Jade’s Blog

Like most people this year, Production Project has been my main focus and my three other subjects have kind of fallen by the wayside. I was looking forward having a substantial involvement in the two events that form a part of Media Industries 2, and using it as an opportunity to learn some new skills, but unfortunately for me, this hasn’t happened at all, and it is largely my own fault for not getting involved as much as others.

Contribution and Collaboration

I was initially in the publicity group for ‘The Next Step’, but changed into the design group after feeling that I would have the opportunity to be more involved as the publicity group was pretty big. That was probably my first mistake, as the design group was a bit smaller, but had a lot less opportunity for work to be shared around. The design team would have happily surived with about 4 people in it, I think we had about 10 people. Basically, the initial ideas were thrown around in Week 1, when I wasn’t there, and by Week 2, the main poster idea was pretty much established and the main people with design skills has already stepped up to the plate. I didn’t really feel that I had anything really relevant or helpful to contribute to discussions, but tried to give feedback where I could. I put my hand up to help design the programs, as that wasn’t an area that had been discussed yet as the focus was largely on the poster at that stage.

Skye, Ana and I came up with the design for the programs, which at least made me feel a little better and that I had helped out in some small way. It’s kind of hard to be motivated and feel involved in a group where there really isn’t enough work to go around, and the work that needs to be done is handled by a select 2 or 3 people.

At the start, I felt really motivated about contributing ideas and helping out with the design, but after a few of my initial suggestions were met with blank stares, that motivation was quickly gone and I figured that this wasn’t the place to do it, and I should leave the design up to the people who actually knew what they were talking about. In the weeks leading up the event, my mind was pre-occupied with our PP shoot, and also crewing on other groups’ shoots, and as a result, I think I missed the last 2 or 3 classes before the day, which really didn’t help in terms of my involvement for MI.

In hindsight, I really should have swapped from publicity to scheduling instead as I think everyone in that group seemed to have learnt a lot and gotten a lot out of the event, which was my initial goal at the very start of semester.

After my lacklustre efforts in ‘The Next Step’, I was determined to get into a group this time around that would allow me to be more involved, and make a contribution. I joined Paul’s technical group, and put up my hand to create the powerpoint presentation for the awards ceremony that takes place at the end of the night. I was really keen to do this as it was a specified role that I could do by myself, it wasn’t just ‘help out with this’, which would invariably mean I wouldn’t really do much. So, I’m in the process now of creating that, and I think on the night I will be operating it as well which will be good.

I also went to Capitol Theatre with Paul and the tech group a couple of weeks ago to see some projects on the big screen (Paul got an overwhelming response, and we watched a total of 3 projects). We also went to get a feel for the venue, where the computers in the foyer would be situated and where the installation projects would go. This was a good chance for me to get a look at the venue before the night, as I’d never been there before. It was also good to get a look from up in the projection booth.

Proactive Learning

In terms of proactive learning, I really don’t think I have done a lot of it that would qualify as Media Industries related. I’m disappointed that I haven’t really. This is where I wish I’d joined the scheduling group from the very start, as it was a great chance to speak to some industry professionals, and improve on my producing skills.

Participation

I think I said most of this in the contribution section, but for the ‘The Next Step’, my main contribution was I helping design the programs with Skye and Ana. I also helped out as much as I could with offering feedback to the rest of the design group with poster design, I’ll be the first to admit that this was very minimal.
I attended most group meetings, but missed the last two or three classes before the day due to my own PP shoot and crewing on other groups’ shoots.
After the day, although I wasn’t part of the production group, I stayed back and helped pack up the masses of gear and went with Corrie to take it back to the techs.

For the showcase, I’m handling the powerpoint presentation for the awards ceremony and operating it during the awards themselves, and I’m also working with Paul and the tech group to help out with any other odd jobs that need to be done before the night.

Connections and Intersections

For me, as I didn’t help out with the event as much as I initially planned at the start of semester, I got the most out of actually attending the day itself and listening to the speakers. I think the day was a big success, and it came together really well. The speakers were great, and keen to share practical, useful knowledge about the day. I learnt a lot about the TV, film and radio industries, and the environment that we are about to enter into. It was great to hear about it from people who are working in the industry, of varying ages. The themes of the different panels were a good idea, as it gave two varying perspectives. The first panel had some great insights into applying for jobs and approaching employers. The second panel, was probably my favourite, I liked how for the majority of the session, they were happy to talk amongst themselves and get a discussion happening based on the question. They were really knowledgeable about their industries, and I felt they all had some really interesting things to say. The third panel doesn’t stick out in my mind as much as the first two, but that could be because the subject matter wasn’t really my field of interest. Overall though, as an audience member, I took a lot out of the day, and it really made me think about what I want to do next year, and how to go about it.

Overall Grade

I’m going to give myself 68%, a Credit, for my contribution to Media Industries 2. I haven’t given myself a Self-Assessment mark this low for a while now, but I feel its warranted. To be honest, Production Project has been my focus this semester, and that’s where all my motivation and efforts lie. As previously stated, I did intend to have a larger contribution to this subject, but it didn’t work out like that, and that is largely my own doing.

For ‘The Next Step’, the design group was way too big for us all to play a decent role, and I probably could have done more to help them out, but my design skills aren’t really up to scratch, and my suggestions not really needed. A couple of members took control from the get go which didn’t leave a lot of room for anyone else. I alluded to this in my Collaboration Contract, where I said that my main contribution would be program design, which it was. I also stated that I would have a larger role in the Showcase, which has also worked out to be true. To be honest, I’m pretty disappointed with my efforts in this subject, it was a great opportunity to learn and to network, and I didn’t take it, my attention was elsewhere.

