#workingtoabrief

[ctrl-alt-freak]

My final product, with voiceover

[ctrl-alt-freak-research]

Customers

Rectory Forge provide services to many customers, including

Calor Gas

DOE Water

JS Dunlop

Kerry Foods

Bushmills Distillery

Focus on Family

Lidl

Trolans Portrush

amongst many others

(Source: http://www.rectoryforge.co.uk/about.php )

[ctrl-alt-freak-research]

3D Printing

Rectory Forge have been pioneering new technology, always looking to find new ways to innovate. From 2013 they have started using a 3D printer for prototype models involving moving parts, to check specifications without wasting money on expensive metal materials just for prototyping. 

[ctrl-alt-freak-research]

History of Rectory Forge

Scott & Stinson Engineering have been trading since 1991, originally starting out fabricating gates, railings & wrought iron products. They expanded into the general engineering & fabrication sector working with mild steel, stainless steel & aluminium. They recently expanded into the precision market, enabling them to manufacture finer metalwork items and finished assemblies in the workshops

(Source: http://www.rectoryforge.co.uk/about.php”

[ctrl-alt-freak-research]

Working through a brief

Brief:

Young people are increasingly using alcohol as a key part of their social lives. Many of them see binge drinking as an acceptable activity and part of their lifestyle. Some are being encouraged by their peers to consider alcohol as a safe drug that has no long-term effects.

STOP.co.uk is a charity that wants to produce materials to distribute to schools and colleges. They are looking for a range of media products that will inform young people of the dangers of excessive consumption of alcohol and binge drinking. The products will be aimed at young people in the 16-18 years age groups. This has been identified in recent research as the age when some people start to indulge in binge drinking. Your media product can be in any style and genre.

Here a STOP.co.uk we are preparing a campaign, aimed at young people, that encourages them to consider the effects of consuming excessive amounts of alcohol and binge drinking.

We want you to research, plan and produce a moving image product that will help us to communicate our message to young people. The message must be appropriate for the 16-18 years age group. We are happy for your moving image product to be produced in whatever format you think would be suitable for the target audience. We want the product to be relevant to the target audience and we would welcome conventional and unconventional approaches to the subject.

The product you develop in response to the brief could be in a fictional or factual genre. We do not want to put any restrictions on the style, content or length. However, it must be appropriate for the target audience and must communicate an effective message about the effects of excessive alcohol consumption and binge drinking.

You must include appropriate ideas development, pre-production, production and post production documentation as well as an evaluation of your work

We are going to produce a subjective documentary piece that will feature real life situations and examples of the harm of binge drinking.

Title: Just One Drink

Material:

- Scientific information: Comparisons of drinker and non-drinker’s livers, people in hospital having stomach pumped

- Emotional appeal: Testimonies from former alcoholics, people affected by alcoholism (younger)

- Real life footage: Videos of people on nights out - crawling on pavement, throwing up - “Why would you choose to do this to your body?”

- Stats: How many ambulances are called out to drinking-related incidents every weekend, how many lives would be saved by those ambulances being used for medical threats that aren’t self-inflicted

- End on a light note: show stats of life expectancy from non-drinkers vs people who drink but do not binge drink regularly

[bethanycaller]

Stalingrad Evaluation

Over the course of filming Stalingrad I was given the role of Production Manager. I did not enjoy this role and found my job very boring. I attended all rehearsals I was told to prior to filming, and attended all days of filming. Without fail, every morning, I stuck up the call sheets for the day ahead and informed the cast needed within plenty of time of needing them on set. I was also extremely apologetic to the cast, throughout the four days of filming, when schedules overran and they had to wait longer for their scene. Once all cast were on set my job became very pointless. I didn't feel very included as part of the crew as my job role involved no practical work. However, I did very much enjoy day three of filming as I was given the role of video logger due to a limited crew. I really enjoyed being able to communicate with a lot more of my fellow crew members and felt like I had achieved a lot more by the end of the day.

In future productions I hope to have a more practical role in order to make my experience a lot more enjoyable.

[courtney-r-king]

Corporate video evaluation

For one of our units at college we had to create a corporate video which is a promotional video for a company, this needed to have two main elements which were interviews and cutaways/filmed footage. Me Bethany and Aimee were told we would be creating two videos for London Dance Academy. Bethany was made the director for this project, so she had to go London to meet the owners of the company to have a meeting about how they wanted the video to look and what they wanted to include.

The following week Bethany told us the outcome of the meeting. We found out the owners didn’t really have anything particular in mind so we were allowed to have full creative control of how the end product will look.

On the 30th of September me, Bethany and Aimee went up to London to film some test shots. This was to allow the rest of the group who did not go to the meeting have a look around and see the space we had to film in and have a rough idea of what we will be filming. When we first arrived we got to met and speak to the co-owner who Bethany had the meeting with. Shortly after this we still had a bit of spare time before the classes started so we had a quick look around the three studios in the academy and took pictures of each, this would then help us when we are back at college to decided what equipment we would defiantly need to take with us when we do the actual film shoot and what risks we might have to watch out for.

