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Showing posts from 2019

Major Project: Evaluation

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From the brith of this project from the Pre-Production Unit, I felt both excited and confident for this documentary. Whilst it was ambitious from the start and if we didn't execute in the right way we could land ourselves into a few problems. The biggest concerns for both me and Jack were contributors dropping or constantly rescheduling. The nature of this documentary meant that two of our six contributors were both very busy and could have been called to court at any particular time at short notice. This was however, a risk we were both willing to take as these contributors were fundamental for our documentary. We perceived as a team and phoned up other potential contributors we could use as backup options. However, the ones we had were better suited as they had been fully briefed on the cases, had prior knowledge of some of them and were great speakers so would come across well on camera. With such a complex subject in terms of scientific evidence and the legalities behind...

Major Project: Submission Links

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Poster: 2 Minute Extract: Production Stills: Behind the scenes:

Major Project: Why we decided to not change the structure

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After several meetings with Simon, giving us feedback on our project one of his biggest concerns was that we forget about liam. And since saying this, I agreed. However, in practice in the actual edit itself it just didnt work. Below is an exported version of this different structure which myslef and Jack spent a couple of days on. However, after watching back it becomes too confusing as we are always jumping from one person to the other.Whilst it works at the beginning from Eddie to Liam it then gradually loses it because the sequence is re-ordered the rest of it loses its flow. The best structure for this documentary in our opinion is to introduce Jan then Liam and then Eddie. From Eddie what he says links very well to what the DNA expert says and it spirals from there. The audience bcome engaged with the Eddies story, and then Jan goes through what went wrong in Jordans trial and then then same again for liam. Breaking from these stories whilst being engaged with them takes away fro...

Major Project: Production | DoP | Editor Statement

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Everyone has the right to a fair trial, but just how fair is Britain's judicial system? Assumed Guilty is an investigative documentary, exploring the flaws in Britains Judicial system, speaking to those who have suffered the most. The documentary will have a through line of experts discussing the pressing issues and detailing what the contributors talk about. The beginning will introduce each of the people, the middle will include where their trial went wrong and the psychological/mental health impact and will end at the Innovation of Justice conference where all of our contributors are brought together. Assumed Guilty investigates why three different cases which all eventually become similar in more ways than one. Cases include errors where crucial evidence has not been investigated by the police, or even brought to the attention of the prosecution. All rape prosecutions are now being reviewed after the collapse of trials like Liam Allans. There are too many cases where discl...

Major Project: Seeking Professional Advice

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Afte rfinalising some of the last stages of this documentary, Jack and I wanted to see how far we could take it in making it a success. Jerry hayes, who we interviewed for our documentary put us in touch with Garath Neame. "Gareth Neame is a Golden Globe and Emmy Award winning drama producer and executive, based in London. Neame is Executive Chairman of Carnival Films, the production company he sold to NBC Universal in 2008 as the cornerstone of their new international TV studio. Neame is one of the UK’s leading producers and is responsible for the global TV phenomenon Downton Abbey, winner of three Golden Globes, including Best Mini Series and fifteen Primetime Emmy Awards, including Best Mini Series. With a total of 69 nominations, it is the most nominated non-US show in the history of the Emmys and probably Britain’s most successful scripted television export. Among numerous national and international awards, including three Screen Actors Guild Awards – the show has even garne...

Major Project: Social Media

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As established in our Pre-Production Unit, social media is findimental in this day and age with regards to promotion and branding. Whislt branding hasnt been the biggest focus of this uni, it has been a concisten underlying theme which has impacted the website, social media, the poster and of course the final edit and the way it is color graded etc. Since the title of our documentary has changed along wiht the posters etc. I wanted to give our page a major update. This mean clearing everything previously and developing into what it is today. The purpose of social media was to also post updates of the edit suite and also behind the scenes filming to give the audience a teaser of what is currently being produced in production; a process audiences rarely get the opportunity to see. This reached over 600 people meanign that it was a fantastic platform to begin promoting our documentary. After sharing it and some other peopel sharing too it raised a lot more attention than pre...

