Final Outcome- Featurette

Music In The Round Featurette from Katherine Muldowney on Vimeo.

Featurette Shoot

As arranged with Simon, on the 1st of March we had the opportunity to film for our featurette the interviews with both pianist, Tim Horton, and page turner, Rachel Shirley. On this day we also filmed the final concert of the Haydn festival, including Tim's rehearsal beforehand. We were told when we arrived that we were on a very tight schedule, as the concert was to start promptly at 2:00pm that afternoon.
Before the concert began, we were given 10-15 minutes to film Tim's rehearsal.  I was the sound recorder for this shoot, but given the short timescale, I was unsure and unable to test as to whether it would be best to use the Zoom microphone or the shot-gun mic. I eventually settled on the shotgun mic, as there was a a lot of background noise which was beyond our control, and the shotgun mic picked up very little of this. It was after this that we got the opportunity to interview Tim, we used a two-camera set-up, with sound recorded through the shot-gun mic. Immediately as we started, I noticed that we had failed to used the clapper-board, Aidan had already began the interview and Tim was incredibly talkative, so there was no opportunity to re-take. We had barely gotten through half of our questions when we were hurried a long by the stage manager, so there was no time to rectify our mistake.
We had been reserved three seats in each corner of the studio, as we had all planned to have our own camera set-up in order to capture the concert from different angles. We originally intended to stay for Tim's performance only, but ended up staying for the entire concert. This actually turned out to be very beneficial, as although our film is predominantly about Tim, there is a mention of how musicians as a whole feel about their sacrifices and achievements. Also, Tim featured throughout the entire performance, not just on his own, so it was useful to get the extra footage.
Finally, we had the interview with Rachel, the page turner. At this point, the crew had began to dismantle the stage and move all of the instruments, so there was a lot of banging and background noise. Also, we had very little options available to us as to where we could stage her interview; in the end we were given a corner in the foyer, right in front of the stage door where everything was being transported. We conducted the interview regardless, as we were only able to stay for 15 minutes or so before the theatre was shutting. We used a 2 camera set-up, using the shot-gun mice for audio- and again, a clapper-board became an after thought. The interview itself though was successful, and Rachel gave us some really interesting material.
I think considering the extremely tight schedule, we did very well on this shoot and managed to gather some very interesting shots and material. There is just the matter in post-production, we're hoping that our fatal flaw in not using the clapperboard doesn't produce too many problems while trying to sync our visuals with the audio.

Blocking workshop

This session was about lighting and blocking, and gave us experience with setting up a scene in terms of the directors intentions, including lighting, directions of the characters and the position of the camera. The scene we were setting up and re-creating was from 'The Last Tycoon' (Elia Kazan) of which we noted different elements of the set, the characters movements and directions and the positions of the studio lighting/cameras. On examining the scene, we first noted the various light sources within the scene ( I noted specifically the fact that the windows of the set provided no light source).  The light appears to be coming from the sources illustrated below. We re-created this lighting set-up in our own re-creating of the scene. The fill-light used we found cast far too harsh shadows in the scene, shadows which are casted on objects and actors can be very distracting for the viewer as a result of this. A piece of white nylon covering the fill-light softens the shadows, and improved the lighting of the scene, a long with the correct positioning of the key-light and the back-light.

Also focused on in this session was the performance of the scene, and how it requires careful planning and relies heavily on the collaborative view, patience and effort of the cinematographer, the actors, the director and the asst. director. This is to ensure that the shooting of the scene remains fluid and consistent, preventing the need for time-consuming re-shoots. This is achieved by letting the camera record while capturing the action from various different angles (5 all-together we arranged). This creates consistency, and allows the audience a natural view of the scene unfolding. 

DSLR workshop

This session was an introduction to filming with DSLR. I had used a DSLR to film projects in the past, mainly out of necessity, but was unaware of the actual differences between filming with a DSLR and using an actual digital video camera, such as the Canon XF100. Dom explained briefly the difference between shooting on the XF100 and shooting on a DSLR.  A notable difference is that the DSLR is designed to focus in on and gather more specific features and information from the shot, whereas the XF100 gathers wider and more information. It is quite noticeable that the DSLR produces a clearer and more enhanced image, whereas with the XF100 it can be a little more grainy at times.

Depth of Field-
Before now, I was unaware of the exact definition and differences between the two cameras in regards to depth of field. Depth of field simply refers to the focus of the camera both in front of and behind the subject in the frame. The DSLR focuses much less than the XF100, mainly due to the amount of information each camera captures. 

Dual System- 
The sync up of audio when recorded on DSLR.

Aperture-
In photography/film, aperture is the unit od measurement that defines the size of the opening in the lens that can be adjusted to control the amount of light reaching the film or digital sensor.

Pinhole photography (useful when looking at aperture)-
A small box with a hole in the one end, the light passes through the box and when removed the camera becomes more focused as the lights bends and the light is left through, making the image appear sharper.

Rolling Shutter-
Usually found in CMOS sensors, is a method of capturing images that does not expose the entire sensor simultaneously but rather exposes different pars of the sensor in different points in time.