Bath Film Office - Work Experience

So it turns out that I (with the help of my lecturer Leslie) found some work experience at the bath film office. They specialize in helping people organize their films and help with locations. They help with anything from suggesting possible locations to helping you block of entire roads for filming. Their service has no fee for small budget films but large-scale productions do quite often leave donations. I will be shadowing and seeing exactly what this job entails. I am very keen about this as it will be my first hand experience in the industry and a very important role in it too!

Work Experience

As part of another of our modules we are to get experience within the industry. Within this I will hopefully gain some valuable experience that I can use to further myself. I am quite exited by this, as the possibilities are endless. I will have to start by emailing companies and asking if there would be any chance of getting experience with them.
I’m quite reluctant and feel awkward contacting complete strangers asking for some experience but think I will just need to get over this; after all they had to start somewhere too!

What the students thought of the day

We took handed out some questionairres at the end of the day so that we could have a better idea of how the students felt it went.

Strongly agree Agree Disagree Strongly disagree
Organised 12 16 1 0
Suitable for interests 10 18 1 0
Informative 12 16 0 0
Enjoyed myself 11 18 0 0
Would consider a 11 17 1 0
job in the industry

Event Planning - Last meeting!

We had our last meeting before the event and final decisions were made about the day. Balve and I are to brief the CRB checked ambassadors at the beginning of the day on what would be happening throughout the day and where they would be needed. It will also be our job to act as the welcoming committee. We would meet the students at the bus stop and direct them to the Italian gardens for an icebreaker, which I am to research. After this we would act as ushers, taking the two divided groups to the different rooms and guide them back after the first hour session finished; so that they could switch to the opposite room.

Another decision was made to scrap the vision mixer and go with a software mixer that Chris had found over Easter. This took away my talk so I am to do a small talk on what chromakey is and where it is generally found.

We also had a look at Jake’s invitation, which we had made, suggested improvements and sent it off to the college.

Event Planning - Practise Run-through!

So today we had the practise session with our technical demonstrator. In this we created the entire setup from scratch, as we would have it on the day. We started off by setting up the screen and lighting. We used three-point lighting to light the screen and had to make sure they were set up so that there were no shadows on the screen. Any shadows would be a darker shade of green and therefore would not chromakey well.



We eventually got the entire set up working and the technician taught me the ins and outs of the vision mixer. It was relatively easy to work out and had simple input and output selections. The image from the laptop would run through the input side and then you would select chromakey and use the lever to adjust the colour range. The colour range was to be adjusted so that you get the same shade of green as the screen and don’t get any unwanted effects.

Event Planning - Third Meeting!

As spoken about before we had decided to act out a mock news or weather item in front of a green screen. This would enable the students to have a hands-on experience on the day. We thought that this could also be quite entertaining for them as they would be able to play with the real live setup and act out to a script that we would pre-prepare. We were also delegated different roles within this area such as lighting, sound, camera and the vision mixer. Each one of us in charge of a section would explain about it and then again on a one-on-one basis when the students would be running the show. I was put in charge of the vision mixer so my role would be to learn about it, how to use it, what its used for and be able to explain it to the students.

I will be learning about the vision mixer in the mock setup we also organised where the technical demonstrator would be running us through each piece of equipment and we would make sure that we knew how to run the show.

Event Planning - Second Meeting!

After our second meeting we were all left pretty exited and ready for more. We thought that in the first room we would have a talk with the students about the media industry, what various jobs would be like and the different routes in. we thought that this would be a good idea as we would be showing them the starting jobs rather than irrelevant high up ones. This would also give them a better idea of the entry-level jobs that they would be starting in after education. We would do this by having videos of various jobs, which we will be making during our work experience as well as presentations about them.
In the second room we had previously decided to have a more practical approach to the session. We brainstormed through a LOT of ideas that we could do and finally thought we would try some sort of industry setup, which we could have the students interacting with.
So we finally came up with the idea of a chromakey setup where the students would be able to participate in the production of a news or weather item.

Event Planning - First Meeting!

So today we had our first brainstorming session within class, we decided on various things such as what we wanted to do on the day of the event. We didn’t make any final decisions on what we were going to do; rather a general idea of what we wanted to happen and delegated some of the roles. We all agreed that as one of the more organised in our group Ved should take on the role of organiser. He is going to be giving us various roles and making the decisions on things that need to be finalised. We all agreed that this would be a good idea because being human; we would obviously disagree on different things.
We also thought that we would have a practical part of the day where the students would be able to get hands on with the equipment. Although not having any final decisions on what this would be we thought it would make the day more interesting; rather than boring them with slide shows and talks.

Introduction to the Event!

So as one of our modules on the course we are to hold an event for a class of students coming from Bath College. We’re going to be marked on how smoothly the event runs; as well as the planning of it.
We are all quite eager to start having brainstorming sessions and get the ideas flowing. Although we don’t really have any ideas of what to do at the moment I’m sure that we will kick up some thrilling ideas in our first meeting next week.

Vodka Revolution (Finished Shooting!) - Work Experience

So today I finished my first two days filming at Vodka Revolution. On the Saturday I filmed the cutaways of the bar, as I wanted some of an extremely busy Saturday night. I wasn’t able to use a tripod for this as it was way too busy and would have constantly been in the way of drunk revelers! My lecturer Leslie’s son James came to join me through the evening too as he works in the industry and offered some valuable pointers – as well as checking on me! I got all the shots that I needed although I underestimated what time it would actually get busy and had to wait around for a little while until it got busy.
Today I shot the cocktail part of the video, where I got a fellow employee there to walk through the creation of one of the favorite cocktails. This part is also going to double up as my advanced audio project and I recorded lots of good sounds such as drink sloshing around in the glass! I also got a lot of cutaways such as close-ups of the glass, pouring and different techniques used in the process.
I really enjoyed shooting this and am exited to get on with the editing process – I will keep you posted!

Bath Film Office - Work Experience

The work experience at the Bath Film Office has fallen through, so instead Mike, Ved and I will be creating a short documentary about it and exactly what it does. In this documentary we hope to show students like us exactly how you would go about contacting them and how they would help you. This film is also going to be shown during the event that we are organizing. This would benefit the students we are showing it to by showing them exactly how the office can and will help them – as we know ourselves we knew nothing about it before this!

Vodka Revolution Promotional Video

As a part time job when I’m not at university, I work as a barman in Vodka Revolution. I was talking to my manager Rich about the fact that I was looking for work experience and that I needed as much as I can get. As the bar had only just recently gone under a huge refurbishment he was quite keen on the idea of a promotional video that could be posted on their TV’s inside the bar, Facebook pages and Youtube account. We threw around some ideas and thought that a video like this would benefit the both of us; him getting free promotion material for the bar and I would be gaining incredibly valuable experience.


An example of what is played on the TV's behind the bar.

Work Experience - Bath Film Office

So it turns out that I (with the help of my lecturer Leslie) found some work experience at the bath film office. They specialize in helping people organize their films and help with locations. They help with anything from suggesting possible locations to helping you block of entire roads for filming. Their service has no fee for small budget films but large-scale productions do quite often leave donations. I will be shadowing and seeing exactly what this job entails. I am very keen about this as it will be my first hand experience in the industry and a very important role in it too!

Work Experience

As part of another of our modules we are to get experience within the industry. Within this I will hopefully gain some valuable experience that I can use to further myself. I am quite exited by this, as the possibilities are endless. I will have to start by emailing companies and asking if there would be any chance of getting experience with them.
I’m quite reluctant and feel awkward contacting complete strangers asking for some experience but think I will just need to get over this - after all they had to start somewhere too!