Major Project: Edit Research learning about colour science

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From researching cameras to find out what we were going to shoot on I also needed to establish how it would work out in the edit. And that is where this indepth level of research came from; as DoP and Editor I wanted to shoot to edit and this is something I strived for from the beginning Pre-Production Unit. Somehting this research has taught me is that resolution doesn't matter; it is in many ways a myth. It is very difficult to explain but the video below should help explain it better. Such videos and books were my way of research and I found it explained simply was the best way to understand it. There are Arri cameras that only shoot in HD that are far more expensive than cameras form companies like RED that shoot in 8K. But the reason companies like Arri are so successful is because of their color science more than the resolution. Technically 4k as described in Netflix's requirements is technically only 2.5K because there are gaps in the pixels. For example, a lot of mobile...

Major Project: Promoting and discussing the documentary on LBC Radio Interview

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Today I emailed Jerry Hayes to inquire about having the talent release form singed. This was important to our project and given me and Jack needed to be in London on Wednesday anyway, we felt it was imporant to get this singed. He relid that he would be happy to do so if he was in London and also informed us that he would be speaking on Leading Britains Conversation Radio at 16:00. He would be talking about the recent change in the law where because of Liams case, the accuser is now required to hand over their phone for evidence; previously it was only the accused. When tuning in we heard that there was the opportunity to phone in to be interviewd about opinions on the law change and that was when we decided to phone in and see if we could speak. When we did we were the second call that was put through and once we explained we were doing a dcoumentary with Liam and Jerry in they were really keen for us to talk. Because it would confuse the listeners we were only allowed for one of ...

Major Project: Feedback before submission

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Nathan Caws Today we had our meeting and viewing with Nathan Caws. It was a successful tutorial overall and Nathan was impressed with the quality of our film and thought that everything that needed changing was very minor and it wouldn't make a big big difference but they're those bits of fine-tuning. Annoyingly me and Jack were late for our meeting as we had the times mixed up which looked very unprofessional and if Nathan was a client we would have the sack. However, he was kind enough to still give us a full hour. Below are some of the notes we took during the meeting: Raise highlights darken police shots, Jordan smiling but victim, make photo sound effect quieter, make lamp darker, zebra crossing light distracting, music too loud on Liam Allan news intro, corner of the screen on black news guy, Liam Allan title more to the left, zoom into police car, Merseyside title bottom, Jerry title more right Evidence planted over police officer make black and white to not s...

Major Project: Editing Fixing Audio

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For all interviews the audio was really quiet. This was a simple fix by just bringing the audio up in post. It is better to record too quiet then too loud as distortion is tricky to remove in post where as bringing audio levels up is fairly straight forward. When bringing the gain up, I noticed there was a little nosie with all interviews so I simply selected the sound clips in adobe audition, effects, capture noise print and then noise redduction proceess. This was effective for all interviews. Hoever, with Liams there was more nosie than the others and by removing the noise it meant that the sound was left quite echo like with strong subalance. I bneleive this may have been down to our locaiton, beign a television gallery there may have been some signal interfearence. I have had a lot of practice doing thsi with audio before, especially with the transitions unit when using the boom poles and there was a lot of background noise. But for the echo I wasnt sure how to fix. I had a play a...

Major Project: Fine Cut Group Screening and working on feedback.

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Today we sat as a year group watching everyone's projects with the intention of critiquing and giving feedback. It was interesting to see what everyone else had been up to this year as I had heard bits but not seen the full and final products of peoples work. When our documentary was watched we recieved a good amound of feedback adn I was pleased to come away feeling mostly positive. There were some areas that could be adjusted or maybe re-ordered with the structure as Simon believed we dont give a fair amount of screen time to everyone. When watching back the documentary with this in mind, I tried to re-jig parts but unfortunately found it very difficult. When showing Jack it appeared that a lot of these tests didnt work ad we lost flow on the stories and it sdidn't flow as well in terms of what the people were saying with what the experts were saying. Because of this we made the decision to revert to how we origionally had it and totaled up how much screen time each of the th...

