Posts

Showing posts from May, 2019

Major Project: Evaluation

Image
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

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

Major Project: Why we decided to not change the structure

Image
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

Image
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

Image
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

Image
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

Image
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

Image
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

Image
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

Image
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...