Human Beinz . It’s a great gag, a simple concept escalating greatly ending with violence and fallouts. For ours we decided to tone it down a little, our comedy is a lot less sadistic than that of The Office’s.

For our take on the lip sync we decided to use a different song, as we want ours to be inspired by and not a scene-for-scene copy of the American sitcoms. Nathan came up with the song Do You Love Me? by The Contours and it fitted perfectly! However, now that the easy part was over, the hard work was just beginning... the choreography.

We begin with a few of us, Nathan, Paris, Matt, Josh, Rhys and I blocking out the basics. We originally intended to have the lip sync begin over the road from the studio, however, we deemed that we wouldn’t have enough time and it would be too dangerous crossing the busy road that is, Duke Street. 

So, because of this we decided to begin in the basement and use the studio space to our advantage. Starting off with a mimed guitar solo, which later would be given to Angel, we would move to myself dancing down the stairs, Nathan dabbing on the table, Josh kicking the door down and Matt and Rhys dancing down the corridor.

As we kept going eventually everyone got involved. Heather and Kayleigh danced on the stairs up from the basement, as I danced down the stairs to the studio entrance. Ryan Taylor Ellis would rise into a T-pose as Nathan and Ryan Tankard have a hand wrestle. The camera would then spin to Matt chilling inconspicuously, then to Josh as he kicks the door down. Matt would then fling himself back into frame (fake) punching Josh, this would cause the camera to spin back to Nathan and Ryan, but alas Ryan has vanished and Nathan stands alone throwing a pillow at the camera (we presume he lost the hand wrestle). Once again the camera spins as a result of our actions (the pillow getting thrown, this time) landing back to where Matt was, however, now it is Connor, Tom and I bopping our heads in time to the beat. Paris (who’s on camera) spins the camera once again, giving me and Tom the chance to run down the corridor, where everybody else is set up and waiting. As the camera reaches the door, Connor opens it for them and presents the wonderful world of colour that we created. 

We knew we wanted to make this part as extravagant as possible, so we put LED lights in each of the four rooms, and covered them all with different coloured gels to make it feel like a rainbow. We initially were going to use the smoke machine but found it didn’t really add much to the scene and just made everything on screen look foggy.

As Paris would walk down the corridor, people would pop their heads out of the doors, dancing to the melody of the song. Reaching the final two doors, we would conga into each other and then reverse, once again dancing through the door frame. The scene ends with Angel once again with his guitar running into the studio, where he would kick the door shut and that is where it would end.

Overall, we were all really impressed with what we created and how it turned out so well. Personally, I think if we were to do it again the authenticity would be lost, it works so well because its not perfect, it was never meant to be perfect (like The Offices version)  if we kept going and going trying to top ourselves, the imperfect look would be tainted and we wouldn’t have achieved our aim, which was to create a fun intro that felt true to us.

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Vision Mixing

An editors dream?

Our first practical lesson was about setting up the cameras in order for us to vision mix our footage live.

Let us first begin by explained what vision mixing is, the official definition provided by Oxford Dictionaries is:

vision mixer

NOUN- BRITISH

a person whose job is to select and manipulate images in television broadcasting or recording.

a piece of equipment used for the selection and manipulation of images in television broadcasting or recording.

We had had prior experience to vision mixing, but had never had the need to use it in a serious capacity on our course so far. So, because of this not everyone had had the opportunity to use the vision mixer. I had used it during live shows I had volunteered to help in, so I wasn’ t completely unfamiliar but I am by no means brilliant at the skill. So I thought that this session would be a perfect time to dip my foot in a little further.

In two groups we were given the task to make an Advert for a fictional Halloween Night, like the ones held at Universal Studios known as Horror Nights, or the more local Farmer Teds which is transformed into Farmegeddon.

Here is Universals Halloween Horror Nights 2018 Trailer:

And here is Farmeggedon’s 2017 trailer:

Both Trailers use typical Horror editing techniques such as flashy clips and prolonged closeups on creepy characters. However, the music used in both vary as Universal uses a moreso pop song as Farmeggedon uses a typically sinister tune. However, both work just as well as the other, Universal uses the contrast of popular culture against terrifying images to put the viewer out of their comfort zone, whereas Farmeggedon uses the more typical horror techniques that scare just as well.

