17/02/17
We began the filming of the Ufilms Oscars Rundown with a group intro. We filmed this on the Thursday before our first official shooting week (beginning on the 20th). This shoot consisted of the entire group being on camera to welcome the audience and prepare them for the episodes in the coming weeks.
Danniella, Kane and I were the main presenters for this piece. Our presentation was to speak about the upcoming Academy Awards and inform the audience that would be uploading videos. We had little preparation for this and had to quickly plan our script beforehand. While we spoke, the rest of the group gathered behind us and once everyone was in the shot, we all looked at a separate, higher camera and announced "The Ufilms Oscars Rundown".
The camera set up was one camera on a track in the centre which pulled back as we walked towards it and then we had a stationary camera held up high on the crane to get a wide shot of everyone on the set. This was used for our big final shot. The lighting we used was natural room lighting with a simple 2 light set up either side of the set to create a more professional look.
20/02/17
Today the first episode of The Ufilms Oscars Rundown was filmed. Rhys & Adam began the week with their old fashioned style episode about the history of the Academy Awards. For this shoot I was a camera operator for one of the cutaway shots/close ups. I also was in charge of the teleprompter which we put on the big screen prompt Adam & Rhys. While I wasn't Director of Photography therefore not in charge of all the cameras I still made an effort to check my shots white balance, gain etc. looked the same as the others and made suggestions on how things could be shot every now and then. However I made sure I wasn't trying to take charge of the shoot and left that to the actual DoP. Rhys and Adam did a great job in the presentation and they were very comedic which was their aim from the beginning. The shoot was fairly quick and easy.
The next shoot we did on this day was for Matthew & Danniella's Fashion episode. For this shoot I was mostly in charge of camera. I made sure each shot was framed correctly and all the settings were the same for each camera. I kept an eye on things such as making sure the boom mic didn't fall into shot. This was another successful shoot with very few issues. Danniella & Matthew worked incredibly well together and even entertained me when talking about fashion, which is difficult to do.
Finally, we shot Chloe's 'Iconic Oscar Moments' which was another straight forward shoot. This was the first solo presentation and Chloe did a great job of it. I was camera operator once again and was continuing the same responsibilities form previous shoots. There were a lot of takes filmed on this shoot due to getting lines wrong however this was just a case of remembering the lines and not a problem with Chloe presentation. Chloe's 'moments' were cut up into different scenes and were to be filmed separately. This meant there was a lot of stopping and starting which each camera operator needed to make sure they were filming at the right times. Once again, very few issues and another easy shoot to be done.
21/02/17
My first involvement in a shoot on this day was for Taylor & Ben's Music episode. The pair presented well together but this episode relied heavily on using the script which took a lot of getting used to before they got it right. I was, once again, camera operator, this time on the master shot. I followed the same responsibilities as usual, making sure the shot was perfect and keeping my eye out for anything being in shot which shouldn't be i.e. the boom mic. There were very few technical issues on this shoot and it was very easily completed.
Next I was involved in filming Matthew & Danniella's 2nd Fashion episode. This time the pair were presenting which Jess got her Make-Up done by a Make-Up student from the college, Callum. This shoot required an extra camera added to the usual 3 camera set up we'd been using and created a 4 camera set up. I was made camera operator on the newly added camera which covered Callum's close up. The reason for the extra camera is due to Callum's height, he is very tall and one camera wouldn't cover both him and Jess in the same way one camera was covered both Matthew & Danniella. Instead two separate close ups of Jess and Callum were used.
This was the first shoot we used 3 point lighting. Before this we had though we only had 2 working but we were able to get another. Before filming we had to find out a good placement as we had no obvious place to put it. I suggested having it point down from above the black backdrop we were using. I extended to light as far as it would go and had it lean over the backdrop and it worked as perfect back lighting for everyone in the shot while also being completely off camera. I also made sure the light did not actually touch the backdrop and left a large gap as lights heat up quickly and that would have been dangerous.
23/02/17
This was my first day of presenting my own episode of The Ufilms Oscars Rundown alongside my co-host Kane. This was the last episode of the week and the last instalment before the Oscars on the Sunday. Since we had a little extra time compared to a lot of people, I decided to make graphics which we could display on the TV and refer to when speaking on certain subjects. These graphics were to visualise the Award Category we were speaking about had the the Award title and the poster for each film nominated. This definitely added to the episode as it added something more interesting to look at for the audience, especially since the full episode was Kane & I sat across from each other simply talking.
The camera set-up for this shoot was different to other episodes which had been filmed so far. In this shoot Kane & I mostly spoke to each other rather than speak to camera so we had to set up the cameras to film a conversation. This meant we had a camera in the centre which filmed a wide shot (which was also our master shot) and then two cameras either side of the set which got mid shots of both me and Kane.
The lighting on this shoot was a 3 point lighting set up. Unfortunately, we had the three lights set up in the right positions but our back light broke just before our shoot. We had to improvise with the lighting and decided we would keep the fill & key light and instead use one of the rooms normal lights as a sort of back light substitute to help us stand out from the background. This wasn't ideal but it was all we had to work with.
The filming went on for a lot longer than we'd planned. Kane and I had decided to go unscripted to get a more natural presentation, simply using notes to prompt the conversation further. While we did achieve the presentation style we were aiming for, the shoot went on for over an hour with a huge amount of footage that, in the end, needed to be cut. Other than the lighting and timing issues, everything else on the shoot went great and we were able to present an episode we were happy with.
