Back From Vacation

Finally back from vacation...

I am a little bit sad but I am definitely excited to get back to work with my blog and pick up writing my script.

Hopefully now I will not have many distractions and I can help amateur filmmakers with this little journal of tips tricks and information.

Summer Vacation

I am halfway through my summer vacation in North Carolina.

The weather here is beautiful and everything is very inspiring. Maybe I will make a movie about a romance on the beaches of Rodanthe and hire Richard Gere and Diane Lane...? Oh wait that movie already exists.

Hello Readers!

Hello Readers!

Sorry if I have let you down by forgetting to post, but please do not give up on my blog yet!

I got an A for the documentary I made! Awesome right? Even better my professor is hoping to send it out to the NBS to try and win it an award or something... I am super psyched about that too.

Other than that, I have been busy moving out of Erie, to Pittsburgh, just to go back to Erie to move storage, then to come back to Pittsburgh all to move back to Erie this Sunday on Father's Day...

That is whats been keeping me from blogging, but I have a new internship coming up that will totally be relevant to this blog and because of it I want to revive my posting, and start giving some more tips.

Basically for my internship, I will be doing three things... making wedding videos, going on local shoots to make commercials and if I am lucky traveling to the Caribbean Islands to make a 30 minute TV program.

No matter which of these things I do, I will start up posting again to try and help all of you amateur filmmakers out there learn some easy tips that I have learned...

My internship starts on July 20th so make sure to check back around then for posts.

Have a GREAT SUMMER!!

Final Video

Well thank you for following me all of this time!

Here is the documentary

Celebrating 15 Years with the Mary D'Angelo Performing Arts Center



If you are a begining filmmaker I hope this blog gave you some helpful tips for filmmaking.

And the Winner Is...?

Despite some entries getting 0 votes in my poll I decided to add little clips from all of the choices in the poll EXCEPT Pink Martini... good footage for them was hard to find on youtube.

During the documentary I feature a lot of B-roll video footage. If you add it all up I think I used 18 different videos for B-Roll and 1 audio track. Most of the B-Roll clips were short but I used three 20-30 seconds clips to both take up some time but also excite the audience.

Those clips were from

Yamato
Streb
Ballet Folklorico De Mexico

Sorry for my Absence!

Hello Readers

Sorry for my most recent absence. I have been traveling back and forth to Philadelphia for racing season and suffocating from another class project. Rest assured, I am back to the blog!


Photo Compliments of Row2k.com

While I have been gone I have written a few posts to put up so please excuse the sudden post overflow that is going to happen tonight after my class.

5 DAYS UNTIL THE DUE DATE!

Avid versus Final Cut

Time is winding down to the due date, and my group still has a lot of work to do, mainly interviews and editing. For the interviews we have seven scheduled so far, and have potential to schedule a few more, but after Monday, May 10th we are DONE interviewing!

Here is our week of interviews so far:

Monday, May 3: Bruce @ 4

Tuesday, May 4: Michelle: @ 10, Dr. Garvey @ 2:30

Thursday, May 6: Dr. Roessner @ 1-3, Earleen Glaser @ 2-4

Friday, May 7: Annette @ 1

Monday, May 10: Dr. Livingston @ 2

It seems like a lot but hopefully if we can go into the interviews with our questions planned out, we can spend about 30 minutes, and get everything we need.

____________________________________________________________________________________

After we get all of the interviews done we are ready for the editing process! Now we have to determine which editing software we use, Final Cut Pro or Avid Pro.

Most editors are biased to one of the two softwares. Whether or not there are any real differences it appears that editors use one software more than the other and then they tend to prefer it because they know their way around it better. I personally prefer the Avid. This is for the simple reason that I have used the Avid plenty of times, and I haven't nearly broke the surface of FCP and what it has to offer yet. But because I have access to both of these softwares, I am going to look at both of the system's Pros and then make a decision.


Pros of Avid
I have used the Avid many times before.
The Avid editing system is located in the Communication Dept. Office, and I will have unlimited access to it.
I have the instructional manual Avid Editing: a Guide for Intermediate and Beginning Users
We have filmed the majority of our footage on Mini Dv tapes, and the Avid system can copy the tapes easily.
Avid systems tend to be able to handle more before crashing.
Avid has better multicamera ability.
Avid manages captured photos, audio clips and video clips better.


Pros of Final Cut Pro
Has much better graphic capabilities.
Is compatible with Flash Animator and Adobe Photoshop.
It can maintain more audio tracks.
All the cool kids are using Macs!

... except for me!!

