What did I learn? Well that is an interesting question. First of all I would like to talk about the project itself and how it evolved for me from the moment we got it to the moment we handed it in. At first I thought it would be an interesting project since I haven't done a documentary in my life, but I was a bit afraid of getting all the elements for making a good 10 mins piece. I knew it was gonna be a lot of work, but this was more than more! At first we decided to divide all the work in 3 so Danny would be director, Helen producer and I will be editor. I was also in charge of camera and sound during the shooting days and it definitely get tougher every time, because you want to get the best you can with what you have. I have always been a bit of a shy person to go and ask if I can do this and that or could redo this, but this project definitely helped me beat that problem, because we all wanted to have some shots and make some great things and for that we needed to ask and risk and just go back to shoot over and over. Everything is possible, but can only be achieved by asking. 

Our topic was not only a great one for our film, but it was an amazing experience as a person. Seeing what these dogs do and how they help people overcome their fears, is just amazing. Roy is an amazing person and quite a character, but no one can say he doesn't care about people or animal, because that man has a heart that doesn't fit in his chest. Working with him was a great experience because he was very open on helping us all the time and wasn't bothered of anything as long as we asked first. We never interrupted his classes or asked him to redo an exercise, so I believe we both respected our video and his job in a very professional way. It was very hard to shoot a live cynophobia class where you have no idea of what is gonna happen and have only one camera, a tiny room full of mirrors and had to be very careful with battery life and memory. Multicam would have been much easier since we could have got questions, actions and reactions at the same time. Although it was hard, we managed to get some really good footage and had an amazing experience. 

One thing that I definitely learned from this project and that I had always thought about it as a filmmaker and applied it for the first time in and own project, was paying attention to the very small details. Is there a reflection in the shot? Can we get the mic 1 cm closer? Is there any light we can use? Can we cut that millisecond of audio? Can we put a frame around that picture? All kind of stuffs that you might see but think that won't make much a difference, they actually do. We worked so hard on getting the audio right during post-production, so all the dialogues flowed fine without any jumps, any cuts or change of ambience. It was a matter of milliseconds and working minutes and minutes in just one little second of audio. Once you see your video with all these details fixed, you can definitely see that there is really a difference and that that centimeter you put the mic closer or that little commentary you used for one bit, can make your video look completely different! If you see a movie in the cinema flowing perfectly, why can't yours flow? You have a camera, a kit, a software and two hands to make it work as well. 

Working with Danny and Helen has been an amazing experience. They are really funny people to work with but very professional at the same time. I have worked with a lot of people in my life since I was part of a big debating community in South America and have had to deal with hundreds of people and write human rights resolutions and plans for war or peace treatments and is very very hard to find people you can work properly with. There is always a lazy one, the one that wants to take over, the one that bothers, the one that works a bit and that is it, the one that takes the credit and the one that after first try either thinks is great or surrenders himself. In our case we have been all very hard workers and have created an amazing chemistry together. This project not only helped us to know that we can work together very well, but got us closer as friends and we had lots and lots of experiences. I will definitely work with both of them in future projects and it is great to see how you can work with people in a very mature way, where we respect each other and where we all want to make our project better and better when we think it can't go better already. It has been an amazing experience and more than a single uni project, it has made the last couple of months a very enjoyable time here in UK for me.

Here is finally the copy our great video, made with a lot of effort:

For our film we decided to create a DVD cover to make our film more professional. At first we decided to make a new poster with some dogs flying, but we realised that we were doing something completely different from what we already had. As we had already spoken that we should give the whole project a similarity in fonts and colors and all that, give it like a theme, I thought it would be nice to convert the poster we had already done into a DVD cover with all the proper elements. We changed it and also included in the back all the details that a normal DVD cover has like format, length, language and region. We didn't include any subtitles since we do not have any. Everything was made from scratch, including the box with all details since I couldn't find any template, but I used different DVDs as a reference of what to put and how. Here is the outcome of our DVD cover:

