Ollie Tristram

An animation into the DVD Menu for the work we are filming at university for BCS. The start animation will be displayed on a green screen where Brian, the presenter, will be introducing the DVD. As he finishes the menu will come into focus. This is not the final design.

A creepy, short Teaser Trailer for my film. Be sure to look below for the 'Making of' and the film itself.

Whilst we were filming, my friend Andrew, who was cast in the original version of the film to play Martyn, documented the process using another handheld camera. Including interviews with the actors and a couple of outtakes, this is the edited 'Making of...' documentary - Narrated by Josh Parker.

My final version!

After a few drafts and a bit of tweaking here and there, I can present to you the final version of my 6 minute fictional film to be submitted on May 22.

I would love to hear your thoughts on the film so if you visit the YouTube page you can post a comment there.

Thanks, and enjoy! :)

An interview with Sam Baird of Whitehill Media about the IPTV World Forum and how his company is doing.

An Interview from the IPTV World Forum with BCS Account Manager Chrissie Walker giving her view on the days events with their client Broadband Forum.

This is an edit which is an package for SeaChange, another one BCS' clients. It follows a similar principle to the Broadband Forum one below.

On Wednesday 25th March, Tom Pearson, Jason Bickers and I went down to London Olympia exhibition centre where the IPTV World Forum was taking place. This was to film some promotional videos of some of BCS's clients and this is the first of them, Broadband Forum.

All 3 of us filmed and recorded sound on the day but this time I have the job as editor as I live in Nottingham and can easily show Brian (Managing Director of BCS) different versions of the film while the other two are home for Easter.

The film is going to be sent to the client to be used how they like to advertise themselves, but also on the BCS website.

Tuesday 24th February 2009

With approximately 40mins of footage in hand, spread over two Mini-DV tapes (one from the Sony Z1 and one from the Sony Handycam), I was ready to capture the footage to my computer, via Adobe Premiere CS3.

Today simply involved just capturing all the footage, but instead of capturing it off one tape in one go I thought it would make editing easier if I captured each scene separately and labeled them all individually, this way I could drag and drop each part onto the timeline in the correct order and cut the starts and ends off, rather than going through a massive bit of footage finding where every part needed to be cut, and then moving it around that way.

Wednesday 25th February 2009

Today involved me sorting between wanted and unwanted footage and then arranging it on the timeline in the order of the narrative. I quickly began to realise I was not going to be able to fit all of my scripted action into 6 minutes. So I thought I would make a full length version which includes everything I have scripted and then cut that down into the required 6 minutes. This way I can showcase my versatility in editing further.

With 14 minutes worth of intended footage arranged on the timeline, I began post-production on the clips. One of the first things I did was to use colour correction on a few of the introductory clips which I didn't white balance quite right as they were too warm in colour, so I reduced the Red and increased the Blue to try and give a more realistic colour and match the first shot which I did white balance properly. In terms of colour editing, I also increased the green on all the nightvision shots, just to emphasise further that it was using an infra-red nightvision light on the camera. I also boosted the contrast a bit to make the blacks even darker and create an even more eerie atmosphere.

Next, I went on to sorting out that intentionally 'messy' introduction to the film. All I did was use a Gaussian blur effect on the footage so much so that people's features were unable to make out, with the intention of adding the film title on later.

With all my footage looking like it was supposed to look, all I had left now was to add titles and audio. I started with the titles, finding a font from Da Font which was clear to read but looked like a horror text keeping with the film's style. I used a Text preset that gave it a glow, but used a small grey to white gradient and changed the glow to a dull green. I added the title over the blurred introductory shots using a crossfade to fade each section of text into the other. I then went on to adding credits at the end of the film - showing the film title in full, who made it (me), the cast, and a special thanks to the people at The Salutation Inn for letting me film there. And finally, I added text in the corner of every new scene using the Handycam to show that time had paased a lot more than it actually had, to make out that Daniel and the volunteers had spent a long time in the cave, as was intended in the narrative.

Thursday 26th February 2009

With the titles in place all I had left to do was audio. I didn't want a soundtrack for the film as it was in the style of a video diary and that wouldn't have a soundtrack over it, therefore it would sound odd. So instead I went on to add sound effects.