We haven’t completely finished editing yet, so it’s a bit early for a final reflection. Without being completely done I can’t really sum everything up, I’ll save that for after Showcase. We’re at the final fine cut stage now, which is a little scary. Our focus at the moment is checking over everything, making sure audio levels are consistent, and that the picture edit works as well.

I can’t really say if this is the film that I imagined it would be as I really don’t know or maybe can’t remember what I though it would be at the start of the year. It seems so long ago, but at the same time it feels like the year has gone way too quickly.

One of my aims for the project was to get some hands-on experience in roles I’d never done before, and I definitely achieved that. I handled a different role everyday of our shoot, which was great in terms of a learning experience, and feeling comfortable trying new things. I now feel a lot more confident across most of the practical production roles.

On the other hand, the way our group approached crew roles, may not have been great for the film in terms of the value of having specialised roles. I think other groups really benefited a lot from having for example, a dedicated producer, or a dedicated DOP that had that specific area to focus on for the whole film. I think we definitely could have used a DOP in our core group who performed that role across every shoot day, especially to handle the lighting, as out of the three of us, it isn’t really a strong point! We kind of had to be across every area of the film, which didn’t leave much time to really focus on one role. But, I think the roles we did take on each day were definitely performed to the best of our abilities.

I thought that this year I would probably take on the role of Producer again and further work on my producing skills, oh how wrong I was! I’m definitely glad we took this approach, as not only have I learnt a lot more about sound operation, operating a film camera and directing, I actually feel that I also have improved my skills as a producer, though probably not in the ways I initially expected. By performing all these different roles on the film, it gives me a whole new appreciation for the other crew roles on a film set. As a producer, it’s really good to have a good understanding of the other roles, what they require, how long they take to perform, what types of skills they involve, etc.

I did co-produce though with Skye and Nicole, which taught me some valuable lessons in collaboration. In the industry, the producer usually works with a team of producers on a project, so knowing how to split the tasks up and work together on the same role is an essential skill. I’m the kind of person who likes to do everything myself to make sure it gets done the way I want it done. Being able to let go handle an area of producing each was a bit tough at first! However, the whole way through I knew that I could rely on Skye and Nicole to get the job done and to handle the area they were working on. There were a few moments there, in terms of producing that I felt things were being a bit double handled which was frustrating for me, but overall I think it worked pretty well.

It’s really strange the way it worked out, but we were saying that in the end, it kind of feels like we divided the workload up pretty much evenly. We all pulled our weight right to the end, but the some had more work to do at the start of semester, while others at the end. For example, Nicole got permission to use the song in the Western before we’d even started, attended heaps of modules at the start of the semester and did a lot of work in the initial stages of production organising auditions and setting up the website. I organised to have the three-day shoot at my house, which was a challenge in itself. I’ve been more involved in the editing process than ever as my scene was probably the most complicated to edit, and have spent plenty of time in the suites in recent weeks. I also took on the role of booking the majority of our editing time and handled that area. Skye worked on the budget, a lot of the catering, and was First AD extraordinaire on several groups’ shoots. Add to that the time we all spent on our scripts, storyboards and story. We’ve all worked non-stop on this subject this year, but in different ways, but it all seemed to work out fair which was really cool.

This goes without saying really, but yet again, I’ve really enjoyed working with Nicole and Skye. They’ve been awesome, at the risk of sounding cheesy; I don’t think I could have made a film like this with anyone else. Without working together on 3 other projects before this, I really don’t think Puttanesca would have come together the way it did. We had to put a lot of trust in each other the whole way through the process, and especially on our shoot days, and at the end of it all, we’ve come out of it a much stronger team, and much better friends.

Sometimes, the three of us are really similar in our opinions and our personalities, and other times we couldn’t be more different, but it works. The three of us balance each other out somehow. It proves that working with friends can be done! We’ve had our moments, especially in the writing stage finalising the script, and also with parts of the editing process, but we get over it pretty quickly and spent a lot more of our time getting along really well. Especially during the shoot, how we got through that weekend with no major fights, I don’t know! Overall though, it’s been a really great experience, and working on this film, and this subject in general, has been for me the highlight of the degree.

One of my biggest issues in terms of editing my scene was definitely the music. Finding melodramatic soap opera style music that doesn’t sound “like Lord of the Rings” or “that Kate is going to kill Charlie” isn’t an easy task. Especially as I’m not musically inclined, it’s even harder. However, I’ve been on the hunt for a suitable track on the Internet, with mixed results. There are so many royalty free websites online, it’s hard to keep track, some with some really good music that you have to pay for and some with some slightly dodgy music that you in most cases still have to pay for.

However, I finally had a breakthrough and I managed to track down some composers through Creative Commons that have put their whole back catalogue online and are happy to have them used in video projects, so that was a lucky find. One composer in particular had a heap of good quality piano based tracks and it was then a case of finding the one that fit the scene the best. We tested a couple of tracks under the scene and this one fits really well, it’s strange how well it fits considering the scene was already edited, I didn’t match the editing to the music at all, I just stuck it under the vision and it just fit. For example, there’s one part I like where Charlie gets upset and leaves the room, and the music gets sad as well, at the right part. There are also other moments where the actor’s movement matches the beat of the track.

I’ve learnt that it’s so much easier to take a full-length song and get it to fit your scene than to find several smaller pieces of music and make them work together. If I was going to do it again though, I think I would have seriously considered enlisting the help of a composer. In the end though, I am happy with the music I’ve found, it makes me a lot happier with the scene as a whole. So, after a long and stressful search, my scene now has music, which I’m very happy about. It improves the scene a lot, and allows it to flow a lot more and move faster. For a while there I really thought I would never find the music I wanted in time.