For the music we decided to go through a variety of royalty free songs. We had decided to put just a little bit of music in the necessary bits, since it wasn't necessary all the way through. We added music at the beginning, the intro, during a bit of actuality, bobby's story, the praise of roy and centre and credits. Six different songs were chosen and founds specifically for our film. The only song we used that we asked permission to, was the one called Best Dog Ever from Pup Direction, which they allowed us to use it as long as we credited them and so we did in the credits. Here is all the selection of music that we used:

Continuing with the editing, I decided to make some changes in the image to give more life to the video. After going through all the shots from Essex, I realised that many of them looked very "dead," like they had not much color into it. I decided to boost the color in the video by giving it a Hard Light effect on Final Cut, that later on I will reduce in the Control Panel, plus I saturated some of the clips a little bit, just to give them a bit more life. Here is an example of what was done:

Original Clip

After

After making better all the necessary clips, we started working on how to put it all together so it didn't look like two different stories, both the Brentwood part and the dog part. The original cut for Brentwood was about a minute long and included the interview of Gemma Collins already edited and cut to fit the video. After showing it to Helen and watching it over and over, we realised that it definitely looked like the video was about Brentwood instead of dogs. We decided to cut the beginning down to 30 secs and included dogs at the end of it, so that we could link it with the intro and start the real main topic. We also cut Gemma's interview because it wasn't relevant, although we kept her as part of our introduction to show the TOWIE section of Essex. 

By this moment we had already decided how the storyline was going to breakdown:

Titles

Brentwood Introduction

Intro

Introduction to the Centre

Introducing Roy 

What is Cynophobia

Story of a kid with cynophobia

Introducing Tony and Summer

Introducing Kerry Burman

Bobby's story

Display Team

Conclusion of Kerry

Conclusion of Tony and Summer

Future of the centre

Images with events

Closing credits

As part of our entire production, we decided to create a quick and simple video with some scenes that were not included that we thought were quite funny during the production. Also we decided to include the shot of the Go Pro where Danny gets attacked by a dog, which wasn't used in the film, but was still a good shot we managed to get. Hope you enjoy it:

As explained in my previous post, for our trailer we decided to make something more promotional of it. The part I did, was creating some freeze frames of the dogs based on the video Helen had sent me already, to put the names of the dogs introducing them. This effect was all done using photoshop and then putting it together with the video in Final Cut. Here are the original frames and the outcomes after post.

Here is also the quick tutorial I made on how to make this effect.

As part of the project, we decided to create a trailer. As I was too busy doing the editing, Helen decided to make the trailer more as a promotional video than showing the story of our documentary. It came out really well in the end, as we introduced all the dogs and gave a little sneak peak and the locations we filmed in. As part of her idea, she wanted to create a still (freeze frame) during the action of the dogs and put the name of the dog there. She decided to give me that task to create something nice in photoshop or after effects and in the end we all liked how it looked. Although music is copyright material, we thought that just for the promotional trailer wouldn't hurt. Here is our little trailer:

For our film we decided to create a poster to give some advertisement to it. We sat together and started discussing what we could do. The poster we came with was based on the first and only idea we discussed, because we already thought it was really good and we were happy with the outcome of it. The idea was to create a simple poster that could catch the attention of people very easily and that is why we decided to variate and use different strong colors. We decided to put 3 dogs in the middle of it that looked like they were done with magazines, which was not either a real dog, neither a cartoon.

After getting the main design done, we added the text of the poster and just finished adding little details like paws and stars. We all liked the outcome of it and since it was a teamwork, we decided to keep it!

