Vox Pops - The better shoot!

Today the vox pops went much better. Watching through the footage yesterday helped me immensely, I knew now what I needed to do to get a better vox pop and looking at the footage I think they have definitely  improved... I'm not going to say they are perfect because there is always room for improvement. We visited The Essence of Tea in Falmouth which is a lovely little Chinese tea shop. I am pleased with the footage captured the people who run it (Pictured below) are lovely people and had genuine passion for tea which was amazing to see! I got some nice cut aways, finally! I made myself take the time to do close ups, to try not to feel uncomfortable asking them to re-do stuff and take up their time and it paid off! The footage looks good but I do need to practise with the focus pulling, I am still getting used to this filming and 5D malarky! 

We also got some great vox pops with the owner of Loading gaming bar, a maintenance man from campus and the owner of Cribbs Caribbean Restaurant in Falmouth. They all had some great input and provided us with a very varied answers. We are off to Charlottes Tea House tomorrow, fingers crossed all goes well! 

Vox Pops = Not as easy as they look

Yesterday we went to Truro to start vox popping people in cafes. Mike had arranged with the Bambu cafe that we were going to film some of their customers and maybe the owners if they weren't too busy, but after that we were just going to wing it. 


We encountered a number of problems, one of the biggest being lighting. Most of the places we went into were tiny and it was not really viable to plug in dedos just to film them. Luckily I brought along an LED light that fits on the top of the 5D but it ran out of power during our first interviews! With the light not working we decided to go to the shop and buy some more batteries. There was a 3 for 2 offer on the batteries so I bought 3 backs of AAA batteries because I thought that was what we needed, but I was wrong so after paying £5 for batteries that were useless we used the AAs we already had! I felt like such an idiot!


Once we were armed with some AAs we set of for some other venues. We went to another couple of cafes and we managed to get this quirky burger van I really wanted to get in, I thought that it would look great on camera! :) I was so happy we managed to, when we had asked the ladies before neither of them wanted to be filmed, but we filmed a man buying a cup of tea instead. Below are some stills from the footage. They still need to be colour graded and Natasha is going to do a great job I'm sure. I think we are also going to go with the cinematic aspect ratio, I really like how it looks in the pieces by Philip Bloom that I have mentioned before. 

Today I met up before lecture with Natasha to start logging. Looking through the footage was slightly disheartening, I could see quite a lot that was wrong and this really annoyed me. Quite a lot of the people moved out of focus, I had not realised as I had stepped away from behind the camera for Mike to stand to ask questions. I thought this would have been a good technique to get the contributor to look down the lens a bit more comfortably, but I had not taken into consideration the fact that I may have to change the focus. Never mind, there is still some great footage from interesting contributors and I can only learn from my mistakes. I am glad that I decided to watch the footage back because I may have continued making the same mistakes through the whole thing.

Another thing that seems to be a big problem with the down the lens vox pops in particular is that people seem to find it very hard to look straight into camera and keep looking there. In a lot of the shots the contributors eyes are darting all over the place and this makes them look really uncomfortable. I think I just need to not be shy at prompting them to look at the lens. This is actually something Mike is very good at doing and I am always very grateful when he does. When it works, the down the lens technique looks amazing. It makes you feel as though they are looking straight at you, I think this makes the viewer become more captured by the piece and drawn in. 

Time for Tea...

This morning I started the filming process and shot the footage for the intro. I used a go pro to achieve 2 shots I wanted, these were the opening shot of the tea being poured onto camera and stirring with a spoon. I would not have been able to get these shots with any other camera and looking at them on my laptop they look good, but I will only be able to see the full effect once they are in the edit.


All the other footage I shot was with the 5D markii. Using a lab stand to keep the teapot in place, I poured hot tea in so it went into the cup below through the spout. Each time the cup was changed I had to make sure it was in the exact same place, but with the handle turned slightly to be able to achieve the spinning effect I want. I used backlighting to show up the steam and highlight the flow of tea which looking at it back works really well. There was a lot to consider while setting up and shooting but I think I have done everything I needed to. I am meeting with Natasha tomorrow to look at the footage once we are back from our first contributor shoot. I am looking forward to that, we are going to the Bambu Cafe in Truro.


