What is Field Production, Really?

Some people may not know what field production actually means, well field production means you're anywhere but a studio. Field production is always dependent upon the characteristics of your location. Your location might be a doctor's office, the bottom of a canyon or a barn.

Each situation calls for unique methods but you can always find similarities. Field production usually requires a lot of setting up and tearing down the equipment.

The Super Bowl, the mother of all field productions, uses at least seventy cameras along with two huge trucks full of tape decks, lights, microphones, cables, switchers, signal controllers, graphics generators, you name it that extravaganza uses it.

(These are just the cameras!)

Hollywood movies evolved using one-camera technique. Most field productions, especially low-budget, are done with one-camera technique.

One-camera technique means the action is repeated over and over with the one camera in a new location every time.

For fancy field production, all the lights are moved and re-set up in between every camera location.

Then, all that footage is editing together to simulate the effect you would have gotten had the action been captured simultaneously by multiple cameras.

Field productions are edited using a computer after they are shot. Good editing can make even a boring subject exciting but quality editing is time consuming. An editor who knows his stuff will plan on taking a minimum of one-hour to finish one-minute of edited story. Quick, down and dirty editing might go faster, but not much. An extremely intricate :30 commercial that gets bickered over a lot might be in editing two weeks. No wonder the budgets for video can quickly soar out of sight! Don't let that happen to you.

The higher the level of the production, the longer editing can take. Quality editing can save an otherwise poor production. Good editing is usually planned, and not just a reaction to fixing stuff that went wrong when shooting. Good editing is one of your most powerful story-telling techniques.

Group Update

Today my group and I filmed on location at my friend's house. It was really nice working off campus because it allowed us to bring a real life element to our story rather than being subjected to campus housing. It was really interesting seeing the characters in our script come to life and I give my group members a lot of credit for casting such good actors. If I could have changed one thing I wished we would have slated our video and audio now it looks like we'll have to deal with that issue in post-production. Today we completed about 70% of all shooting and we intend to finish the rest tomorrow. So far, so good.

Purple Cobra's Project

Yesterday we had our first day of shooting for our project.  We got together our actors and equipment and headed over to the most disgusting apartment I've ever been to.  I think our shoot went really well.  Craig Mike and I worked very well to get all of the shots we needed in order to tell our story.  Of course the scenes in the apartment are not where the meat of the story lies, but it is still an important way to open and close our film.  Obviously you will run into problems every time you go on a shoot, especially in a location as messy as this one.  We were able to overcome difficult lighting, audio and blocking challenges to create a solid final product for the interior scenes.  After shooting my ICTV show all semester in a Studio, it was a real reminder to what shooting on location in the filed is like and how difficult it is to have a very small space to work with.  It also was a nice reminder of how difficult it is lighting wise, where in the studio all of my lights are over head and interchangeable.   The actors took direction well and were extremely solid on their lines.  I was impressed with the amount we were able to get done in the little time crunch and limited crew.  We were very polite and respectful to the people in the apartment.  It will forever be the most disgusting place I've shot a film at. (I hope.)

Welp, it's all over..

Tomorrow, we get to show our fellow students what we've worked on and what we've learned.  Ending the semester is always a bittersweet thing.  You spend a lot of time working on things, put a lot of heart into them, but end up being so happy for it to be over once it is all over. Anyways, I'm really excited to show everyone the hard work all of our group put into our project.  Of course, nothing always goes as planned and we have had a ton of setbacks, from birds and trains on set, to not one, but two macbooks failing but I've always felt that the most important thing you can learn when you're working on something that is important to you, is learning from your failures and working through the hard things that are inevitable to get in your way.  I think our group did just that.  We made the cards we were dealt with work.  Of course, there are things that we could have avoided or do better at certain times, but I believe that we really did work hard to achieve what we achieved and for that, I'm extremely proud of our group.  With that being said, good luck to all of the other groups with their showings tomorrow, its going to be a great day and I'm excited for everyone to see all of our work!  Thanks for a great semester everyone, and of course, the main man himself, our teacher, Arturo.  Thanks again!

Dial M for Murder

This week, I watched my first Alfred Hitchcock film, Dial M for Murder.  It's basically about a guy who finds out that his wife is cheating on him and comes up with an extremely elaborate plan to kill her as way of revenge.  I don't want to ruin the movie but the story is absolutely brilliant.  There are so many plot twists and elaborate schemes that you constantly find yourself thinking one thing is going to happen and then something else happens.  I constantly had to remind my self that this film was well over twice as old as I am, yet it was done so, so well.  Hitchcock was way ahead of his time in his storytelling.  From a video shooting/editing/aesthetic aspect, it was pretty bare bones in my opinion.  Everything was what it was supposed to be, and nothing more.  There were plenty of shots that we consider cheesy now, but they were almost necessary back then.  I absolutely was hooked watching this film.  I definitely plan on watching more of his films from now on.