I’ve also done my colour grade, which was really good to learn. I started off just playing around with the 3-way corrector, not really knowing what I wanted, but in the end, I think I now have a much better idea of how to get the look and the colours that you want. I’m happy with what I came up with and even more so that I ended up doing it by myself. It was tempting to ask for help straight away, but the more I played around with the shots, the easier it was to see what worked and what didn’t and work it out for yourself. The shots in the dining room had a slight blue tinge to them, so I worked on warming up the shots and getting some more yellow and red tones in there, which looked a lot better, and it also gave the actors some more colour on their faces, and made them look less washed out.

Although I didn’t think it at the time, my Language of Colour elective turned out to be really useful, especially in terms of colour grading. I found myself thinking a lot more about warm and cool tones, the colour wheel and how the colours work together, and understanding it a lot more than I would have without doing that class, so that’s a bonus. I also tried to help Nicole and Skye with their colour grading, so hopefully I did that.

The two shots I used for the opening scene with Kate and Charlie were slightly different in colour as we moved the lighting around and they were shot from different part of the room, so I worked on balancing them out, and making the yellow on the walls match in both shots, while at the same time matching their skin tones, not an easy task. I remember on my work attachment at WTFN, sitting in with the colour grader of Shopping for Love and watching him grade an episode. He worked so quickly and knew exactly what to adjust for each shot, and how much. There was a lot of tweaking involved, and some shots took more than others, but he’d been doing it for so long and was so good at it that he made it look easy. It was really interesting to watch, especially when at that stage I’d done hardly any of it myself. It’s a difficult stage of post-production thought, to get the colours the way you want them, and to make sure all your shots match.

I think Paul said to us last year that you should only do colour grading for a short period of time each edit session and keep coming back to it and adjusting it, which is what I tried to do. It works a lot better than trying to get it done in one sitting, which is what we ended up doing with Skye’s scene. It makes your brain go into meltdown, and you start to lose track of what looks good. We sat and tried to match 3 or 4 different Mocumentary shots up the other day, and then came back the next day to look at it and it looked different to what it did the day before!

With the Soap Opera, I played around with it a bit each day and kept adjusting and tweaking it, until I got to the stage where I felt happy with it, and that I’d played with it enough. It was really good to hear that Skye, Nicole and David were happy with what I’d done as well.

A lot has happened since the last snapshot. Editing is well and truly under way. The three of us had been working separately on our scenes until recently when we’ve started collaborating more, which has been really helpful to get second opinions when you’re stuck after staring at the same clips for ages. I spent everyday of the so-called break editing the soap opera scene all on my lonesome as Skye and Nicole were on work attachments. At times I got a bit lonely and bored stuck in the suite on my own. I even fell asleep in v5 at one point. I was really tired, stuff was capturing, and it was only a few minutes!! I think after that I learnt that I’m only capable of editing by myself for about 2 hours at a time. After that, my brain just decides to shut down and doesn’t want to process any more information. Unfortunately, I can’t see myself in a career as an editor!

I learnt a heap about editing during the week though, as I created the scene from the very start. Whenever I had a problem, I had to solve it by myself. I wasn’t that comfortable with Final Cut at the start of the week, but I feel that I know it a LOT better now, which is great, and another skill that I probably wouldn’t have if we had have made a traditional project, as I don’t think I would have got the chance to edit a whole scene all by myself. I think I’ve found a new appreciation for editing, as previously I wasn’t really a fan of it, but after seeing what can be created with a whole lot of raw footage, and making it from scratch, I like it a lot more now.

I got the Soap Opera to a rough cut stage at the end of that week, but it was way too long, and since then I’ve been working away at it, fine cutting and taking out anything that doesn’t work or isn’t crucial to the story. Last week, I cut out a joke that had been in the script since the first draft which I thought would leave a massive hole in the scene, but I was pleasantly surprised to see that it doesn’t, and it actually allows the scene to flow a lot better and works well. My scene is now pretty much at the right length. I’ve seen it ten million times, so I’m well and truly over watching it, but I still feel that it moves along quite well.

Our consultation with Anne Carter was really beneficial to us. She was very encouraging and positive towards our project, which was really motivating. We got lots of good ideas to work on to make the three parts stronger on their own, which then makes the project stronger as a whole. In terms of the soap opera, she gave me a whole lot of edit points to work on which was great and the scene works a lot better as a result. The things she told us to cut seemed so obvious, I remember thinking, “Why didn’t I think to cut that?” I guess it’s just that we’ve seen our work so much and Anne was able to come in fresh with no attachment to the footage or the story and with a trained eye and spot the parts that needed work. So, I’m really glad we got the chance to see Anne; she helped us a lot, and gave us some really useful tips.

That same day was the first day we’d brought the three genres together as one! Seeing them all together in the same sequence was really cool, as they’d been separate entities for so long. It was good to see the project finally taking shape. Yesterday in the Rough Cut Screening, we were told that the genre changes are clear enough and that they understood the story, so that was good to hear!

At the moment, I’ve just started working on colour grading. I’m looking to get some more warm tones into the scene, to reflect that ‘soap opera’ feel, as at the moment, the shots are quite cold and a bit stark.

My major issue at the moment is music. It’s freaking me out a lot as I am really not a musical person. I know what sounds good, and I know what I want for the scene, but I don’t know where to get it, or how to make it myself. Finding a piece of existing cheesy soap opera style music that is available royalty-free is tricky enough, let alone making it from scratch.

