PLAY RECORDING
For this task I am separating my research and my work into the sections: Pre-Production, Production and Post Production.
PRE-PRODUCTION RESEARCH
Press the button below to see my Pre-Production blog.
PRODUCTION
After doing all tests and experiments we felt were necessary, we finally moved on to recording the real thing!
In my opinion, production actually went pretty well and much better than I anticipated, especially considering this was most of the group's first try at anything like this on both the media production and acting department sides! There were obviously many areas we could have improved on and had more knowledge on, however I think we were able to work pretty well with the acting department despite all of the obstacles and challenges we had to face.
Below are some photos taken during the production process.
In the photo above, I was up in a room where you can put on a headset and listen to the microphones that we had given the acting students, we can also see what the cameras are recording down in the studio on the screen to see if everything is going smoothly and check everything is working okay.
Below, you will find some of my favourite shots we got of the performance during production. I was so happy that they turned out as good as they did.
POST PRODUCTION
Even with the errors made and obstacles faced during production, we were able to salvage and improve these mistakes and mishaps during post production. With things such as editing and cutting, the adding of sound effects, the adjusting of audio levels etc. we were able to create something great. With all of the work done in post production I feel that the result is substantial and you can really tell how much we have learnt throughout the course of this task and how much effort has been put in all around.
Even with the mistakes we made and the parts we weren’t able to salvage quite as well as we would have liked, we can still definitely say that we have learned from these mistakes and next time we will be able to do even better with all of this newfound knowledge and experience.
EDITING PROCESS
Below you can see examples of the before and after of my editing. You can see how much was changed, cut and included.
Before.
Above you can see all of the uncut and unedited audio and video, the only thing I had done at this point in the editing process was synchronise the clips to the audio so I am ready to start editing.
After.
As you can see in the 'After' photo above, compared to the 'Before' photo, they look very different. You can see that I had to do a lot of cuts and shot changes to work around any shots that didn't look good enough quality or weren't at the correct angle etc.
Another reason why I decided to make a lot of cuts so the shots change regularly was because this is something that felt like a common theme when it came to looking at play recording examples within my research. The shots tend to change regularly especially when there is a lot of movement in a scene because otherwise the production can feel static and boring. With shots changing constantly, there is always something new for an audience to focus on and look at, it immediately makes it more interesting.
You can also see that around the beginning, middle and the end there is text added (the pink clips) to both introduce and separate the different acts. I also included the title at the beginning and some text at the end to say thank you for watching.
Font Experiments.
On the left, you can see my font experiments.
I knew that I wanted to use white text on a black background to ensure that it stands out and is visible against the dark background.
I also wanted something simple and bold for this same reason.
The font at the bottom is the one I eventually chose as I felt that it would be the easiest to read and clash the least with the backgrounds. The font is also modern enough to fit in with the target audience.
FINAL OUTCOME & EVALUATION
I think the post production work on the play recording was one of it's strongest points. I was able to combine the shots in a way that made for a visually striking and captivating experience for the viewer. I purposefully changed between cameras to keep the audience interested and give the production a polished appearance. Something in this visual sense though, that I forgot to do in post production before I ran out of time was the final touches with colour grading. I believe that if I had done colour grading and touched up how the shots look the play recording would look even more visually appealing and I would be much more happy and proud of the result. Because of this conclusion, I think that next time I come to edit something like this I will definitely try and prioritise some of my time towards colour grading.
Something else I think could have been improved on as a whole, with both our creative media department and the acting department an in all parts of production was the sound and the audio. While in many parts of the play, the audio was fine there were many parts which didn't sound as clear or as good quality as we would have hoped and this was because of many reasons - some of it could be fixed in the post-production process - however the main reason was because some of the acting students had accidentally turned off their microphones and their voices were not loud or clear enough to salvage in post production. The way I think we could avoid this mistake in future would be to do more tests throughout the play. If we had gotten the time, maybe between acts we could have tested the microphones as well as at the beginning before recording. Another thing we could have done is use the boom mics as well as the lavalier mics however we would just have to make sure in this case that the boom mics stay out of shot and that there is somebody willing to hold and move the mic accordingly. In addition to this though, on my part I think I could have also allocated more time to getting the audio right within the post production process as I wasn’t able to do as well as I would have liked editing the audio due to running out of time. If I were to do something like this again I think I would definitely be able to learn from these mistakes and do better.
Something in many cases I think was a really strong point was the pre production research and testing. It all helped us and the actors a great deal to communicate and meet for chats or for watching rehearsals and testing equipment. Something that went particularly great because of our work pre production were the angles of the cameras.
As one of the people who helped position the three cameras, I feel as if they were positioned in the correct spots appropriate to the actor's blocking on stage. The way we did this was we watched some rehearsals of the play before creating the final recording which was definitely extremely useful to us and we placed the cameras according to what we saw within the rehearsals.
Something that I think could have been improved with the filming element of production was that some of the movement of the cameras was a bit shaky and sometimes shots became blurred. An example of this could be that while I was editing I noticed that there were some shots of the cliff scene that could have been really effective however the cameras had blurred so the shots were unusable - something positive did come out of it though, in a sense that I was able to find a way to work around it and overcome the obstacle within post production which is always good practice. It was good to face the challenges. Maybe some more practice with the video cameras could be a good idea for us before using them again so we know how we can quicker fix an issue like this.
If I did the production part of this project again, I feel as if I would be more confident filming and getting the correct shots. I think overall I'd have preferred to be downstairs in the room where the production was going on and recording instead of up in the sound/camera room checking things. I think that because choosing the correct shots was a strong point for me during post production, I would love to try doing this in production while filming. I think I could have been really good at it.