One thing that I like to be a lot is critical. Criticism is a very good but hard thing to do, because not only requires the ability to see things that maybe some other can't, but also requires the skills of doing it without making anyone upset or at least trying not to. People say is easy to criticise others but is hard to criticise yourself, but I believe that with all this projects and the help of my teachers, I have been able to learn to criticise my own work even better every time. The first thing that crossed my mind when we got the brief for our Digital News Unit, was that I wanted to work with Helen and Danny again after our very successful Documentary that gave us an A as a grade. I can tell I looked back at my documentary after finishing my Digital News video and I can't tell my level of criticism has raised as I can see more and more things that would have changed or I would have criticised 7 months ago when we submitted it. I have felt quite confident about us as a group, we call ourselves "The Best Team Ever" because not only we are friends, but we are quite sincere with each other, specially when it comes down to work and we respect our work a lot. If there is true and some do more work than others in the end, one thing that I love about my group is the ability to discuss ideas and bring some to the table without fighting, arguing or having anyone being lazy. When you need to get the work done, it gets done and we all become part of it one way or another.
For this occasion we had to find 2 different stories for our news channel that fitted our brand and more importantly, that were interesting. After we decided to do a sport news channel, since we all love sports and we have been wanting to do something related to sports, I had the idea of doing something about pole dancing which at the beginning might have sound as a joke. I went for a training at Epsom for my Student Warden job and I met someone there that does pole dancing and at the beginning it was quite weird to me because I had never met someone like that before, but after she told be all this stories about what they do and all the strength they get form it, I really could have told that it was something much bigger than a woman touching a pole and being "sexy." I mentioned that to my team and to my surprise they actually liked the idea of making something about pole dancing and that is when it came down to finding what kind of story we were going to have. Helen found some stuff related to the Olympics which I was completely unaware of and we thought it could make a really nice and entertained story, since people love this new stuff and the same way this girl changed my mind on pole dancing, we could change some other people as well making them see that pole dancing is exactly what they see in movies, which degrade women because of what they do. After finding the academy and getting everything set up, we made our way to the Pole Persona academy in Rochester, which actually ended up being a nice an interesting place to film. The very main issue that we had there was that one side of the room was completely full of mirrors, which became an issue for us regarding camera angles since we couldn't have that side at all without a proper angle, otherwise we would be there in the reflection. Another issue was the space of the room which wasn't as big, I could say it was about the size of the Lecture Theatre 1 more or less, giving us less space to move and since we did a multicam shoot, we had to make sure that we could focus on our shots but at the same time not be in the middle of each other, otherwise would just ruin the other persons shot. It was a little bit hard at some points, but I believe after 10 mins in we got used to it and learned our ways to move and how to do it so it looked professional. To be honest one main thing that I learned that day was that communication during a shot is essential as sometimes as you shooting something you might not be seeing something else but someone else in your team might and they can point you in that direction so you can get that other shot as well. Mirrors and small spaces are also part of the list of learning strategies as even though in the documentary we had mirrors as well, that was more of a bigger place plus we were focus on dogs and just one side of the room, when in pole dancing you have all this tricks and 4 different poles in different corners of the room plus the 2 cameras shooting at the same time. One of the main ideas we had when it came down to interviews was to have something in the background relevant to what we were shooting which in our case was having Angie doing some tricks while we were interviewing Beth, but we got a nice depth of field so that Angie was blurry so that people didn't get distracted by her. One of the ideas I had that sadly didn't work out, was to try to put beth in front of there mirror and have angie doing the tricks from the reflection of there mirror, but we could;t find the right angle as the poles were in not favorable places which led us to doing that first and final option. Apart from that I believe that was a very good day at shooting. We used a lot of advices form teacher Helen from the documentary unit like framing, continuity, getting relevant shots, background noises, the use of multicam for different angles and close up shots, plus eye levels when interviewing. After a long day it was a good wrap up, back home to have a look at the nice footage.
