George Wing Television Blog

 Car In UK/ packing for Berlin Today we went to shoot at Kamran's (our Presenter) house. The filming today was to relatively basic. We wanted to have a go-pro setup in the car, as we weren't allowed to film handheld- it had to be fixed. These setup for this was as follows. We put a go pro in the bottom left corner of the windscreen to avoid any distraction/impaired vision. This allowed us to focus on Kamran from a side/front view. We stuck this to the dashboard. The second go-pro was fixed from behind Kamran, on the left seat. This was difficult to attach at first, but I found a way using cable res. I linked several together in order to make them long enough to go around the go-pro and car seat. This was fastened tightly, and as a DIY setup it worked very effectively; our presenter was able to drive, and the go-pro state din position without jittering or falling. Picture quality was therefore no lost here. I then moved onto filming some close ups inside the car including the ...

Social Media Expert, David Glenwright  Today we needed to film our social media/war expert. This involved traveling to Birmingham, which was a four hour drive in total. Luckily we planned this and learned from our trip to the holocaust survivors, on the importance of allowing for extra time. We knew it would be a long car journey so we left Rochester at round 5:15 to get there for 9:30. This allowed us plenty of time to recce the location and set-up our equipment. Some of the walls were orange, which affected the aesthetic look. To resolve this we used four LED lights and soft-boxed two of them, whilst adjusting the camera settings. We did manage to stage the room so as little orange as possible was showing, and it eventually looked effective and became a good setting. We also had some issues with our sound. We faced a lot of loud background noise from the upstairs rooms, which we were able to calm sometimes. Some may have been picked up on the clip mic's, but they are lucky desi...

 Holocaust Survivors  Today we traveled to London again to meet and interview Holocaust Survivors. We were originally wanting to drive there as it was convenient for equipment. However, we realised that if we wanted to be there in time, we would have to leave unnecessarily early to avoid, account for traffic. We decided to get the train which cost us about £12 each. Unfortunately Simon missed the train as a result of being stuck in traffic on the way to Rochester station. We had to make a split second decision wether or not to board the train with out him or all of us be late. In the end we had to leave him behind. We contacted him explain, and give him the details on the train journey, where to get on/off etc. He was able to meet us at the centre. When we arrived to the Jewish Centre we signed in and were told Aviva is running late from traffic. After waiting an hour or so, we had no news until the reception came to find us and informed us we were in the wrong building. The...

Today was our first day of filming and was overall a success. We started the day off travelling to Kamrans (our presenter) house is Watford to film his narration voice overs and shots of him researching on his laptop. The narrations went well, although some took a couple of attempts, which meant we could perfect them. We allocated for this timing in our schedule, which was just as well. We then filmed Kamran doing research. After recceing his house, we found the best place to film was the living room, with was an open space, with big windows allowing plenty of light in. We did originally want to film at his desk in his bedroom, but the desk was too small for us all to film in there and light was limited more. After filming it became clear that we had made the right choice. Next up, we headed into the centre of London (Westminster). We wanted to film kaman inside a cafe, where he would be on his phone scrolling through instagram. We found a Cafe, and asked if we would be able to film ...

Today we had a Skype meeting with our presenter pre-shooting tomorrow. We just went over a couple of things like where we're going to meet, and how to get to his house. We had planned much of this previously so it was just to have a general chat, and confirm details so when we turn up to his house tomorrow, theres no confusion. Doing this is a measure put in place to reduce the chances of anything going wrong. We agreed on a time to arrive at his house and went through the structure of the day so we would record voiceovers first and the shots of Kamran going through his laptop searching 'Yolocaust'. We said we would then drive to London for GV's and PTC's. We then discussed again what we would be doing for the rest of the week, including the survivors on Wednesday and the social media expert on the Friday.

