As you can probably tell, I have been really busy over the past 3 or so weeks with placement at PlanesTV, with my fellow class mate N (Names shall not be given, so names will be given their first initial).
Over the past weeks, I have taken part in:
- Editing (Visual and Sound)
- After effects
- Camera operation
- Setting up a studio scenario
- Audio operation
- Professional coffee making skills (since other placements make tea)
- And almost placed a HDTV onto the wall, but for health and safety, it hasn't gone forward as of yet.
For those who have followed my twitter, you'll see what I've been up to at Planes, as well as the kind of mug I use for tea, but that is for a different module on a different day.
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| Tea in question... |
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| Rendering an edit of my boss talking about trains |
Now onto the purpose of this post:
Over my weeks at PlanesTV, I have been chosen to work on the OO Live Steam Club (OOLSC) DVD for the OO Live Steam Club, in which my employer is chairman of. I know you will all be wondering, 'What is OO Live Steam?' Well, I can safely give an overview... In the 1990s, Hornby released OO Gauge Live Steam models (Invented by Richard Hallam) that were powered by steam, just like a real steam locomotive. It was an innovative system and even had Sean Bean narrate the official Hornby promotional video (below), but people simply found it difficult to operate their locomotives and the enterprise of live steam died.
(Hornby Live Steam promotional video)
But the OO Live Steam Club want to change that. They know the ratio of water to oil, how many times to flick the switches before the train will move, they have worked it out and made the locomotives live again! The chairman of the OOLSC hopes that the DVD will bring more people to buy second hand or use their Live Steam locomotives that have gathered dust on the shelf to play with them again, with the end game of Hornby releasing Live Steam again, properly.
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| Mallard train... its tiny... |
So far, the edit has taken about 3 weeks and I have almost finished! And the run time stands at over an hour! It's a bigger job to do than On The Bench was for Estuary TV and a lot more difficult since I have to carefully select footage, rather than receive a live mixed show to just tweak the audio, drop in VT's etc. This is because its not a TV show, it cannot be made in a few hours for that evening. Its a carefully planned documentary about the life of a legacy that was cut short, to bring back the legacy and the immense engineering that made, Live Steam.
In between editing, I set up for a studio scenario where my employer sat at a table and spoke about how to get your OO Live Steam Locomotive operational and give the correct instructions. I had a Mini JVC 1080i camera filming wide (with audio) and a JVC 1080i broadcast camera. Big JVC was used to film close up shows due to the smoother focus ring and the none-clunky servo-zoom system.
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| Multi-camera set up with green-screen that wasn't keyed out in edit... Not needed... Apparently... |
During my time on the Live Steam project, I have placed in over 50 hours (3 days a week, 8 hours per day, roughly) into the filming or instruction, editing and compiling the main feature for the DVD. There were times I enjoyed editing, and times where I got home and wanted to pull my hair out due to an editing mistake or a corrupt video file. But the experience is amazing, to be able to work on a documentary edit and film it with little-experience in documentary film making. I've learnt a lot about how to imagine a story; how to choose the best footage and work with bad footage to make it look good; learnt new tricks in Adobes Premiere Pro (Normalisation of audio> -12db); and learnt a lot about toy trains, something I had no respect for before, but I do now.
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| Normalise to -12db with the US spelling |
Now to conclude:
Over the OOLSC project, I have learnt about editing a documentary which will aide me in the documentary module after christmas and I have gained a deeper respect towards toy trains. My skills have broadened by: learning best places to cut on (if cutting on action, place cursor on a point on your target. Go frame-by-frame until you find there the camera shakes. Cut before the camera shakes and you'll have a smooth edit); being able to normalise ALL audio on a time line to a certain volume level; and most importantly, how to select the best footage to work for the story being told.
This is a quick summary of my 3 weeks (due to being immensely busy. So, you gotta take that into consideration)
Until next time
Josh
P.S - My professional coffee skills surely outrank tea making skills of other placements, I'm sure.
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