My third week in the job started quite quietly, much to my appreciation and i was handed a list of photography jobs covering the next few days. They were all fairly standard with the exception of a diamond wedding during which i was fed cake and tea by the staff at the home. One of the benefits of my job is i get to travel around a lot and meet a lot of different people from different backgrounds making all my days, school days!I also had my first big live video job at an annual awards evening. What made it interesting was the fact that i would be taking photos too. Usually when i have shot an conference type event, it has always been a three camera setup. one on wide shot, one on close up of the speaker and one on crowd reaction. Unfortunately we only have one camera and one operator. Me. I arrived slightly late due to a google maps confusion trying to take me down a road that doesn't exist, but still got there with enough time to evaluate the shooting space and get setup. After collecting some pre talks b-roll footage (cutaways used in the edit to make it look interesting and set the scene) I arranged myself in a sneaky position at the back of the room with a straight view to the podium. All the talks went smoothly and the footage turned out grand other than me and my purple jumper running into shot every five mins or so to take photos of the award winners. Now all that was left was to gather some shots of people eating and looking sociable and then i would get my reward; The corporate buffet. To my mild disappointment the food was served in bowls smaller than my hand although it was very tasty and did filled the required gap. I then shot home as my shift was verging on ten and a half hours and i had a long day photographing ahead of me. The next day involved me covering another wide range of areas including the construction of a new high school and gathering some very uninterested teenagers for a shoot, all in all a successful day.
This week i had also had a new toy arrive in my life in the shape of a video mic by Rode. This is a simple condenser microphone that sits in the hot shoe of my camera and provides a much greater range for recording sound. I had to test it out. It is awesome. The sound is so much clearer than the onboard mic and gives you more freedom with the ability to add a high pass filter (allowing you to remove rumble and other low frequency noise whilst recording). I have managed to use it for a project i am currently working on and has definitely added a more professional touch to the finished film.
I have also been experimenting with different timelapse techniques after watching some truly epic films. Namely, The Mountain by TSO photography, http://vimeo.com/22439234 and Landscapes Vol 2 by Dustin Farrell, http://vimeo.com/29950141. I've always wanted to capture the stars in a timelapse, as i find it fascinating that you can watch the world move through a camera and depending on the location you can sometimes pick up full milky ways!Not the chocolate bar! So off i set to test it out. Being Scotland and the summer only lasting for around about 2-3 days it was scandalously cold but i braved it for a good forty five mins before retiring to my warm flat to check out the footage. Im not going to lie i was well chuffed, the finished piece didn't look as good as i had hoped but you could still make out the stars, i just need a wee bit more practice. The test piece can be seen on my vimeo page: http://vimeo.com/30765617.
A happy end to a busy week.
Tuesday, 25 October 2011
Sunday, 16 October 2011
Week 2...
My second week began with covering a new campaign for the council, which involved a double decker bus, a councillor and some foster carers. After getting lost for 15 minutes (this seems to be a consistent factor in my work day at the moment) I eventually found the location and began setting up. This was a great opportunity for me to try out the wide angle lens within my kit bag as I've never had a full frame camera before and the image quality is ridiculous! After the obligatory getting people to pose in every imaginable spot for the photography i went to set up the video camera for the interview section of the campaign only to turn around and find the bus we were supposed to be using had driven off. Plan B. One of the foster carers kindly agreed to let us use their house for the interview, which actually turned out to be a blessing. I always feel people are more comfortable being interviewed in their own home, plus for a campaign which is centred around carers looking after people in their own home, the location was perfect.
Having shot everything we needed i headed back to the office to rip the footage and get ready for another interview. This one was extremely the easy as i had shot it the week before, but the lovely tape I used decided to cut off the first minute and a half of the footage leaving me without an intro to the person being interviewed. This led on to me cutting the rest of the interviews and presenting them later on in the day with some positive feedback(always a bonus).
With starting my new job I've not had as much free time to get out and explore recently so when i found out i had a whole Wednesday to myself i decided to make the most of it. I'd heard about a distillery up by Pitlochry, called Edradour. It's claim to fame is being the smallest distillery in Scotland, possibly the world. I thought this would be a perfect opportunity to make a small film, so i phoned up to enquire about their filming policy and the receptionist seemed pretty confident it would be fine on most of the tour. Alas this was not the case. Upon arrival we were told no filming, full stop. Although they were more than happy for us to take photos in the designated area's. We figured having driven all the way up we may as well enjoy the tour, so off we went on a fascinating whisky adventure. The tour was brilliant, teaching us about the history of the distillery and the process of making the whisky. Did you know that bottles of 50 year old single malt can go for up to £1500!we also got a wee dram, to allow us to fully appreciate the experience:).
