October 2017 archive

The good, the bad, and the ugly

Please, for full effect, play this music (quietly) while you read my blog post. Thank you!

It’s been a ride. We’ve had our ups, and we have definitely had our downs, but thankfully, everything worked out in the end. We had location problems, cast problems, and communication problems at. And on top of it all, many of us have lacked a lot of sleep. BUT! It was all worth it. In this post, I want to take you through the good, the bad, and the just plain ugly parts of my/our journey in This is Serial.

The Good

Thankfully, there is actually a lot of stuff for me to write about in this section. To start with, we were grouped with four incredible writers, who were all extremely open to hearing our input on the story, and final scripts. All though it wasn’t technically our job to write the story, as a group, it was great being able to share our own ideas with the writers, and not have them shut down.

Our media group was one of kind. Every single one of us got along, to the point that i’m sure we’ll remain good friends, even after this semester ends. We were able to have fun working together, but as well, once we really knuckled down, we were strong in being able to work as a professional team.

Another positive was how strong our planning and preparation was. We were super organised when it came to casting the serial, so we were able to take our time getting to know the actors. We were given an opportunity to have a day dedicated to table reads, as well as organising costumes with our actors. If our organisation wasn’t as strong, things like costumes, and even props, probably would have ended up taking a bit of a backseat.

The Bad

Unfortunately, there are also a few bad things that we can talk about here, but thankfully, not as many as when we did our first pilot (yikes). In the beginning, we actually did have some problems with our writers. Communication wasn’t the strongest, and we all felt quite disconnected from them. This was fixed later on though. Location scouting was the worst part of the process. Who knew finding a spot to film within your own university would be so difficult? We sure didn’t! We tried, I don’t even know how many spots, but it just seemed like the world was against us, and didn’t want us filming. We drew it very close with settling a location, it all caused a lot of stress and tension within the group for a bit. Again, we got through it and solved the problem. Another ‘bad’, was my problems with the editing suites, but you can read all about that in my other blog post! It was not a very good time for poor tired me.

The Ugly

There was only one thing that I thought was appropriate to put under this heading. That is, when we had to cut our actor who was cast to play Duncan. This one definitely put a lot of strain on our group, as we had almost no time at all to properly recast. We weren’t far off shooting, and we were one actor short! Not much could have really gone worse. Luckily, our lord and saviour, Monty Mclean, came through and took on the role for us. It may not have been our first option, but it did work out well having Monty play the role.

As the semester ends, all we can do is reminisce on everything. It all worked out in the end, and we all sure learnt a hell of a lot! And that, has been the good, the bad, and the ugly, or This is Serial 2017!

Stop, collaborate and listen

Collaboration is always an interesting experience, because it’s never the same in any project. Everything depends on how prepared you are, and overall, who you’re actually collaborating with. Compared to our first ‘attempted’ pilot (let’s not even go there), our collaboration skills have improved by a mile. Here is the funky lowdown of it all.

Overall, we didn’t really have a lot to do with the writers for most of the process. We worked with them when it came to providing prompts, whether that was written, on their part, or in the form of video, from our side of it. When we requested tasks of each other, there was little, to no problem in getting things done. We asked to have scripts written by a certain date, and they were all extremely good at following through with our requests. We did have some communication issues at the start, when we were just working with prompts, however we took steps to resolve them. As the production period loomed over, I personally didn’t find we had any communication problems with the writers. However there weren’t any problems, I did find to feel a little disconnected from a couple of them for the majority of the semester.

Heidi, one of the writers, actually worked with us through every step of the pre-production, and production process. It was really incredible being able to work so closely with at least one of the writers, as it really helped ensure us that we were staying true to their vision of where the scripts should go, as well as our own personal, and creative visions. We could tell that she really wanted to be there for the team, and wasn’t interested in just doing the bare minimum. I know as a media team, we really appreciated it.