Happy Halloween everyone!

Tyler

Apple

I recently watched a brand new documentary on Steve Jobs.  It was recently done and talked about his life from the starting of Apple, to buying Pixar, to once again becoming the CEO of Apple, until his death.  Admittedly, I am an Apple fanboy.  I own an iPhone, a Macbook, an iPad, and countless Apple applications like Logic, Final Cut Pro, and many others.

Normally, we think of Steve Jobs as just the CEO of Apple, a guy who helped with the iPhone and was ultimately, a computer geek.  What this documentary highlights and why I am writing this is that Steve Jobs revolutionized almost every aspect of the media today.  He was involved with the creation of Final Cut Pro and studio, he was instrumental in starting iTunes, helped launch logic, and also helped create the software that makes all of these tools and assets that we use as communications and Television Radio majors possible.

With just the mention of the word Final Cut (the old version at least), most people think right away about a NLE that was revolutionary, streamlined the editing process, and kept costs down in the process.  It's interesting to think that a man that we all consider a visionary, impacted all of us so closely.  I for one began editing on Final Cut Pro in high school.  Because of Final Cut, I found my love for making films, telling stories, and finding my own way to be creative.  Had it not been for Steve Jobs or even iMovie, my high school may never had the money or resources to have a video production class and I never would have gotten to the point I am at today.

Another thing that Steve did was with audio.  ITunes is gigantic; and unstoppable force in the music industry along with iPods.  People forget that when iTunes was created, there was nothing even remotely close to it on the market nor was there anything reasonably as advanced as the iPod was when it was released shortly after.  Music is one of my biggest passions along with video and when I was thinking about, Steve has literally contributed to almost all of my happiness in my life in some way.  While his programs are not instrumental to my life all of the time now that I have found my passion, I still use them today and without Final Cut or Garage Band and Logic, I may have never realized how creative of a person I really am because there was nothing even remotely affordable on the market or easy-to-use for music and video.

While people are quick to judge "apple fanboys", I think it is important to step back and think about all of the ways Apple has impacted our lives.  Steve Jobs and his company have made so many things possible for all of us that may never have been possible before.  Because of their innovation, so many more innovators were created and made able to realize their true potential.  For this, not for the iPhones I use or the computer I own, do I hold Steve Jobs so highly.  Through his products, he inspired me and many others around me to create, to learn from ourselves, to be our own visionaries, and for this, we are all indebted to Steve Jobs.


May he rest in peace.

The Hunger Games (Movie)

The other day, I watched the move, The Hunger Games, with my friends.  I had read all the books and frankly, was in love with them.  I'd seen the movie before, but decided that this time, I would watch it from an analytical film perspective rather than judging it on how much different it was then the book because frankly, no movie can capture an entire book or book series perfectly as we've seen many times (Harry Potter, Twilight, ect.).

I loved the DIY approach that Gary Ross took when shooting the movie by having most of the movie shot "hand held" which most feature length blockbuster movies never do.  I noticed very quickly that whenever the scene was taking place in a high tense situation or an impoverished area, everything was shot hand held and the editing was extremely fast jump cuts and very bare bones from an editing perspective.  This puts the audience in a certain mood I could tell from watching it.  It became even more noticeable during the few scenes that were in the rich capitol where every shot was either a tripod, steady cam, or jib type shot with extremely smooth cutting from an editing stand point.  Everything was very refined and more typical of most blockbusters to show the wealth of the area they were in.

They way this movie was shot was very different in my opinion from most blockbuster type large budget movies and from that aspect, I thought the movie excelled.  They did a great job of capturing the "indie feel" that the book had been written in.  There also isn't a ton of music in the movie which I think is very important because most of the "districts" didn't have any organized music so it wouldn't make sense with the story.  The only songs were folk type songs which was cool because they were sung by the actors and no instrumentals.  It was very affective in that sense as well.

Overall, it was a well done movie in my personal opinion from a film perspective.  I enjoyed the indie look because that is personally the style that I am drawn to.

Tyler Chadwick

Goals for the class and what not

Since a lot of others have been posting about their summer and expectations for the class and what not, I figured why not? I'll do it too. Like everybody else in the class I have an interest in movies and obviously I have an interest in making them and being apart of that process. Unlike quite a few of you guys, my summer wasn't spent on a movie set or as part of an internship somewhere. I just worked at a grocery store all summer so I'm definitely ready to get back into making some cool stuff again. Now for my goals in the class it's pretty straight forward. Really all I want to do is improve on what I've already learned. Intro to Field taught me some basics but I'd really like to dive in and see what I can really do. I've done a few projects but I would definitely like to do many more.