At the moment I’ve been watching a lot of Everybody Loves Raymond. Channel 10 is showing double episodes every night after Letterman, which for someone who’s up that late anyway it’s awesome to have good TV to watch! Anyway, moving on to my point, the show uses a lot of simple, piano-based tracks at the start and end of scenes and the start and end of the show, which works well. Even though it’s a sitcom, I think I can still incorporate this music style into the scene, at its cheesy and gives that family vibe that the scene also has. A short simple piano piece could work as an intro, where everything is still happy and light, but it won’t work at the end of the scene where the tension increases, so I want to incorporate traditional dramatic soap opera music with lots of strings and organs for that part. I know Nicole is against using Garage Band, but I’ve been playing around with it, and this weekend I’m going to keep experimenting with a whole lot of relevant instruments and come up with SOMETHING, at the very least to use as a template, or something to work with and build on. At least if we start with some music, we can build on it, change it and make it better. It I keep going with no music at all in the scene, I’ll have, well, still no music, and run out of time. The music in the soap opera is crucial for building the tension and the drama and also for clearly conveying the genre. Another comment we got from the Rough Cut screening is that once we put music in the Soap Opera, it will be a lot more clearly definable when it’s watched next to the Mockumentary, which I definitely agree with, it’s going to be one of the main things that will help to identify the genre. Cheesy soap opera music isn’t as easy to find as I thought it would be, but I’m working on it, if anyone has any ideas, let me know!

So at this stage, we’re fine cutting, continuing to tighten it up and make it as short as we can. One thing we have in our favour is that the genre will change every 3 or so minutes, so that’s less time for the audience to get bored! In terms of my scene, I’m working on colour grading and finding suitable music, and then onto audio post. It’s slowly coming together, but I can’t wait to have it done and watch the finished project!

I think whatever happens and however this crazy thing turns out, the three of us should be proud of what we’ve achieved. We’ve taken a less than conventional approach to making a short film, but we’ve worked together really well, learnt so much more than we would have otherwise, and had a lot of fun doing it.

My first week of work attachment last November was at WTFN Entertainment, a Melbourne-based TV production company. The day-to-day posts I wrote about this attachment can be read here. I enjoyed my time there, and it gave me a huge insight into television production and the huge amount of work involved in putting TV shows together. For my first day I was on a whole day ‘Shopping for Love’ shoot which was really tiring, but also really interesting to see first-hand how they film the show. It was a full on day from 8am till about 6pm non-stop travelling with the crew from the contestant’s house in the city then to Chadstone for the other contestants to go shopping and then back into the city to shoot at Crown to look at the gifts and reveal the winner. I was talking to the crew afterwards, and the sound guy he was telling me that this shoot was a short one in the industry, and I remember thinking how do they do it, especially since they shoot ‘Shopping for Love’ in particular in the middle of summer. The poor cameraman had to lug around the massive camera on his shoulder all day, luckily he had a camera assist to take it off his hands every so often and give him a break. I think the 3 day shoot weekend we’ve had for Puttanesca since I did this work attachment has better prepared me for long shooting days though, I can handle it a lot better now!

The next couple of days were more office-based, but I found that I also enjoyed this part of production as well, getting to see the organisational side of things, and learning more about the role of the producer. I did a bit of research for Talk to the Animals, which was not too bad. I’m not a big fan of research at all, but if I want to get into producing, it’s a part of the job, which I’ll have to get used to. I also did some logging of episodes of Coxy’s Big Break, and noted where specific segments were so some of the stories could be re-edited for the international version of the show. I also really enjoyed sitting in on things like voice-over sessions for Coxy’s Big Break, to see how that is done. There are so many different elements that make a TV show, and everyone has to know their role and do it well for it to work. After the producers have organised the shoot, and the crew have got the footage, the editor brings together the raw clips, the titles, the filters, the voice overs, the cutaways, and it takes shape. It was cool to see the process and also how much work is involved.

I also got to sit in with the editor and the colour grader of Shopping for Love, which was really good to see, but I learnt that I couldn’t be an editor. The hours are very long, and when you are working on the same show, the work can get very repetitive, especially when you are working on a show that has such a strict formula. Sitting in with the colour grader was great to see as well, as Shopping for Love is a show that uses a lot of bright, saturated colours, so there is a lot of work involved in bringing them to broadcast acceptable levels, and balancing everything out.

I sat in on the post-date interviews for Shopping for Love on the Wednesday and was happy to see that they used a three-point lighting set-up similar to the ones we’ve used in TV1 for our doco. It was cool to see that the things we’ve been doing are the same as in the industry, and they also edit their shows on Final Cut Pro.

Overall, I really enjoyed the week and learnt a lot about what it would be like to work at a TV production company, and came away from the week still wanting to work in the industry. I enjoyed working with the people there and getting an understanding of what their jobs involve.

My next week was at MCM Entertainment, a radio production company that produces shows like The Hot Hits, Take 40 Australia and The Jonathan Coleman Experience, edits them and packages them in-house and sells them to radio stations all over Australia. I got to work on most of the shows made there and got a good feel for how the organization works, which was great. The people there were really nice, and the roles I performed were really varied, which made the week go quickly and also gave me an interesting experience.

I got to have a go at a whole range of jobs, and try a bit of everything. I helped out with script writing for one of the shows, got to record a few bits and pieces, like song requests for Loaded and Hot Hits. I also got to sit in live radio broadcasts for the Jonathan Coleman Experience with Julia Zemiro, which was really cool.

I also sat in on pre-record sessions for most of their shows, including one for Take 40 which is hosted by Andrew G. He was in the US at the time, but they were still able to link up with him and record the show from his house over there, and it sounded like he was in the studio. They also hooked up a Skype connection so they could see him and he could see them as they were recording, so that was really cool to watch, and I was also a bit excited to say hi to him!

