During our second week of the carousel , we spent our time on the first day period learning about media production with Stefan. In this session , we had created a one minute advert for a BIC pen - the multi-coloured pen with 4 different colour choices. I will be blatantly honest , this task wasn't easy for any of us. We could all see that most of us was struggling but we got there in the end , with dedication and commitment and, surprisingly, we made a decent looking advert for our first try !
Before starting with this task , we were told that whilst we going through this challenge we had to be taking risk assessments to make sure that any possible risks were clearly visible and they were counteracted sensibly. So for example, with my role I had to help position the lighting with James Halliday and this entailed sorting out the cables coming from the light. Now a possible hazard from this lighting is that people can trip over the cable or the tripods holding these lights up. Using duct tape , we would stick the cables down to the floor and placed sandbags over the tripods to weigh them down more. By doing this , it has helped us understand ways of keeping the studio safe from any possible risks from anytime that we have to use the studio.
 |
| Max's wonderful group idea |
Our first task , was for us to brainstorm different advert ideas in groups of 4. Our group was struggling to come up with potential ideas that would be long enough to carry out the minute but we had several small ideas. After contemplating different ideas and noting them down , we pitched all of our ideas together as a whole group and then voted on the best idea. It ended with Max's group having the most votes. Their advert idea was to recreate a classroom scene with as student writing an essay who was getting frustrated with their normal, black ballpoint pen. The teacher then comes up to the student and offers the new BIC, which the student is more than happy to accept. The student uses the pen and it's the best thing to happen to him. The other students however were getting jealous. This causes a little rumble at the end. Once going through this , it had helped all of us communicate with each other , getting to know one another and find different ways of getting ideas out of each other which is very key with this course especially. There is a key aspect and that's all about expressing ideas to everyone.
 |
| James H and the lighting |
With the main task in hand, we were all individually given an important role to make this production work. We couldn't all be doing the same thing It just wouldn't work So my role was to help with the lighting alongside James H. Matt , who I believe is an assistant at college, taught us several key aspects with lighting like how to deal with over-exposure, shadows, etc. which can be handy for when we next have to record a film for either ourselves or maybe for other students.
Obviously there was never going to be the possibility of filming this shot in one perfect shot, sadly it's never that easy ! So we spent some time getting practice runs, to get us all use to our roles and to understand how we could make it better for the final run. By this time, there was a new role for me to adapt - floor manager. From my experience it would seem that this role entails controlling everyone on the floor and responding to requests from the studio. I'll be honest , this wasn't easy to start off with. Leadership is not my key skill but after a while of getting use to it of feeling more and more comfortable, I felt as if I did a good job. It's definitely helped build my confidence taking to others.
 |
| Actors celebrating the end ! Finally ! |
After our little lunch break, we were ready to film the final shot. Everyone was all prepared and ready to start the action. Everything was so pressuring that time went flying through the filming process. The final shot itself was perfect ! Everything went the directors way and he was more than happy with it ! Everyone was finally happy that it went the way we wanted it too. After so many try's and failures, we had learnt how to do it right. Through our mistakes, we nailed the final footage !
From this carousel session, I've learnt that there are a lot of key aspects to media production. This entail mainly communication, leadership and a spark of creativity. It has helped me understand that this job cannot be easy for any of the real-world professionals ! How they aren't at each other's throats bewilders me !
- Owen Bowra
Comments
Post a Comment