42 Films Reflections

42 Films Ongoing First Reflections

This past week I have worked on five short 30-second films, edited two and have plans to film one more! Its been a crazy experience so far, but also a realistic one. All of these small films have tested my ability to stay focused and continue to produce work that I am proud of and haven’t rushed.

The first film I was subjected to was Somerdale International, based in Wellington; the company were up for two awards, one for best use of I.T. equipment and the other, best medium-sized business. Both films included B-Roll of the warehouse as well as the new barcode scanning technology that Somerdale now use to organise their stores, this all had to come across in the two 30-second films, which we made for them.

Things went swimmingly for the most part; we captured two interviews, one for the medium-sized business award and one for the I.T. award, these interviews were reasonably easy to set up, I brought my fluid head tripod along with me to the shoot. The cameras we were filming with; the Sony X70 does not have a lens cap, this means that the lens kept on getting dirt and marks on it when we put the camera in its bag between shoots, So I brought a microfiber cloth which is used to clean the lens before each shoot, just another quality assurance measure I thought about before filming. The audio I used in the edit of this shoot was from the laves, these microphones strap on right under the collar of the person we were interviewing for every shoot, then we also had a backup audio recorder capturing a second file for audio on its own, however this track is more of a backup for me, Finally I brought with me some of my 8” Bi-Colour lights, just to fill any darks spots in our interviews, the same setup including the rest of the equipment was used for all five films I worked on.

My primary reflections for the Somerdale interviews were that the quality of the interviews and everything technical went well; however, some of the content in these interviews were a bit of a mixed bag, for the section I edited which was the Medium-sized business award, the film came out perfectly, and its now complete, ticked off, but, the other video on the I.T side of the business had one big mistake, which was my fault. While recording the interview, Somerdale’s I.T specialist, I interrupted him mid-sentence while he was answering one of the most critical questions ‘What would winning this award mean to you’. I slipped up, ruined the structure of the 30-second film, it is a mistake, I have made sure I will not make again, that is why I'm putting it down on paper now, to reflect on how I can better myself and learn from my mistakes.

The B-Roll at Somerdale went well, I mounted the Sony X70 onto my Steadicam as the camera was too heavy to fit onto my Ronin SC which would have provided active stabilization, whereas my Steadicam is full manual control and a heavier piece of equipment, as you need weights on the bottom of it to counterbalance the weight of the camera mounted on the top. I can assure you it was definitely a workout! For camera settings for the warehouse shots, I set the camera to auto-focus, the WB to auto, and maintained the widest field of view the camera offered, as well as the aperture set at f2.8. This again was the same setup that I used in all of our B-Roll shoots with all five films I was DOP.

For the other films I worked on such as SASP (Somerset Activity and Sports Partnership), Singer Instruments and PRM waste systems, the story was a silky smooth one, interviews went well, I even knew Brian Moore, the managing director through one of my Father’s friends, we had a good chat Brian, he even offered me a chance to possibly come back in the future and make a film for their website so that PRM can send to clients. He told me it would be a short film maybe 2 mins long describing what PRM manufacture and develop.

I must say throughout the whole process, I have been happy to work with Amy Fisher as my producer, planning the routes to all of the locations and researching each business thoroughly, I don’t think I could have managed this all by myself like I would have chosen to do in the past. This has taken me some time, but I genuinely do accept and understand the importance of a team now in productions, it takes a while load off stress away from me, and it gives me the space to have some space to capture some truly good camera work that I am proud of!

For the other films I helped work on SASP and Singer Instruments, the B-Roll captured was suiting of the business award they were up for, so for SASP it was more activity, so there was some movement involved but mostly I think the plan was for Megan and Holly, the two other colleagues that were working with me for this film, to email SASP and get some photography from them and to clarify what they have achieved to help local businesses get moving, but that edit is not mine, same goes for Singer Instruments. Amy is editing our Singer Instruments film; she’s completed a really good job, also making sure to show a substantial present of what the business does for their employees’ which was a very different work environment from the one I work in at the moment.

Below is the feedback Amy received for that film:

For both of my edits, what was critiqued was the lack of colour in some shots also few more B-Roll shots could have been inserted into the timeline as Matt thought there needed to be some more shots of the actual construction of one of PRM’s products; finally, I needed to make some subtitles introducing Brian. Since hearing these suggestions, I have since applied them to the film.

Below is the feedback I received from Matt, one of our teachers. While we were writing down the possible changes, while Matt was suggesting the changes, I was editing the film in real-time to make it perfect, whilst Matt was helping me.

Below is the feedback from Matt before I made the suggested changes.

In conclusion, the whole 42 films work experience project has been extremely beneficial to me; it provided me with the skills to perform a professional-looking film with an extremely short turnaround. Thank you to our tutors for setting up this project, as the opportunity’s for future work experience are apparent, and I may even get a job back at PRM to make another film for them! Although this project has been stressful, not only for me but also my tutors, for organising all of this, it has been worth it, and I thank them for the opportunity.