As the shows that MCM make are broadcast all over the country on different radio stations, they are packaged with some ads that are relevant Australia-wide, like for well-known, widely available products. These ads usually go at the start and end of the ad breaks. The radio stations then put in their own location-specific ads in between, for example for local sales or events. I got to see a couple of radio ads being recorded, one was for Eveready Batteries and one was for All Phones. I got to see the process involved with getting the right take, with just the right amount of energy and the right tone, and in exactly the right time frame. It can be a long process to get the right performance, but once they have the material, the editor can whip up the rough cut of the ad really quickly for the producer and the client to listen to, it was really interesting to see how that all worked.

MCM gets a number of artists coming through for interviews on the shows. One of the artists in town at the time was Alice Cooper, so I got to see that interview as well. It was really funny, I knew that he was coming in, and thought oh yeah that’s cool, I can handle it, I won’t freak out when he comes in. I got in early on this particular early, and no-one was around, so I sat down with a glass of water for a minute before I started. Next thing I know, in walks Alice Cooper himself with his manager, really casually. I looked up to see him walking right past me. He said “good morning”, while I managed to get out a “hi”, trying to stay as relaxed as I could on the outside. He said good morning, and I said hi?? How does that work??

I also spent a lot of time in the CD library, which I loved. I did get sidetracked a few times when I was supposed to be putting CDs away and started looking through the huge library of CD’s they have there, pretty much every artist you could think of was represented. They also had an extensive library of interviews with musicians and celebrities that they had collected over the years which was really cool. I got to listen to a few of those to log the questions that were asked and put it into the database so that producers were able to easily search it to find the audio grabs they needed for shows. I also used the database to add new CD’s into their catalogue and filed them away. It seems like a pretty mundane thing to do, using the database and putting away piles of CD’s that the producers and editors had finished with, but I actually enjoyed sitting in there amongst the thousands of CD’s and working away.

I also was able to sit in on meetings with record companies where they presented their new music for each of the shows, which I found really interesting. Each show made at MCM has its own target audience and the record companies cater to that and present them with music that would suit the show, and also the artists that are a priority to them. I can’t remember the exact job title of this role, but I remember it was one that stood out to me as one that I could see myself doing. It is very organisational based, and the woman who does it at MCM, Shellie, told me that she loves making lists and checking things off, and staying organised, which I can relate to! She makes Excel spreadsheets of all the artists in the country touring, promoting or releasing an album, and works on getting interviews booked with them, or getting their affiliates in the US or UK to get interviews for them before they arrive, or if they aren’t coming to the country to promote. The audio then gets used by the MCM radio shows, and if the interview is done by a freelancer, the content can be also used by print media like Famous Magazine for example, but it won’t be heard on any other radio show. Shellie also liases with the record companies and handles small promotions for their shows like CDs or merchandise to give away on Take 40 or Hot Hits.

I also got to spend time in the online department and wrote news stories for the Hot Hits and Take 40 websites. The next day I checked the pages and they had been published, which was really cool. Both of these websites have a huge video and audio component to them and are always developing new ways to use new media to bring traffic to their sites. Even though MCM is predominantly a radio company, they use a lot of video content on their websites, and the web team are constantly working on redesigning their sites to make them more user-friendly. It showed me first-hand how the online world and new media, as we’ve been told many times in this course, is increasingly converging with traditional media forms.

MCM was a very different experience to WTFN in a lot of ways, as obviously they primarily produce completely different products, but there are also many similarities to the way radio and TV production companies’ work. There is a lot of collaboration involved, which I’ve learnt is a common trait among media organizations, so I guess it’s good after all we’ve had to do so much of it at uni. With both WTFN and MCM, several different shows are made there, each with their own teams of people working on them. However there is a lot of overlap between all the shows, and staff cross over, help each other out, and give opinions if needed. Both places had quite relaxed, casual environments and made me feel really comfortable being there which was great. The staff at both places were really friendly and happy to answer questions, or take the time to explain what they were doing.

The Australian media industry is small, so it’s always good to keep your options open. Knowing that I would be more than happy to work in either television or radio is a good thing, as it gives me a lot more career options, even thought they’re aren’t a huge amount of jobs in either! I was determined to get work attachments that would allow me to experience professional environments in both TV and radio, and I’m really glad I was able to do that, and also that I was at great companies that make content that I am really familiar with and enjoy.

It’s been about a year since I did my first attachment, and about half a year since my second one, and I definitely feel that I have learnt so many more skills and gained so much more experience since then. I definitely wouldn’t feel as daunted walking into a professional media company as I did back then. Working on our Production Project all year, and also getting more experience in the TV studio on shows like ‘Newsline’ has allowed me to learn a lot and feel a lot more confident about moving into the industry and feeling that I have at least some of the knowledge and skills required to work professionally. Having the opportunity to complete these work attachments, was definitely a really valuable experience, which reinforced that I am heading in the right direction. Even if it won’t be easy, at least I have an idea of where I want to go; now I just have to work out how to get there!

The past few weeks have flown by, it’s scary that we’re at the end of Week 9 already. Last weekend we shot our film at my house, a crazy weekend indeed. Three days, three scenes, three cameras, three directors, yeah, I think you get the idea. Anyway, it was a big challenge we took on, and I have to say, under the circumstances, like extreme lack of sleep and annoying technical difficulties, I think we handled it very well. Not only did Skye, Nicole and I work together three days in a row, they also stayed at my house for the weekend, so there was no escaping each other! It turned out to be really fun though, and I know I couldn’t have made a film like this with any other group. There’s just no way! I’m definitely happy that we worked together again. I think the three of us were starting to go slightly insane towards the end of the weekend, and we still are. At the moment, I’m so tired that I’m finding everything hilarious and laughing at things that probably aren’t that funny, even more than I usually do. I’m delirious I tell you!

