16:9 Storyboard

Script Breakdown & Shot List

Photo Release Form

Location Recce & Materials

Health and Safety Form

Consent Forms

Call Sheet

Audio Visual Script

Action Plan

Proposal: Sumac Centre Promo Video

We are going to be producing a promotional video for the Sumac Centre. This video will roughly be around 1 – 2 mins consisting of footage of the Sumac Centre, it’s members, the events they run there and maybe an interview or two. The video will also have voice-overs from the members at the centre, as well as a narrator.

The goal of this promotional video is to of course help promote the Sumac Centre, therefore this video is required to be short, yet professional, encapsulating and informative. This video will help publicise the Sumac Centre and show people who they are and what they do, and how much fun the children have who go there on youth club days, as well as how much they learn on homework club days.

The footage in which we require to film at the centre will be interviews, relevant cut-away footage, children playing during the youth club and doing their homework during the homework club. Acquiring this kind of footage is essential towards making sure that this promotional video will be professional and outstanding to any viewer.

Consent forms will be filled out by the children’s parents, allowing us to use them on camera for our promotional video. This prevents any illegal matters being ensued upon the creation of the video.

I will ensure that this video will be edited to a professional standard, using Adobe Premiere. I will also make sure that all footage be acquired on a suitable device for filming, assuring that the quality of the video is crisp and clear. Alongside the camera I shall use a tripod for any footage that will require an extremely steady hand. Overall, the production of this video will be of professional standards.

Evaluation

The first task for analysing the different kinds of briefs that can be obtained, went very well. I discovered a lot of important and useful information about all these kinds of briefs, such as contractual briefs, negotiated briefs and formal briefs. I wrote a detailed essay-like blog post explaining what all these kinds of briefs mean and how they should be approached. The difficult part of this task was finding real-life examples, because there weren’t very many; if not at all.

My tutor Faye mentioned in one or two of my blog posts about the Sumac Centre and social action required some alterations in order to complete them fully. This was very helpful and taught where to not go wrong in further blog posts. “Great work George” is what Faye commented on my #iwill blog post. #iwill was one of the trending social action projects that I had to research to begin with.

The second task began the social action and community media research which played a very critical part for expanding my knowledge on the topic of social action within my community, and the world. Social action plays a key part in our lives whether it be helping the homeless, free catering for vegans or setting up a homework club for children who don’t get enough educative attention at home.

Ashley Carter came and visited us, he does work for the leftlion which is a community driven magazine, in which all the workers there work for free. The main reason he came in was to talk to us about what it’s like to be a writer. It was very informative and helped me understand furthermore what it’s like to work for a magazine. He told us a lot of information about leftlion too. The Leftlion played a part in my assignment, because I had to research how it is social action. The main reason it being social is of course because the workers work there for free. And because it is community driven of course.

I analysed my community’s social action, mostly by evaluating the actions that took place on the University of Nottingham’s website. Here I gathered many examples of social action within my area. Seeing this vast array of organisations trying to make a difference in Nottingham made me re-evaluate how much needs to actually be done within Nottingham. There are particular aspects around Nottingham that require more of our attention and action. E.g. the free catering on Thursday’s organisation, organised by the University of Nottingham. They require more volunteers to help feed more people in need of food.

After conducting all of my secondary research it was time to research into the organisation that I was going to be helping. This was the Sumac Centre. There website provided much information that I required in order to know what I was going to be getting myself into. As well as make it clear to me as to what it is specifically they might need my help for. I learnt that they are a social action organisation, in partnership with veggies, a free vegan catering organisation. These two together help each other b organising events, especially for children, such as youth clubs and homework clubs. I attended both the youth club and homework club to record footage.

After my research was completely gathered, Dominic paid a visit to our college in which we negotiated a brief with him which was very helpful. He discussed with us, what it was he was looking for from us. He didn’t make it quite clear at first, however in the end we came to terms that we would produce a promotional video for the Sumac Centre. I blogged the visit that Dominic did for us. I also blogged about the visit of Patrick and Libby, they visited before Dominic to tell us a little bit of history on veggies and the Sumac Centre.

After the brief was sorted, we organised when we would visit the Sumac Centre, and the people we would go with. I went to the Sumac Centre with Ben Homer and we recorded plenty of footage for the promo video.  The volunteers there were incredibly helpful and aided us whenever we needed their help with something, or were confused, or nervous about of the children. The recording went extremely well, aside from some of the lighting at the Sumac Centre due to it being quite dull or too yellow there. I ended up going to the Sumac Centre twice, once to the homework club on the 7^th March and second to the youth club on the 3^rd May.

