26/02/18
This was our first day I was put in my group with Matt, Georgia and Meg. Our first few sessions were gathering each other’s ideas together and we all agreed in basing our TV show on the Graham Norton style; interviews, game and a live band. Our group member Georgia starred in a short film called ‘The Thornton Heath Poltergeist’ which she suggested we should base the show on because she would hopefully be able to arrange other cast members to be part of the show.
For our live band, group member Meg has contacts with the band Grafton Ash which we are hoping to arrange to perform live on show. We understand that the band have other gigs so we were thinking in other alternatives if they couldn’t make our show by going to one of their live performances and filming it to edit it as one of our VTs.
27/02/18
Today we began making contacts to try and get people in for our TV show. We had decided to get in contact with a band known as ‘Grafton Ash’ which Meg has good contact with. We had also given them the show date which they could make.
06/03/18
Today we spent a session in the TV Studio with Technician Jack showing us all of the equipment that is available for us to use for our TV shows in the studio. This included the camera crane, the different lighting and sound equipment for live bands. We were also told that other equipment from different departments will be available for us to use as long as we give Jack enough notice that we require it for our show. This will especially be useful to use other equipment from a department like Technical Theatre as lighting is going to be a big part of our VT and using other equipment as we are limited on what we have in the studio at the moment.
During Simons lesson we were speaking what VTs to include in our show and Simon suggested having the opening titles for our show as a VT at the beginning and the ending credits.
20/03/18
I began to work on the Pre-production as a VT producer as I had finished all of the research we had to begin first.
This included:
- Risk Assessment
- Production Schedule
- Crew List
All of this work can be found using this link: https://jacksmith529.wordpress.com/pre-production-2/
21/03/18
During Carols lesson today, we had our final rehearsal pitch for our Final Major Project idea. I thought that it went very well and that we delivered our idea to the audience clearly. The feedback we had received was to make sure all of us spoke equally so that not just one person in the group was speaking for the majority of the pitch.
22/03/18
Today was the day of our final pitch in front of the whole college year and both lecturers Lee and Shamalia. The pitch wasn’t until 1:30pm which meant we had time in the morning to make some last minute changes to the powerpoint and run through everything to time it, as it had to be approximately five minutes. I felt that we delivered our main concept of the show well to our audience and that everyone in the lecture understood what we were hoping to achieve. The main feedback that we received was that it was quite clear that we were all nervous and that we needed to be much more enthusiastic for future pitches.
Easter Half Term
Over Easter half term I spent alot of time talking to Georgia about the RuPauls Drag Race advert. We were mainly planning out the whole production schedule for the filming of the VT. Here are some screenshots of some of the conversations we had with each other.
16/04/18
Today was the first back after half term and we spent prepping for our first day of shooting which was on the 17th April filming the interviews, scene 3. We wanted to create the same pink background like they use in the real interviews. This process actually took much longer than we wanted it to, as we had to gel certain lights in the studio and we kept on having to swap them out for darker gels as the colour was to light.
Below are some test shots which we achieved:
17/04/18
In the morning I spent arranging with Lee a suitable dressing room to film the fight scene between Rufus and Tom the next day (Wednesday 18th). We had many available for us to use and considered the positive and negatives with each one. One of the dressing rooms which we ended up using has mirrors with the light bulbs surrounding it which was exactly what we were looking for.
We had many different Dressing room locations around the college which we could have used to film this scene. Above is one of the dressings room in the theatre department. The space wasn’t very big so with a full crew in their as well as our actors, It could easily have been very cramped and limited to space. The lights around each mirror in the room were very basic and we were looking more for the LED bulb lights around the whole of the mirrors. This location was therefore not what we were looking for.
There was also another dressing room down the corridor of the one above which basically had the same problems for not filming here.
In the art department we found a make up/dressing room which was perfect. The room had mirrors with LED bulbs surrounding each mirror which was exactly what we were looking for. We had booked the room for the morning between the hours of 9-11am.
Filming took place for our interviews and it ran smoothly and didn’t take long at all. We got all of the parts that we had planned to film.
18/04/18
We spent the morning in the dressing room we had sorted the previous day and filmed the scene where Rufus and Tom start fighting whilst there all doing their make up in front of the mirrors. It took quite a few takes for us to achieve what we were looking for.