I did the floor/camera/lighting plan for this episode:
As we planned to use the TV in our episode, so we could have graphics to refer to and help our presentation, I had to design the graphics we would use. This took some time but we were able to do more with our presentation by including this. I gathered the posters for all the films in each category and made a slide show with a slide for each award.
24/02/17
On this day we continued to edit the predictions episode which we planned on uploading on Saturday 25th. Due to the large amount of footage we gathered, the edit took far longer than expected. We edited for 5 hours and were only able to achieve about 3/4 of the final product. We were unable to complete the edit in time and would need to continue the next day, having a last minute editing session before uploading it, hopefully, on the Saturday.
25/02/17
Today Kane & I managed to find a slot where we could complete the edit. Unfortunately we had many issues during this time with editing and were unable to complete the edit in time to upload it the same day. Instead we scheduled the upload for Sunday 26th which still worked as a pre-oscars episode.
WEEK 2:
27/02/17
This week, Kane & I started the week with out follow up video to our predictions, 'Our 2017 Oscars Reactions'. This filming was significantly different to our first shoot. While the camera and lighting situation stayed exactly the same, we were conscious that we needed to take less time filming due to issues with last weeks video. We also had almost no time to prepare and we were very on the spot in our presentation as we were reacting only 4 hours after the Oscars had ended. We had printed off the winners of each award and I had stayed up to watch the entire Academy Awards so I was able to offer a more in depth view on what had happened.
Thankfully, a lot had happened on the night of the Oscars, including a huge mix up on the announcement of the final award, which made a great talking point for Kane and I to have. We managed to cut filming down by a huge chunk of time compare to last weeks shoot, with this shoot taking only half an hour. We also got the entire thing in one take meaning we had a lot less work on the edit and we would be able to upload the video on the same day of filming.
We also came up with a last minute skit to open the episode based on the Best Picture mix up from the Oscars. For this we had Kane announce the wrong co-host and awkward ask me to come on instead afterwards. We thought this was a very funny and somewhat clever joke for anyone who had heard about the mix up.
We had a lot of sound issues on this shoot which was unfortunate as it went successfully in every other aspect. We used the tie mics to get a better, clearer sound quality for both of us however when editing we noticed that throughout the footage Kane's mic spikes and crackles making the sound almost impossible to listen to. Luckily we used a boom mic as back up which we ended up using for the majority of the episode. However, near the end to boom mic begins to make a scratch-like sound which we couldn't use. This meant out only choice was to use the tie mics and cut around the spiking/crackling. Other than the sound issues, the episode was a good quality instalment to the Ufilms Oscars Rundown series.
28/02/17
The first shoot of the second week was Adam & Rhys' episode. In this episode they parodied Wayne's World while talking about the details of the Oscars after parties. This was once again a very funny, comedic piece and they were much more natural than their first episode the week previous.
One huge change we made to our set up was the boom mics. After last weeks sound issues, I discussed possibilities about what could be changed and we had a few different ideas on what could be changed. One that we tried was to use 2 boom mics on either side of the set, both plugged in different channels on a single camera. These boom mics were also attached to mic stands which meant there was no need for a boom operator anymore. The sound was a huge improvement as you could hear both presenters clearly, something we'd struggled with achieving in previous shoots.
The camera set up was similar to their first episode, which was a basic 3 camera set up with a master shot and two close ups.
Next up was Taylor's Music episode, which he decided to follow up on presenting on his own. I was camera operator on the master shot of this. There was a slight issue in white balancing, which I hadn't checked properly, which I usually would have done but instead the shots colour changed slightly half way through which Taylor had to correct in post. Obviously this isn't ideal from a camera operator but this was really the only issue i'd had when operating camera since we began filming the Oscars Rundown.
I also partly directed the shoot as I had to carry in a prop for Taylor in the final scene. Because of this, Jess (the current Director) and I had to swap roles for the final piece of filming. This meant I had to call for cameras to record, call Action and bring the prop on at the right cue. This took only a few takes and the shoot was finished.
01/03/17
This was our last day of filming episodes for The Ufilms Oscars Rundown. We had 2 more episodes to shoot before we had all the episodes ready to upload each day.
We started by filming Chloe's 2nd episode, 'Facts of the 2017 Oscars Winners'. This was a similar set up and filming process as her first episode. Chloe presented on her own, switching between cameras for certain lines. The piece was completely scripted and presented well. Chloe had her script on the table in front of her so it was important to keep it out of shot and not make it obvious she was checking it every now and then. As Chloe was talking to different cameras, the camera operators had to make sure they knew when to record at the correct time and know when Chloe was going to change camera as it was sometimes a reference point for her to know when to cut.
Next up was Jess' episode. This shoot was the first time since beginning The Ufilms Oscars Rundown that I wasn't operating camera (other than when I was presenting). It only took me 8 entire shoots to try a different role, impressive. For this shoot I took on the role of Director as I'd been hoping to try it during filming at some point. I was in charge of making sure all the cameras were recording at the correct times, letting Jess know if she needed to change anything she was doing and calling Action and Cut. I think I did a good job in the role and took control of the shoot well.
02/03/17
Today we filmed out last piece, the outro the the Ufilms Oscars Rundown. This was a piece to let the audience know that we were finished but we would also be uploading in the future. This was not as complicated of a shoot as the intro was. This time we used a single camera and positioned everyone so they were all in frame (except for Adam & Rhys, who kindly offered to keep the backdrop extension held up behind us). We took turns delivering lines and, similarly to the intro, ended with us all speaking in sync. This time it was us saying "Stay tuned" as a group.
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