Today was the last meeting before filming. We finalised our script and were given the 'go ahead' from Helen to shoot. Helen's constructive feedback rived very useful to us; we aren't too experienced in writing scripts for documentaries, so this allowed us to make our scrip short and sweet, without taking away vital information we need. For example, a voiceover that would take 30 seconds to read, would instead take 15 seconds, which is very valuable screen time. After losing the Imperil War museum, we decided to forget the idea of filming at a museum in Britain, as it works well enough without it anyway; we have several good interviews.   Now everything is organised, I am looking forward to this project even more. Its all coming together,, and we've managed to work in an original, complex, very serious idea into the style of BBC three. Today we booked out our filming equipment, taking pictures of the original condition, pre-filming. We also paid for the car we...

Filming with the DSLR Given I've never really filmed with a DSLR before, and am use to using the Sony EX,  I thought it would be worth my time doing a little research into filming with the DSLR. When researching I came across some useful YouTube tutorials:  (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w8BzeZEGEYY) ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5DF3iv1MLlQ).  Here I was able to pick up a few tips, and whilst doing so I took some notes. >24 frames per second >Shallow Depth of field >Night filming- wide open aperture >Control manually , auto  aperture isn't as accurate, best to be more specific to what suits the shot. >High aperture- less light  >ISO starts at 100 and ends at 6,400- brightnesss In order to further this basic knowledge, I wanted to find out how I could really make the most of filming with the DSLR, and show it off for its true potential. Anyone can pick up a camera, but very few know h...

Since we want to look into the social media aspect of this topic after our feedback from Zoe and Helen after our pitch, we looked up any social media experts based in the UK. We found a woman called Jodie Cook on 'LinkedIn'. Jodie is one of the UK's leading experts in Social Media. She built up a Social Media agency back in 2011 and the company and her reputation has since grown. Jodie works with both company and education based companies. Her agency (JC Social Media) is one of the largest social media specialists in the UK and offers Social Media Management and training for their customers. Social Media has become such a huge part of our lives, which has had a knock on affect with businesses; most successful ones can be found through social media, and is just a click away from our laptop or smartphones. We thought that Jodie would the perfect candidate to interview. When we contacted her agency, we were put straight through to Jodie. After explaining the project she w...

Yesterday we finished a new draft of the script. Trine had been editing the script since our last meeting with Helen, and so when we had a Facebook video meeting, we all went through the script and looked at the edit, and put forward any more changes to be made. We listened to what Helen said in our last meeting about getting reducing the amount of interviews, given we had quite a few. We decided to get rid of the VOX in London which isn't detrimental to our piece. We're also debating whether we'll have the museum in the UK, after the Imperial War Museum backed out. It would've been nice to have them on board, but we still have plenty of interviews, and it may not be worth trying to find another at such short notice. We had a break before Facebook meeting again to discuss the filming schedule. This would affect a lot and help us see if we rely on driving or trains (transport can be time-consuming given our locations/interviews aren't too local. When we had our...

Britains Teenage knife wars: Jermaine Jenas Investigates Returning back to previous interviewees, after exploring topic further to see if their opinions/mindsets have changed. In this documentary Jermaine met a young adult who carries knives around for 'protection. It's a case of 'kill or get killed'. “One thing that kept coming from them was, ‘well most of the people that I come into contact with on a daily basis, I know they carry knives. If it kicks off at any stage and they pull out their knife and I’ve not got my knife then I’m a dead man. It’s as simple as that. So, yes I will carry my knife." Then Jermaine visits him at the end of the documentary his knowledge is enlightened and he has a better understanding. After developing his own conclusions he wants to almost try and encourage the young adult to not be involved with such atrocities. Jermaine is angered at the end by the young mans complete disregard for life, and the lives of others, after seeing firs...

Today me and my group decided to do a 'test shoot' for our interviews to see how long it would take to rig and get ready for a shoot and to rig down and to test out the equipment we will be using. The initial setup  was pretty successful and took roughly 3/4 of an hour. In terms of lighting shadowing became a bit of an issue. The large LED light wasn't available for us to use for the test shot so we used two small LED lights which produced more shadow on our test presenter and interviewee. Another way we could have resolved this issue would be to move the interviewee away from the wall. That way we would eliminate shadowing from behind Jason's head. As a result our interview setting would possibly suffer, and I feel that its more important to have a good backdrop to a little shadowing. In terms of sound the set-up went pretty well. We decided to do the set-up with the clip mics on a zoom instead of using the TASCAM since using the zoom would be easier and the sound qu...