One of the other writers we worked closely with was Monty. Unfortunately we had to ask our original actor playing Duncan to leave, as we were having communication problems with him. Monty stepped in as the role of Duncan, which ended up actually working out incredibly, as Monty had so much involvement with writing the characters, and he knew exactly how to play it, and how himself, and the other writers were wanting him to be portrayed.

For the first time ever, I was also working with actors, who I didn’t know prior to the project. In the past, I have only ever worked with actors I know, or at the very most, worked with friends of friends. It was really strange for me, and something I wasn’t used to at all. Working with actors who I had never met, did cause me to feel slightly anxious at times, as I didn’t want them to look at us as unprofessional, since we are only a student film. I just kept reminding myself that they are amateur actors as well, and if anything, they were probably much more nervous than I was.

The only trouble that we really had with the actors, was trying to find availability that suited everyone. This was something unavoidable, and we were prepared, knowing that this would be something extremely difficult to work around. It took a lot of planning, but in the end, we managed to make everyones timetables work.

Finally, our media crew. Personally, I couldn’t have asked for a better team to work with. I think that we all had our doubts when we began the project, as our first pilot was such a flop. I think what worked for us, was that we really sat down and came up with a strong game plan. We knew we were capable of so much more, which I think is what helped us push to create something we were actually proud of. I’m so lucky to say that I made some amazing friends in our team.

Overall, collaboration went smoothly, or at least as smoothly as it can really go on an amateur film set. We all came in with a similar creative vision, and desired outcome, which I think is really shown if what we produced.

Facebook chat minefield

Communication this time round, yes, was substantially stronger. However, to this day, I still hate Facebook group chats. Sure, we are all able to communicate in one place, but going to work and coming home to 99+ unread messages? No thank you.

Arguably the chat was actually super helpful, and i’m guilty of sending multiple questions in the space of about ten minutes, it just meant that after not using my phone for a few hours, it was worth making a cup of tea, and settling down to read the pages, and pages, and pages, of messages.

In the last assessment, I wrote a post talking about what we could do as a group to improve our communication. One thing that we all put forward, was starting an actual Facebook group page, where we could post more long winded things, discuss times, dates, locations etc, without clogging up a tiny chat window. This came in super handy throughout the pre-production and production stages. During pre-production, we used the page to talk about props we needed, as well as nominating who would bring what. It was great having the Facebook page to come back to if we needed to check out anything, so we weren’t scrolling through hundreds of messages. During the production stage was when it became really helpful. Due to the fact that locations, to begin with were a bit up in there, and a bit messy, we posted regular updates on new locations that we scouted and booked. If we were ever in doubt, or unsure of anything, we could comment on the relevant post, instead of just referring to a past group chat message.

Throughout post-production, we did fall back into the habit of just going straight to the group chat, which worked fine to an extent, but many of us had put the chat on ‘do not disturb’, so often questions would be left unanswered for a while.

I think it was super helpful having the group Facebook page though, even if we didn’t utilise it as well as we possibly could have.

Unlike the Facebook page, the group chat often just became a friendly chat, where we talked about, and sent things that were completely irrelevant to the project. (Please see examples below! and ignore the group chat nicknames)

Very clearly, we were easily distracted on the group chat, but that didn’t stop us from getting the job done! Maybe we would have been better only having the Facebook page, however without the group chat, we never would have formed such a strong group bond!!

Post Production? Post death.

Yes, the title is slightly over the top. As perusal, the final editing process has been squeezed into the final days, along with my millions of other assignments. It’s okay though. Unlike last time, with our first attempted pilot, I actually have some decent footage (and audio!) to work with. For editing, I am working alongside Skylar.

Prior to getting started on post-production, I took some steps, that I thought would be important, just to ensure that when it came to actually getting stuck into editing, nothing too major went wrong.

Firstly, it was important to go over the footage and make sure that there were no major flaws with the footage, or with the sound especially. I went through all of the clips that I would be needing, and lucky for me there was nothing major, that I wouldn’t be able to work around, whilst I was editing the episode. There were small things, such as audio being louder in parts, and maybe the video unfocused for a moment, but other than that, we were pretty clear of any major disasters.

