Studio Production: VT Workshop

Today we was given the task of getting into our production teams and creating a practice VT so we would be able to learn what we need to do on the actual production. We was also given the task for the editors (Vic and I) to edit each others VT's so that we get used to editing something we wasn't there for during the production, this will allow us to see if we can follow the script and edit the VT correctly. It will also enable us to give feedback to the groups to tell them what they need to change so it's more helpful for the editors.

As our VT group is quite large (around 10 of us) we decided to split into 2 groups and film two VT's. Danny, Illy, Hannah and I decided to practice filming the reaction video. As Danny and I hadn't seen the new music video 'Sia - Elastic Heart' we decided to react to that as we was told it was weird and unique. After discussing with our group for a while we decided to use a green screen and put the video behind us so the audience could see what we was watching. It took us a while to set up the lighting and green screen as we tried to create a spot light but this made too much shadows. So we decided to just do a simple green screen lighting. Danny was the director, I did camera, Hannah did sound and Illy helped with the lighting and was the production assistant.

The actual filming was pretty straight forward, we had questions set out for after each of us finished reacting. Vic and Illy also decided to react too so we had a mixture.

Me personally found that reacting to a music video was quite straining and fake. The video was very over rated and I found it hard to do a fake reaction when nothing was happening and it was the same thing throughout. I think we should of reacted to a scary game instead as the reactions can become boring. However the whole process was easy to film and we didn't have too many problems. However I think it would of been more efficient if we filmed everything straight away as people wanted to keep having breaks and it wasted time.

The next mini project we had was to edit each others VT's. I edited the Graffiti VT which the other half of my team filmed.
To be honest, I really struggled with this as a lot of the shots were too shaky/ moving between people every second and not letting the shot 'hold' and kept zooming in and out which meant the focus was always bad. However I really pushed forward to make the best I could out of it. Fairly, the group did well on the script and I had that to guide me throughout, they also used sequencing and a few different shots which meant I could easily pick out parts of the sequence to put together.
I was a little disappointed as I'm worried that the same thing will happen with the real VT's and I don't want to be struggling to edit something, but we all gave feedback to each other and it allowed us all to learn what we did well and what we could of changed.

For my group as our shot was one shot and a reaction video, we didn't have much variety and the video itself was very boring as the video to react to was boring and didn't have anything that could make us really react properly. We also should of used a third light behind us as we looked a little flat compared to the background.

Overall, I liked the workshop and enjoyed editing something which I wasn't part of as it allowed me to really try work out the story, and know how it feels to know nothing about the filming but still be able to edit it together. I felt like we worked well in our small groups and hopefully when we film the real things it will all go smoothly!