Professional Practice: Commission Piece: Reflection

My commission piece was a three minute promotional video for Zeroth Clinical Exercise Centre in Maidstone, Kent. In order to ascertain what sort of video the manager wanted. We had a meeting where we discussed what sort of style, look, music, and so on he wanted. Then I began to script it, and showed the script to my tutors and my commissioner to make sure they were happy with it. Then once everyone was happy with the script, I proceeded to book out a camera. On the day of the shoot itself, things didn't go as well as I would have liked, as we got stuck in traffic on the way to the filming location, so we had less time that we should have done. Also, when we got there, because I was flustered and hurrying a bit, I forgot to direct my camera operator to shoot everything three times, in wide, medium, and close up. This meant that I was very limited regarding the choice of shots when it came to the editing process. Therefore in the edit I had to resize and reframe a selection of shots to give the video more variety and make it at bit more interesting. The music in the video was chosen from an online resource that provided royalty free music. I chose the music because I wanted something calm and relaxing, in accordance with the commissioner's wishes. Another aspect I had to capture for the video was a voice over/commentary. To this end, I brought in the services of a friend of mine, because I felt he had a distinguished and clear voice. I did have one slight drawback when recording it, which is that his eyesight isn't what it was, so he had some difficulty reading the script. To overcome this, I re-wrote the bits of the script he had to read on single lines, so that he could read it. Despite doing this, there were still an awful lot of gaps and pauses in the voiceover. I did a lot of work on this in the editing process, closing gaps and adjusting the volume, so that it now sounds clear, concise, and makes sense. I did notice during the edit, that the shots I got of the manager for the interview were a bit too low angle, so it looked like the camera was looking up at him. I managed to cure this to a certain extent in post production by reframing the shot and making it a close-up. I also positioned him off centre, so that there was room for the aston containing his name. Overall from producing this video, I have learnt a great deal, mainly to ensure I get plenty of coverage when at the shoot, make sure that I frame shots correctly, position the camera correctly, and ensure that I direct my camera operator correctly to ensure I get the shots I want.