I think this intro will prove to be quite a tricky edit, but I am sure Natasha is up to the task. She is going to need to blend the steam and tea flow in each clip so it isn't so obvious when they change. I want the cuts between the cups to look sharp and almost jolty but I don't want it to look like the teapot or tea pouring is changing. There is also another couple of things I need to her to mask out as I could not get them out of shot, such as the lab stand clamp left in shot when the teapot is removed from frame. I also want her to colour grade it all, I have shot it flat so it will be easier to manipulate, I will definitely be keeping her busy...

Green Screen

Today in camera workshop with Pete we learnt about green screen, it was so much fun! I pretended to be a weather girl and looked like a right idiot. Will be good to see what the edit class come out with...
Here are some pictures from the class, note me attempting to do the forecast.

Afterwards I had a group meeting with Michael and Natasha which went really well, along with their help I pretty much finalised the script. They both gave some great input, I think this is a crucial part of working as a team. Yes, everyone has their roles but I want the other people in my production team to be as involved as possible in the creative development. At the end I hope to  have produced a piece that everyone is proud of and feel like it is 'theirs'. I am quite enjoying the role of being director at the moment, I think it is good for me to have a role of authority, I believe if I were left up to my own devices I wouldn't be very forward with in a production group. Whether I will continue to enjoy it as time goes by and pressure builds is a whole other story...

Tips and Tregothnan

We had our first feedback session with Mel today which went pretty well. She seemed to like my idea and gave me some good pointers which have really helped. Mel and my group helped me decide how to end the piece. I knew I wanted to finish at Charlottes Tea House, with someone drinking Tregothnan tea, but they said that if it were to look cinematic and stylistic like the beginning that will make it work better. So I just need to think a little more about how exactly to do it. We also screened our show reels and ours got quite a good review, I think it was a very insightful assignment and helped me come up with ideas for the 3MW.


Michael and I finally go to go to Tregothnan today. As I drove down the twisting country lanes the views were incredible, I could tell this was going to be good. Once we arrived we found Abby, she was lovely and extremely helpful, no request was too much. She informed us that ITV West Cornwall had been filming there earlier that day. They were doing a story on how Tregothnan, due to the warm weather, are still picking tea past the usual season. We also met Jonathon Jones who is the director at Tregothnan, he was very accommodating and also couldn't do enough for us. He showed us another tea crop which was fully mature and this is where I have decided to do the majority of the shoot, I was unable to do any test footage because it had gotten too dark by this time. Jonathon also showed us where they dry the tea and the machine that makes the tea bags (see the stills from my videos below). 

Jonathon has been interviewed many times on camera and as I have seen first hand and on the ITV piece he is very confident on camera. I think he will be a great contributor and will be the vital glue to bind this piece together. Jonathon also mentioned another possible film for us to do, Tregothnan has recently twinned with Darjeeling in India and they want him to go over to give a speech but he is too busy to make the trip. He would like to do a short speech to be sent over there telling them how excited he is about this new business move and sorry that he can't be there. I immediately jumped at the opportunity and said that we could film it at the same time as we film for the 3MW, I think this impressed him because it means less of his time taken up. There is also a prospect of us producing a promo video for Tregothnan using footage captured on the same day. Fingers crossed it all goes well. I really enjoyed my trip to Tregothnan and I found it such a stunning and inspiring place. I am really excited to see how it comes out on film, it has potential to look absolutely beautiful. Lets hope we do it justice...

Recce: Take Two

We were still unable to visit Tregothnan today so I decided we should still do something productive and go into Truro to visit some other tea houses. I wanted to see Charlottes tea house as it is a Victorian themed place and I thought this could look particularly visually pleasing on camera. And it did not disappoint! I really loved the feel of the place and the waitresses dressed up in their victorian aprons were delightful. Also another bonus is that they serve Tregothnan tea so this could be a possible ending point for the 3MW...?

Just some inspiration...

I will just keep this one a short post, I am aware that I have been guilty of rambling in my previous posts! As we didn't go on a recce today I decided to work on developing ideas and looking for inspiration.