Here is the final intro for our film:

We decided to create an intro for our film that was exclusive for it. As the main topic of the project is dogs, clearly the intro must have dogs. I came up with an idea of giving it a cartoony look to our project so we could ad some entertainment and fun to the video after the brentwood introduction. We had discussed an idea that came up, which was to have a dog jumping through fire and creating one of the "O" of Hero Hounds. Once we had went to the the training centre, we managed to get the shot of the dog jumping through fire, but it wasn't a round shape in what the dog jumped through, but more of a squared one. My team still said to give it a try and make the "O" squared instead of round and I decided, alright, I'll give it a try. During the editing process the first problem I came across with was that the video had a background so I had to get rid of it. After that I identified that the flame could look like a "U" if turned upside down. Here I made an explanation tutorial of the whole intro was created:

At the beginning we decided to start the video with something that says Brentwood so people would know where we are from the very beginning. We couldn't get a good sign at first, which is what led me to create an animation on After Effects of a city and the name Brentwood. There three different versions of it, where the first one was at night, the second one during sunset and the last one said 'Brentwood' instead of 'Welcome to Brentwood.' Here are the examples of the three versions of it:

After our first feedback from our teacher Helen, she mentioned something to us that we all agreed in the end and it was that due to the fancy look of the Brentwood intro, it looked like the video was about Brentwood at that that was the intro of the film, which isn't. We all agreed to remove it from there and decided in the end that it would look nice as the background of the credits right at the end of the film. It ended up looking much better and we changed the substituted this Brentwood title with a real sign that says Brentwood on it. Here is the new sign and the look of the clip in the the credits.

As the editor of the team, I was in charge of everything related to post-production in our project. The main objective I had was to cut a video of 10 minutes of length from more than 3 hours of footage. The first thing I use to edit is a second screen. For about 3 years now, I have gotten used to editing in 2 different screens, because I believe 1 is not really enough for working properly as an editor. You can have you main editing software like Final Cut Pro, Adobe After Effects, Adobe Premier Pro, etc. in your main screen and the other one can be used for looking up videos, images, music that you may need, previewing things you have done already, working on Photoshop in an image while having your video or even rendering a file and looking at it while editing, but not losing sight of your main editing window makes a lot of difference, because you never lose the focus in what you are doing and it gets much easier to find things and just click  and drag. 

My usual workspace

After setting up everything, the main thing is to import all the footage I have into Final Cut Pro. As a new element I have been using lately that helps massively on editing long videos with hours of footage, such as this one, is the use of Keywords in Final Cut Pro. Keywords Collection is a feature it has that allows you create a "folder" in your event where you can drop any video you want there and separate it from the other ones. The use of Keywords Collection is to organise the footage from a specific place or person in one folder, so it gets easier to you to find all the shots were that person appears for example, without the need of going through all your clips. I created some very useful keywords that helped a lot while trying to fill in the actuality and get shots from some moments in specific. Here is the list of my keywords:

- Bobby 

- Cynophobia

- Display Team

- Dogs

- Essex B Roll

- Go Pro

- Interview

- iPad

- Roy Interview

- Titles

- Training Centre

Once all the clips were organised in their respective Keyword Collection, the editing began by putting the best clips we had in the timeline so they could be cut later on.  Here are two different cuts in the timeline of the beginning of the video:

Draft

Final Version

Here is the transcript of Nicole Crockford's interview:

Transcript of Interview With Nicole Crockford

Here is the transcript of Kerry Burman's interview:

Transcript of Interview With Kerry Burman

Here is the transcript of Tony and Summer's interview:

Transcript for Interview With Tony and Summer Nay

Although we didn't use her interview in the end, it was good to see and have what she said in her interview, taking into account that by the moment of it we were not sure whether to use it or not.

Here is the transcript of Gemma Collins's interview:

Transcript of Interview With Gemma Collins

As part of the team we decided that it would be best for us to have a transcript of every single interview we did. At first I really thought it was a bit pointless writing everything that was already in a video, but as an editor I must say that is the most helpful thing ever. It allows you to build sentences, find words you need, create a story from it and the most helpful thing is that you can take it anywhere and work on it everywhere without needing to have the video with you to listen over and over.

