George Wing Television Blog

After asking Sam Creamer if he would be kind enough to allow us to test his Black magic Ursa, a camera we were keen to hire or even purchase its budget equivilent the pocket cinema, today we were able to test in person. And this camera did not dissapoint. Sam went through all the details with us and how much its helped his own filmmaking. This was a beast and is the camera needed in creating the look we want for our docuentary. This has been my intention since the pre-productiom unit and is exactly what I want to carry through. Something I was able to take from this was the idea that shooting in its pro-res setting is better for us than shooting RAW. Whilst RAW would give me more control in the edit becuase it brings "creative control over the images" (Andrews, Butler and Farace, 2006). This means haivng better control on the edit, especially when it comes to colour grading. However, Sam explained that it can be more trouble than what it is worth, and pro-res is his go to set...

Below is an inquiry myself and Jack made to Feral Equipment. I had heard from a friend on the UCA Farnham film course that they were really good at loaning equipment and they were a recommended, trusted equipment hires for UCA. They also offer a student discount. However, even after a discount it still became very expensive and given the equipment store was fully booked out on the week of filming for the Panasonic cameras.  After establishing that this could be too expensive, we looked into other options and believed there would be cheaper alternative. Jack phoens a place called 'Lens Pimip' where we were recommended a cheaper option the cannon C100. After analysing and researching this camera I found it owuldn;t actually be any good to our documentary, and would be better to use the Panasonics. We knew the C300 was the one for us and in taking this futher Jack phoned UCA Farnham to see if they had any equiment available and to our amazemnt they had the C300. The ch...

In the pre-production unit, we were deciding on equipment and one of our final decisions was to hire a couple of Cannon 5D's with 35mm and 200mm lenses (see:https://georgewing42.blogspot.com/2018/11/pre-production-camera-researchtest-shoot.html). However, having tested this in practice with out Innovation of Justice Test Shoot, we found that this perhaps wasn't the best option for us, desite our initial thoughts. It is therefore subje to change. Now, before we went off hring any equipment, it was important to see what we could use from the unis equipment store room. Unfortunately the Panasonics are all booked out for the day we're filming, however there are stil more options available. They do have Cannon 7D's, but after establishing we aren't keen on the DSLR look we looked into potentially the JVC GY-HM890 FULL HD CAMCORDER.  We went into the sotre room and asked Ferg if we could have a little play about with this camera and he was fine for us to do...

Video. Shooting in 4k gives me more opitions in the edit and it is therefore important to keep this as my camera of choice. The reason this gives me mroe options in the edit is if I need to zoom in on certain parts of the interview or any action. Besides from this it will look really nice and clean. Many shows shoot in 4K now and is a specification for Netflix. For example, House of Cards is only able to achieve this even, symetricla look below by shooting in 4k as they have the ability to crop and zoom in the edit without loosing noticeable picture quality. It isn't essential to shoot in 4k and due to the amount of time such footgae takes to render in the edit it may be woth shooting in 2.5k (something both the Blackmagic Production and URSA cameras have the ability to do. Shooting Camera:  Black Magic Production Cinema 4k  Lenses: 50mm Samyang  Prime Lens  Battery: In House, charge whilst shooting Why? This came...

Today me and Jack went to test shoot for an interview set up. Having learned from several issues with shadows and a lot of (although intentional) headroom we decided to test the style of interview used in TIME: The Kalief Browder Story. After previously testing out the style used in BBC’s Reported Missing I have found that this style may not work for our project. After discussing the style with Ferg, he said it looked amateurish and I couldn’t disagree. Before I was very conscious that it may have been a stylistic choice and that could be true but there is no information around on this and it appears that it was a small production team without a director according to IMDB. With this in mind, it could be that having no specialists to compose the interview, the just shot what they thought to be a good setup with no strong intentions behind breaking conventions.  Looking at the way interviews are shot with TIME: The Kalief Browder Story , each of the interviews are shot in a di...

Below are some notes I took in our briefing lecture. This will be useful to refer to throughout the project as well as the unit handbook as a guide to ensure I am on track with what we are producting and deadlines etc.