Tuesday 1 February 2011

And so it begins...

So I’ve taken the next step in my life towards the career that I want to end up in. I’ve only gone and started university at UCA. I’m doing a foundation degree in Broadcast Media and will be working out of the UCA Maidstone campus and the Maidstone television studios. So this brand new blog is my way of tracking and having a digital record of my work to look back on as and when I need to.
Although it’s been somewhat slow to start what with tours and health and safety talks we’ve now been given two projects to get our teeth stuck into. For the first I have been instructed to work alongside Ze and Hennie. Unlike previous projects that I have undertaken outside of the University environment where the main goal was to have a rendered seamless video by the end this appears to be intended as a thought provoking exercise. Deliberately used to make us think about camera techniques such as angles and shot types that we’re going to use with professional HD Sony cameras. The brief for this task outlined a number of requirements and restrictions that must be met in this task. Mainly the following, the title must include the work ‘Life’, it must run as close to 3 minutes as possible, the locations we’re allowed to use are internal and exterior grounds of the Maidstone studios (where we have access) all of these requirements would be seeming normal nothing to get worked up about right? Wrong! The biggest obstacle to manoeuvre is that we are not allowed to do any post production at all. Meaning that every scene has to be shot in chronological sequence something that I’ve spent time learning how not to do.
So today after a night of individually thinking up ideas for this project Ze, Hennie and I discussed our various suggestions. After our discussion we decided to run with Ze’s idea which followed a shift of a security guard at the Maidstone studios. Due to the fact that everything has to be shot in sequence we sat down and planned out a step by step list of the events that will unfold in our three minute production. Unlike all other productions we have agreed to experiment using exclusively POV shots throughout the entire three minute production.

00.00-00.30:- Security guard closes the car door
                    - The title ‘A day in the life of a security guard’ is in the window
                    - walks to the studio entrance

00.30-00.50:- Greets and then changes places with the security guard on shift

00.50-01.10:- Security guard is sat in the booth
                    - A few employees hand there passes back and leave the building
                    - Puts his legs on the table
                    - Looks down

01.10-01.30:- Looks at watch
                    - Puts pass down
                    - Falls asleep

01.30-01.40:- Snoring

01.40-01.45:- Looks at watch
                    - Starts to fall asleep again
       
01.45-01.50:- Scream

01.50-02.15:- Walking along corridors

02.15-02.30:- Walks into a small dark room
                    - Using torch
                    - Heavy breathing
                    - Loud Smack

02.30-02.35:- Falls to the ground

02.35-02.45:- Attacker walking away

02.45-03.00:- Credits

It remains to be seen how well we can pull of this idea off but I look forward to seeing how the three of us work as a team and if the point of view throughout will result in the audience feeling connected to the character due to seeing everything the character sees or whether the audience will be left bored due to the unconventional technique.
The second project that I have been given information on is the story telling unit, the first gradable piece of coursework of the semester. I am yet to start any substantial plans for this unit of work but I look forward coming up with some kind of exciting and hopefully original story around the title ‘the meeting’.

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