Having finished the tour we felt slightly unfulfilled with our lack of filming. My filmmaking friend had mentioned that there was a micro brewery in the area, so we thought we would try our luck there. We arrived at this small barn style building and wandered in, not really sure what to expect. The one worker was extremely welcoming and had no problem with us filming.Score!We were also starving by this point so decided to head across to the local pub for some grub and try the local brews. I had an epic ploughman's, the kind you can only find in small country pubs. Now that we were fed and watered, we headed across to start filming. My friend was shooting on a Sony A1E, a consumer style HDV camera, with an external XLR mic and i had my panasonic GH2 and konig tripod. After chatting with the guy for five minutes we thought it would be great if we could get a mini interview from him as he was full of info about the brewing process having been in the industry for 25 years. So we questioned away, then got some artistic cutaway shots and headed on our way.
My next two days were fairly manic as we had to get everything finalised for the sports awards on the friday. I had two interviews left to shoot, the first very straight forward, the second, not so much. It consisted of about ten excited high school kids who (after the teacher had left me in charge became even more hyper) relished the fact they were being filmed and didn't seem to want to stop talking to each other and the camera all at the same time. I fired through the questions and thought I had enough footage for the interview having not noticed in the swimming pool next door people seemed to be having a shouting competition, just adding to the editing fun!
Having shot the last interview on the thursday afternoon i finished editing later on thursday and prepared for my 12 hr shift the next day. The majority of the day consisted of setting up the room for the awards and finalising the DVD. After a few wee tweaks the films were ready to be shown, we just had to check the sound system worked. Picture the scene, I was alone in a huge chamber style room testing the sound on the films when i heard, "thank you Michael, 313" coming through the speakers. At first i assumed the that someone had a wireless mic and was testing sound levels from outside the room. Nope. My boss walks back in to me looking quite confused, so i ask him, to which he replies, "ah, that might be the the taxi thing"!It turned out that when the sound system was installed they set the frequency to that of the local taxi firm, so whenever they called out from their office, it came through our speakers. Happy days! The rest of the day was trouble free, so all we had to do was get through the night. With all the award winners and delegates arriving we settled into our seats. Within 10 seconds of the first speech we had the taxi company coming through the speakers much to the dislike of the speaker, who turned to us with a baffled look on his face. After the 5th time it happened we decided the only course of action would be to keep the mic's off and just play the sound when the films came on. Thankfully this worked and no more disruptions were had. On the plus side, we were offered a tasty buffet dinner and then got to meet Craig Brown the ex Scotland Football manager, who is a very likeable person with great stories and anecdotes about the Scotland team. Great way to end the week!
Having shot everything we needed i headed back to the office to rip the footage and get ready for another interview. This one was extremely the easy as i had shot it the week before, but the lovely tape I used decided to cut off the first minute and a half of the footage leaving me without an intro to the person being interviewed. This led on to me cutting the rest of the interviews and presenting them later on in the day with some positive feedback(always a bonus).
With starting my new job I've not had as much free time to get out and explore recently so when i found out i had a whole Wednesday to myself i decided to make the most of it. I'd heard about a distillery up by Pitlochry, called Edradour. It's claim to fame is being the smallest distillery in Scotland, possibly the world. I thought this would be a perfect opportunity to make a small film, so i phoned up to enquire about their filming policy and the receptionist seemed pretty confident it would be fine on most of the tour. Alas this was not the case. Upon arrival we were told no filming, full stop. Although they were more than happy for us to take photos in the designated area's. We figured having driven all the way up we may as well enjoy the tour, so off we went on a fascinating whisky adventure. The tour was brilliant, teaching us about the history of the distillery and the process of making the whisky. Did you know that bottles of 50 year old single malt can go for up to £1500!we also got a wee dram, to allow us to fully appreciate the experience:).