Looking at the two lists it is easy for me to choose the Avid over FCP for these reasons:

I am more comfortable using the Avid.
I have unlimited access to the Avid.
Final Cut Pro does not have any game winning advantages that are enough for me to sit down and learn the new software for a 30 minute documentary.

In the future I hope to learn FCP, that way I can work for any editor/producer with no problem but for now I am going to stick with the Avid, and try and learn as much as I can about the system.

While researching which software to use I found a bunch of great links and blogs discussing the differences/pros/cons/etc of the Avid and FCP. If you would like to read more about Avid vs. FCP check out these links/blogs!

http://www.scottsimmons.tv/blog/the-avid-vs-fcp-articles/
http://lafcpug.org/feature_avid_vs_fcp.html
http://www.videosymphony.com/blog/?p=124
http://editingstandards.blogspot.com/

In other news I still have not decided on what additional clips I would like to use during the documentary, but I have added a poll on the sidebar, so you can help me decide! Please vote for your favorite programs, and you will see them in the Documentary!!

B-Roll Footage

So after a few hours of looking through potential B-Roll footage I have decided on a few clips that I would like to use. Unfortunately I did not know about this project before all of the years programs were done, but thanks to Youtube I was able to find some good 20 - 30 second clips to use for transitioning throughout the documentary.

To fill the 30 minute requirement I have decided to use five to nine 20 - 30 second clips of past PAC performances. These clips will both help transition between interview questions and also help keep the documentary fun and exciting. Also since all of these clips are accompanied with great sound, I am going to use them to play quietly in the background of the interviews. This helps a lot because now I do not have to search for music, and the videos, and then the background sound will help the documentary flow.

Here are four of the clips I am planning to use!

If you are the owner of any of these clips and would like them removed from this blog please email me at lniecg72@mercyhurst.edu.

This first one is a clip of Ballet Folklorico de Mexico



The Ballet Folklorico de Mexico was the first sold out show of the PAC after the opening night. It was in 1998 and one of the favorite performances by many of the staff members.


This second clip is from the St. Petersburg State Ice Ballet's production of Sleeping Beauty.

Originally I was intending to use footage from their production of The Nutcracker, but I was not able to find any good footage.



The St. Petersburg State Ice Ballet's Nutcracker was a landmark show to the PAC. For the Nutcracker, an ice rink was literally built on the PAC stage. This ice rink took a lot of work to maintain, but was such a successful and fun show that the PAC staff may secretly try to bring it back to Mercyhurst within the next few years. But please, you did not read that from me!


This next clip is from YAMATO.



Yamato has visited Mercyhurst several times in the past, and has truly become one of the PAC's most entertaining and well received shows in the PAC's history.

For these clips I was intending to first fade to black and then fade in to the clip, and the fact that this clip from YAMATO starts in black with only one drummer visible, fits perfectly into my plan for editing.


This last clip is Juan Carmona, a spanish classical guitarist.



This clip is not a stand out visual clip, but the audio that it has will cover the last 5 minutes of the documentary.


Like I said earlier, I would really like to use five to nine clips, and so far I only have these four, but tomorrow I will be picking at least two more clips.

These clips could be from any of these programs:

Ana Vidovic
Biava String Quarter
Regina Carter
Streb
Pink Martini
Max Raabe
The Metropolitan Opera HD

If I can find clips from each of these artists I will love to use at least two to three for the documentary and the other three to four during for credits.

If you would like to see any of these in the documentary, or clips from any of the other past performances please post a comment to this post!!!

Thanks and I hope to hear from you!

Writing the Script

In the class that goes along with this project, Documentary Production, we briefly talked about writing the script. Basically there are two types that could be used for a documentary.

There is a single column script, better known as a "film script" and then there is a two column script.

A film script looks something like this...


This film script is compliments of Waggish.org If you are the author and would like me to remove it please email me at lniecg72@mercyhurst.edu

Film scripts are very fun to write, but very hard to write for a documentary style film, especially when you do not have all of your interviews completed. This is because a single column Film Script only allows text and no pictures. Therefore I would have to try my best to predict the scenery of the interviews, and what the interviewees are going to say in their answers. If I couldn't write a lot about what I thought they would say and what the image was going to look like I would have a very short unclear script.

Luckily the storyboard I started during a group work day looked exactly like a two column script ready to be made for this documentary. First I printed the half complete storyboard I had originally typed into my computer. Then I started adding more cells to the story board, drawing in little pictures to create a vision and adding ideas for audio to make it flow.

When I was done drawing in all of the pictures, and wrapping up the story, I went back to my computer and filled in the blank table. This time I went through the entire video column and added "Roll Graphic, Name, Year etc." in each of the blocks that I want to add a graphic to.