I managed to get an interview with one of the volunteer’s whilst he was doing the washing up. I would have preferred to interview him when he wasn’t doing the washing up, however he was too busy. We also got some footage of the children having fun, we played around with some camera angles whilst this was all happening. We got some cutaways, zoom-ins, zoom-outs, camera pan fades ETC. All relevant footage in order to produce our final product.

After we gathered all of the footage together, I put it all onto my hard drive. Sersha Rose who was part of a different group that went to the Sumac Centre, gave us her footage and we gave her ours. We used some of her footage in our final piece to give it more character and depth.

Editing the Video went terrifically smooth. I ran into zero problems whilst editing the footage together, found some great royalty free music and put it altogether, with one voice-over of myself. I mostly used hard-cuts with one cross-dissolve for the final scene transition to give it a good fade-away effect. Ben Homer helped me by selecting some of the clips I should use and what order some of the footage should go in, however I mostly did all of the editing.

This project has taught me a lot about social action within local communities, and Nottingham. I now see what social action truly is and how it can be used to bring communities closer together and help form a better society for our future generations. Taking an in-depth look at social action in person too helped me reflect further upon the effects too, like visiting the Sumac Centre’s homework club. I look forward to seeing how much further this could go in Nottingham. I hope the best for the Sumac Centre, and that this video helps them along with their social action within Nottingham.

Sumac Centre Video Link

Here is the link to the Sumac Centre promtional video that I edited.

Check it out!

Thanks

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T9NEpceYTjw

Editing the Promo Video

I began editing the promo video on the 13th May 2016. The entire editing process for the 2 min video took me roughly three hours.

Firstly I acquired all relevant footage from sources that have also been to the Sumac Centre. Which was only Sersha and Ben. Ben came with me to the Sumac Centre therefore the work he captured was also with min on my SD card. Sersha only obtained cut-away footage, which is fine because me and Ben had already covered the interviews.

Next I began compiling into onto one timeline on Adobe Premiere CS5.5 after choosing the footage I believed was most suitable for the promo video for the image of it in my head and to my pre-production work. Ben also helped me out by suggesting a few clips to be used in the video. I cut down all the necessary clips so that I could fit them appropriately together. This helped the video be cut down to be around 2 minutes in length, as well as be formed in a way that I saw fit to my pre-production work.

I used a cross dissolve for the final cut to the video. This added a nice transitioning to the end title page that displayed the music I used in my video. I exported the final video with the H.264 format in a 1280x720 resolution at 30 frames per second. This provides the video with a suitable memory size whilst keeping a suitable quality for display. After it was exported I used a program called handbrake. Handbrake is a piece of software that can compress video files down to smaller sizes without damaging the quality of the video. This makes sure that I can email it to anyone without having to worry about file size restrictions on any email website.

Overall the editing process for the video went very well, I believe that the Sumac Centre will be happy with the outcome.

Sumac Centre: Second Visit

Me (George Whittall-Weston) and Benjamin Homer visited the Sumac Centre for a second time on the 3rd of May 2016. This second visit was a lot more rewarding in terms of footage gathered. It wasn't all that much different from the first time, apart from that it was during a youth club event rather than the homework club. The children were very ecstatic once again on our arrival. However this time instead of us bringing a camera we had to record with Ben's phone. We were unable to book a camera out at the technicians office due to it being closed before we were about to leave for the Sumac Centre.

Ben helped by adjusting and doing some of the camerawork and I did the same. I interviewed Phil, one of the volunteers there, whilst he was doing the washing up. This was kind of annoying but considering how hectic the Sumac Centre is, it's acceptable. I also briefly interviewed Dominic the chief supervisor for the children at Sumac. This was a very short  interview but may come in useful.

Overall this was a brilliant visit, where we got the final bits of footage needed to complete our promotional video for the Sumac Centre. I look forward to editing all of this together and seeing the final product we have for them.

Dominic's visit from the Sumac Centre

Dominic visited us from the Sumac Centre on the 3rd March 2016. The reason for his visit was to negotiate a brief with us in order to aid us in developing a promotional video for the Sumac Centre. This promotional video will help the Sumac Centre gain more publicity and show people who they are and what they do and how much fun the children have there on youth club days, as well as how much they learn on homework club days.

Dominic co-operated very nicely with us, providing us with an array of information in order for us to provide them with the promotional video that they desire. This will be great for us because it is great experience relating to public relations in the field of Journalism. This will also be great for the Sumac Centre because it will increase their publicity and maybe even perhaps, help them acquire more revenue in order to spruce the building up a bit.

He answered all of our questions and let us know that we must all get consent forms filled in from all of the children's parents, so that they will be allowed to be on camera legally.

Overall, Dominic didn't precisely explain what sort of video he is aspiring to obtain, he merely is just expecting us to do our thing, and they they're sure our video will be of their expected standards.