Week 5

This final week of preparing for the kids show has beee, like all the other weeks, a good leaning experience and probaly the most busy one ive had. i managed to film two inserts this week, my one for the junee licorice and chocolate factory and one on swimming for the olympic show. First of all, my shoot went very well. The manager at the factory was very nice and said there wasnt really anywhere we couldnt go to shoot. So we got to get right in close to the action like when the started making the licorice on the conveyor belt and when they were chocolate coating nut in the big copper barrells. I liked directing but i think i could have been a bit moreactive in the process. I chose a lot of shots for my cameraman to get but left it up to him how he got it. An example is i said get a shot of the licorice room and left it to him to get any shot. I wasnt very specific a lot of the time but then again sometimes i was. The only thing i think didnt go so well was the interview. I decided not to have voiceover in my insert so most of the information about the factory would come from an interview with a tour guide because its their job to know alot about the place. The answers were fairly good but the camera work wasnt too good. I wanted the same shot for the whole interview but while the interview was going on i went away to close a door where alot of noise was coming out and when i came back the shot had been changed. The shot i wanted was a constant mid shot. You could see the mic at the bottom of the screen but i dont think that mattered too much. Then it changed to a bit wider than a close up then to a shot of the interviewer and the interviewee. I think he was trying to give me different options or the interview and also get the mic out of the shot. I may also be talking to soon because it may turn out to look good once i get the footage into the edit suite so ill see what happens. Right after i shot my insert i went to the oasis to shoot some overlay for the swimming insert. This turned ou to be a bit difficult because we were filming minors at least under 8 year old. Im not sure how shooting minors works but the director spent most of the time talking to parents and getting them to sign releases. I thought there was an easier way but then again there may not have been. So i just got as much overlay as i could because i was a bit restricted with the whole minor thing because 80% of the people there were minors. After i did that i went home and looked over the footage and wrote down all the clips but i didnt do time codes. The next day of shooting started with an interview with a nutritionist. For some reason the sound guy didnt show up so i had to do that too. The interview turned outpretty good but i didnt get much direction from the director. I think she knowed what she wanted but she wasnt really telling me but in the end i got it. After the interview we had to wait a few hours before the other interview. When we got back to the oasis we did the stand up and some other bits with the actor. The sound guy wasnt there again so i had to do that again. Then there was problems with the interviewee who left the oasis and went home so we had to go to her house and do the interview there. unfortuneatly it was now dark and the lights in the interviewees house werent too good and the director didnt book any lights, only reflectors so the interview went alright but the lightingwasnt as good as it couldve been. Class was good, hearing about all the roles and thing i needed to know how to do on the vision mixer before the show and also the hierarchy in the studio. The studio session was pretty good too. I was camera 3 for the first run which was interestig because me being short, i had to have the ped at almost full height to get shots of bowls in hands and other thing which really hurt my neck but i guess thats part of the business. I was then cook 2 which was annoying because i dont like being in front of the camera but i liked that marcus was practicing doing a quiz and having an audience which is going to be in my show. That night was the first rehersal for the picnic show which i was vision mixing for. It was a bit challenging but after a while i got used to what was going on and anticipating some of the directors calls. I also finished the final script, in hello riverina format, for my show ready for a production meeting on monday.

Week 4

The fourth week back preparing for wicked after the holidays has been very informative. Firstly, ill go through some of the things i did during the holidays. Proabably the biggest change during the holidays was that the idea for my insert was changed. Instead of doing it about the waterbombing helicopters at heliair i decided to do my insert on the junee licorice and chocolate factory. There were quite a few reasons i had to change my insert but probably the main reason was organising everything to shoot because the lady who i was goong to interview was never in the same place for a long time. Most of the holidays i spent trying to contact her and when i did get on to her and found out her schedule i realised that it was almost impossible to organise. The idea was good it was just a bit too hard to follow through. I wish that i had realised this earlier then i could have spent more time working on my new insert. The junee licorice and chocolate factory was a great idea for an insert because kids love licorice and chocolate and all the food they have out there is organic which goes good with the green theme of the show that its on. so most of my holidays was spent working on my insert which probably wasnt the best time management. Anyway, the first week back was informative because we had a producers meeting where we handed our scripts to camilla and also got a chance to look at other people scripts. Another thing we did was look at some of the past kids shows from 2004 i think which was good to see what we should strive to achieve. Class was also good because we got to see more past kids shows. Probablt the one thing i thought was really good was one of the commercials done which was the stop motion blutack man. i thought it was really good. One unfortunate thing was that i was sick on thursday and still a bit sick friday morning and i had to address the class about my show. I think i did fairly well. I told everyone a breif overview of my show and managed not to collapse or fall asleep in the process so that was good. The studio session was good because i got to get some more practice in on the vision mixer and also to some staging. I think im getting a lot better at vision mixing but the one very important thing i learned that you may have noticed is to check that firstly, that if you want to fade to black, the mix button is on and if it isnt on and the wipe button is on and you dont notice just hope that person before you didnt leave it on star wipe. One thing i know is that ill never make that mistake again. Staging was easy because the camera i was watching didnt move much but i was still looking for things to do but couldnt find find anything. Also, over the weekend i organised a shoot for my insert and got an extension on the due date because my editor is going away for a while which is good because it would have been rushed and probably not to good otherwise.