Sunday, 28 February 2010

Comparison

Comparison to similar documentaries.

A similar video to ours in another documentary about the Creative and Media diploma, this video is based around the learning of CRaM students and features mainly audio of interviews with people involved while cutting from interview footage and footage of what they are disribing. Also the text style is the same, simple white text introducing who is being interviewed and what they do. One of the main things this video has that may have worked well in ours in establishing shots of where the work is going on, we could have feature some establishing shots of Long Road, The Junction and Bournemouth University to show where we work.

Special effects...

We had planned to do some possible special effects, and I think that that may have been a good idea although we didn't use it, I think that some special effects in other documentaries look good. Not during the actual documentary part but for the intro there are a lot of possibilities we didn't use.

A video I found made by other CRaM students feature quite a few things that would have made our intro better. I think we should have used; establishing shots, quick cuts, moving shots, speed-up shots and other things that this video uses.

Comparison to original idea.

Our second rough cut included a lot of what our orginal idea set out to do, it features most of the footage we intended it to;

An intro, L2 interviews, samba footage, Simon interview, Gary interview, Bournemouth interview, Pete interview, Nick interview, Bournemouth footage, editing footage, fiver footage.

Although this rough cut does not yet have L3 interviews or music video footage, we have filmed it and it will be included in our final documentary.

We also included our original idea of simple text and music. But I think that when comparing this with the original idea, we could have included some special effects (maybe with the text) to show our skills a bit more.

I also feel that we didn’t use enough variety of stuff, we have planned to have some of the interview footage spilt screen with footage of the interview information, instead we just have interview footage then a cut to footage of what they are talking about then cut back to the interview. The spilt screen idea may have add some variety as the style seem very repetitive in our documentary.

When coming up with ideas we research quite a few different documentary to see some styles we could use, we looked at a lot of different interview styles, this video of an interview with Derren Brown, although very different from our final video, was one of our original ideas, having the camera move back and forth from interviewer to interviewee, and although I now see that this would have worked very well with our video, we could have changed our interview styles with each interview. For example having the interviewers should of head being show to see that it is an interview; also we could have experimented in editing what it would have sounded like if you were to hear the question on the video. The interviews could have also changed angles a bit more, all of the interviews in our video are from either above or below and are held still, like the Derren Brown interview we could have move the camera around a bit.

Although some of the styles used in other documentaries and videos may not work with the idea for ours, they are still some idea we could have tried, because our documentary seems a bit repetitive in the shot types.

Expansion of Pyramid Concept.

During one of our first meetings with Simon he spoke to the class about a Pyramid idea of people we could interview for our documentary and different level of people involved in this project.
But after this project there are now more people and companies that I think can be added to the Pyramid; CEMP, Simon, BU, Skillset.


I have a much better understanding of this pyramid now, it is now only about how has more authority, but is about who does what for the diploma and the project, the STRATEGY part are the people that run the diploma and work to keep it going and develop it. The TACTICAL come up with ways for us to work and ways to help improve our learning and the OPERATIONAL are us and the other people that do the work and projects that are developed by the other two categories.

Final Budget

Although we have planned for our budget to be;
  • Travel £1000 Hire coach
  • Accommodation £20 per head for o/night at bournemouth, based on staying in a hostel = £400
  • Food £20 per head = £400
  • Uni fees £500 pay for student mentors from Bournemouth
  • Samba tuition £260
  • Total £2560

Equipment costs at Long Road/Coleridge Nothing
  • Computers
  • Cameras
  • Editing software
The only changes in the budget were the travel and accommodation costs.
SkillSet and Simon Bates had given us a budget for £1000 for travel, but the coach quote came to £750 and the final cost of the coach end up as £670. Also we had a budget of £400 for accommodation for the trip to Bournemouth University, but we didn't end up staying over night so there was no accommodation cost. Also the cost for the food at BU only came to £120 not £400

The money that was not used for the travel and accommodation costs are now being used as funding for the CRaMBA project our of Level 3 class' extended project (newspaper).

LOtC Quality Badge



The ‘Learning Outside the Classroom’ Quality Badge is for all organisations and venues that provide students a way of learning outside of classroom experiences for people between the ages of 0-19. The LOtC badge is awarded to organisations that are offering a good quality of teaching and learning experiences and safe environment. The badge is intended to assist schools in identifying external LOtC providers who can give a good quality of learning experiences.