Taking these trailers into consideration, and the props we had available we came up with an idea where we would use extreme close-ups and use the sinister black flash effect to make our props look like they had disappeared into the darkness, or were just a figment of your imagination the entire time. I quite liked our idea, however, our planning had taken us a while so we had to compromise and make something just as eerie in the time we had left.

So, in the end we kept our same premise but limited our props to one. We decided to use the IT mask, as quite a few people in our class have Coulrophobia, so we knew we had the element of horror there. Having Josh be our ‘IT’ we used different close up camera angles to blend his face together whilst vision mixing. This worked okay, it gave us a manipulated scary creature but something was missing... music.

Tom chose some typically scary music but it still didn’t feel complete, so as we brainstormed yet again, Tom decided to play some remixes, thus this is how we found the perfect tune: a Witch Doctor remix. The build up to the beat drop created the tension we needed, and having the typically more childish song play over this scary face, it was brilliantly off-putting, just what we wanted.

Through our multiple takes we finally got everything we needed, having Josh dance whilst a blue light flickered and lit up his face, remaining in extreme close-up until the beat drop when the lights turn on and an array of dead bodies linger around him. It was brilliant, I came up with the tagline ‘Life's a drag, come join the after party’, and honestly I thought it fitted so well, I could imagine so many people being intrigued by this peculiar advert and would want to go to our event.

Overall, we were all very impressed with what we created, and everyone we have shown it to with and without context has really felt what we wanted them to ‘creeped out but intrigued’. All in all, I was very proud of my vision mixing on this as well, as it was my first time using fades and our final edit worked really well.

I really liked vision mixing, as an aspiring editor I know this is a skill I need, so I would love to keep experimenting and learning what else I can do with it. However, in the end nothing beats post-production editing, it’s a lot easier, you don’t feel the pressure of the moment and mistakes can be edited out, unlike the live vision mixing where mistakes would call for a whole new take.

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The Concept

Magazine Show

In this module, as a class, we have been assigned a group project of creating a fifteen minute magazine show, showing off our multi-camera skills. 

We firstly tried to realise what the elements of a magazine show are, listing different shows and series that use multi-camera. We came up with shows like, Graham Norton (for his use of stand up at the beginning of his show, interview in the middle, ending with a musical performance and a gag, otherwise known on his show as The Big Red Chair.) Another show that came to mind instantly for me was BBC’s Children In Need, as its use of hosts and different segments, whether they be interviews, music or even made of the show tv specials, it garnered a lot of the segments we thought you would find in a magazine show. 

Through finding multi-camera specific shows we then could figure out what segments you could have in magazine show, we did this via brainstorming and using our already prominent knowledge, here is what we came up with:

A few of my favourites are:

- Skit/Sketch

- Game Show

- QVC style show

I personally think these would be great opportunities to create something comedic (with that being my preferred genre) a skit/sketch can be anything but imagine a game show based around something completely ridiculous like taking The Chase but actually having the competitors be chased around the streets by The Chaser whilst being asked multiple choice questions, make it even scarier/funnier by having the competitor be an escaped convict and the Chaser be a police officer, and the convict is playing for their freedom. Saturday Night Live has some great comedic game show examples, here’s one of my favourites;

I love how they’ve taken the traditional Supermarket Spree and by enhancing and overexaggerating one of the characters it makes it so much more intense.

The QVC style show would be easy to make comedic as well, just have them sell off ridiculous items like Candles scented to daily tasks like ‘Doing the Dishes’ and ‘How about Hoovering’. 

Overall, we gained a lot from this session as it helped us figure out what we would like to include and what we wouldn’t. It also helped us brainstorm ideas for possible segments and gather the mood we want it to feel, as we debated over a serious show or a comedic one. The majority of us chose comedy, which is great as it will allow us to make something completely unique, as I believe comedy enhances anything from being generic to something off the spectrum of normal. I am very excited to see where we take our ideas and what we come up with in the end.