Looking at the pictures and footage back at college we had some decent shots but most were really dark as the lighting in the studios was very poor we decided at that moment we would use flo lights as these looked more natural as the dedo lights would have been too yellow. We also noticed that we would have to be care when filming in one studio as there are mirrors on majority of the walls so when we have lighting set up we would have to make sure we don’t get that in shot or the other camera.

We started to get to work on schedules as we needed to know when we could go back up to film, this started numerous emails between Bethany and Alexe to sort out dates. We needed some time to prepare and they needed time to let their students know about the filming as on the day of our test shots we had problems with people not wanting to be filmed and teachers not being too happy with us filming their classes. Not long after the dates were set for the following week to which we would end up filming for 4 days straight.

On the 7th October we went up to London to start our 4 day shoot. On each day Alexe told us what interviews she wanted to film, we had interviews with mostly teachers at the academy who all teach a variety of classes from pole dancing to extreme stretching. We even had interviews with Alexe herself just talking about the academy in general. Each interview was filmed differently with something to resemble the class in shot. Overall id say all the interviews went really well and we didn’t have any major problems with any of them.

Throughout the hectic week we filmed a variety of different classes from taster pole class to acrobatics. Depending on what studio we were filming in depended on the layout we had the equipment set up. No major issues came up with filming classes only a few small problems which included some people still not wanting to be filmed and batteries running low in some of the later sessions.

I believe that I did the best job I could while out on shoot. I didn’t have a specific job role. As there were only three people in the crew, as we were not allowed to have any boys on crew and no other girls were available to help out, this meant that we all had to pitch in as much as we could to make up for the lack of crew members. We all took it in turns to do some camera work as we took two cameras up London with us, we all helped to set up lighting and we all helped to set an interview up.

Even though I would say I was mainly in charge of sound for the whole production as on one else did this job as they didn’t know how to work the equipment, but I believe I did a good job on this as sound for nearly all interview came out to a good standard only one interview didn’t because I was rushed for time and had to attach the microphone to the interviewee quickly to which I didn’t attach it tight enough so it fell loose when they did tricks making the interview sound muffled and unusable.

Once filming was all completed Bethany took over the edit completely as she knew how she wanted it to look. I had no part in the edit and no say in how the end product looked, but I liked the job Bethany did as the end results looks great and it’s something that we can all be proud of as we all had a big part in the project. Alexe at the London Dance Academy was pleased with the overall result of the videos as it shows off the academy in a great light. This means we achieved our goal of what we originally had set out to do.

[courtneystalingrad-blog]

Stalingrad evaluation

Towards the end of our first year of our course we got told by the lectures that when we came back in September we would be filming one of the Miskin shows, one afternoon we had to go into the Miskin auditorium to watch for the first time the play. The play was called STALINGRAD and is based on the war between Germany and Russia.

Once we had returned from our summer break we had a meeting with Tim and Andrea to discuss job roles on this production. I was given the role of production manager. For this role my main responsibilities were for scheduling the production so that the crew and actors knew what scenes were being  filmed on each day, this enabled them to know if they would be needed on set or not. I was also responsible for noting any changes in the schedule and for keeping the crew and cast updated on these changes. While on set I was responsible for looking after the actors and making sure I answered any questions that they had.

To start off the whole process all the people selected to be director, producer, production mangers, d.o.p, first AD and head of sound got told that we would have the say on how the production is going to run. We were the ones who had to pick which scenes to d , as we were told we had to pick 10 scenes to film over 5 days and make them into a short film (not an easy task). This meant numerous trips down to the Miskin to watch rehearsals after rehearsals. While down in Miskin I took numerous notes while watching the rehearsals as we would constantly talk about ideas for the scenes. Whenever the actors had their breaks this always enabled us to explain our ideas more clearly as we could get onto the set at this point.

After a few weeks of watching rehearsals we had our 10 scenes picked, it was then just a matter of watching the scenes over and over to think about how we were going to light the scene and camera shots/angles. What helped a lot throughout the process was we were working closely with Gavin who is one of the directors down at the Miskin and he was allowing us to walk In and out of the rehearsals and was happy to help us out in any way to get the best end product possible especially as it came to getting our paperwork sorted for filming. He also was a big help on set as he would constantly talk to the actors to get them into their character, give them tip to improve their performance and  make them work around us than us work around them, this made our job easier as we could direct them ourselves if we needed to. This meant we got the best performance out of them that we possibly could.

Overall I believe I did my role to the best of my ability as I turned up to every Stalingrad rehearsal and was involved a lot in the decision making. Also I believe that I kept the actors and crew as up to date with schedules as I could.  I would finish a day on set quiet late go home and then have to send out another call sheet to everyone needed the following day, to which this did take up a lot of time. I also on some of the days did jobs that I was not supposed to be doing this was a result of being short on crew or people not turning up. I needed up being a grip/gaffer and on one day and sound on another, I enjoyed doing these other roles because otherwise I was left sitting at the back of the room with nothing to do as the actors were already on set, this gave me something else to focus on.