Benefits;

For users, the Quality Badge provides an assurance that a provider:

Offers ‘what it says on the tin’;

Takes account of the needs of users;

Has an emphasis on ‘learning/skills outcomes’; and

Operates in a healthy and safe environment

Local authorities, other employers, the education workforce and parents will be able to recognise and have confidence in the Quality Badge scheme.

For providers, the Quality Badge will:

Accredit the quality of educational provision;

Provide a marketing opportunity;

Better enable ‘fast tracking’ for client approval;

Improve consistency in educational provision; and

Provide a useful development tool.

The Junction has been awarded this Quality Badge due to the ongoing work relationship between The Junction and school/colleges. The offer a lot of LOtC experiences, examples of this are; letting our class film music video at The Junction and giving us a better understand of lighting that we wouldn’t have been able to do with their influence. Also working with our class to make promotional video’s for their ‘Fiver’ event. They gave us mostly all access to the building and have helped us in setting up green-screens and stages for our projects. Simon Bates the head of ‘Learning and Access’ at The Junction also offers us feedback on work that we produce at The Junction.

CEMP


CEMP is the Centre of Excellence in Media Practice, which is an organization based around researching and developing ways of learning in relationship to creativity. CEMP is based at the Media School at Bournemouth University.
They consider themselves to be one of the organizations on the forefront of responding quickly and effectively to the pace of organisational, technological, social and cultural change which is sweeping through these industries. They are interested in how people learn, and how creative activities can facilitate imaginative learning, they can evaluate some of these things throw organizing sixth form visits to Bournemouth University, like the one we have recently had. They develop ways of learning in order to help develop the future generations of leaders in Creative and Media industries.

Skill Set


Skillset is the Sector Skills Council (SSC) for Creative Media which comprises TV, film, radio, interactive media, animation, computer games, facilities, photo imaging and publishing.
They work by leading and influencing, training and developing skills, they also give career advice and help people get to work in a creative and media industry and keep the industry competitive.
They help by funding projects, which is what they are doing for our project, they are giving us funding to make the documentary, that will promote work-related projects on the creative and media diploma. They will feature this documentary on there website.

Illustration of Progression

The documentary project is an illustration of progression;
The progression from school - sixth form - university - work (or sixth form - work)
They way that this is shown in the documentary is having the link in the work, with sixth form students working in a collaboration between high education and work place.

This documentary is a way a case study video for students, employers and consortia to show the progression of students on the diploma and how young people can get involved in a creative industry and shows how experiences with employers and universities can lead to direct routes into the industry. The video will be shown on the SkillSet website (www.skillset.org). This video shows how to diploma incorporates work-related learning to show students what it is like to work in the real media industry.
The way this project shows these things are; sixth form students is us and our project, then we show higher education options by involving our relationship with Bournemouth University, and work options is businesses like The Junction.

Thursday, 25 February 2010

Documentary rough cut 2 - 25th Feb 2010



This is the second rough cut for the documentary. I feel that this is a very big improvement to the first rough cut, but there are still a few things that need to be fixed.
These are the things that I feel still need improving...
  • There is no sound on the Nick and the Level 2 student's interview videos, there is just music.
  • The music stops at the beginning of Pete's interview and then starts again during the middle of the interview, this happens twice in the Pete's interview and then once again in Gary's interview, the music either needs to stop throughout the interview or continue throughout the interview.
  • The interview with the man from Bournemouth University cuts from one stop of the interview to another, I think this would be better if it had a cut of other footage in between to get rid of the jump in the interview footage.
  • Finally there is no footage of James' interview or music video in the documentary.
Though there are a lot of improvements that have been made following the pervious feedback from the MA student's Bournemouth University.
  • There is an added an intro at the beginning to get the audience's attention.
  • There are no longer any random black parts.
  • There are no black screens with white text saying who's being interviewed, now there is white text at the bottom of the screen at the beginning of each interview with the person's name and job.
  • The editing footage has been broken up a lot more and interlaced with more footage of the interview with Pete.
  • And it is now the correct length that the documentary should be, it is 8 minutes and the target was 6-10 minutes.