Now I had always intended for there to be a Sheep sound effect and during the shoot we even had to act as if we heard one. I searched the internet and found a Sheep 'Baa' sound on a Sheep website, which was mildly amusing. I had to edit the sound to fit in with two locations it would be used - a cave, and a bedroom. I opened up Logic Studio and applied a considerable amount reverb to the sound effect for the cave, also reducing the dryness of the original sample. For the room, I added a small bit of reverb again as the original sound was fairly flat and must have been recorded outside.

One part of the film is where Warren becomes possessed slightly, and I needed a demonic growling sound to overlay while he had a fit. I did this by recording myself into my flatmates microphone in ProTools and then headed into Logic again to edit the sample. Again adding reverb due to the cave, but as the camera approached Warren the dynamics needed to increase, but I sorted that in Premiere.

Another significant piece of audio was an eerie and strange royalty-free apple loop I found in Logic which I simply lay over the credits.

And finally I found a royalty-free cave ambiance sample, which I overlay on any of the cave sections of the film. When the film is watched back you can hear the occasional drips and a low rumble which really adds to the atmosphere of being inside a cave.

One I had all the audio balanced I wanted to master it. I exported all the audio tracks as a stereo uncompressed WAVE file and imported all 150mb of it into Logic. To master it, I boosted the levels (as the original overall levels were fairly quiet), used a limiter and also added compression. Unfortunately, when I initially recorded the footage on my Handycam the sound was clipping/distorting whenever I spoke. But with a little help from Logic I managed to remove most of the clipping by using a High Shelf Filter, and it came out quite nicely.

With the footage arranged, video effects rendered, titles on and audio processed I was ready to export my full 14 minute 30 second film. Now the task was to be how I would cut it down to fit 6 minutes... hmmm...

Wednesday 26th November

We captured the footage to the computer and watched through it all. It came out as 4.5GB and 21 minutes in length, which according to Jules is about the right ratio for a 4 minute film. We didn't get time to do any work on it but Tom offered to cut up all the footage into individual clips at home, so it was easier to rearrange them for our editing.


Thursday 27th November

Today started with us imported all the separated clips, Tom had kindly spliced last night, into Adobe Premiere. It was very hand for him to have done that because it made life so much easier to just scroll through a list of clips and pick out the ones we wanted in a particular order.

Next, we simply began choosing clips, placing them in a provisional order and then began cutting them up - very straight-forward.

After doing so, and getting over 1 minutes worth of footage on the timeline, we began to take a look at the audio files we had recorded during the shooting. The live recording of the busker playing is fine, but we don't want to settle for second best, and we would be doing so if we kept our interview audio file. We have decided that there is too much hustle and bustle in the background, and not only does it make the interview more unclear, but there are sudden cuts between each section of speech. Anyway, we have booked out a sound booth and will be rerecording the interview on Monday.

Wednesday 3rd December

Today Jason was off ill with a cold so Tom and I continued with some of the editing ourselves.

We applied some visual effects to the footage in order to try and get that urban, gritty city look to our film. We did this by applying high contrast and lowering the saturation of the clips.

Also today, the other groups came to look at our edit. The general feedback was that it looked nice and the shots were well framed, but they thought because of our effects that the shot looked over-exposed.

Thursday 4th December

With Jason back in we showed him our new visual style and he liked it a lot. We didn't really do much else to the edit today because Debs came round to give constructive criticism. Generally I think she was quite impressed and the overall tips to take away from her feedback was to rearrange some of the clips as not to mislead the audience (for example, introducing the busker at the right time) and to go all or nothing with the effects so that nobody thinks its over-exposed and knows that we have applied effects.

Also, some filming tips I learnt was that one performing a pan, it counts as 3 shots: still, move, still. This way any still clips that come after it fit nicely. The other tip was to make sure in the future to always use manual controls - exposure in particular. We remembered white balance and manual focus but a couple of the shots that go from light to dark see the auto exposure kick in and the white colour fades in and out making it look more unprofessional.

Our main aim for today was to rerecord the interview with Sam and we booked out a sound booth and Edirol R-09 to redo this today. At 16.30 Sam turned up and we began interviewing. Compared the interview on the street we got a lot more audio, 17 minutes worth in fact, and we got everything we wanted out of him except him talking about other buskers, which was one of the main things we wanted for the voice over of our film!

When I got home that night I spliced up the interview into bite size segments with only the best and most clear parts of the interview. This cut down the 17 minutes into around 6 minutes of roughly 25 clips. This way the edit the next day will be easier to pick and choose each audio file we want.

Friday 5th December

Today our aim was to rearrange some of the clips, but most importantly to put the new audio on the film.

