carousel week 3-Media Production



live editing suite

Actors on set

view from camera

A2- Primary and Secondary Research


This week for our carousel we were in Media and we had to produce an advert for the Bic four colours biro. To start of we were spilt into four different groups to come up with our advert ideas and add in details about lighting, cameras and music we could use. My group came up with an advert about a school's media lesson setting with 4 main characters each wanting the pen for a different reason one for marking; drawing, writing and underlining. Each person would also use a different colour of the pen, either red, blue, black or green and we would have each person have a different method on gaining the pen. One would crawling between the desks and another would distract the someone using it. We then were required to pitch our ideas to the whole group before voting on who's idea was best. The result was a draw and so was decided on the toss of a coin. We ended up producing an advert about people landing on the moon and defeating an alien with the Bic pen!

In addition to this, for our primary research we chose which job role we wanted to do whilst producing our advert. A few of the job roles were Director, Actor/Actresses, camera operators, live editing and sound operators. I decided to choose being a camera operator. I was one of four camera operators and we call had headsets on which allowed us to communicate to each other and Kian, the Director, to talk to us when live filming to give us some instructions in camera movements. This really helped our teamwork as we had to follow the directors direct instructions without arguing or disagreeing as it would disrupt the take causing us to have to reshoot. I really enjoyed working on the cameras as I got to be behind the scenes but also be a big part in the production. I did have a slight problem with focusing my camera at first but I soon found out it was because the focus lens was broken and had to work with the focus it was on.

Our secondary research was that before we did our live shooting, Stefan taught me how to use the camera properly, so how to tilt the camera and lock it in place; how to zoom, and also how to focus. This helped me as I had never used the camera before and so I knew the basics before we started shooting. This then changed into primary research as I put this new knowledge to practise when we shoot the advert.

Some more Secondary research was we had a health and safety talk before we did anything to assure we were safe when using the studio. The hazards we had to be aware of were; cables, we had to watch out for loose cables as we could've easily trip over them and hurt ourselves or easily take down a piece of equipment with us. To reduce the risk we taped down the cables so they stayed on the ground and our feet didn't get caught in them. This was similar with the tripods, some of the lights had sandbags on them so they wouldn't fall but some tripods didn't. We especially had to be careful of the lights on tripods as they could easily burn us due to them being extremely hot, this was equal to the hanging lights, as we could move these lights up and down people had to be aware of where they are as if they hit their head on the metal casing it would injure us as well as the burning hot light. To stop this happening we had to make sure everyone was well informed about where the lights were so they were less likely to hit their heads or burn themselves.

Another piece of Primary and Secondary evidence is from the second day where we were taught from Peter different approaches to editing. Editing is creating a meaning out of two or more images that is not contained within those images themselves. We learnt three different types of editing:

Continuity Editing - This is refereed as 'invisible editing' because an audience should be able to watch the clip without take much notice of the editing put into the clip and the anecdote flows easily. This includes sound bridges being used to connect two scenes together so the audience recognizes as it is part of the scene.

Soviet Montage Editing- This is when two images that don't link in anyway are put in the same shot to create a message, a metaphor. This is called the Kuleshov Effect. The Soviet montage is unique as the narrative is not seen as the most important element during the post production editing.

Classical Montage Editing-This editing style is used to show a large amount of time passing in a small amount of time in the scene. This is usually to show the development of a character.


After learning this and watching examples for each of the different types of editing we were put into groups and we had to edit on of the videos we filmed on induction week and we had to chose either the Soviet Montage or Classical montage to re-edit the film clip. This was primary research as we did all the editing ourselves.







A3-Skills learnt

This week the new skills I have learnt have been learning how to operate one of the main cameras (camera 1) I also improved my teamwork skills as my whole group had to coordinate with everyone so that we all knew the right instructions.

Whilst using the camera I got taught how to use the zoom so I could get the different shots needed for the production. I also improved my accuracy in following someone whilst they are on set. Instead of a person however I had to follow the Bic Pen which was the main object throughout the sequence. I also had a chance tilting the camera and practice getting a smooth movement whilst doing so. I did struggle however with the focus but this was due to the focus lens being broken and so I had to be careful when zooming so that the image doesn't go blurring.


Another skill was I managed to edit some footage from induction week into a soviet montage editing. This was interesting as I had only previously known about continuity editing and so learning about some less popular editing styles was new to me. My group got a rather hard set footage and so we struggled slightly but we managed make a small clip that we changed into black and white and we repeated the scene over throughout the video to make a soviet montage edit.



A4- Processes and Methods

One of the processes that we had was we had to do a live recording of our TV advert. We first set up our setting which was suppose to look like a rocket and so we had the actors wear helmets,


made of cardboard, and we also had the actors wear a white one-suit to make it seem more space themed. We added in coloured lights to make it seem more space themes and we made the room dark to also add the effect of them being in space. Before this however we had to decide on job roles and we got assigned different jobs, I was a camera operator. Before we started we had to wait for the script to be written, the props to be made, the sound effects to be found and the cameras and lights in the correct place and so we all knew what we were doing. Kian, our director was there to make sure everyone knew what they were doing and to make sure we had everything right. After this was all set up and everyone was in position we then started to practise with all the effects and moving cameras a few times before taking around 5 takes before we got the perfect one. I think the production was really creative and fun to take part in but it was bring to begin with as we waited around for everything to be complete such as the script and sound.



A5-Tools used

I didn't use very many tools this week as we were all focused on one particular job. So I only used the camera and the Headset.

I used the camera to capture the shot of the 4 colour Bic pen. My job was to follow the pen around so the live editing team could use the correct shots. We also had headsets so that we could hear the directors instructions for which camera should do what, such as move to a close up or long shot. We could even talk back to the director but we didn't as it would disrupt the recording.