Live TV Project

http://jackbarrettevanslivetv.blogspot.com/

Music Video Project

http://snc0910-nd1apop-jackbarrettevans.blogspot.com/

Video - 8 Shot Journey

For my video assignment I had to film a journey consisting of a starting destination , a journey around a location (in this case the college) and a place where the journey concludes and the film end, and I was had to do this only using 8 shots. A shot is a continuous strip of motion picture film, created of a series of frames, that runs for an uninterrupted period of time.

I started by thinking about the journey itself, why the person is on this journey, what his target destination is and where does he go to get there. I decided that I would have my protagonist start of in the learning curve and then walk across the atrium to the canteen to get a drink. I thought this would be a simple but effective journey to portray in the video, and as the atrium is a very large room with lots of surrounding angles and different levels there are alot of possibilities for really effective camera angles.

I then had to draw a story board for this film. This would not only help me know exactly what location and what shot i'm going to use when it comes to filming but it helps other people working on the film know what sort of shot I want before the filming starts. When drawing this story board I need to think about continuity, I need to make sure that when the shot changes the protagonist is moving in the same direction that he was in the shot before. I also have to make sure that no noticeable changes happen from shot to shot. This can include the clothes that are being worn, accessories being worn such as backpacks and and watches, and even teh little things such as the side that the hair is parted. If these things change then it will ruin the continuity of the film.
This is my story board -

I then set about setting up the camera for the 8 shot journey. I had to set the camera up so it was filming in a 16:9 frame, 16 bit audio and standard playback, I then had to record nothing but black for an hour so there will be a continuous timezone and i wouldn't have problems when editing, this is called striping.

I then went out and filmed. I took my story board with me so i could use it as a reference for my shots. After finding the right location and showing the actor what I wanted him to do, I set up the camera on a tripod and then and made sure I had a shot that was the same or simular to the story board. I then started filming my handles, this is when you film for 10 seconds with no action so you have plenty of space in the film to edit it and cut it down, this must be done at the end of the shot aswell. I then shot my 8 shot journey. Problems I encountered were people getting in the shot, people shouting things at us while we were filming and being told by one of the cafeteria staff that we couldn't shoot in there as we didn't have any permission, but these problems were easy to overcome and I was happy with the way the filming went overall.

Once I had finished shooting my film I had to fill in a log sheet. To do this I had to watch through the film and write down information on the timeline, including when the shot began, when the shot ended and how long each shot was. I also had to write down if I was going to use that shot or not to make sure it is clear what shots are succesful and will be included in the final product and what shots will not be included. I also had to write down any additional comments or information that I had on each shot. Once I had done this I went to edit the shots. To edit this film I used the program 'final cut pro'. This program would allow you to cut the film up, add effects and effect the playback speed e.g. put certain shots into slowmotion. All I had to do for my film was cut the handles out of each shot,cut out the shots that I didn't want to use and trim the shots down so they flowed into each other well. I think this program was effective and easy to use.

After doing all this I had my finished product, this is my 8 shot journey-

I was happy with the outcome of my video and I was also happy with the process of planning, filming and editing it.

Radio - Jingles

For this weeks project I had to make my own radio jingles, using songs, sound effects and recordings of my own voice. I had to make a station ident, which is what the station plays inbetween songs so you know what station your listening to, this had to be about 10 to 20 seconds long. I also had to make a jingle for the news which would advertise it or be the theme music that introduces it, this also had to be about 10 to 20 seconds long. The other jingle I had to make would be a show promo that advertises a particular show or time slot on the station, this one had to be 30 seconds to a minute long.

I started by researching different radio jingles and news intro's. I studied what factors most radio jingles incorporated, I found that the jingles used music that appealed to the target audience of the radio station. For instance 'kerrang radio' would use rock music in there idents whereas a station like 'one extra' would use hip hop music and samples from songs by artists like 50 cent. I also found out that news jingles and intro's usually used dramatic music and dramatic deep voices to make the news seem more enticing and interesting to the audience.

I also studied what information was was usually put into the jingles, this was usually the name of the radio station, the frequency it was on (e.g. 93.1 fm) for the station idents. For promo jingles they usually had the same information as the idents as-well as the name of the DJ and what sort of show it is (e.g. a rock show or a hip hop show). News jingles usually said something along the lines of 'hear it here first the 'whatever station it is' news'.

I then decided what audience I was going to make my promo's appeal to, I thought that making my promo jingle advertise a rock show would be the easiest one for me to work with as that is the genre of music i am most interested in. My station ident would use some guitar music but would appeal to a larger audience and my news jingle would be a basic news jingle that would appeal to everyone.

I then decided what music I was going to use. For my station ident I wanted to use a repeating guitar riff, I decided to use the intro for Limp Bizkits 'Break Stuff' as it was a basic guitar riff but also sounded good and would be effective in a loop with talking inbetween. For my promo jingle I wanted some quiet music that goes into some loud heavy music as I wanted to say the tag line before the song kicked in. For this I used a song I was familiar with called 'Clone' by a band called Gojira. For my news jingle I wanted to use some dramatic music, so I searched you tube for some effective dramatic music and once I found one that I liked I downloaded it and saved it to a memory stick. As i already had the CD's for the other two songs i ripped the music onto my computer and put it on a memory stick so it was ready to be edited and used for my jingle.