For our second story we had Roller Derby which was a tough story to find in my opinion. We struggled a lot on finding our second story as we originally had the freestyle guy from Manchester that was going to be part of the film but said no in the end and the main thing we wanted was a cool ad different sport, but also something that could give us a story, something people would tune and and say I am interested, I want to watch this. We sat down in the same room and googled exotic sports, interesting sports, sports whites balls and we found lots of interesting stuff that finally led us to Roller Derby. A sport from which I had never heard about, something local, fun, an amazing team such at it is Kent Roller Girls and very interesting story since we found out that Roller Derby is the fastest growing female sport in the UK. We knew we had found the perfect thing for our channel, with only one issue. There was no contact number and their email bounced us back a couple times and after managing to send it, we knew we had no other option than to wait to see if someone ever read that and replied. Can say that today we haven't even got a replied from that email and wonder if someone ever got it or read it. The second option of concussing them which ended up being the lucky one, was through their Facebook page. After a bit "stalking" or better said research, I realised that they posted something on their Facebook page at least once a day, meaning that there was someone there reading and logging into that Facebook which was the perfect chance for sending a private message to see if that person every read it and replied. I sent a message to them and off we went for the long waiting. After more than a week of waiting we almost got resigned and started looking into new stuff, when suddenly I got that amazing reply from Jo-Commotion saying yes and helping with all the necessary stuff for arranging a day to shoot. At first we were going to film Wednesday here in Chatham when they get together since it is a bit closer to all of us, but then she helped us saying that the best place to film was sunday's at Herne Bay since the space was bigger and they did more training and proper sprints, which equals to matches in football foe example. We analyzed it, managed to get Hayle Pike, Helen's best friend to take us there along with Jamie Terry and off we went on this adventure 40 mins away from home at night to film and get involved with this world of Roller Derby. At first when we arrived it was a very awkward moment as didn't really know anyone and were not sure of what to expect but after talking to Jo Commotion and couple other girls and seeing how excited they were about the filming, we got a bit more into it. The very first discussion we had happened that day when we were deciding how to start the live segment as I didn't want to start straight way with an interview without first explaining what Roller Derby is and all that, but in the end Helen and Danny managed to convince me and we did it their way which tbh ended up being quite nice and smooth and I completely love it now. I was very very happy, because our main goal was to shoot the live report form Jamie in one go as if it was really live and we did, which I was quite shocked because I thought surely something was gonna go wrong like we could forget a question or someone would mumble, maybe a lot of 'uhms' but not, he and the Lady Killer, the girl we interviewed, were amazing and we managed to do it in one go as we planned and as if it was actually live. After that we did a very nice multi cam shoot again when I was operating the main camera, Sony EX having a big and main shot of everything that was going on, when Helen and Danny were using the Canon having more of close ups of my general shots. Those close ups, specially in interviews ended up helping a lot as I had to cut 1 question out if the interview with the Lady Killer due to timing and the only way I could have cut it was if I had a close up of her and we did thanks to that pre production and preparation and I learned that having two cameras or at least two angles of the same action can help a lot when it comes down to editing. After shooting for 2 hours, we called it a wrap, were very excited about the film and the nice answers we got from the live interviews and off we went again ready for the editing.
When it all came down to the editing and to creating our own image, we decided to go really for it. We didn't want to stick just to the brief and just create or submit what teacher Helen had told us to do, but we decided we wanted more than that, we wanted a true identity and something to look back at in a couple months or years and be very proud of. We created our own very original logo, bought the rights a music we wanted, created our own website, got our very two unique presenters, found two amazing and very new stories, travelled a lot in order to get our stories done, did a lot of graphics and VFX to make our video look more professional, designed and created a green screen studio, had our own very original intro, very own youtube channel, create profiles of the team so people could know who we are, created our very own teaser for the show and so much more. The amount of work that was done for this project was insane. Days and nights of editing, designing effects, looking at endless tutorials to learn how to do new stuff, but if there is something I have learned and keep learning with very project is that the very minor details and some cool stuff can make such a big difference. It is fair enough that not many people know how to use After Effects or even Photoshop, but taking time to learn all this stuff even if you are not to become an editor, makes a big difference when it comes down to making your own videos as you can expand your possibilities endlessly, plus with every project I learned how to create new stuff, effects that work and that don't and with an advice that Simon gave me in my first year, which was to try to create videos without to many VFX, I have been learning much more when to use them, when is it too much and more importantly, when to stop, because if there is a good thing that sometimes becomes a problem to me, is that once I start with visual effects and editing, it is very hard for me to stop as every idea I get that think it could be cool, I go out there, watch a lot of tutorials, look into other people's work and start learning and creating until I create something similar to what I want. I can officially say that my Digital News video is my best and most complete video so far among every single one I have made in my life and feedback from my teacher has helped me a lot to grow as an editor, director and camera man. Learning how to think and plan ahead the editing wen doing the shooting is very important, because there you know how you going to cut, the tone you want to use, how you want people to use say some words, which after filming is could be too late to go back and reshoot. For the very first time I can watch this video and go back to all the months of hard work and can say with no doubt that I am very proud of this work and so far it has been my favorite unit. Has helped me get better at what I do best, editing, plus it covers a bog range of elements in any production, form getting actors, to planning, shooting, editing, interviews, B-rolling, research, brand creating, open to the use of a lot of graphics and most important, learning how to work as a team, because if there is something you cannot do at all in this industry, is to work on your own.
Hope this has been enough for my learning and I will sure miss this unit, which in my opinion will be hard to beat as my favorite. Well done team!
Chris Sarmiento
Editor
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