Location Reccie #2

After our tutorial today, we went looking at further locations to use with the help of one of our contributors. In our minds, we were looking ideally for two really great locations that would provide enough interest for a max of 3 mins.

The first location we arrived at was great, it had big rooms, small rooms, roofless rooms and floor less rooms. There was a large variety of graffiti on the walls as well as objects left behind. There was a lot of foliage outside it too which I think could provide a nice contrast to the vast concrete of Stanley Tools.

We then went to look at a further three locations. All of these were interesting places, such as an abandoned, crumbling church, however none on their own would be able to provide enough footage. All were either too small or too destroyed to use on their own so we have decided that we are going to shoot a little bit at each. I don't think this is a bad thing and in fact I think the added variety could add to the film.

Tutorial 26/11/12

Todays tutorial involved getting further feedback from our Poetic piece as well as looking at what we were going to do next from our final doc.

We have been given 68% for the poetic which I am pleased with. I hope that for the final piece we can aim for a 1st, as I think that the project does have the potential to do so. The main point that let us down was our sound. As said in a previous post,  I think that here, our director should have listened to the advice of our sound recordist and designer.

For our final film, Debbie heavily emphasised the importance of our interviews. We were planning on doing a bit of shooting this evening with the guys at their homes. However, after this feedback we decided to cancel that and book out the sound studio and record the interviews with them both this evening. Doing this now also means that we can look for anything while on location that might relate to points both have mentioned in their interviews.

The interviews went well, both approaching nearly and hour each. One interview was better than the other, who was pretty easily distracted but i thnk that because both interviews were so thorough, we shouldn't have a problem with finding suitable material for the film.

Edit

I think editing took a while to get going.. I had arranged to meet Steve to being pro-ressing the footage with Alli (editor) at 10.30. Steve it turned out had forgotten that he had made this plan with me. Therefore I left it up to him to go in with Alli, but he didn't actually let her know for while that he was in edit, so as I said it was a bit of a slow start.

On Thursday, after my workshop in uni, I went up to edit see how things were going. Both Steve and Alli were in disagreement about what shots should be used and the finer details of the edit. This created a bit of a tense atmosphere, so after I arrived Alli went off to get some lunch and some space.

I think at the this point what they had put together was good, however there were one or two shots that I think could have been better selected. Though I understand that Steve wants to keep some things till the final film.

Grace began her sound edit; Steve asked her to recreate a piece of music he found online that he really liked. Later on, after I had left, Neil came in and told Steve that this was a really bad idea and that the music told you nothing of the place. Im told Steve reluctantly agreed to do a soundscape. As with Alli, I think Grace had difficulty with Steve's direction in edit as she disagreed with a lot of his ideas. He was very insistent that things be done as he said though so for better or worse, he has gone against her opinion. Im not sure how I feel about this as Steve doesn't do sound and has said many times that he doesn't' know a lot about it. Therefore I feel that he should probably take Grace's ideas into account.

There was also a problem in that no one brought in and dvds to burn the film on. I offered to go back into uni with some but then I was told Robin was going to bring some in on his way to the train station. It turned out that in his rush he brought CDs not DVDs, so the film is going to have to be burnt this weekend. This is pretty frustrating as Alli should have brought these in with her and it should have been checked that they had been brought in.

It feels like it has been a difficult end to the week with many members of the group, including myself at times, struggling again Steve and his directing style. He has already been told by a member of the group a few weeks ago that he wasn't stepping up however now it seems he is a bit too dictatorial. I am meant to have a meeting with him after we present the poetic film on Monday. If he has not brought or prepared notes on our final film I thnk I will have to talk to him, because it is becoming increasingly difficult to see how we can produce a successful documentary, when half the group is finding impossible to work together.

Sound edit..

Shooting Day 3

For our final days shoot it was good to see that we actually got a bit of sunshine and it wasn't raining!!
We had a little bit of a slow start as some people over slept and the caretaker of the site arrived a little later than usual. However, our contributors promptly showed up so we could get to filming right away.

We spend most of the day on the third floor, which we didn't really cover yesterday. This floor is filled with abandoned boxes of plastic moulds and a lot of paper work and stickers for boxes. We could also go one the roof which was pretty cool as you get a great view of the city from there.

A highlight of the day for me was finding an old notebook in which injuries made on site were recorded. There were some really nasty ones noted down, such a slicing fingers in half!.

Overall we managed to get more than enough footage, which is good. This means that we may not need to return to this site when we film our final piece. The difficulty is going to be in choosing what to include in the two minute poetic...

Schedule

Shooting Day 3

10.30AM – Meet outside Sainsbury’s (opposite uni) for taxi

10.45 AM – Arrive at ST

11 AM – Long shot; Shot of the outside of Stanley tools.

11.15AM – set up on 3^rd floor

11.30 AM - Bathroom, peeling walls and vegetation in better light

12 PM – Contributors arrive

12.15PM - Long shots of the large rooms, position urbexers CU and LONG

1 PM – cut aways

2PM  - Wrap. Taxis back to accomodation

Shooting Day 2

After the various issues that we have had which have led to us being pushed for time, today was actually a very good days shoot. I think everyone was very aware of how pushed we are for time and therefore how important it was that we didn't mess around today. All of the group came prepared and this time we did have shot lists. However, the airsofters were in today (normally they are only on site at the weekend) which meant that we had stick to their schedule more than our own. In a way though, this was helpful because the added time pressure of knowing that we had to move to a different floor by a certain time, or risk being hit by a pellet, meant that everyone worked even harder.

All the group were very proactive and I think this encouraged people more to continue to work hard throughout the day.

This time round we also booked out the portable lights. This made a huge difference and I think really improved the look of a lot of the shots we had to reshoot. It also enabled us to shoot things that perhaps last time round we wouldn't have been able to, because it was so dark. We also got a lot of good footage with our contributors who as always were very helpful and cooperative. It is very easy to just sit back and watch and film them too because, left alone, they are like kids in a playground running around finding new objects of interest.

From the footage I have seen I'm really pleased with what we managed to get. Hopefully tomorrow will be as productive.