One video I came across on vimeo that I really like is Splitscreen: A Love Story by James W Griffiths I especially like the part with the different cups of tea split down the middle and how you see the contrast of milk moving in them (see still from video below). This is definitely would like to experiment with this technique as I think it could really work when the contributors are talking about how they take their tea.

I found another short piece which was by Sebastien Montaz-Rosset called Summer Feelings really inspirational. I love his use of colour grading and the fast pace clips in time with the music. I really want my 3MW to look similar in colour to this piece, I find it amazing how a simple bit of colour grading can really change the mood of a film. (Please see still from video below) I also really like his use of time-lapse of the sky, I would like to try and get time-lapse in the 3MW somewhere but I am not sure how.

I would like to make the opening sequence really interesting and fast paced to grab the viewers attention after watching the news. One advert that I really like is the Lurpak advert I love how an omelette is made to look almost sexy through the use of cinematic close -up angles and voice over. The use of camera attached to the fork and slow-mo works really well at grabbing the audiences attention, I would like to experiment with using these techniques for my opening.

(Still image from Lurpak advert)

With inspiration from the lurpak ad I have come up with the idea for the opening of having loads of different tea cups representing all the different characters that drink tea. Such as; china cup with saucer, mug, chipped cups, polystyrene cups etc... I want it to open with tea being poured onto the camera from a tea pot above (using a go pro in a mug) then cut to outside the cup with the tea being poured in still but the cups changing and spinning as they change then the milk being added. I would then like to try attaching a go pro to a spoon when it is stirring the tea. Once the tea is made it will be picked up leaving behind the title then you will hear a slurp gulp and 'ahh'. I think this could work well if I do pull it off, the cups and teapot need to stay in the same place so the teapot needs to be secured and the tea poured into it. I will have to practise this...

Perhaps this wasn't such a quick post after all...

Recce: Take One

(Image taken from Essence of Tea website)

Now armed with an amazing team it was time to start developing the idea and recce some possible contributors. Along with Michael I went into Falmouth today looking at different cafes/tea shops hoping to find some gems! It didn't go as well as I would have hoped, stupidly I hadn't taken into account the fact that it was a SATURDAY! Durr, and of course pretty much all the places we went to were busy. However we did get a few good interviews with people that we may decide to reshoot and it was good experience for us. I think we have come up with a couple of questions that are great and provoke interesting answers from people. "How do you make your tea" was one and it was fascinating to see how everyone had a different opinion on what the 'optimum' cuppa is. One of the places we visited today that I am really excited about perusing further is a delightful little specialist tea shop The Essence of Tea on Falmouth high street. They were too busy for an interview but said they would be interested in working with us on this project. I think it will be great to get the different aspect of chinese tea, seeing as that is where tea originates from, also it is really beautifully decorated inside and will look great on camera! 


We still have not heard back off Tregothnan about filming there this weekend but Michael is on the case, fingers crossed we will be able to go on Monday. I decided that it would be pointless attempting to go to tea shops on a Sunday because they will just be far too busy!

Some inspirational videos I have been looking at include a couple of shorts done by Philip Bloom, I really love all his stuff, I think his style is quite similar to the vision I have for this piece. Booths & Bodies: The life and work of Anthony Vizzari (see still of video above) is a great interview even if some of the content is slightly strange, I really like the camera angles used and how it is 'down the lens' which is a style I think could work well with the 3MW. I really think the use of shots of him in the photo booth with the master interview audio laid on top are visually pleasing and capture the audiences attention, something I could experiment with perhaps? 

And also Bangin' n Clangin': The Redneck Hippie I love the use of wide symmetrical shots (see above screen grab) and close ups of the contributors face (see snapshot from video below). I really want to play around with down the lens and symmetry. I also think the cinema aspect ratio that Bloom uses a lot looks incredible I think I would like to use that for the 3 min wonder, it would bring such a stylistically strong look with it which is what I inevitably want to achieve, but I'm not sure if that would be OK? Something to ask Mel at the next lecture if I remember.

