Moving Image Entry 5 - Kevin Ross:

Date:06/03/2014
Module: Moving Image El342
Kent University

Team 07:

vp216 - Viknesh Prabhakar
kr278 - Kevin Ross
cb595 - Connor Brown
Tws6 - Thomas Stowell

Production studio Class 2:

During our second production studio seminar this week the 03/03/2014 we practiced the use of the video cameras, as well as filming techniques. We had the task of filming several clips around the Jenison building at  the University of Kent. After this was done we would be required to cut the clips and compose a short video of fluid shots one leading to the next, A "sequence".

As a group the first thing w did was decide who would do what. We decided that it would be wise to keep the roles we will use in our actual film, So Tom on filming, Connor in acting and story, Viknesh in Directing and myself in sound recording. We found that this would be beneficial in being able to record lots of shots rapidly and efficiently. This is good since the main part of this exercise was to later use all these recording and develop them into a small clip.

After this we headed outside to search for a suitable location. We choose an area with a pathway since it was easier to follow our actor here.


My role was to assess the sound quality of the clip. For this firstly I attached the recording receiver to the camera and the recorder onto Connor. He would require to leave the microphone away from his throat but inside his shirt since there was lots of outside noise which seemed to disturb the films audio, Thus from this I have realised that it is best to keep the microphone within our actors shirt for the real film.


After the actor was ready , the camera was placed in the correct location for filming and the audio was on par we were ready to shoot. The cameraman Tom was required to start recording before the actor even got into our clips. We did this so that we could edit our clip later to however it best suited the scene. Furthermore we had Tom record each scene of our sequence of events from a different perspective so that the clip was more eye catching/fluid and less boring.

We recorded each scene 5 times so that we had a large pool of clips to edit with so that if one clips lacked in a certain field another of the clips may compensate. This is also useful for if the sound was of on a certain clip. I found that whilst recording for our few first times there was a lot of emphasis of background noise, so I turned the decibels down to 0 and from doing so Connors voice was much more clear. I had him whistle in the clips to see what how the sound was.

Once all the desired clips were recorded we went into our editing lab to edit the film. We cut all our desired clips into clips of around 5 secs or less each so that when we compiled the film it would be a more fluid sequence apart from long boring scenes.

We found that Connor was whistling different tunes in each clip so we decided to grab our longest recording and use the sound file from that clip for the whole video. At first we had left the other sound files still on the clip but once we tried listening to the clip with both files there it gave the clip as a whole a nice beat.


Our Created video :

Criticisms/what would we do different:

- We found that next time we record it would be beneficial to vary our angles a bit better since most of our shot were zoomed out shots on Connor. For our film we will use a variety of shots since this sequence we made was pretty boring.

- Connor was always in each scene of the sequence from the very start, even though we were advised to do this, we ended up finding that having him actually walk into the shot would be an effective way to make our sequence more varied where it would keep the viewer watching.

- We found that Connor was in every shot, so it would be wise to include some shot without him there all together to display our scenario.

- We found that the sound was not constant for each clip and this is something I will have to remember to monitor since it will make our film look jumpy if the sounds change dramatically each scene.

What have I learnt from this practical?:

- I have further developed in my editing skills which include the audio editing as well as cutting longer clips to make a more fluid sequence of events.

- I have learnt to calibrate to different environments for filming as well as develop more on my team skills.

- I have developed in methods of filming, such as in angles from which we shoot from and  where to position the main actor. This is useful to keep the film more attractive and appealing and we found that using a different filming angle each time or zoom provides a more attractive look the the clip.