Here is Roy's first interview transcript:

Transcript of Roy Dyer Interview

One of the things we managed to get while in Brentwood thanks to Roy, was a quick interview of Gemma Collins, a member of the show "The Only Way is Essex", which allowed to get a good shot of one of the things Brentwood is best known as, which is TOWIE. She was very nice about it, although it was quite quick. To me it was really like interviewing some random person since I have never seen TOWIE before and I don't even know who she is. To Helen and Danny it was more of an experience since they knew who she was, but I took it really normal because she was just one more person for me. The interview, although it was made with the gun mic, ended up really well with really good audio. Here is is the full interview on Gemma Collins

As part of the production, we decided to come up with a logo for out film. The plan was to create something that could tell Hero and Hounds and the same time with just one image. During a trip to Bradford, I sat 3 hours on my computer trying to design something based on the ideas that we had talked about. We all agreed that it would be nice having a bone with a superhero logo in the middle, so we can tell exactly what this movie is about. Here are some of the phases of the logo while in production.

I came up with 3 different ideas, which ended up leading in the end to the real logo. They were all based on the same design, but had slightly variations. The first 3 options were these:

After discussing them we decided to use the one with the red paw that didn't have the red fancy border. The logo was supposed to have as well the name of the production, which is where our first problem with that design came. Due to the "superhero badge" in the the middle, there was no place to put the name apart from either the outside or to the sides. Once we tested with having Hero Hounds on the sides, we ended up seeing that it didn't look good at all. This is an example of the logo with one of the names we were going to use for the film "Mighty Muts"

After noticing how bad it looked, I had to come up with a different layout for the logo, where the name fitted perfectly in a good looking way. I decided that we needed to get rid of the superhero part but keep the paw. That led me to create the final logo, which we all ended up liking in the end. 

As part of the project we required to have consent forms for all the people in our film. Our major issue in ours was the amount of kids in it, which requires permission from every parent to be on the film. Gladly every single parent agreed on having their child filmed and we didn't have to go through the process of blurring any face. In total, we ended up with 22 consent forms from families, workers and handlers at the centre. Here is an example of one of them:

As a group we decided that it would nice having our own Facebook page where people could see what we are working on and keep them motivated on our project. It is part of every production to give some advertisement to it, so that people can watch your piece and you make something out of it, which is why we thought it would be nice to have one. We have received a lot of support from family, friends, people in Brentwood, people of the cynophobia classes and also just random people interested in watching our video. As a goal we set up a 100 likes before deadline, in which our producer will supply us with sweets as accomplishing our goal.

The site can be accessed on: www.facebook.com/HeroHounds

Here is a image of our current site

As part of our video, we had Danny wearing the Go Pro in one shot. It was during a dog training of getting the dog to identify who the bad guy is and attack him. Danny was suppose to be the bad guy and had an arm protector that covered him from getting actually bitten by the dog. We had a multi cam shot, where the Sony XDCAM was operated by me from one of the sides and the other one was a POV from Danny with the Go Pro on his chest. Here is the outcome of that entire shot from the Go Pro. 

During our filming, I was in charge of camera during Day 1, 2 and 4. We had a couple of issues with shooting in general, but they were all solved gladly, thanks to some tips Fergus had given me in previous opportunities. 

The first tip is what I like to call the "Danny factor."Danny has a particular thing that maybe not everyone notices and it's that he always wearing a plain white t-shirt. This has come very in handy in our project and in different moments we had worked together, because it is very useful for white balancing. We never use a white piece of paper, because we can manage to balance the camera with his shirt and also helps us not having to carry with a paper everywhere just to white balance over and over. 

The second tip, that was actually something I learned from talking to Fergus once, is the use of the ND filter in the camera. At first I just thought it helped giving more or less light to the camera, which is same feature as the aperture gain, but it wasn't. I learned that if there is a lot of light, you can put your ND filter in 1 or 2 (depending on how much light you have) to get a more sharpen image and also get a nice depth of field. It is basically a feature that gives you more quality by dropping light. In our case, the days we were outside during the morning or sunset, there was so much light, that this feature helped us get a lot of sharpen images from dogs.