It started off kind of slow, picking the most related audio clips to go with their video counterparts, but once that was sorted we trawled through the rest of the interview/voice-over clips, picked out the best and placed them in the gaps where they fitted best.

When we were happy with the order the main thing to do now was to sort out the levels for the three audio tracks: the live recording, interview and city ambiance. One technique which was important for us to do was the use of ducking the live recording whenever Sam spoke during the voice-over, to make him clearly and more prominent in the audio mix. I spent a good hour or so going through the timeline and fluctuating the audio levels via use of automation at the appropriate parts.

FINISHED! Well not quite. But we were for the day. All that is left is for Tom to put the text on screen when the busker says the important stand-out lines.

Monday 8th December

Today we heard some more feedback from Jools and we learnt of a couple of tweaks we needed to make to our film. The first thing was to rearrange some more clips, most notably the second shot was too dark following the first, bright shot. This was deleted completely. We even added in a new shot we forgot we had of Sam waving at a passer-by. It works because it shows Sam's pleasant attitude and the effect he has on the people.

Another main issue was hearing the sound of some speakers other than headphones. The mixing was fairly bad because there were times when Sam's interview could not be heard over the backing track. We had to get this sorted and we did so by altering the ducking of the backing track more severely.

A third thing to change was to add more text from what Sam says during the voice-over. This keeps in the style more and also helps the audience follow the narrative easier.

It's been over 2 months since I posted on here last.

No Time, No Space

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By Ollie Tristram, Craig Thomas, Jason Bickers and Beth O’ Connell

Documentary

08-11-2007

Today we booked out a camera and intended to film our project. We had discussed prior to this what we we’re going to do and Jason had the idea to film a single shot over a long period and speed it up (known as time-lapse photography) to fit the 1 to 2 minute time requirement. This way everything would look frantic and our intentions of filming from the bridge over Parliament Street at all the traffic and pedestrians was a good way of representing a bustling city.
However, our plan of getting around about an hours footage during sunset didn’t go quite so well as the camera was due back to the store at 4.30pm with sunset being around 3.30-5.30pm. We set up and began recording around 3.55pm and finished roughly 4.15pm, obviously only a third of our intended time. With this in mind we are planning to review the recording and test out the speeding up effect on Tuesday. If the footage is still what we had in mind then excellent, otherwise we plan on doing a re-shoot next Thursday.

14-11-2007

I began to edit the footage we had at home to see what it would look like speeded up. I did this by 1300% to make the video around 1 minute 40 seconds long. I showed it to the group and we are all satisfied with the footage, however there are some reflections in the window we shot through.
I cut the clip so I could edit a 10 second slice with some effects, as rendering would be quicker this way. At the end, the effects I had used were altering the brightness, contrast and saturation, adding the ghosting effect, adding the zoom blur effect, and adding a lighting effect with a yellow tint. It quite dramatically improved the overall visuals by giving it a much more ambient feel. It also diminished the reflections somewhat.
Also, I began work on the background music with a friend, which is a downtempo trip-hop tune. It is farily minor, which adds to the narrative of a depressing city lifestyle.

20-11-07

We have rearranged our ideas, and now that the video editing is complete with use of Ghost trials, lighting effects and radial blurs, we have decided to give the project a new theme; greater intelligences watching over us. This way the narrative is more focused and the music, which I have now finished, always connects better with the imagery onscreen.

29-11-07

The project is complete. The new narrative works well with the visuals and music. The ‘overuse’ of effects of the video symbolises the vision of the aliens watching over us. The time-lapse aspect of the project works well with this because when everything is moving so fast, and is a blur, it represents how insignificant one day of one person’s life is out of the history of the rest of the World.
Our idea of having a speech or narration over the top of the visuals and music works very well as it gives depth and meaning to the project. It gives it a point, which is one thing we thought was a neccessity for the assignment.
I had a few problems exporting the video, and one which i can’t understand or get rid of is the small portion of the video that is blacked out at the bottom. But it goes fairly unnoticed.

Here is my first completed project for my degree. A memorable occasion.
It is a stop-motion animation using people. It doesn't have a narrative in particular it's just mainly random.

There are around 470 photos in this, some of which are doubled, reversed etc. We took them as a group (five of us: Me, Scotty, Kirsty, Katie and Craig) but then sequenced and edited everything individually.

The video:
One of the Earlier Stop-Motion Animations

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Unitl next time.