News Shooting Exercise

We started on the group News Shooting exercise a while back but I only got my final edit completed recently, so now seems like a good time to post about it.

In interviews there were a couple of points we talked about before filming:

B-Roll:

B-roll refers to narratively coherent sequences which are useful for telling stories visually as well as breaking up the to monotony of interview footage.  This helps to draw in the viewer.

Eyelines:
Another tip for Interviews was to do with the subjects eyeline, which should be near to but not directly towards to camera.  Positioning your Interviewer near to the camera is one way you can achieve this.

3-4 Sec Rule:
The 3-4 second rule is about shooting economy.  Shooting Economy is the ratio between the amount of footage shot and actually used in the edit.  When editing B-roll together it is likely that you will only use 4-5 seconds at the most.  This means you can move through B-roll shooting quickly as you only need to roll on a few seconds. 

It's important to have shooting discipline and to know in your own mind what you are shooting.


My Interview:

When I filmed my interview I decided to go for a 3-point lighting setup.  I didn't want flat lighting in my interior interview, and I am quite happy with the look of the lighting.  Unfortunately when I came to editing my footage it was really, really grainy- which I hadn't noticed at the time of filming.  (it looks nice while it's small!)  I'm not sure why it happened, but I wonder if I just didn't have enough light in the scene.

Grainy footage mishap.

Things looked better in my B-roll sequence and I didn't end up with as much grain.  I really like the lighting in both shots despite the issues..

B-Roll

In my B-Roll sequence there were other problems though and things I would do differently now that I have a bit much knowledge.   I would definitely think a bit more about the composition of the shot above. I'd also want to frame out the wires in the and deal with the reflection off the Mac in the back.

I was pretty nervous filming this as it was the first time I was using the camera for a sequence as opposed to just for exercises to compare the different settings, and I found myself a bit daunted by also the different things to think about.

Editing