Location of ND Filter (right)

Shot with ND Filter 2

The third and last tip that I also learned from a talk with Fergus once, was how to set up the gain of mic in the camera. One feature that the camera has that I wasn't aware of before, was that you can control how much sound you want the mic to pick up. It helped a lot in the interviews with the clip mic, because the clip mic was so close to the person's mouth, that I could set it up in -36 so it only picked their voices and almost nothing of the environment. 

Regarding the issues we had with the camera, the first one was that we got a dodgy battery the first time, we limited us a lot on battery life on the camera. We had to charge the battery every time that we were not using it, otherwise it would have been a shame to run out of battery in the middle of a session. Luckily we didn't at any point and we managed to admin the battery very well. 

The second issue we had was during the second day filming the display team. Since it was at night and it was all outside, we had to set up the camera with quite some gain and in places where you could get some light from some big lamps they have, otherwise all our shot would have been very dark and we would have been unable to use them. 

Another issue we had that was solved with a tip learned as well from Fergus, was trying to get a shot from a dog jumping through fire, but darkening the background a bit without making the dog go black. We wanted a shot focused on the dog and the fire. I remember Profile Picture was a good tool for that and I played with the black color in it and managed to set the background dark but not take make the entire shot black. Here the outcome of it 

Original Shot

Shot with Profile Picture

Day 1

In Day 1 of our filming, Danny, Helen and I travelled by train to Brentwood, where Roy very gently offered to pick us up. He gave us a tour around some good areas of Brentwood, which helped a lot to see what we wanted to film. After deciding which bits to shoot, we grab the camera back from the car and decided to shoot at people looking fancy, walking dogs and general shots of places like Sugar Hut, a Cathedral, a school and just the street in general with shots we thought could have been useful. After that, we went to the training centre, where we started setting up and doing 2 interviews from the dog handlers since they were not busy at the moment. Late at night, the cynophobia class began and we used the rest of the memory left in the camera in everything we could get from it. We also managed at the end of the day to get and interview from one of the families who attends the class, Tony and Summer. 

Day 2

The second day we travelled again by train and then our production assistant, Hayley Pike, took us back home at night. That day we had gone to shoot only the Display Team, which trained at night. There was a lot of different things going on that day, so we decided to use the Go Pro, the XDCAM and Helen's iPad, to try to get as many different angles as possible. Danny and I interacted in the training as part of understanding how the dogs were trained, which was a great experience. Danny had the Go Pro on his chest hanging from his shirt, which allowed to get an angle from his POV of a dog attacking him. Later on Danny and I had an obstacle race with the dogs, were we had to command them to finish the course, gladly I was the winner twice with my dog Charlie. 

Day 3

The third day was sadly the only one I couldn't make it as explain in a previous post. This time Danny. Helen and Hayley went to shoot another session of a cynophobia class and try and get some interviews from other parents. They also got an interview from Roy, which ended up not being well. That day our team was very limited on equipment since they were lacking a tripod and a clip mic. They had to do all the interviews steady cam and couldn't mic up Roy during the whole class to get audio from him for actuality in the video. Gladly the shots of that day were really good and helpful, although we had to redo Roy's interview because of lack of quality.

Day 4

Our last day of filming was also the shortest one, because Helen, Hayley and I just went there to redo Roy's interview. This time we had a clip mic and a tripod, which helped us a lot to get the good quality video that we needed. Roy was very nice about doing his interview again and this time it lasted 20 mins compared to the 5 min interview they did on him on Day 3. There was a lot more information and having listened to the first one, we spotted the answers and the information we needed from him, which made easier and longer this interview, because we already knew what we were looking for, so we just wanted as much information about it as possible. We also got a shot form the a Brentwood sign, which we thought could be useful for our movie. We finished that day very happy and looking forward to get the video done.