Week 8

1 October 2007

On Monday we shot our insert "Salsa Dancing" Maikha was our Dir/Pro with Guy as our sound person and Billy as our editor. On our shoot it was Maikha, Guy and myself with Mark Alexander coming along to help. Maikha hired out the dolly on wheels which helped me get some shots I think worked very well. We had massive problems with the equipment as our yellowhead started smoking and blew and the camera batteries ran out of charge very quickly and we only had approximately an hour worth of battery due to what we imagine had something to do with the batteries losing charge over the break. In the end we only captured about 22minutes of raw footage, which having seen Billy's edit was used brilliantly considering the opening stand-up and our interview took up about 13minutes of this. I have to say the dolly was our saving grace and also without the interviewee who was a pleasure we would have been in strife. I cannot say enough of the people I worked with on this insert as they all impressed me with their knowledge and Maikha let us to our own device's after telling us his vision for the shoot. The only problem I think we faced on the day visually was the lighting in the dance studio itself. The flurescant lights were a hindrance even though we white balanced every time we shot. I think it has been fixed up alot in post and as I said, I was very happy with the people I worked with.

After the shoot I was involved in my first production meeting for the Christmas children's show produced by Nathan. We met at Gelatissimo and it was a good outing to meet the people I didn't know a bit more closely to get comfortable with them before we worked together. The only negative was that Kate Shephard did not turn up to her own meeting and drove past at the end which I thought as very unprofessional.

2 October 2007

On Tuesday we had another production meeting but this time for the Aussie BBQ show produced by Peter G. This was very much an informal gathering at the Nosh Pit and did not last longer than 30minutes after everyone had introduced themselves and the necessary discussions were had.

In the evening we had our first rehearsal for the Christmas show which very much fell to pieces from most angles and acted as a very good wakeup call. We had a very large problem in audio trying to send foldback to the boom after a few people, myself included tried to muck around with the router and basically stuffed up all the audio for the evening. As Sound Sup I was very disappointed in myself but have since been to tutorials regarding patching and am competent in what I need to do including pre-fading the auxillary to the boom and controlling all other levels around the studio. It was pretty daunting having no one there to hold our hands for the first time but am better for the exprience.

3rd October

On Wednesday we had our first rehearsal for show 1a directed by Anne-Marie. I voulenteered for CG in this production as it would give me a bit more exposure to the control room and understand the intricasies of using CG on a live show. I got the jpeg up on screen for what we needed to use it for but as the animations are currently in the wrong extension I couldn't really suss them out. We have a tutorial with a second year student Andrew Varvel on Tuesday the 16th of October which should be very helpful.

5th October

On Friday afternoon we went through the entertainment show for the last time which I was Talent and Cam for. What struck me most was that the directors are thinking alot more laterally about what they want and how they want it which is a big help to all involved with the production. Mark Alexander was my director on cam and he basically told us what he wanted but gave us free reign to show him some shots that might work. His directing really keeps the crew interested and in high spirits.

Later that evening we had our first full rehearsal for Aussie BBQ. Mark as director of this show really pushed us until 9 o'clock and we eventually ran the show full length with random tapes instead of inserts and ads. Our final rehearsal ran to the tune of something like 00:29:59:24. After this all of the cast and crew were very happy and we all shared a beer at the tav to celebrate how well it actually went.