Story-telling Unit: Camera Workshops

Over the last 2 Tuesdays I attended camera workshops with Fergus. I've not used a video camera since school so I was excited and nervous to learn all about the cameras we would be using on the course. It's probably my weakest area along with editing and, although I am really visual with my ideas and what i want to achieve through filming, I don't feel confident at the moment that I can achieve what I'm expecting.

I really enjoyed the workshops and learned a lot about using the cameras and SWEFF. Something that I took on board and will be using on all my shoots in the future is having the eye piece visual set to black and white as it really helps to see things like shadows and lighting. All the important little details are much easier to spot in mono rather than colour. 

I worked with Sophie and Roxanne on the first day and Shanelle joined us for the second day. I enjoyed working with different people for a change and they were all really easy to work with. One thing my group had problems with on both days was audio. I was being filmed so didn't could help the guys with the camera but the little mistakes we made in the workshops have helped us to not make them again and we all understood what we had done wrong so atleast we can learn from it. We had problems with a radio mic as it was set to a different frequency and Fergus couldn't get it to work for us so I think when I do my filming I would be more comfortable using a mic on a rod. 

The things we improved on from the first to second workshop were the quality of the sound and of the footage. Although the sound was still too quiet on the 2nd day, listening to audio back through headphones we could hear the difference from the 2 shoots so I'm glad we were improving.

I'm excited to get out and film my opening 2 minutes and hopefully make something I'm proud of.

Stay safe,

Helen