Wednesday, 24 February 2010

Interviewing Nick & James - 24th Feb 2010

Today while the editor were putting things together for the second rough cut, me and Mike did two more interviews for the video. First we interviewed Nick, the questions me and Mike came up with were;
  • Could you explain who you are and what you do?
  • Could you give a brief outline of the Level 2's Samba Performance?
  • How did they develop from the first lesson to the final performance?
  • Are their any future plans to work with The Junction again on any other units of work?
This interview didn't go very well, Nick didn't feel very comfortable on camera, and the tension he had about it was making us unable concentrated in some parts, Nick ended up joking around with sunglasses, and from then on found it very hard not to laugh in during the interview. Nick also didn't really understand what we wanted him to say as the answers to the questions, so to make it less distracting for him, I left the room and Mike just filmed him generally talking about the Samba project without any questions.



The second interview we did was an interview with James about the music video he made at The Junction. James and I worked on making up the questions together, by making him help create the questions, I thought it would make him understand more of what we wanted him to say in the interview, so that he wouldn't get confused about what we were asking of him like in the interview with Nick. The questions we came up with were;
  • How did you find working with the technicians at The Junction?
  • How did you find the experience?
  • How do you think your video would have turned out with the experience?
This interview went very well, the reason we chose to interview James about his music video and not anyone else in the class is because we knew that James is very confident with speaking and being in-front of a camera. He gave very detailed, clear answers that were very quickly thought of and I think it will definitely work well in the documentary.



During these interviews in the documentary we will need to cut them with footage of the projects they are discussing.
So there will need to be Samba footage and sections of James' music video.
Samba footage...

James' music video...


Also we realised that we needed an interview with a Level 2 student about the Samba project, but as we didn't have them to interview we realised that they made a sort of video diary about the project that we could just cut bits from to use as a substitute for the missing interview...this is the video...

Emailing Enquiries - 24th Feb 2010

We recieved a reply from Long Road enquiries about scheduling an interview with the principle, Sandra Hamilton-Fox, the reply asked us to reply with our timescale and a rough version of the question we will be asking...so I reply, responding to the questions they asked.

Dear Gail Carr,
We have a very short timeline for this documentary. We are required to have the interview before the end of the week. We understand this is of very short notice to you.
Here is a copy of the questions we were hoping to ask:
1) Could you tell us who you are and what you do?
2) What do you see as the value of the new 14-19 diplomas?
3) What's your viewpoint of the work that the creative and media students have been doing with the Junction?
4) Can you see any future opportunities arising from this project, and if so what could they be?
Please let us know a time that would be appropriate from this interview.
Thankyou,
Natalie Nicoll


I will now wait for another reply from the college, which will hopefully tell me an available interview time.

Tuesday, 23 February 2010

My thoughts of Bournemouth feedback.

I think that the feedback we got on our first rough cut from MA students at Bournemouth University is going to help us a lot in completing the video. A lot of the points he made about the video are very good ideas, especially the idea about having an intro, and having 'money shots', the best of the footage to keep the audiences attention.
I feel their input is going to help all of the groups with their finished videos...
It was a very useful trip and our group learnt a lot about not only improvements for the documentary by he helped us with some editing techniques and Motion.

Bournemouth Filming

At Bournemouth University, although we didn't get all of the shot that we intended to get, Mike got quite a lot of footage of the Promo group's editing, and an interview with the Head of Media at Bournemouth University. Kirk also got some footage of a student of Bournemouth University giving us feedback and showing us editing techniques on Final Cut and Motion.

At Bournemouth I interviewed the Head of Media of Bournemouth University, I came up with three questions;
  • Tell us about yourself and what you do?
  • What's your involvement in this particular project?
  • What do you think the benefits of this kind of project?
He answered these questions very well and gave some very interesting and confident answers, this interview also looks good because me and Mike decided that all the interviews for the documentary so far have been for the same type of angle; above and from the side, of the interviewee sitting down, so we decided to have to interview from a little below and of he standing next to a blue wall. I think this was a very good interview and the style of the interview will definitely add some variation to the types of interviews in the documentary.

