Television and Broadcasting Evaluation

The list of roles that we had to include in our team were:
3 Camera Operators
A Vision Mixer
A Directer
An Autocue Operator
A VT Operator
An Audio Mixer
A Floor Manager
2 On-screen Presenters

There are a few more roles such as a Lighting Operator and Personal Assistant (P.A), who keeps track of all the timings, however due to the shortage of people in our team we had to have some experienced degree students cover these roles. My role was a camera operator. I really enjoyed the job as although I didn't have to give any orders to anyone, I had to follow orders that I was given quickly and efficiently. I think as a person I work best under pressure so this job was perfect for me. As a camera operator I had to listen carefully through a headset to what the director was telling me from the gallery. I had to listen out for key words such as zoom, pan and track. Although I don't think that it was the most stressful job, I do think that at the end of it all, if I didn't follow orders correctly or if my camera wasn't even focused then the filming of the show would be ruined.  

I didn't have a lot of expectations for this project as I never thought of a job in TV Production to be in my future. However as the project came close I did find my self getting excited to see what really goes in to live television. I thought it would be stressful, especially up in the gallery, and that ultimately when it came down to recording it is the director who has the highest authority.

I was most looking forward to seeing what it is exactly that goes into making a live TV programme. I was very excited to know what was included within each role, as although I had a good idea I didn't exactly know what all the roles actually were.
There wasn't anything that stuck out to me that I was least looking forward to. If I had to choose something though I would have to say being put under a lot of pressure, and I quickly learned on this project that every single role had a lot of pressure to preform well. If any member in the team failed at their job it would mess up the entire show. I normally work best under a little bit of pressure, but only when the work is for me, not when the work I produce is for 10+ other people.
I learnt a lot about live television while doing this project. One thing that shocked me was how difficult it is being a presenter. I obviously knew that it is nerve-racking for presenters to do their job in front of thousands, potentially millions, of people. However I didn't know that a lot of stress went with the job too. Not only do they have to read off of a moving autocue, something that I personally would not be very keen to do seeing as I am not a very confident reader. But they also have an earpiece with a directer, and often a P.A, talking at them to sit a certain way or to finish up a segment. I now have a lot more respect for presenters. I also now realise how difficult it is to come up with good interesting content that will keep the target audience engaged throughout. We found this particularly difficult, and after cutting out a lot of boring talking, we only managed to produce an 11 minuet show opposed to a 15 minuet one that was advised in our brief.
I think that our most successful aspect of the project was sticking to the brief. We produced a television show that was engaging and well thought out for teenagers (our target audience). However as discussed we only managed to produce 11 minuets of content opposed to the 15 minuets that we were instructed and I feel that this is were we let ourselves down. Another successful aspect in my opinion of the project was that as a team we all worked together really well and I think this made a big difference as we all listened to each others opinions and suggestions, and took onboard anything that anyone put forward.
I learnt that I enjoy being behind the camera. I found it really interesting and I thought that enthusiasm can carry you through the most stressful of situations, such as making live television.

Film Week Two: Storyboard Making

I, before starting this project, didn't realise just how important and vital making a well thought out storyboard is to producing even the shortest of films, especially if you want them to be good, which I'm sure every film maker does. It is important to make sure you know exactly what you need to shoot because otherwise you waste a lot of time shooting things that you don't need to,  run over and give yourself a lot of stress trying to meet deadlines. What's good about making a storyboard for a film is that it can be really basic and simple sketches that are straight to the point and clearly show the scenes that need to be shot and what needs to happen 

Film Project Week One: Moral Premise

For the film project we were all put in groups of four, some people in this group would be people that we had never worked with before. I thought that this would be really good as it would be an opportunity to hear what other ideas people that I had never heard from had. 

We learnt what a moral premise was and what the format to use was when making one. The story premise is when and incident occurs and the hero must achieve a goal. The moral premise is the attitude that leads to a consequence. Some moral premise ideas that we thought about included, faith conquers pride, foolish generosity leads to poverty and ill temper leads to isolation. Our group liked the idea of the attitude leading to isolation. At first we thought of betrayal leads to isolation, but betrayal is quite vague as an attitude so we changed it into something more specific; disloyalty leads to isolation. 