I organised to use the editing suites, as editing from a laptop can be super tedious at times, especially when it comes to syncing up the footage to the audio pieces.

I was all set, with my editing suite booked, but then disaster struck!! After trying to upload my premiere project to the suites computers, I soon realised the worst… The suites had an older version of Premiere set up. Update it? Oh no. Being a student, I didn’t have access to make changes to the computer.

This lead to me spending the next hour, attempting to convert my files so that they could be opened in an older version of adobe. I tried exporting it as an XML file, but that didn’t work. I tried “un-updating” my Premiere app, which also didn’t work. I really was in a bit of a pickle.

I wish this blog post could have had some sort of sound conclusion, but unfortunately it isn’t going to. In the end, I just had to use the editing suites to keep the shot list and script up on screen, but for now, that was all I could really use it for. I stuck to editing on my laptop, or else I would have probably just wasted another hour trying to do something that wasn’t actually possible.

As they say, where there is will, there is a way. I knuckled down and did the editing on my laptop, which really wasn’t too bad, more just frustrating that there was a huge desktop computer sitting in front of me, that I had really no way of using.

Aside from this little obstacle, post-production went smoothly. There was the typical problems, such as not being able to easily locate clips, getting angry trying to sync audio and footage together, but I didn’t really expect any less.

I worked shot by shot, and with some time to spare, I had a pretty decent rough draft put together. Doing the fine tuning was a bit difficult on my laptop, as cutting just milliseconds off a shot is hard to do using an overly sensitive laptop mouse.

I think I edited together a pretty solid episode, but like everyone says every time, if I had given myself more time, I think it could have been even better. Some links between character lines could have been strengthened, and the pacing is slightly off in parts of the first scene. Nothing flows terribly, but I definitely know that there is huge room for improvement, as there always is.

My Role on Set

This may come as shock, that as a media student, I have never been involved with a proper filming process. Of course i’ve made short films before, but I have always done them on my own, or in smaller groups of about three of four people. Working with a whole team, where everyone had their individual roles really strictly laid out was different to what I’ve done with film in the past.

For me, being on set was difficult, not in that my job was strenuous, but in the fact, that to an extent, I sort of had to take a step back, and use the time to learn how ‘larger’ sets ran. I was technically assigned the role of camera, along with Hazel, however, I didn’t end up doing a lot on set. This was a decision that I had a say in, but it got to the point, where I knew that Hazel had a lot of experience with using our particular camera, that for the sake of the team, and our time restraints, it was easier to let her make the technical decisions.

Before you worry that i’ve spend the past three weeks not actually doing anything, like I said, I took the time on set to learn. In between takes, and before cast calls, Hazel showed me how to work the camera, when it comes to things such as fixing the white balance, and also making sure that the iOS was consistent across all shots.

Sure I didn’t take a huge amount of shots on set, what I learnt from being on set, and being shown thoroughly how to use the equipment I found to be just as valuable. This is because, instead of just guessing what I was doing, and ending up with a half assed version of our serial, I can take what i’ve learnt from being on set, to other projects that i’m part of in the future.

Along the way, in between learning the camera in more depth, I was in charge of the clapper board, as well as ensuring we were following the shot list, and not forgetting any shots.

Although on set became much less hands on that I had expected, I think it worked out for the best, and i’ve come away probably learning a lot more vital information than I would have otherwise. Working with a technical team of mostly second years (Hazel, Aine, Beth, Josie etc) forced me to focus on working as a team, and simply doing what I am asked to do, if it is what is best for the team.

Hopefully working on set with such a good team, has set me up well for sets that I work on in the future. I will definitely feel more comfortable taking on a bigger role within the production stage, as i’ve seen first hand what is actually involved with each particular role. I’ve built stronger communication skills, as well as picked up technical skills involving camera along the way. Yes, at times, my role during production felt small, but what i’ve gained has been much bigger.