Having finished the tour we felt slightly unfulfilled with our lack of filming. My filmmaking friend had mentioned that there was a micro brewery in the area, so we thought we would try our luck there. We arrived at this small barn style building and wandered in, not really sure what to expect. The one worker was extremely welcoming and had no problem with us filming.Score!We were also starving by this point so decided to head across to the local pub for some grub and try the local brews. I had an epic ploughman's, the kind you can only find in small country pubs. Now that we were fed and watered, we headed across to start filming. My friend was shooting on a Sony A1E, a consumer style HDV camera, with an external XLR mic and i had my panasonic GH2 and konig tripod. After chatting with the guy for five minutes we thought it would be great if we could get a mini interview from him as he was full of info about the brewing process having been in the industry for 25 years. So we questioned away, then got some artistic cutaway shots and headed on our way.
My next two days were fairly manic as we had to get everything finalised for the sports awards on the friday. I had two interviews left to shoot, the first very straight forward, the second, not so much. It consisted of about ten excited high school kids who (after the teacher had left me in charge became even more hyper) relished the fact they were being filmed and didn't seem to want to stop talking to each other and the camera all at the same time. I fired through the questions and thought I had enough footage for the interview having not noticed in the swimming pool next door people seemed to be having a shouting competition, just adding to the editing fun!
Having shot the last interview on the thursday afternoon i finished editing later on thursday and prepared for my 12 hr shift the next day. The majority of the day consisted of setting up the room for the awards and finalising the DVD. After a few wee tweaks the films were ready to be shown, we just had to check the sound system worked. Picture the scene, I was alone in a huge chamber style room testing the sound on the films when i heard, "thank you Michael, 313" coming through the speakers. At first i assumed the that someone had a wireless mic and was testing sound levels from outside the room. Nope. My boss walks back in to me looking quite confused, so i ask him, to which he replies, "ah, that might be the the taxi thing"!It turned out that when the sound system was installed they set the frequency to that of the local taxi firm, so whenever they called out from their office, it came through our speakers. Happy days! The rest of the day was trouble free, so all we had to do was get through the night. With all the award winners and delegates arriving we settled into our seats. Within 10 seconds of the first speech we had the taxi company coming through the speakers much to the dislike of the speaker, who turned to us with a baffled look on his face. After the 5th time it happened we decided the only course of action would be to keep the mic's off and just play the sound when the films came on. Thankfully this worked and no more disruptions were had. On the plus side, we were offered a tasty buffet dinner and then got to meet Craig Brown the ex Scotland Football manager, who is a very likeable person with great stories and anecdotes about the Scotland team. Great way to end the week!
Saturday, 8 October 2011
My first day...
So i've just started a new position at a local council as their multimedia officer, a fancy title for what basically means the councils photographer and videographer. I arrived fresh faced, excited and early on my first day expecting a relaxing morning filled with meeting all the right people, tour of the building etc but to my surprise, five minutes after arriving i was presented with my first job for the council! They were running a Sports Awards ceremony for local residents who had shown a dedication to local sporting groups as well as tremendous solo achievements. Where i came into this involved contacting all nine winners, arranging an interview, filming, editing and production of a DVD for the following friday. Now under most normal circumstances this would be fairly straight forward, not today!As my post is only 20hrs a week i have to juggle my jobs over three days!Having only just started i had no phone, computer or email access and no clue as to where any of these people lived as the entire area was new to me. After acquiring a desk and a phone i began phoning round and arranging suitable times and places to meet, luckily for me all the winners were very understanding of the situation and agreed to help in anyway they could. By my first lunchtime i had arranged 5 out of the 9 interviews!Hurrah!