Back to the shoot though, the whole time, there were no major fights or issues between us, which was great. We’ve built a good working relationship over the past couple of years. The previous projects we’ve worked together on have definitely helped us this time around. We can now communicate with each other without using real sentences, and understand what each other mean. There was one moment that comes to mind on the Sunday when Skye said to me something along the lines of “Can we do that thing, with that other thing”, something random like that, and I immediately knew exactly what she was talking about, while Laura was like “what the hell are you talking about Skye!” After every shoot day, a definite highlight of the weekend for me was our nightly “de-brief” over dinner where the three of us, running on no sleep and no energy after a whole day shoot, re-capped the days events and funny moments.

In terms of the shoot days themselves, here’s a rundown of how they went:

Day 1- Mockumentary

The first day, for Skye’s Mockumentary shoot, I was sound operator. This was a role I had previously not attempted before, so I was nervous about how I would go. It all seemed pretty straightforward until the cables from the mixer to the boom mic started continuously buzzing and being temperamental. Every time I slightly moved the boom pole or held it at a different angle, it would start humming until you tweaked the cable to exactly the right position. The mixer also had a heart attack mid-morning when we had to replace the batteries. It started distorting majorly and I blasted poor Nicole when she had her headphones on a few times, probably making her partially deaf. A flying visit to the petrol station to replace the batteries and the sound seemed to be on the up and up, minus the cable situation which I just had to be constantly aware of. By the end of the day, after a mild panic attack on my part that the sound was screwed, I actually felt quite confident with operating sound and knew how to manoeuvre the boom pole when it was playing up. I still had no idea how it was going to turn out, so I was very relieved on Thursday when we finally watched the rushes and it sounds ok! Yay! Very happy with that considering how much trouble it caused, and how much time we wasted fixing it, especially in the morning. The shoot itself overall was good though, a good day to ease everyone into the craziness of the next two and the actors to get more of a feel for their characters. The actors were great, we’ve been so lucky in regards to casting, I feel like we got the characters spot on. We wrapped really early as well, so that was good!

Day 2- Silent Western

Our second shoot day was film day, Nicole’s Silent Western. My role for the day was camera operator. I wasn’t entirely comfortable with operating the Arri, and I still have no idea how it all went. I felt ok with it by the end of the day, but we still haven’t seen the footage! Corrie was a really great camera assist, helping me out heaps with the dolly shots and also helped with the lighting. In terms of the shoot, this was an entirely different day, as we weren’t working with sound, so it posed a different challenge to Nicole to have to work on blocking, movement and facial expressions of the actors instead of dialogue to tell the story. I think she did a good job, even though she probably doesn’t! There were challenges put in front of her that weren’t her fault, namely involving a key prop being missing which caused some creative problem solving and something that I think she handled really well. The actors were great yet again, their costumes looked awesome and I think they really got into the western theme and had fun with it. It was the first day that we’d had the whole cast together at the one time, and they got on really well, like they’d known each other for years. While we were setting up for the next scene, they would be outside in the sun chatting away together and laughing like old friends, it was great that they seemed to be enjoying themselves, and put us at ease as well.

Day 3- Soap Opera

Day 3, the Soap Opera, this was my scene, and my turn to be director! I woke up with a sense of dread about the day and how I was supposed to pull this off. I was up late finishing off shot lists and schedules and up early as well which wasn’t a great start. I was so nervous that morning and had a mild panic attack, which was eased when our great crew and cast arrived and I calmed down a bit. The sound problem was stressing me as well, but I knew that I could trust Skye and Nicole to work together and sort it out as well as they could while I took Rhyannon and Mark away to rehearse the first scene of the day. In terms of sound, it would have been great if the mixer and DSR could have just got along, but the sound we have is SO much better than I was expecting. I was really dreading watching the tape back as I didn’t want to know what kind of sound we ended up with. At the end of the day, it isn’t ideal, but it is definitely workable, and Nicole did an really awesome job of making sure she got good sound takes of everything she could, asking for specific sound takes if she needed them, and working really hard to get good sound. I was so focused on the vision side of things, lighting, framing, camera, and of course working with the actors, that I kind of lost track of the sound was going.

In terms of lighting, Skye and Darwin did an awesome job. Lighting a dining table in the middle of the day and making it look like night time isn’t easy and they both worked really hard to make it look as good as possible. It was made even harder because we had so many different camera set-ups and angles at the dining table, and the lights had to be moved around each time, but still had to look consistent. Darwin was also good as our camera assistant, (and I’m giving him gaffer credit too cos I like the lighting! haha!), but as a director’s assistant he was really good to talk to when I wasn’t sure about a shot or lighting or anything, and needed a second opinion, and making me laugh when I was getting stressed!

Skye also did an excellent job as camera operator, her first time, and she did great! I gave her a complicated first shot with pans, tilts and tricky frames that I came up with on the spot after seeing something she did accidentally while practicing, and she handled it really well. By the end of the day, she was camera operating with a lot more confidence. We also had a camera crisis in the morning after Skye inspected the camera and found what looked like several specks of sand in the camera. Skye brought the camera into my bedroom at about 7am and woke me up by shoving the camera in my face and saying “hey, does this look like sand to you?” Omg, I was already freaking out about the day, but sand in the camera, what the?? I came up with a very technical apparatus that involved sticking some tape on the end of a straw to pick up the specks we could see inside the camera. Thankfully, after watching the tape, it looks all good. Very happy that Skye checked inside the camera that morning though, cos in the panic I was in, I would have never thought to look in there, especially not for specks of sand!