Blogger does not allow you to post PDF files so I uploaded the file to my Professional Website, so if you would like to read my whole script you will have to click the link below. Sorry for the inconvenience.

CLICK HERE TO GO SEE MY SCRIPT AS OF TODAY!! (IN PDF FORMAT)

A graphic could be any still image or text to go in place of the video, or compliment the video. Usually used as a title or a name.

For this documentary our group has decided to add a small graphic in the lower right or lefthand corner with the name and title of each interviewee, or the name and year of the performance.

A common mistake that most beginning filmmakers make is having the graphic up too many times or for too long.

The graphic only needs to be up for about as long as it takes to read through it twice.

If you show the same person more than once you do not need to show the graphic every time. I have learned that you should show a graphic text once every four to five time someone appears on screen.

The next part of the script writing process for me is going to be searching for and selecting B-Roll video I would like to use.

Since we are going to have a limited number of interviews we have decided to make the documentary more exciting by adding several clips of past programs in the PAC's history but we have yet to find any to add.

See You Next Time!

Story Boarding

This past Thursday our group got a lot of work done. Right off the bat we split into 3 groups. One group was sorting through hard copy pictures, choosing ones that we could use for B-Roll, another group was searching through the PAC computer systems for digital photographs, and a group member and I were story boarding the documentary.

The storyboarding started after I found a picture of the D’Angelos and Andre Watts, a pianist who played on opening night. A few weeks ago Earleen Glaser, the school library archivist, was telling my group a story about opening night.

It is opening night, and the audience members are excited for the first performance of the PAC. The curtains open and there is Andre Watts dead center on the stage with his custom piano, delivered here from Pittsburgh, Pa, earlier that day. Watts waits until the applause quiets down, and then he presses his fingers down on the keys. Nothing happens. He plays a little more and there is absolutely no noise coming from the piano. Opening night of a brand new Performing Arts Center and the piano breaks right on stage. Luckily the Performing Arts Center had it’s own piano backstage and ready. Stage crew brought out the other piano, and Andre Watts got on with the show.

What a great little story to have to open the documentary. It fits right in with the 3 part chronological method, it’s interesting, it’s funny and best of all there are 2 great pictures of Watts, the D’Angelos and Dr. Garvey, the former college President to scan for the opening B-Roll.

So after seeing the pictures and thinking out the first part of the documentary, I immediately grabbed a pencil and a notebook and started to storyboard.

For the storyboard I used a Two Column format. In the first column is the video that will be shown and in the second column is the audio that will be heard.



Here is my the first page of my storyboard. Originally only the copy in my notebook had actual pictures in the video column but for this, I decided to add pictures from Google images to help you get an idea of what it should look like. Below is the first page of the storyboard I have on my computer, without any actual pictures, just words to describe what will be in the video column.



CLICK HERE TO PRINT AN EASY TO USE TWO COLUMN STORYBOARD TEMPLATE

Within no time we had filled a few pages with pictures and audio.

At the end of the workday I typed up what I had of the storyboard and sent it to all of my group mates and now we have a very clear direction to steer towards during these final weeks. Unfortunately, I did not finish the storyboard yet, but I have gotten to the middle of the present section and so far everybody seems to be pleased with it.

Scheduling Meetings

So a few weeks have passed and our group is realizing that we do not have as much footage as we would like to have at this point. What does this mean for us exactly? We have about 10 more days to get footage, and if we don't get something we want, we will just have to scratch the idea entirely.

You might think "why can't you film anymore after 10 days? The project is not due until May 18th." Well if you have never edited footage before you might be surprised to know that it takes a VERY VERY long time. I timed myself during a previous project and it took me on average 10 minutes of editing to get just 30 seconds of finished product, and that was with sound-bytes ranging from 30 seconds to 1 minute. Therefore a 30 minute final product will take about 600 straight minutes of productive editing without changing my mind or messing up the editing.

Normally I would never suggest having 30 second to 1 minute sound-bytes, but for that project I only had 4 interviews so I had to make best with what I had. A good sound-byte in my opinion is between 7 and 15 seconds long. If it is any longer make sure you have B-Roll to play because without it you could lose viewers interest.

I'll talk more about these processes when I get to the editing phase of the project but for now it's back to how hard it is to schedule meetings.

Right now we have about 2 1/2 hours of total footage. Half of it is from a Student Outreach program that the PAC is involved with and the other half is from the Ailey II show.

2 1/2 hours may sound like a lot of footage, but to fill a 30 minute documentary it is far from enough.