Feedback from Bournemouth


  • Intro - Need an intro to establish a feel for the documentary and get peoples attention. Pick out the best shots for the intro.
  • Change of shot - good use of band footage but maybe use more - maybe have a musical montage to set up the feel of the venue.
  • Then - Simon Bats - Head of Learning and Access. Use footage that can be linked with what's being said, I.E. footage of the collaboration.
  • Maybe some transitional footage between, the interviews just to break up the structure, and create a break in the overall documentary.
  • Timing of the shots used. Some need to be shorter or longer.
  • Good use of titles to break up structure - possible alternative is having a voice over?
  • Shots of the interview really needed - to break up the footage of the edit studio - shots of the screen edits. Too much footage of the editors - really needs to be broken up.
  • First fine minutes needed to be broken up more to flow better.
  • Setting up a feel, what do you want to get from the film?
  • 30 Second intro.
  • Random Black.
We disscussed all of these things with the student we spoke to at Bournemouth University and he explained how these things can make it better.


After giving us the feedback he showed us how to do some editing on Final Cut that could help the documentary and then showed us the basics of a program called Motion.

Sunday, 21 February 2010

Bournemouth Planning

We are going to Bournemouth University tomorrow, in which our documentary group will need to film the process of editing for the promos and some interviews.

The shots our group have planned to get done tomorrow are:
  1. Open with the coach journey down to Bournemouth.
  2. Establishing shots of the university and signs “Welcome to Bournemouth
  3. university”.
  4. Shot of the university students talking to the class and shots of the students
  5. listening to them.
  6. Shots of Long Road students being helped by University students.
  7. Interviews with a University of students. Possibly interview 2 students.
  8. Shots of all the Long Road students working.
  9. Interview with some Long Road students about what they got out of going
  10. to bournemouth for the day.
  11. Interview with a University teacher. (This may not be needed)
  12. A shot of the Long Road students finishing for the day and heading back to
  13. the coach, the journey back to Long Road."
The footage will be shot in this order to make it easier for the editors.

My role tomorrow will be to interview Long Road students, University students and possibly a University teacher.
I will also be around to help with anything else that the group needs.

Original video ideas

When first coming up with ideas for the documentary, me, Philippa and Kirk found a found videos that featured some aspects or techniques that we thought we should use for our video.
These videos are...
The Eastenders E20 making of video documentary at......
http://www.bbc.co.uk/medialiteracy/understand.shtml

The Jamiroquai Documentary part 1...

And the Derren Brown interview with Richard Dawkins part 1...

We felt that all of these feature things that would be very good in our documentary.
Effects, hand held camera, interviewing style.

Interview Questions

As one of my role is interviewer, I will be interviewing people for the documentary, these will be the general questions that I will be asking.....

  • Could you explain who you are and what you do?
  • What's your involvement within the Junction project? Would you say you have a specific role?
  • Could you give a brief outline of the project?
  • What do you hope the students can get out of working with the Junction?
  • Can you see any further opportunities arising from this project?

Budget

The budget for the project.....

Skillset Budget for the project, as bid for by Simon:
  • Travel £1000 Hire coach
  • Accommodation £20 per head for o/night at bournemouth, based on staying in a hostel = £400
  • Food £20 per head = £400
  • Uni fees £500 pay for student mentors from Bournemouth
  • Samba tuition £260
  • Total £2560

Equipment costs at Long Road/Coleridge Nothing
  • Computers
  • Cameras
  • Editing software

Actual costs likely to come in lower.

Advice from Simon

This is some general advice that Simon has given up about the project...
  • Don't use the junction/fiver.myspace address, it is no longer live!
  • All promos need to use our logo and NOT stetch it in any way.
  • Please use Helvetica as the font with no additional formating (ie bold, shadow etc)
  • The following logos MUST appear in the promo: The Junctions, The Arts Council, CRaM, Long Road, CRC, Parkside Federation, QB Learning Outside the Classroom, Skillset
  • All promos should include some advice on getting noticed, for example 'good photos' of them gigging, consider testomonials, 'action' photos

Rough Cut Feedback from Simon

This is the feedback that Simon has given our group on the rough cut of the documentary so far.
  • Visual Looks clear and mature
  • Audio Sounds good
  • Interviews with students, Junction staff, lecturers Good interviews, more, i.e. Nick would be great, Sandra at Long Road, Jonathan at Bournemouth
  • Demonstrations of students working alongside Junction and Bournemouth staff Some good footage but more of the Samba and CRaM conference would be great
  • Interviews with students who are going to Bournemouth and how Long Road has developed the link Needs more of this
  • Information for other consortia on how to schools and FE colleges should engage with employers More on: students saying how important this is to the success of diplomas, at the end of the day this is why students do diplomas

Rough Cut and future improvments

Documentary Rough cut from cmdiploma on Vimeo.