We had to ensure that our work was relevant to the idea of the power of silence that has been carried through following the photography project. We thought that disloyalty liked to silence quite well because when someone is completing a disloyal act, they are likely to do it behind someones back (most likely the person they are being disloyal to). Also isolation as a consequence is a very lonely and often quite silent state to be in.

LBM Evaluation

We were giving the theme for this project as 'The Power of Silence' which at first left me feeling unsure  of what I wanted to do for the outcome. We were told that our outcomes for this project would consist of 4 final photographs.We only had two weeks for this project which I wasn't very happy about considering that I am a beginner in photography and it took me about a week and a half to feel comfortable using a DSLR camera. I interpreted the project brief that there wasn't a right or wrong answer, and it was mostly down to interpretation. I was really looking forward to using a camera in a more professional way that I have done previously. In the past I have only borrowed DSLR cameras for short periods of time and not thought much about what I was doing, so I was keen to receive tips and feedback on what I was doing. 

I looked particularly into the work of Walker Evans as he has focused a lot on abandoned houses and I was really interested on looking into the idea of abandonment within the idea of the power of silence. However I wanted to make it more nature based rather than architectural based. I found that the power of silence was largely down to interpretation, and one persons' silence would be another persons' noise. I didn't want to create anything that obviously showed silence, but at the same time I wanted people to see the link. I thought the idea of abandonment easily showed silence. Since I didn't want to follow in Evans' ideas within architechtual abandonment, I thought that abandonment within nature was a good fit to the brief that we were given and it also wasn't obvious. I learned throughout the project that aswell as taking a good photo it in the end comes down to editing. Rarely will you take a photo where the lighting, saturation, exposure, and colour balance is all perfect and you don't have to change anything. I took it upon myself to clue up on photoshop and Lightroom via tutorials on lynda.com.  This helped a lot and I think that without doing this it would have taken me a lot longer to edit my photos.

I began this project by creating a mind map which outlined all my ideas which would demonstrate the power of silence. This first step helped a lot as it made things a lot more clear and made sure that I wouldn't forget any of the ideas that were in my head. After I had a handful of ideas on paper I went out and took lots of photographs that demonstrated my ideas. I displayed these photographs on contact sheets using a tool in Adobe Lightroom so that they could be easily viewed without taking up lots of pages in my sketchbook. I then went ahead and chose a few photos to take forward and edited them. Finally I came up with a final set of four that I displayed A2 to present. Producing contact sheets allowed me to easily pick out the photos that didn't fit in the colour scheme or in a set. I think that this was a significant trail that I carried out and I am very happy that I did it. I did think that my final four photos, although worked really well as part of a set, they might be too similar. I didn't have enough time to go right back to the editing stage to pick and edit more photos to include my set, so I am going to update this project in the very near future and produce different sets, and see what works best. I was at one point told that my photos were too cool toned and that I should focus on adding some realistic colours back into my work. However I disagreed. I did reedit the photos as instructed however I still wasn't convinced that the photos looked better. There was a reason for why my photos were so cool toned, I thought that it represented silence well and that it also gave more of a surreal, mysterious and abandoned feel to it. I thought that when they were displayed with a more realistic colour scheme it took away the story behind it and simply showed an overgrown garden. After reediting I decided that I would stick to what I originally thought and keep my photos cool toned.

I learnt of a new method when shooting and it's called the 'rule of three'. This basically splits the frame into three sections. If you think about the rule of three while shooting your photo will more than likely turn out a lot more pleasing on the eye.

During the film portion of the LBM project I became very uninspired in the topic of 'The Power of Silence'. I have never thought about going into film as a career and I still have this view. I found it incredibly difficult to come up with a unique response to the brief that nobody else had thought of. Luckily I was surrounded by some inspired people that gave me ideas in how I could go about making a short film. My response to the brief can be viewed here.

I like to think that I am a very organised person and that I demonstrate this in my work. However I also think that this can limit my work. Due to me being quite organised I make sure that everything fits on one page, this means either not including certain things on the page or including too much that isn't necessary. I think I definitely need to work on this as it means that flow and continuity are lost in my work.