James Cameron’s Titanic has 240 hours and 45 minutes of footage.

The average 45 minute TV Show shoots about 60 to 90 hours of footage per episode.

TO LEARN MORE LITTLE FACTS ABOUT FILM CLICK HERE!!


We probably are not going to shoot 58 more hours of footage, so instead we are going to try and get as much footage as we can in 10 to 15 different interviews. We have decided to break the documentary into 3 chronological parts: the past, the present and the future. For each one of those 3 parts we are hoping to have about 5 different interview pieces. We probably could get away with having just 10, but I believe a documentary will have a better effect with more variety in interviews.

To decide how we are going to get these interviews our group has broken down the chronological parts, and started to list people who would be good to talk to.

Ailey II

So right after our first meeting with Ellia, we learned that the last big show of the Performing Arts Center was going to be in two days. The program was Ailey II, a dance show from the popular New York City dance company of Alvin Ailey. This gave our group an excellent chance to get good footage.

During the day the Ailey II dancers did a dress rehearsal and they invited students from Mercyhurst Prep School to watch and even participate. I was not there myself but John, our videographer was, and he got almost an hour and a half of great footage of the dance company and student interaction.

Later on that night the Ailey II dancers went on stage and did their performance. Me and three other group members went to film the show and get some interviews with the audience members during intermission. The publicist said that we could film the show for B-roll, but when we got there they said that they had changed their mind. At first I was upset because I thought that gave us a chance to get some great footage, but instead it made us rely on the audience members and what they had to say. Before the show we got a chance to interview these two guys who are always dressed in outrageous outfits riding a tandem bicycle around campus. Their names are Jesse and Ricardo and they love the arts and being cultured. During the interview they gave so many good answers that would fit perfectly for the documentary. Unfortunately I did not have a tripod with me, so I had to film by hand, and I forgot to charge my camera so we had to stay near a wall outlet when filming. This did not ruin the shots, but they did not turn out as nicely as they could have. Either way the audio from the interview will provide me with some great sound bites to add to B-roll.

A sound bite is just like a VO except it is not narrated it is captured from another source, like an interview or just the natural sound from the background.

Sound bites should not be shorter than 7 seconds or longer than 13 seconds. There is nothing worse in a documentary than endless amounts of talking with no B-roll so please if you are going to have a long sound bite, break it up with lots of good various B-roll.

After we interviewed Jesse and Ricardo we interviewed a few dancers, a long friend of the D’Angelos and several students. Everyone gave us so many great answers that it will be hard to end the documentary at 30 minutes.

Here is a video of the awesome Ailey II dance company. Like I said before I was not allowed to film any of the show, so instead I grabbed this from Youtube.



This video was not filmed by me. I found it on Youtube, on the AileyOrganization channel.

The Plan

So we have now been working for about 3 weeks on our video and things have been going very smoothly. Each week of class we spend Tuesday watching a documentary, and then Thursday doing group work. On our first group work day we met with Michelle Ellia the assistant marketing manager of the performing arts center. The group members and I sat with Michelle around the conference room table, broke out our notebooks and got right to planning the documentary according to what the client, the performing arts center, wants.
After about an hour of questions and discussion, we have come to the conclusion that we will be making a twenty to thirty minute documentary celebrating the fifteen years that the Performing Arts Center has been up and running.
2011 will be the 15th anniversary for the Performing Arts Center, and to celebrate the birthday the staff is planning to have a big get together to show off the upcoming season’s programs. Also at the big unveiling of the 2011 programming they want to show the documentary we have made. Yikes, that kind of seems like a lot of pressure. Even more intimidating is that for the unveiling they are attempting to fill every seat in the PAC… that’s 800 seats.
After talking with Michelle the team decided that we are going to use a simple three part chronological format for our documentary. The first part will be the past. For this part we are going to have to sort through old footage in the basements of the school library and the Performing Arts Center. Hopefully there we can find a lot of good stories and B-roll for the film.

B-roll is video or still pictures that you show during VOs

VOs are voice overs

Together VOs and B-roll make a SOT which stands for Sound Over Tape

TO LEARN MORE FILM JARGON CLICK HERE

Also for the history segment we have assembled a list of important people to contact when it comes to the history of the PAC. These people are the former President Garvey, the Guelchers, Dr. D’Angelo, and many more who were there or helped out when the building was erected.

The next segment of the three part theme will be the present. For this section we will interview the current staff members, i.e. Michael Fuhrman the director of the PAC, student regulars who attend the PACs shows for their benefit, community regulars and season ticket holders who come to the performing arts center to experience culture, and finally students who have performed on the PAC stage.
Also during the present section we hope to go over this past season’s programs showing footage and images from the events.

