But I’m gonna have to be, lots to do this term.

Some video work for the alumni association and making artifacts for research project, all sounds very fun I know.

http://www.microfilmmaker.com/tipstrick/Issue5/dvtofilm.html

This is an article about how to make ‘video’ look like ‘film’ with tips and all the technical jargon. Some good stuff (y)

This video is pretty cool, in terms of how its made and the content (y)

Enjoy.

So me and 2 friends turned up at this building at about 2 o clock. After eventually working out how to get in, we were led onto what looked like a building site and was met by the 2nd AD, who told use to make our way across the room were they was food for us and a load of other people. After a while, we were all taken on set. The set was under the building and also looked like a building site because it was a massive room with breeze block walls. It had a ring in the centre and all the lighting and cameras were set up around it. It was pretty cool I’m not gonna lie!

On set, we were positioned around the ring. Women from costume and hair and makeup came round to check what we were wearing was fine and the hair women even put some wax in my hair! lol. Everyone was then given cans of beer and glasses of wine…filled with shandy and apple juice of course…and everyone was ready. The biggest shock was when one of the main actors got into the cage. After looking at him for a while I realised who it was! It was ‘Mr Eko’ from Lost?! Mr Eko, who’d been in one of the biggest program, shot in Hawaii and in one of the Bourne films…was now in a small, probably british indendant film in Nottingham! Crazy Stuff!

“ACTION!”…Silence…no one said a word, the actors started to play out the choreographed fight. No one knew what the hell they were doing, we weren’t told anything?…“CUT” was called and everyone wondered what the hell was going on. Finally this women whose role wasn’t clear shouted to us all “I want you all to scream and shout, be rowdy, try and be a little moderate with language though but go for it”. We went for another take ,and wow, the atmosphere was completely different! It was pretty surreal but a hell of a lot of fun. People were shouting abuse at the actors, chucking their drinks everywhere, “Come on!” “Hit him!” “Get up! What you playing at!”. We did a lot of takes of each scene, ones with the camera on an arm, ones with multiple camera in the ring and by the end it was hard to keep mustering up the energy to do it! Looked round and noticed there were a few webcams placed about too that were wired up to a laptop which was pretty interesting.

Between one of the takes as the one of the producers came round to check on us all, I noticed she was holding what looked like a shot list with the name of the film at the top, ‘Best Laid Plans’ so we decided to imdb it. Turns out it has Barbra Windsor in! And some guy from the new Harry Potter film which was suprising. My god it was absolutely FREEZING though! After each take, the actors were given coats and water bottles…but we were just left to stand there in the minus temperature to freeze! Not fun lol. Finally called it a wrap at about 7 o clock, 5 hours we were there! Being rowdy extras, but it was fun, and a pretty good experience. Managed to get a few pictures on my phone so here they are.

http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=17098031&server=vimeo.com&show_title=1&show_byline=1&show_portrait=1&color=00ADEF&fullscreen=1&autoplay=0&loop=0