Yet again, the actors were fantastic! They were so much fun, friendly and easy to work with, and made me so much more relaxed, especially as a first-time director. They arrived totally prepared and ready to go, and their performances were spot on. After lunch, I came inside to get the actors together to rehearse the dinner table scene while the others worked on the lighting. I walked into the dining room to find them all sitting around the table running through the whole scene from start to finish word for word! I sat down at the table and just listened in, it was a really cool experience to sit there and watch the actors perform a scene I’d written. I had hardly any directions to give them, as they were all so good, and had such a good handle on their characters. We filmed the dinner table scene from many different angles and the actors we’re all so professional and dedicated to getting it right. It was a fun shoot, and I was surprised to find that I actually enjoyed directing! Once I got into it, I liked being in control of the scene, making more creative decisions, and working with the actors, instead of having a purely technical role. It was a really good experience, made much easier by our fantastic cast and crew!

Speaking of crew, they definitely deserve a BIG thank you! Everyone did an awesome job, and worked really hard. So thanks heaps to Laura, Corrie, Darwin, Jessica C, Valerie and Janice!

Laura in particular was a great First AD on all our shoot days, keeping everything on track as each day we went more and more insane. Especially on the Sunday, when I was freaking out about directing, I was running about of time to get everything organised, the actors were due to arrive any minute, and I had to drive to the station to pick up our crew members. Even though she probably didn’t want to, Laura went and did it for me, five seconds after she’d walked in the door that morning! Thanks Laura! Jessica C did a fantastic job on production design, styling the set, making our prop pasta meals and making everything look realistic!

So after watching back the footage, now comes the next challenge, editing! In the initial stages of post-production, we’ll all be editing our own scene, and then bringing them together later on and finishing it off as a team. For me, I have a lot of work to do in terms of audio post, syncing up alternate dialogue takes if the sound quality isn’t as good, so that’s going to be a challenge and a half, as well as cutting between the heap of angles we took of the dinner table scene. This film is a huge learning experience, so I’m looking forward to learning more about this stage of production. One of the best things about the shoot is that every day I did something I’ve never done before and by the end of the day, I felt much better about it. I’ve now tried Sound, operated a film camera and been a Director, which I’m really happy about. I now have a heap of new skills that I wouldn’t have had if I had have decided to stick with what I’ve done before and produced. I’m pretty certain at this stage that I want to be a producer, so I decided why not use this as a chance to try something new before we graduate!

Industries Day

I was initially part of the publicity team, but found out it wasn’t for me, and joined the design team. As Skye mentioned, when we joined the group for the second meeting, the basic design for the poster was already pretty much decided on and underway. That was fine though, I like the idea and I haven’t come up with a better one to show the group myself as yet anyway. So, I think at this stage my major contribution for the subject will be for the Showcase rather than the Industries Day, as I think there is more that I can do for that day, and more opportunities to get involved.

Back to the Industries Day though, during Friday’s seminar in the design team, we divided up what roles we wanted to work on into 4 sub-groups: poster, program/flyer, website and indoor design. I decided to join the program/flyer group as this is one of the reasons I wanted to get involved in the design group, to help work on the program and promotional flyers. I will be working with Ana, Jess C and Skye to help bring this together, so I am looking forward to taking on a larger role in this part of the design process. I would like to be involved writing up the information that will go on the programs, like once the speakers are confirmed, a short blurb about what they do and their previous work, etc. As the four groups are so closely related, there is a lot of overlap between them, so I’m not sure if our group actually does this, but if we do, I’d like to be involved with it! If not, I would like to help take the written information, logos, etc and work out aesthetically where everything should be placed on the page, and help work out how the programs should be designed.

Media Showcase

Also in last Friday’s seminar, we separated ourselves into three groups for the end-of-year Showcase: Curatorial, Publicity and Technical/Design/Yearbook.

I decided to join the Technical/Design/Yearbook group, as this group had the most roles that sounded appealing to me. I want to get involved with more technical jobs for the Showcase because for the Industries Day, I’m in the design group which isn’t really that technical in terms of learning new skills or how to use equipment. The Showcase will give me another chance to learn some new things before we graduate.

Paul went through the roles needed to be filled, and he mentioned that we will be having a Power Point presentation that will be shown at the end of the night during the awards presentation that displays the logos for the sponsors who have donated prizes, and the prize winner’s name which is added in by the staff just before the night. I asked Paul whether I could work on that, and he said I could, so that will be one of my contributions to the night.

As I’ve used Power Point many times before, this won’t give me that much of a chance to learn new technical skills, so as well as this, I would also like to assist Paul and the technical group with any other jobs they need help with, like setting up computers and technical equipment on the night, or jobs that need to be done in preparation for the night.

So, it’s that time already, time for another snapshot!

A lot has happened since the last one. For one thing, the genre I’m working on for the first scene has now changed, which is pretty big. I was previously doing a sitcom as being a genre I was very familiar with I thought it would be something that I would be really interested in replicating, or trying to. What I discovered in the process of writing a script and trying to come up with an aesthetic for the scene that creating a sitcom would be much harder than I originally thought.

I think it was last Wednesday that Skye, Nicole and I had a meeting about where the script should go. Among other things, we talked about whether or not I should change my genre which after a long discussion ended in me having a mild nervous breakdown and feeling like my whole scene needed to be rewritten, that I was a hopeless writer and that I should do something completely different with my life next year. Yeah, I’m only a little bit dramatic.