For the last section we have decided to show the upcoming programs, and where the Performing Arts Center is headed in terms of growth, programming and influence. Ellia told us that the budget for the Performing Arts Center has went from about $80,000 in its first year of operations to $700,000 this past year! That is a tremendous amount of growth over a 16 year period and we are sure that it will keep growing so we are going to do our best to predict the future of the PAC.

Pre Production

For the documentary project my Documentary Production class has been split into two groups. My groups topic is the Mary D’Angelo Performing Arts Center at Mercyhurst. At first I was not very happy about being assigned to this particular team. The other team’s topic is on an Erie Immigrant Relocation Project. They get to talk with immigrants from all over the world, and help future immigrants by making a video that shows them what life is here in Erie, Pa. I have to make a video celebrating 15 years of the PAC. Even worse, when meeting with the Manager of the PAC they informed us that they would be showing this documentary to about 800 people as they unveil the upcoming 2010-2011 program list. A little bit of pressure there. Luckily the way my professor split the groups left my team super stacked in comparison to the other team.



Here is a shot of the PAC. It was not taken by me and if you are the photographer, and you would like me to remove it, please email me at lniecg72@mercyhurst.edu

When my group sat down together for our first class work day, it became very obvious that we each had something good to bring to the table. Me and another group member have had a lot of experience with non linear editing systems, so we are going to act as the chief editors. One girl on the team is a very organized person, so she is going to be documenting the meetings we have, and organizing our group timeline. One of the boys in the group has volunteered to shoot the most of the footage with a pretty sweet camera of his own, and I will help film when I can to add additional angles and perspectives. The last male group member actually does his work study at the Performing Arts Center, so he has volunteered to schedule all of our meetings with the staff of the PAC. Another girl is a graphic design major and she is going to handle all of our videos graphics, and any CG we need. Lastly, there are two other girls who do not necessarily have a specialty, so they have agreed to be extra hands whenever we need them.

It almost seems as though this group has been made with success in mind, and so far we seem to be working well together and I am very excited. Sometimes you think of guys in group work being lazy or just kind of sitting back and letting the girls do the most of the work, but the guys in the group have been awesome so far and I can tell they are really excited about the project.

My First Post

Well before I jump right into making posts, I should probably make a little blog entry about myself and what I would like to do here.
My name is Leah Niecgorski. I am 21 years old and a senior at a small school in Erie, PA. I am majoring in Communications. With a degree in Communications, I would really love to explore the film industry. Ever since I can remember I have wanted to be involved with movies. In 1997 I watched Scream and instantly became obsessed with the horror genre. With a childhood friend I started researching how to make fake glass, wounds and blood on the internet. For months after that I would pretend murder myself every day right in time for my mom to get home and find me lying on the floor covered in corn syrup and food dye. Within a few years I began writing short scary stories, making silly videos with friends and saving up for a video camera. Finally when I was a junior in high school I got a JVC Mini DV camera for Christmas. Once I got the camera I took almost every opportunity I had for extra credit or an independent project to make a short film. Often times I would write, act, film and edit the videos and I loved every part of the process. I made four films my senior year of High School. One of them, a good-bye/tribute to all of the graduating seniors, even brought a lot of my fellow class mates to tears.
In college so far I have taken a few production courses. I have made three music videos but I only have two of them left after a computer eating virus. One of them was for a New Media class and it is a parody of the song “I’m on a Boat” by The Lonely Island and the other one left is a silly video I made as a freshman to the song “Hustlin” by Rick Ross. Both of these videos were put together poorly so I will only post them if any of you followers out there really really want to see them. The other music video, which was definitely my best, was to “You Won’t Know” by Brand New, and it was a training type video. I was really happy with it but then a Trojan Horse happened to find its way into my hard-drive and crash it. Luckily I was able to save one other video from my college coursework. This short video is a trailer to short film I was attempting to make about a girl and her bizarre dreams. Due to time restrictions from my actors and the awful ten week term, the film was never completed but here is one minute and thirty seconds of a pretty fun trailer. I hope you enjoy!




Oh yeah I almost forgot to say what I am going to do with the blog! So I have made all types of little film projects before and now for a class project I am faced with the task of making a thirty minute documentary about the Mary D’Angelo Performing Arts Center, more commonly known as the PAC at Mercyhurst College. For the project I will be teaming up with six class mates and we have until May 18th to complete it. Please follow me on this blog as I juggle the life of a senior student athlete, while I try to make a thirty minute entertaining documentary on a Performing Arts Center.

The Journal starts here.