In between the manic phone calls, i inquired about what kit was available for me to use(this is were i got a tad excited). I was pointed in the direction of a large metal cupboard, upon opening it i was confronted by about five different sized camera bags, a tripod bag and a full flash lighting kit. My eyes glazed over!i then proceeded to empty the cupboard onto a near by table and open every bag to inspect the contents. Christmas had definitely come early!On the video side of things they have a wee canon HV40!It does what its meant too and has manual controls for almost everything its just so much smaller than video cameras im familiar with!I also ended up with three canon DSLR's one of which is a 5D!full frame happiness!then every variation of lens i could imagine!there was a 24-105mm, a 24mm and 50mm prime, a 15-35mm wide angle and about three telephoto lens going up to 300mm!i didn't know what to do with myself, i also felt i had to act professional as being the first day on the job i was eager to make a good impression. Having covered the only spare table in the office with camera bits and bobs i put everything away and calmly asked my boss if i could take the cameras home, as i felt i should acquaint myself with them, 'no problem, do what you need to do'!ha!okay!:)
In the afternoon i was shown my desk and my new computer!This had also crossed my mind on my way in, as i'm an apple fiend and could not imagine going back to using a windows based operating system!To my absolute happiness, i was presented with a mac pro with two apple monitors!Happy days!the only downfall to this was the lack of editing software, i had the option of imovie or nothing. Don't get me wrong imovie is great for what it does but its like a designer going from photoshop back to Microsoft paint!It could be worse!i'm also in talks with my boss about trading up for Final Cut if i can put forward a good enough argument for buying it, so i'm currently scouring the apple website making mental notes! The rest of the day was spent arranging interviews for the following days and meeting some important people such as the Provost of the region, who will be one of my main subjects for photography.
Over the next two days i managed to interview and film five of the nine winners, all of whom were very welcoming and enthusiastic as well as interesting. One of them was a snooker player, who is the only amateur ever to have a 147 break recored on camera another was a nine year old girl who gained a black belt in karate when she was only eight!bizarre!This also gave me a chance to get to know the area, as it consists of a lot of small towns and villages very close to each to other but very different at the same time.
Having a had a fairly manic start to my new job i was glad of a day off, to give me time to recuperate and plan a new personal project. Im hopefully going to enter something for the http://www.onedayonearth.org/ collective, so i've been brainstorming with various creative people over what to do. I would recommend this to any budding filmmakers (or even just to people who want to show the day in a life of something/one/where interesting) as it is a great cause and it sure to produce some inspiring films.
Watch this space...
In between the manic phone calls, i inquired about what kit was available for me to use(this is were i got a tad excited). I was pointed in the direction of a large metal cupboard, upon opening it i was confronted by about five different sized camera bags, a tripod bag and a full flash lighting kit. My eyes glazed over!i then proceeded to empty the cupboard onto a near by table and open every bag to inspect the contents. Christmas had definitely come early!On the video side of things they have a wee canon HV40!It does what its meant too and has manual controls for almost everything its just so much smaller than video cameras im familiar with!I also ended up with three canon DSLR's one of which is a 5D!full frame happiness!then every variation of lens i could imagine!there was a 24-105mm, a 24mm and 50mm prime, a 15-35mm wide angle and about three telephoto lens going up to 300mm!i didn't know what to do with myself, i also felt i had to act professional as being the first day on the job i was eager to make a good impression. Having covered the only spare table in the office with camera bits and bobs i put everything away and calmly asked my boss if i could take the cameras home, as i felt i should acquaint myself with them, 'no problem, do what you need to do'!ha!okay!:)
In the afternoon i was shown my desk and my new computer!This had also crossed my mind on my way in, as i'm an apple fiend and could not imagine going back to using a windows based operating system!To my absolute happiness, i was presented with a mac pro with two apple monitors!Happy days!the only downfall to this was the lack of editing software, i had the option of imovie or nothing. Don't get me wrong imovie is great for what it does but its like a designer going from photoshop back to Microsoft paint!It could be worse!i'm also in talks with my boss about trading up for Final Cut if i can put forward a good enough argument for buying it, so i'm currently scouring the apple website making mental notes! The rest of the day was spent arranging interviews for the following days and meeting some important people such as the Provost of the region, who will be one of my main subjects for photography.
Over the next two days i managed to interview and film five of the nine winners, all of whom were very welcoming and enthusiastic as well as interesting. One of them was a snooker player, who is the only amateur ever to have a 147 break recored on camera another was a nine year old girl who gained a black belt in karate when she was only eight!bizarre!This also gave me a chance to get to know the area, as it consists of a lot of small towns and villages very close to each to other but very different at the same time.
Having a had a fairly manic start to my new job i was glad of a day off, to give me time to recuperate and plan a new personal project. Im hopefully going to enter something for the http://www.onedayonearth.org/ collective, so i've been brainstorming with various creative people over what to do. I would recommend this to any budding filmmakers (or even just to people who want to show the day in a life of something/one/where interesting) as it is a great cause and it sure to produce some inspiring films.
Watch this space...
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