Major Project: Micro Moments Marketing

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In order to promote and engage itneres tin this docuemntary I have edited some micro-moments to put on social media. This was somethign planned for the documentaries origional brief I drew up for the pre-production unit. " Micro-moments occur when people reflexively turn to a device – increasingly a smartphone – to act on a need to learn something, do something, discover something, watch something, or buy something." Pre-Production Project Brief: Below are all the mircro moments condensed into one video: These videos will be uploaded onto our facebook and instagram pages. "The philosophy behind micro-moment marketing is that in the world today, consumers are bombarded by content, ads, offers, emails, texts, tweets, push notifications and everything else imaginable. "  (Inc.com, 2019) . This means that social media has a massive marketing impact; if people see video content on their timeline, they view it and if it grabs their interest. When uploading to...

Major Project: Trailer

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When designing our trailer for this unit I wanted to have something that would really capture the essence of our piece and make it exciting and inquisitive so the viewer is left wanting to watch more and will hopefully tune into the final documentary. In order to gain an insight into this I first referred back to the original trailer I produced for the pre-production unit and in doing this found out just how much our project has developed from then. Whilst the general theme and tone has been the same now we have actually filmed the documentary there is a lot more to show that could well be condensed down into this trailer. Something I found I really did enjoy was the music. it was lifting and really helped carry it. This was inspired by the previous documentaries I had seen on Netflix and I researched into those trailers. I wanted to refresh myself with some of those trailers again as well as some new trailers that have come out very recently. One new Netflix documentary  reminds ...

Major Project: Drone Shoot

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 In planning our documentary we knew we wanted not only drone footage but also drone footage of our own. After carrying out some lengthy research I found that websites like Shutterstock were expensive and would exceed our budget. It also wouldn't really be our own work and whilst professional companies and documentaries do use this, we felt it was too expensive for our budget. To match our footage we would need to also select the 4k option which is £84 for just three seconds of footage in some cases. So if we used one we would need to pay for more; something that isn't very feasible. I called on contacting someone who has helped us with a previous client project 'The Firm Awards Opening Video'. We found the drone footage to be really good and wanted to use the same person again for this project as we could also get discounted rates on the pretences we give him a credit in the project and also give him a recommendation. This will also build up a showreel for him so par...

Major Project: Primary Research visiting a prison guard from Belmarsh

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As a part of primary research and in order to gain an understanding of Belmarsh prison and what it was like there, myself and Jack visited a prison guard from Belmarsh Prison. For confidentiality and privacy reasons we were not allowed to record the interview or post any images anywhere. This prison guard has had friends in the same position who have been attacked or stalked buy inmates they guarded just by being on facebook. We did try to persuade an anonymous interview but he was dead against it which was fair enough and I don’t believe our documentary will suffer as a result. The reason why we went to speak to his is to cooberate with what Eddie has said about being in Belmarsh prison as an innocent mad and to get a strong background. This is important to documentary making and just because you don’t interview on camera, having private or telephone interviews are great means of research. Below are some notes I took during the interview: Remand prisons- usually temporary...

Major Project: Deciding on an Ending

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Myself and Jack have spent a lot of time working out how we will end the documentary. I went ahead and sourced some clips we could end on with any of the contributors closing statements. I looked through our transcript and picked out some key clsoing statements and what we could narrow them down to. After sitting through this we both decided to end on just the 'victims' closing statements rather than all the contributors. I feel this is more impactful. I also didn't want to waste all the fantastic footage we had from our day shooting in Manchester for the Innovation Of Justice in our pre-production unit. Whilst this was a test shoot/chance to meet and learn about not only our contributors but the topic itself, i wondered if it would work as an ending in bringing all of our contributors togehter in one room, now they are all united by going through similar experiences.They have found a vocie and an extended family for others who have suffered an di feel it would help to brin...