This is the rough cut for the documentary so far.
There are still a lot of things that are not finished about this, we haven't yet collected all of the footage that we are going to need for the video.

The plan for what we still need is...
- Nick interview
- Samba footage
- Bournemouth footage
- Bournemouth interview
- L3 music video and interview footage
- L2 interview
- Principle interview

Saturday, 20 February 2010

Monday, 15 February 2010

Email Response - 15th Feb 2010

I have received an email back from Long Road Enquiries about arranging an interview with the Principle.
This is the email I received...
Dear Natalie
Sandra has asked me to contact you to arrange an interview.
In order to do so, would you let me have an idea of your timescale?
It would also help if you would let me have details of your questions in advance of the interview.
Kind regards
Gail Carr
College Administrative Manager / PA to Principal
Long Road Sixth Form College
Cambridge CB2 8PX
t: 01223 507423

Once I have spoken with the rest of the group about timescale of interviews, I will email them back telling them more information about the interview.

Thursday, 11 February 2010

Emailing Principle - 11th Jan 2010

For our documentary we want an interview with the Principle of Long Road, I offered to email her and ask permission for an interview. But I did not have an email address for her, so I decided to email Long Road Enquires to ask if they could help me get in contact with her.
This was the email I sent to the College's Enquires...
Dear Sir/Madam,

My name is Natalie Nicoll, I am a student at Long Road Sixth Form College, on the Level 3 Creative and Media Diploma.
We are working with The Junction on producing a documentary based on how Long Road and The Junction have been working together. This project has been funded by Skillset and this video is being produced for educational purposes. We were hoping to get an interview with Sandra Hamilton-Fox to get her views and opinions on this project. Is there any way that you could help organize an interview with her? If you are unable to arrange this, could you possibly give me contact details for her so I can arrange it with her.

We look forward to hearing back from you.
Many thanks,
Natalie Nicoll.

Wednesday, 10 February 2010

Researching - 10th Jan 2010

My main role is to help out with anything that people need, today these tasks were;

Philippa and Kirk needed to know the roles of the people that work at The Junction, so I researched the roles of all of the staff at The Junction.
Philippa and Kirk found this very useful.


Today I also had to research the logos of the companies that Dave needed to make animated logos for. I used google images and the companies websites to find these logo.









There were many logos for a few of the each of the companies, so I got all of them and put them into a folder and gave them all to Dave on a USB.

Model Release Form - 10th Jan 2010

As part of my role as a runner, Mike needed me to help with the signing of the release forms, so I handed out release forms to the whole of the class, and Nick so that we have permission to use all the footage of them, in the documentary.

This is the model release form...

Risk Assessment - 10th Feb 2010

Today I worked with Mike on creating a Risk Assessment for the project.
These are all the bad things that could happen during the project, and the solutions to each of the project.

I also printed out 10 copies of this to give to everyone in our group a copy for our folder.

Health and Safety

The health and safety points to make sure we stick to during all aspects of this project, including; filming Interviews, Fiver, Bournemouth and Editing.
- Making sure not wires or equipment are left around that people could walk into or trip over.
- Getting in peoples way and bumping into other people or objects when filming in crowded places such as the Fiver event or at Bournemouth.
- Not starring at computers for too long when editing, take regular brakes.

There are some thing that we were denied access to due to health and safety; such as at the Fiver event we asked Simon if we could film from the Cherry Picker, but he said that we weren't aloud to as it was not be very safe for us to do so. As we could get injured during using or operating the Cherry Picker.
At the Fiver event, the people filming we also warned that because of it being quite full that it would be hot, so people should take breaks and make sure to drink water and eat something.

Monday, 1 February 2010

Roles for the project - Documentary

Kirk - manager, on set photographer and interviewer
Dave - editor
Philippa - editor, on set photographer
Mike - camera operator, runner
Matt H - assistant editor, graphics designer
Alie - interviewer, runner
Joe - camera operator


My job for the project is to interview people for the videos, and also as the runner I will do small jobs for other people that they need doing.