23/04/18
We were in the TV studio and spent the morning filming the Judges scene which was scene 5. We had a few problems in getting the lighting correct as we had gelled a few lights to change the colour of the backdrop behind the judges, however we wanted a natural light on the face of the actor which would always wash out the backdrop. We tried positioning the light in different places and we eventually got what we wanted after a numerous amount of attempts to get it right. Even for a short scene like this and it being filmed in the TV studio, we should have had a basic lighting plan for where each lantern should have been positioned to get what we wanted. It only required three lights but we should have tested where they would have worked best.
Towards the end of the day we began preparing the studio for the main modelling runway scene which was taking place the next morning. Most of the main set was all put up in time. I managed to rig the four Par Can lights to the two trusses, connect up the moving floor lights and test that they were working correctly and also began moving a few of the main lights in the studio.
24/04/18
Today was our main filming today for our RuPaul’s drag race. Our whole group arrived into college for about 8:45am. Whilst the drag queens were all being glammed up, I spent the time moving the rest of the lights with Jack (technician) and began programming the moving lights on either side of the walkway. As well as moving them, I gelled most of the lights apart from a few which we used for natural light on the drag queens. The different colours we used were Pink, Blue and red.
The filming process went very well and we got every shot that we had planned to get. It was very stressful at times as It required a big crew.
Director: Georgia Sheward
Vision Mixer: Meg Crossley Lighting: Jack Smith (me) Cast: Chris Garvey, Jake Waters, Tom Smith, Henry Faulkner-Smith, Dominik Dobrowolski and Jackson Clifford
Makeup: Meg Crossley, Georgia Sheward
Camera Operators: Matt Morgan, Harriet Beddow
30/04/18
This week everyone began rehearsals for their TV shows. Our first was on the Tuesday morning. This day we spent time helping over groups with their shows. For most shows I was down for lighting which I quite enjoy. Georgia also spent most of her time editing the RuPaul’s drag race VT and I made a few improvements to the Grafton Ash intro which Simon had suggested for the VT.
01/05/18
This was our first ever rehearsal for our show and it didn’t go too great. The thing with out show is that its all about who’s in thats making it look good and exciting. We didn’t have our band to rehearse proper shots with, but had Harry and David on the stage pretending to sing a song where we could see what some of the shots looked like. I just felt that not many people knew the purpose of the show and what it was all about, just because the content of the show wasn’t here.
08/05/18
This was our final rehearsal for our TV show and it went much better than the week before. We were able to practice the transition between the presenter and the band, and managed to do a few test shots on the band area.
14/05/18
Today was the day of our broadcast day. We all arrived for about 8:15am on the Monday morning in order to allow extra time to set everything up. We had planned to come into the college on the Friday afternoon before to build the set to make it easier for the Monday morning but it turned out the TV Studio was booked all day. ‘Grafton Ash’ arrived at the college at about 8:45am who began setting up their equipment on the staging, where the rest of us made sure everything else was sorted and that everyone knew what they were doing. We had originally scheduled the show to kick off at 10:00am, however we were severely delayed until 11:30am where the show finally started due to the issues we were having in sound. Certain channels weren’t receiving anything from the bands instruments and we kept on having to change cables to try and get everything to work.
In all honesty, I think we needed someone who’s more experienced in sound to have done it for us as Bartek who was on sound I don’t think has had any previous experience doing it live for a band. We did have a lot of support from Simon and Jack who tried their best to fix the problems. However in the end, we just went with it and it didn’t come out too badly on the recording. ‘Grafton Ash’ were extremely patience and we couldn’t have thanked them enough. They performed their own songs ‘The war’ and ‘Existing’.
Draft 1:
Final show:
Between Draft 1 and the final show, we just made a few minor improvements to the edit. For example, after the Grafton Ash Intro was played, we cut back to Meg who introduces the band before they play, however the mic was either not on or wasn’t working as she couldn’t be heard so there was no point in having it in there. When we played the VT’s during the show, for some reasons the audio of them sounded really weird. So in in the final edit we just cut them out and put the original file in. We were also originally going to include an ending credits VT, however during the bands last song we just added the crew credits towards the end of the song.
21/05/18
This week was our evaluation week where we spent most of our time writing up a report how well we think the project has gone as a whole. We also spent time making sure that our blogs were all completed as it is deadline day on the Thursday.
22/05/18 – 24/05/18
After completing my Evaluation, we had the opportunity to go down to the Stratford Artshouse and film the colleges annual production of Musicals Rock! In the afternoon we went to watch the dress rehearsal which allowed us to take notes of things in the performance that we needed to get on camera and also plan how many cameras we were going to use. I suggested that in order to get some close up shots in the band to use my two Go Pro’s.
Jack Smith 