I used a program called 'Adobe Soundbooth CS4' to edit my music. I started with my station indent jingle. I imported the song into soundbooth and used it as a multitrack file. This means that i could play multiple song files at the same time and edit them to work together. I cut the song so i just had the guitar riff at the intro, i then copied this and pasted it multiple times, this is easier than looping it as i can then decide how many times i want it, how long i want the gaps to be inbetween each one and even put different effects on different ones if i really want to. I then decided what i was going to say, i needed to include all the information to promote the station but put it across and keep it very simple, so i ended up saying ' SNC live, 93.1, all day everyday, coming to you'. I recorded myself saying this on the built in microphone on the computer and then edited it so the dialogue would fit in between the gaps of the guitar riff. Once i was happy with this i decided to use some effects so it didn't sound as plain and boring as it did. I put an effect on my voice called 'dreamscape' which gave my voice a slight echo and made it sound distant whilst still being very audible. This made it sound more interesting and appealing to the audience.

This is the jingle -

http://www.infinitemb.com/download/5506/station_ident_finished.mp3/

I then worked on my promo jingle. I did the same thing that i did for my ident jingle by importing the song and using it as a multitrack file. I then trimmed the song down to the part that i wanted to use. I then recorded my voice on the built in microphone, as i was promoting a show on this jingle I said 'SNC Live, the metal show with Jack, we don't play heavy music, we play the heaviest music'. At this point i wanted the music to kick in and really stand out so i edited my voice clips so they matched up with the quiet part of the song and i made sure that the vocals were clear by making the music quiet and my voice louder. As i then wanted the music to stand out i split the song into two halves where the music goes from quiet to loud and i increased the volume on the louder part of the song so it really kicked in. I then recorded myself saying 'so tune in every friday, from 2 to 4 p.m., for your fix of all things metal'. I wanted this to be said over the loud part of the song towards the end but i found that the music was to loud so i put in a slight fade so the music gets quieter so i can clearly talk over it but it isn't a drastic change in volume so its not immediately noticeable. I then had the song fade out to the end.

Here is the jingle -

http://www.infinitemb.com/download/5507/Show_promo_finished.mp3/

For my news jingle i used the music that i downloaded from the internet but it was way to long so i had to edit it down, i kept the intro as it was but i cut a long section out of the middle, so in the jingle when you hear the two dramatic beats after i say 'on the SNC live news', there has actually been about a minute of audio edited out from between those beats. But the way i edited it worked well so i was happy to use it still. I then recorded myself saying 'loads of bad stuffs happening in the world, and you will hear about it here first, on the SNC live news, welcome to the news'. I then edited it so it worked well with the music and was effectively dramatic as a news jingle should be.

Here is the jingle -

http://www.infinitemb.com/download/5508/news_jingle_finished.mp3/

When I was done I tweaked the volumes on all of them to make sure that they were not to loud and they wouldn't distort when played. I am happy with how all my jingles turned out and i was happy with the process of making them.

Photography - Pinhole Camera

A pinhole camera is a very basic and easy way of taking pictures. To make a pinhole camera I have to have a box or a tin and make it light proof. This can be done by painting the inside black to reduce the shine and light levels. By using gaffa tape to cover up and holes or potential gaps I can made the box compeltely light proof. The box needs to be light proof as too much light can completely ruin any pictures I attempted to take. I then made a small hole in the box using a pin (hence the name 'pinhole camera'), this is an aperture. An aperture is a hole in a camera which allows the light through to shine an inverted image through onto the film or in this case the photographic paper. A pinhole is used as the hole has to be small as photographic paper is very sensitive to light exposure and a hole to big will allow to much light in and the photo will just end up being black. A shutter is then made out of a flap of cardboard to cover up the hole when I do not want a photo to be taken, this will make sure that no light is exposed to the paper at inappropriate times.

I then had to measure the focal length, this was the distance between the hole and the photographic paper in the camera, mine was 60mm, this divided by the diameter of the pinhole (which was 0.8mm) gave me my 'F-stop'. In my case the F-stop was 75. This helped me find out how long the paper must be exposed to the light for a succesful picture to be taken. I also took some light readings and using these and my F-stop we estimated how long I would have to leave the shutter up to get maximum results. For me this was 25 seconds of exposure outside and 4 minutes of exposure inside.

I then had to take my pictures. This involved loading the photographic paper into my camera in a dark room, this was to make sure that the paper did not get ruined by exposure to light before the picture was even taken. I then had to choose my location, the first picture i took was outside, i set my camera up and then lifted the shutter and left it for 25 seconds before closing it again. I then took my camera back to the dark room to develop it. This involved leaving the photo submerged in 'developer' which was a chemical which developed the negative image, i then submerged it in 'fixer' to stop the image reacting to the developer and turning it brown. I then submerged the photo in the 'wash' which was just water, to clean the chemicals off of the photo. I then put the photo through a drying machine and i ended up with a negative image that lookd like this. I then Did this 2 more times inside,leaving the camera exposed to light for abour 4 minutes each time and i came up with these images of the atrium and myself.

I then needed to make these into positive images, i did this by scanning the photo's onto a computer and using the photo editing software 'photoshop' to invert the pictures and edit the contrast, brightness and colour of my photo's to my desire.

I ended up with these finished photo's of the college building from outside. I am happy with the what this photo turned out, you can clearly see it is a building but it also looks like it could have come from a horror film, as there is alot of dark and shadowy area's in it and the rest of the colours and the way the light merges into dark makes it look a bit ghostly.

This photo is the atrium from inside and on the second floor, this photo also has a dark and errie feel to it, the light makes it look slightly depressing and slightly prison like. The angle that the photo is taken makes it look like a very long room and kind of gives the idea that there is alot of space with not much going on.

This photo is of myself from inside the college building. This photo also looks slightly ghostly. You can clearly tell that it is an outline of a person but any defining and facial features are blurred so your not completely sure on who your looking at or what they look like. Also the way that only the area close to him is lit up gives more emphasis on the person in the photo and makes the enviroment seem more mysterious.

Welcome.

Welcome to my blog. I am Jack Barrett Evans and i am a student at Suffolk New College. This blog will include all my work on radio, video and photography.