Crunch time…

Today we were faced with the difficultly of deciding which of the great pitches we were to make. Some ideas were disregarded because people felt that they were too big for a 3MW and would work better as a 5 or 10 minute piece. While sat in a group everyone said which production they would like to work on and what role they would like to do with in that.

I actually missed the very beginning of the meeting as I was in another meeting for the BeeSoc  that I am joint social secretary for, we were organising a bee documentary cinema night and a society Christmas meal at the Falmouth meadery.  

When I joined the rest of TVP at the meeting I was informed that I had an editor and producer for my tea team! I was quite shocked at this but it did give me a bit more confidence in myself and my idea! By the end I also had Jamie on board doing sound alongside Mike as Producer and Natasha as Editor, Directing and Camera being done by me. I am really pleased with my production group, I think we will work really well together and everyone will bring something extremely valuable to the table! 


I am really pleased that I did keep the Director and Camera roles for myself! I think one of the main areas I fell down in on the last projects was that I did not push myself, I just sat back and was shy, I didn't really take charge of anything apart from the bee interview with Lindsay, which in the end I was pretty pleased with. I do not have the option to be shy and indecisive with this project because it all rests on me and my vision. I have to be very productive and pushy I think this will help me overcome my shortfalls of letting other people take control. I am looking forward to having a bit more confidence in myself and my abilities! Can't wait to get stuck in and develop this into a great 3 minute wonder! 

How could I forget??

Breaking into Media Event
Yesterday we went to Plymouth University for the breaking into media event I found it extremely informative and ever so slightly scary, apparently it is very hard to break in to the media business and you really do have to be the best to get noticed! I better pull my finger out... I learnt a lot about what employers within TV are looking for from the panel session, this will definitely come in handy in the future. The secrets of a Hotel Inspector was very enlightening about what it is really like to make a television series, I enjoyed this part. But the best part of the day, in my opinion, was the RTS student awards cause my boyfriend, along with his production group, won the factual category with Rid an anxiety awareness piece. Much deserved even if I am slightly biased, I do have a lot to live up to now though the bar is set pretty high...

Pitches – Britain: A Nation Fuelled by Tea…

I had such trouble with coming up with an idea for a 3MW, it was over lunch one day while chatting with some friends that I came up with the idea. We were discussing how strange it is that people drink tea in times of crisis and how “tea magically cures all”. So I developed the idea further and created a powerpoint presentation for the pitches. I want the documentary to focus on Britains relationship with tea and look at Tregothnan Estate in Cornwall, which is the only place in England that grows tea, look at what it is that they do there and how tea is actually made! I contacted Tregothnan explaining what it was that I wanted to do and they got back to me saying that they would love to be involved. I also found that there is a UK Tea Council! I actually found their website really informative and I used many of the facts from it for my presentation, I must remember it for the future if I end up making this 3MW.

We did the pitches today and started the day feeling really nervous. I don’t do very well at standing up and speaking in front of people, I talk really quickly and shake, it’s quite embarrassing! I didn’t think that my idea was very strong and I definitely was not expecting anyone to choose to make my 3MW. I sat at the back hoping not to get picked and ended up going last, typical me! The presentation went quite well and to my amazement people liked it and showed an interest in making it. Now we just needed to decide which 3MW we want to make and choose production groups.

This is an image that I used in my presentation, which I found on the internet. I really like how fun it is and I think it really captures what I want the 3MW to show!

Britain in a Day :)

Saturday just gone was Britain in a day day. This is a Ridley Scott and director Morgan Matthews production where they asked people of the UK to go out and film all on the same day and upload it to youtube. It follows on from Life in a Day, a truly inspirational and emotive film that I highly recommend. I find it amazing how such a simple idea can create such an extraordinary piece, I don't think I would have been as keen to film for Britain in a Day if I had not watched it.  


For the filming I set off for Lands End armed with cameras and questions with some close friends; Michaela, Alice and James. James drove and while in the car Michaela did a bit of filming out the window and asked me and Alice questions about where we were going and what we were doing. It was my first time at Lands End and it was as pretty as I had imagined. We decided that filming by the sign would be good and most likely to get used as Lands End is such an iconic part of Britain. I explained what Britain in a day was to the sign attendant and asked him if we would be able to change the sign to say Britain in a Day 12^th November. He really kindly changed the sign and let us go and stand by the sign to ask the questions, what a LEGEND! 

