Aurelija's TV production blog

"Color has always been an obsession in movies. Before movies could be shot with color film, colorists hand-tinted, dyed, and stenciled film in order to satisfy the filmmaker’s vision <...> Color continues to be an obsession for filmmakers today because we now have the ability to not only shoot in color but also digitally manipulate any image to any color range our minds can imagine."(Andersson, 2015:337) For our film, we ended up using one light in the office bit to create a shadow behind our character. Initially, we wanted to film that scene at night but had to compromise for our actress who couldn't stay late. Thus we ended up with a pretty well-lit room where we tried to block out the sunlight. In a way, it worked to our advantage as we wanted that red hue in the office shots. Other than that, for the bar, we ended up using only the lights that were in there as the image looked good and didn't need any changes. When we were discussing lighting for this pr...

After 2008, when Nikon released the first camera that could record video, more and more manufacturers started adding the feature to their cameras. Now DSLR cameras are very popular amongst independent filmmakers as it is a more affordable option and by using different lenses, filters, and other attachments you can create a cinematic look  (Andersson, 2015:1). They are lighter than professional film cameras, are more discrete, great at capturing images with low light (some even better than professional cameras) and by using different lenses and rigs you can achieve a different look to most films. However, DSLRs are made for taking stills rather than filming, so they do have their setbacks, but it's nothing you can't work around.  DSLRs come in a big variety of cameras to choose from. Some things to consider while picking out a camera to use is the sensor size. There's a full-frame sensor and a non-full-frame sensor, commonly referred to as a crop sensor. A full-frame sens...

For the most part, I'm happy about our finished project as it went so much better than I expected it to. To start with I had my doubts about the winning show idea as it was a children's game show and  we were warned not to work with children or animals as they come with a lot of legal responsibilities (like the fact that we can't upload our show on YouTube, or any online platform, yet for example). However, I think that all of us did their best and deserved a clap on the back. This unit definitely helped to bring us all together as we never actually worked on anything as a  big team, so far we only had little teams that wouldn't change a lot over a year and a half.  As for my own work on it I feel like I could have done a better job at keeping sharper focus, but I'm sure that with more practice I could have done it better. During game two I did a crucial mistake (that was later on edited out) of reframing on air. My job was to have CUs on th...

Jungle Run I chose this show because it has a lot of similarities to our studio show Mission Control. There are a few games along the way that help to 'power up' the last one and depending on how you did in the games before you get a certain time limit to do the last task. Obviously Jungle Run had a way bigger budget and a way bigger set that let them have more challenging quests, but at the same time, the show is meant for older kids than ours was.  From the camera perspective, there's always a following shot when they are running from one game to another, there's also an establishing shot, usually from the jib, which we tried to do on our show, but at the end, it was too risky to use.  Something different from our show was that they didn't have an audience on set, but the host interacts with the viewers at home. As well as there's a pre-titles sequence of the host introducing the show, he and the kids run off and then they play their titles which wo...

I was the DOP for our promo team. Overall, the experience of working with my team was quite pleasant. However, I wish things wouldn't have been done so last minute and that the communication between us was a bit better, as I had to miss a shoot day due to being told too late about the filming date when the promo was being filmed and I couldn't move around my shift at work anymore. But I am fairly proud of my work in our trailer and titles.  If I would have filmed the promo I would have suggested to put the letters on the word S.P.A.C.E down on the left side of the frame and left enough room for Jess to put them in the edit. "Ideally, every shot in a television program should be composed as carefully as a still photograph."(Inman and Smith, 2006) and in a still shot like in our promo that is very easily achievable. Looking back at the footage I feel like we should have turned the lights up a little bit because even though it supposed to be nighttime it...

Grams aka sound effects, the name Grams come from 'gramophone' as back in the day they were playing it through gramophones  (Singleton-Turner, 2011) . For our pre-production, I was given a job to find grams, which wasn't as easy as I thought it would be, however finding decent sounding, royalty free effects that fit into our 80s synth/vaporwave theme is possible. It took a while but with some help from Tom, we managed to get it done in time for the day. Sound effects are extremely important to any TV show or film. Without any sound design, people may not understand what's happening. Not only does it help to explain the setting of the action it also helps the viewer to get immersed in the show/film. Sometimes we as viewers don't even notice how we react to background music or sound effects (like infamous dun dun duuun ). Grams are especially important in kids TV shows and films as it helps them to keep up with what's going on on the screen, draw in their...