Approaching the first deadline

Byrichard
Reading Time: < 1 minute

It’s six weeks into the course and the first deadline is approaching. It’s for globalisation and I need to work on it today to save on stress later in the week.

I went out to Central London to record some vox pops asking people about myspace. The weather was good and people were quite willing to talk to the camera. In fact, it’s quite surprising to see what a high percentage of people accept to talk about. In general, they accept to talk if they know about myspace.

I was editing for a few hours on Friday, getting one or two interviews shortened for later in the production. We’re missing a lot of footage at the moment. We need to listen to the interviews, see what is mentioned, and according to this decision on what shots best illustrate what is being talked about.

I’ve watched my fourth Broomfield documentary, soldier girls, last night. It’s a different style. He’s far less visible in front of the camera and it focuses almost entirely on one problem recruit. We only see him at the very end when the problem recruit leaves the service.

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The advantage of being 25

Byrichard

The advantage of being a 25-year-old student is the following. You’ve been insulted, you’ve been threatened, you’ve been in trouble, you’ve shown that you’re an honourable person and more.

Tonight there was a party in my flat and I asked for the mess to be cleaned up and it has been. For such a request I’ve been labeled a fucking prick. If only it were true. That’s part of life. You make demands and get abuse for the demands. I’ve had my door banged  on at least twice in the past half hour to an hour but frankly, I don’t care. I’m not going to lodge a complaint. I just want responsibility for parties to sink through.

Anyway, goodnight, and see you tomorrow.

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I Haven’t Had a Proper Night’s Sleep in 85 Days

Byrichard

Since I left Switzerland after doing some work on the 21st of February I haven’t had a proper night’s sleep for 85 days. That’s a long time.

I wish there was a soundproof chamber into which I could go.

What if I designed and built a soundproof bed? Wouldn’t be that complicated.

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A Typical Day Two Weeks Before Uni’s End

Byrichard

Just put on some music and now I’ll tell you about a typical day, just two weeks before the end of uni life for me. My phone is set so that it rings every morning at 9 am and the reason it gives me is “catch a flight” because I had set that particular alarm to wake me up before one of my numerous flights.

It doesn’t often get me out of bed, I usually snooze till about 11 am and that’s when there’s noise from the cleaners. I open up the laptop and I start surfing around the world wide web syncing up with what’s happened whilst I was sleeping. It’s not until about two hours later than I do something productive like get out of bed, take a shower, and then get on with the public phase of my day.

a few times I’ve woken up and got straight into one of the three assignments that are due within the next three weeks. I stop working when either it’s at least an hour later or I’ve run out knowledge and because it requires research I decide it’s easier to get sidetracked by something else.

Around 2 pm I go for a walk, as an excuse to listen to a podcast. I get myself what is required for a sandwich and get some ice tea. Time to relax whilst eating.

Until this point there’s a chance I haven’t been sociable so I walk over to the uni library, it’s only 5 minutes away so it’s no struggle. As I arrive there I go from one friend to another, getting a little insight into how well they’re doing with assignments.

With certain people you find that they’re halfway through the dissertation, others are finished. Some were working on their advertising module course work and others claim not to have started writing. I’m glad I have. (slight understatement)

There are a few groups of people I hang around with. Sometimes I go to a venue and I film a friend’s gig, as happened or I go to the SU bar (which hasn’t happened for the past two weeks and won’t happen before next Monday. The third option is to hang out with more friends in halls.

Once I get home I do some more work, sometimes another two or three hours. I found that at one point I was so anxious and worried about my work that I couldn’t go to sleep before I had progressed with my dissertation.  I’m lucky that way. My mind has become the perfect nag. I’m grateful for this.

Sleep is easy, I lie down, pull the laptop screen down and see that it latches. Listen to my ipod and fall asleep.

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It’s All Over – Mission Accomplished

Byrichard

Checking through my pockets this morning I found that £30 are still there in cash. That’s quite surprising when you take into account that last night’s mission was to drink the bar dry. Obviously I did not contribute to this as greatly as was initially anticipated.

It was another night of relative madness. It was a night that involved getting to the bar around four or five in the afternoon and chatting to many people and listening to many others. It was a night where people trickled in until it closed at 3 am. During this time sambuca shots were drunk, people partied and others argued.

The fire was the final part of the night. At this point, I was in bed for the second time that morning sleeping my way into today. They got the police to come to the fire and one person was even taken by car around the building and released. This was simply to scare everyone into behaving themselves. It was probably amusing to see all the conspiratorial drunks spreading rumours and insults at this point.

The wake-up call was quite original today, a fire alarm. The last halls fire alarm I will ever hear and I can honestly say it’s not going to be missed in any way shape or form.

To all those whom I partied with over the past three years, it’s been both a pleasure and an honour. See you around.

Day two of editing

Byrichard

And there we have it. Day two of editing is over and we’re up to five minutes with a script that’s ready to be fleshed out by a variety of interviews. I love editing and whilst writing this I’m beginning to look forward to tomorrow’s editing. The problem is that I was getting a little tired of being in the same room for so many hours in a day. That’ll change tomorrow as new things occur.

We’ve added the sequences to the timeline and it would seem that things are progressing nicely.

I have captured the making-of footage for the multicamera project and that should be fun to edit. It will wait until later in the week when the Documentary edit is closer to completion.

On being directed

Byrichard

Being directed is often a good thing. It helps you achieve the tasks you are meant to achieve within a certain amount of time. Other times it helps you learn something useful. In occasional cases, though direction is one of the most frustrating things in the world.

I have spent many hours standing over the past three days being directed by someone who had not taken enough time with multicamera directing theory books or taken the time to familiarise himself with the theoretical aspect.

You’d expect most people who direct to watch others carry out such tasks, as I have with video editors for example. You’d also expect individuals to take the time to understand what shots can be achieved with which cameras. Over the past few days though I have seen an individual with the lack of skill to direct a team of people for a multicamera event.

Among the flaws were: lack of clarity, both in ideas and direction, lack of direction – for onscreen talent, too slow resulting in people being bored, etc.

One flaw I have seen from a number of directors is that they concentrate too much on the shots they would like to have without actually looking at what’s going on through the three cameras already in place, often missing one shot.

Don’t stop a take just because your vision mixed the wrong camera at the wrong time. Keep it going and see whether any more of the production can be salvaged.

I’m glad that the task is completed. Now it’s up to me to make it work in post-production.

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