How I'm Technically Good..



Deri and I get stuck into some Tripod action!

This blog post will be used to outlie my role in the as of yet unreleased Viral marketing video for DIVA. As writer, creator, and director I feel my job was perhaps not quite as techincal as some others who very dutifully set up the lighting and white balance of the shots I was still involved in the framing of each shot, the placement of each shot. In what scene who was doing what, as well as doing my fair share of the tripod setup.

My role was to look back to my orginal idea and adapt within the time available, call the shots and get the team working to meet the (rather quick) deadline. It was a very quick and high pressure shoot which is something that I will have to get used to as my perfectionism often had us looking over 7 minutes

of footage for a 10 seconds scene. (self criticism, goes far)



Me framing the acting talents of Jemel and Edun.



My role wasnt just telling people what to do, I did alot of camera work and filmed some great scenes and contributed many nice camera tricks such running footage backwards and whip pans, which should look quite nice in the final edited video.  As well as this I did some off screen prop work such as creating gusts of wind using big corrigated card or throwing paper on screen. (It will make sense, I promise).

the concept drawings of some of the characters.

Other ways I techincally helped to achieve this video was my concept design (again quite rushed) but this helped us compile a list of what would be needed for each character as list which then allowed us to go out and get the props we would need to finish the video within the timeframe.
As well as this I also had my hand in finding the locations for each of the scenes you will see in the video upon completion, I know this doesnt sound too techincal but it was how I looking at my idea, seeing what resources location-wise that we could work with and calling where we would go next to get the footage.



Me, acting out to Jemel and Edun (off-screen) how the scene will look

I felt that I did alot of coaching to the others with acting which I hope helped them get into the headspace of what an actor must go through. Each time I would usually walk through the scene physically as a point of reference or discuss what exactly each character was trying to get across, I would often leave the camera running and work with them describing whether they needed to project thier voice more or say thier lines in a slightly different way. We managed to keep almost all the members of the team involved in some way, as we would tend to rotate camera, lighting etc.





The concentration of the group was intense!

And finally to conclude one last place where I was techincally good was in the cutting room, I helped edit the rough cut version pretty much from start to finish as well as cutting down some scenes that will undoubtedly be in the finished product, working with Final Cut Pro I came up with some quick last minute ways to get the scenes to link together coherently as not all scenes in the orginal idea could be shot due to time contraints  as well as cutting our footage together to give a rough idea of what the final outcome of the video would look like so that the other apprentices can come in and edit to polish off the finished version.