Anyway, during one of the songs on Anger Management in the Syn Studios that afternoon with Nicole, I picked up a Herald Sun that someone left and started reading the Guide. There was an article in it written by Darren Devlyn called ‘No Laughing Matter’ which was really relevant to our project, and it really made me think. It was about how hard it is to create a successful sitcom not only here in Australia, but also in America. It looks to us like so many of them in the US are successful, but we just don’t get to see the ones that fail. These successful sitcoms like ‘Friends’, ‘Everybody Loves Raymond’, and here in Australia ‘Kath and Kim’ need years and years of planning, research and pre-production time in order to work. The time we have isn’t long enough and I’m not prepared to risk it and make something that I end up not being happy with. Looking back now, I really think that seeing the article on the same day we had that meeting was a sign that I needed to change my approach.

In a meeting with Skye and Nicole, Christine suggested that the Soap Opera is in itself a situation comedy, the difference is it doesn’t set out to be funny. The girls then suggested to me that I write a soap opera version of the script and see which version works better. I did this by adapting what I already had, taking out some dialogue, and making the drama more over-the-top by introducing some soap opera conventions like lingering stares into the distance and secret scheming. The sitcom script I originally had wasn’t really so much sitcom anyway, it was more straight drama with some jokes thrown in. I’ve now modified it to make the action much more dramatic to better suit the next two scenes. So after much though, I’m now doing a Soap Opera instead. In terms of inspiration, at the moment I’m thinking some sort of hybrid between the American soaps (Days of Our Lives, Bold and the Beautiful) and the Australian Soaps (Home and Away, Neighbours), as I think the lighting style and aesthetics of the American soaps could work quite well, but combined with the Australian accents of our actors. I’m not exactly sure how I see it yet, I’m still trying to sort it all out in my head, but I do see it! That’s the main thing cos last week I couldn’t. On Monday I met with Christine to show her my revised version of Scene 1, and I walked away from it feeling a lot more positive about it’s progress.

In terms of casting, we have a Kate, a Charlie and a Sandra, but are still on the hunt for an all-important Barry. Nicole has put out another Barry-specific casting call and I’ve been contacting some local theatre companies asking if they know anyone suitable for the role. One of those companies put us in touch with an actor who looks the part, and that we’re auditioning on Wednesday so here’s hoping we’ll have our Barry very soon! Or else there could be another mild nervous breakdown on the cards. Well let’s face it, there probably will be one of those in the near future anyway.

Location, Location, Location. Another stressful task. We’ve had a few potential leads, but unfortunately none have worked out so far. Tomorrow, Skye, Nicole and I are putting our ‘professional student film maker’ hats on to go and see some serviced apartments in the hope that we could shoot in one of those. It’s probably going to be an expensive option, but it does have it’s positive points and at this stage we don’t have a huge amount of potential houses to choose from. So, hopefully we’ll have a location sorted out very shortly.

So at this stage of the project, Week 5 of Semester 2, things are slowly coming together. We’ve had many script re-writes, several genre changes, plenty of discussions and heaps of auditions. We’ve still got to lock-down the script, find a Barry and a location and then get the storyboards and creative planning finalised. We each have a structure of our scene in our heads and an idea of how it will look, so hopefully it’s just a matter of clarifying that and getting it on paper so other people can see it too. Lucky for us, the film is divided into three so each of us only need to do one third of the storyboarding which will hopefully allow us to get that aspect done a lot quicker if we’re all working on it separately.

Our shoot dates are the 7th, 8th and 9th of September, which is really close and something I don’t really like to think about considering all that needs to be done in between here and then. Having said that, I can’t wait to get the shoot over with, editing done and finish! We’ve been working on this concept all year and now I can’t wait to get it done and hopefully end up with something we can be proud of.

It’s only week 2 and already we’re moving full steam ahead. We had a really good response from actors wanting to audition, a lot more than we had last year. So many that it is making the process that bit harder since we have to narrow so many applicants down to 5 characters. Yesterday during an audition break, the three of us made an executive decision to cut out on of our characters, the Grandma. She was initially a major part of the story, but as the script progressed, her character seemed less and less relevant. As we haven’t had as high demand from actors for her part, we’ve decided to take out her character. We decided instead to add in another character in the Western scene where the Grandma had the most involvement, and we have an actor in mind already, which makes casting easier.

For me personally, a highlight of the process so far has been having our actors audition with the scene from the script that I wrote. It’s such a weird experience seeing the way other people interpret your work and the different emphasis they give to lines you didn’t give emphasis to, or vice versa. When I was writing it, I had an idea in my head of how I wanted the scene to look, and how it should play out. Some of the actors have shown different ways to play the character, and some have portrayed the character exactly as I envisioned which is also cool to see a character on paper be reflected back to you.

Also, some of the actors have commented on how they like the script, maybe to make us feel good about them, but I’m still taking it as a complement! It’s really made me realise how much I like script-writing, and how I’d like to do more of it. With script-writing, the part I like the most is creating dialogue and thinking about a character’s personality, what they might say, how they act.

I already knew this at the start of the year, but my main interests are really in script-writing and producing, they are the areas I want to move into in the future. This time around I’m also taking on the role of director, which I wanted to do as a way to build my skills, and extend myself. I know that I want to move into producing and writing, but I figured this was a good chance to be able to experience directing, and since it’s only one segment out of three, the job doesn’t seem as daunting as being a director of a whole film when I’ve never done it before. As part of the auditions, I’ve been the director, as it is the sitcom scene that the actors are auditioning with, and also because I haven’t had any real directing experience. I’ve found this experience to be really challenging, as it isn’t something I’m used to, and it’s a real skill to be able to effectively communicate with actors and to get the performance out of them that you are looking for. One of my goals I set for myself earlier in the year was to get some directing experience, and to be more confident as a director, so I’m still working on that. I find it hard to do, but hopefully I’m getting better at it, and it is definitely good experience for me to prepare for the shoot.

Nicole: “Isn’t his name K-Fed because he used to work for Fed-Ex???”