Today we had a meeting with Helen at 12:00, where we discussed dour final script and where we were with our project before breaking up for easter. We were given a few alterations with our script and Helen was pleased with our project progress. She did however, feel we had too much in the way of interviews. We really wanted some varied opinions for our project to make it as unbiased as possible, but we also don't want to take away from the actuality. Its better to make a interesting 10minutes than a boring 20minutes so its important to keep the audience attention, especially for a younger target audience. Although we were advised not to we still want to have 2 people at the Imperial War Museum because we are thinking of making a slightly longer version of the documentary with the intention of sending to film festivals. We have already organised to talk to a tour guide and the holocaust exhibition expert, and since they've been so obliging to help us with our project its unfair t...

Since we've been considering to do the Documentary on Young people and their opinion, I decided to research into some of the stories which we had been told about involving disrespect towards the Holocaust and things involving it.  Auschwitz Sign theft (2014) In the infamous Death Camp Auschwitz, a sign reads "Arbeit Macht Frei" (Work Sets you Free). This would be the first thing people see when they reach the camp, both for the prisoners at the time, and visitors today. In 2014 it was reported that the sign had been stolen from the camp. A group of men had gone to the camp and taken the sign from there in 3 pieces, cutting it and then sneaking it away. Police eventually found the sign on display in one of the thief's gardens. The men in connection with the vandalism and robbery were arrested and the article that told this story explains the the Holocaust memorial charity called this crime "an attack on the remembrance of the Holocaust" (The Guardian). ...

On Monday we had our first feedback session with Helen on the script. She liked where we were going, but had a couple of suggestions for the beginning which we were advised to work on a bit more. We also need to decide on how to end the script as it needs to be more conclusive. I also managed to get hold of a group of holocaust survivors, justness to officially confirm it. Gavin has been in contact with the Imperial War Museum and landed a deal where we’ll be interviewing the Director and a Tour guide. We’ve also gotten permission to film in the exhibition. Trina has been in contact with a lady named Jodie Cook, the UK’s leading expert in social media, who got us in contact with David who’s an expert on war studies and social media. He's very interested in talking to us about war and selfie culture. We still have Shahak Shapira, the creator of ‘Yolocaust’ on board on the project and the Jewish museum in Berlin where the Programme Director will be talking with us. These will be ...

Presenter Kamran A couple of weeks ago our chosen presenter, Liam unfortunately dropped out because of a paid acting job that crashed with our shoot. This was understandable, as we can't expect him to do this or free when he could be getting paid elsewhere.  So we moved forward and tried contacting various people, and posted adverts on Casting Call Pro. The first day the advert was posted we received 6 applicants, which only increased over time. In the end we had to one of 16. We got back to 3 of the applicants who we were especially interested in and asked them to make a short self tape showing how they would like to open the documentary. This was designed to give us an idea of how they behaved in front of the camera, and their interest in the subject. It was just as well we did chose this path in the end as one applicant had a brilliant application, but didn't reflect as well on camera. We ended up deciding on one of the guys, Kamran Vahabi; he's studied under a we...

Getting holocaust survivors was far from easy, and given it's such a sensitive subject, many survivors struggle to talk about it. I phoned and emailed several places, starting with the Holocaust Educational Trust. I had had a talk from one of their survivors during my A-level examinations, which inspired me to get in touch with them. Unfortunately this is a very busy time of the year for them, so they were unable to help us, which is understandable. I got in touch with several places until I eventually came across The Association of Jewish Refugees. I emailed them on the off chance, and they were able to link me with an association called Jewish Care. I phone up and spoke to the Service Manager Aviva Trup, who was very obliging. I explained the project and she was able to not hook us up with one survivor, but a group of three. This will hopefully work in our projects favour, where we can get our presenter to show the survivors the #holocaustmemorial search on Instagam. Aviva too...