Heres a screen grab of one of the videos we uploaded, I really hope it gets picked that would be awesome!

Catch up...

I am such a bad blogger! I am ashamed that I have neglected to blog recently but I shall catch you up on all my exciting antics! I fear you will have to be patient with me as I get to grips with the notion of blogging, I have never been one to keep up to date with diaries or even keep them at all. Well only time will tell if I am up to the challenge...  

Start of Unit 130

This was the first week of our new unit, we each started our specialism mine being camera! I’m going to be doing 4 weeks of camera followed by 4 weeks of sound. It was split like this because too many people wanted to specialise in camera and not enough in sound, I am quite glad that I will get to do 2 as I did feel it was too soon to specialise.

This first session of camera with Pete Langford was really fun we looked at dollys, tracks, jibs and steadycam. I’d had an induction into steadycam back in second year but I had never used it myself after that and I couldn’t really remember how to use it. I leant a lot in this session and am really excited to see what we will be doing next week!

We also started lots of different seminars this week such as Editorial with Hannah Sim, which I really enjoyed and I think I am going to learn a lot from. We are going to be developing ideas and writing treatments on them, these will come in really useful at job interviews.

Our online PDP seminars with Alex di Savoia have continued and this week we were looking at using twitter and stuff to network and promote ourselves.

We started new screen writing seminars with James Henry in this we learnt all about the three acts and how every TV programme, movie etc has the same format. This is going to come in really useful when coming up with ideas and writing for 3 minute wonders.

Media law with Anne Pentecost has proven a lot more interesting that I expected it to be and I think I will really enjoy learning about the law in media plus it will come in very handy in the future!

3 Minute Wonders (3MW)

Mel has told us this week that we need to come up with ideas for a 3MW. I was hoping that I wouldn’t have to come up with one myself, I’m having complete creative and imaginative block at the moment which is proving to be very irritating but I am sure I  will think of something, only a couple will actually be made, I'm pretty sure mine won't be one of them!

Now it’s time for hand-in…

I’m scared, it is our first hand in for the course and it counts towards our final grade! Ok it doesn’t count for many marks but every little helps and I really want to get a good grade. I think we have done well though, we have done all the paperwork and, in most cases, we have stuck to the brief. Fingers crossed it all goes well…

Vicky drives

We were missing a 1” piece from the first week so we had to shoot another sequence with no dialogue. As it turns out I now star in all 3 videos from the first week! We filmed me walking from my house to my car and then driving off. It isn’t the most interesting thing to film but as it was shot well I think it works quite well at showing a journey. Jamie did most of the work for this piece as he wasn’t here in the first week and he wanted to put some work in for it. 

9am, that’s time for a pint!

4^th brief – each group is to produce another 1” sequence of actuality, which is not an instructional video or interview.

Henry runs a brewery in Penryn, which seemed like the perfect thing to film for actuality, it was interesting and unusual as most people haven’t been inside a brewery before. But it meant an early start, we met at the brewery ready to film at about 8am, ouch! I was boom op while on shoot, I found having the headphones on a great help at being able to decipher whether I was capturing the correct sound or not as it was quite a noisy environment. The first part of the filming went well, we just shot Rob, the guy that works there, and Henry starting off the brewing process. Once the first part was done it has to left for 1 ½ hours before the next stage can be completed so that gave us time to sample the finished product. Although I am not an ale lover I must say it was nice, Jamie certainly loved it he kept going back for more! Feeling slightly light headed we filmed the next part of the brewing process and some shots of bottles etc.

Editing actuality is really hard, I found it difficult trying to get it to look visually pleasing while still telling the story as when shooting we couldn’t stop the process to get another shot. I also found it hard to fit the whole thing in to 1 minute as there was A LOT of footage to sift through. I am happy with the finished product and I think we have managed to successfully produce a sequence of actuality but only time will tell if we actually did!