Interview with Andy

This is my interview with Andy in the Editors lounge.

Interview with Marisa from The Cornerhouse

I did a video interview with Marisa in the editors lounge. My opinion is that Marisa has a very cool job. You may wish to do a 'WOW' count during this video.

The Start of Editing

Now we've finally shouted "that's a rap" it's time to start the long process of editing. They have all the footage they need ready to be turned into a fabulous film.

Marissa who works at the Cornerhouse cinema gave us a run through in the editing lounge. There seems to be a lot of tricky things to remember about editing, especially fine editing. After she'd showed us some basics on the macs, we watched some of the footage we had. We watched the kitchen scene which had lots of cuts and a few mistakes in it. It also had lots for the editors to work with and be clever about.

Once we'd finished watching, it was time for them to decide how they wanted the shots to go. They worked out the camera man's style of wide shot, mid shot, close up. There was some nice establishing shots of our actor setting up the kitchen - boiling curried goat and putting the kettle on.

So after they'd watched the footage and got an idea of how the shots were going to go, it was time to look at the script and the storyboard and start editing for real.

They split up into two groups to start editing the beginning kitchen scene. They began to work out more of the order of the shots and what they could do with the little mistakes that were made.

With the editing beginning it's starting to look much more like a film than just a few random shots of people having a chat.

Interview with Crew Member Aminah

During the filming process I took the opportunity to interview another one of the crew members. This time I interviewed Aminah. I wanted to find out how she thought the process of the film was going. I asked her a few questions about what she likes doing and why she wanted to make this film.

How did you find out about The Uncommon Shorts film project?

It was at my college. I was actually just signing out when I saw the word media. I ran back to sign up.

What have you enjoyed about the film project?

Filming and also getting to know new people and learning more about media.

What do you think of the story of the film?

Pretty good. I like the story throughout the film.

What would you say is your favourite scene in the film?

I really like the first kitchen scene.

How do you think the film is starting to look?

Better that how I expected it to look.

So there we have a few thoughts from Aminah on how she thinks the film is going.

I'm certainly very excited now all the filming is finished. Next is the editing.

With Thanks to Aminah.

By Aimee Sutton

Interview With Margaret Henshaw

I also was able to get an interview with our best friend character.
Margaret said she enjoyed the audition. Just as much as we enjoyed auditioning her I imagine.
Margaret had a lot of acting experience under her belt. She describes her job as on and off, she loves doing it as it a lot of fun and she's met so many interesting people in her career. In her 20 years she'd been in many different things including Christmas Lights, Clubbed, Eyes Down, Life on Mars and Shameless. She told me about meeting Rob Green and how he was the loveliest person she's ever met. She also has enjoyed working in theatre, and mentioned one of the productions she performed at the Empress Ballroom in Blackpool.
She told us about her first acting job which was a walk on.
The auditions where held quite close to home. She said everyone was there and they queued up for hours. "I got picked. And after that I was asked if I'd like to be put on the books to play more walk ons." After that she got to play all sorts of parted. She talked about one time getting to meet Peter O'Toole. She said during the filming she had a good chat with him, only some guy came up and told her she wasn't allowed to speak to him. "So what am I supposed to do if he talks to me? Ignore him? I was always taught that was rude. So he just walked off and me and Peter O'Toole carried on talking."
Margaret was originally from Great Ancoats (where our story is set). This was brilliant and she had plenty of stories to tell about living on George Leigh St. A long while back around those streets was known as 'Little Italy' where they would make the best ice-cream ever.
She said when she was a little girl she would sneak to the back doors of the factory and ask for a cup of ice-cream. "Me Mam used to say 'you been begging again?'"

So from her interview I gathered some facts of her past experience and some lovely stories of past times. Thank you Margaret.

Interview conducted By Aimee Sutton

Interview with Patricia Farrell

On set I managed to sneak in a brief interview with our main actor, Patricia. I say brief and I mean brief. She was very busy during our days of filming. I was glad to ask her just a couple questions.
I asked Patricia how she thought the audition for this film went. She said it was lovely although she was nervous. She didn't seem that way to me. She seemed very relaxed and took everything on board. She was keen to have a go at the script straight away. She said that Jessica (one of our cast members) made her feel very comfortable as she read the script with her during the audition.
I asked Patricia how long she had been acting. Her answer of "since yesterday" surprised me a lot. She said she'd only done acting in school and also in a inter-generational drama group. But most of her acting experienced was relaxed. This was the most professional thing she'd done. This made me feel even more glad that we ended up with her.

Thank you Patricia for a few precious minutes out of your busy schedule.

Interview by Aimee

Pictures from the first day of filming

Instead of putting them on with the writing I've decided just to put the all on here so you can see them, I will try and explain each of them as much as possible, hope you enjoy

INSIDE THE CHURCH
Theses are some pictures I took of inside the church, during filming and inside the church.

This is the yellow light

I was talking about.

OUTSIDE THE CHURCH

These are some pictures of when we started shooting outside, when they were shooting Patricia (our main character) walking into the church.

These are some pictures we took after dinner, when dialougue was coming into the film.

Time for an intro

Heya, just thought I'd introduce myself. My name is Sarah Noblett, and I am 16 (nearly 17) years old. I got involved with MYVP through my college when they were there, I saw media and jumped to the chance of doing it, you could say i'm a media fanatic because I love it so much, the business side of it and the production side. This is the second time in my life that I have ever blogged and the first time was just maybe a month ago when I had to do it as a part of my A/S Media coursework, and I just thought i'd be good at it again so when this oppurtunity came up, I decided to try it. Not sure if its something I want to carry on in the future but lifes all about experimenting, if you don't experiment how do you know what you want to do in life.

First day of filming

The first day of filming I thought was amazing yet tiring. Our first location was at St.Peters Church in Ancoats which was beutiful, inside was amazing, and there was this one little spot that had three stain glass windows over it and from there the sun just beamed through projecting a little yellow light on the floor, which got used to its full advantage during filiming. We didn't really have to do alot of shots inside the building because it was quiet enough to run through without any distractions because for the bit that they were filming the only sound they wanted was a voice over of our main character as she walks out around this gigantic space that she was in, I presume also they wanted to hear her footsteps walking across the room because the boom was held near her feet sometimes just to get that right sound, after everything was done within the church we decided to have a dinner break, I was able to a little sun tan before I got to hot and had to move in the shade.

After dinner some people went to go and set dress a kitchen in Urmston for tomorrows filming, where as me and 7 people including the two actresses (which were fantastic may I add) stayed behind to film some more, outside of the church this time there was dialouge going on so they needed utter silence, but that didn't really happen that much because of the builders that were working right next to us, also we had to stop because an airplane flew over just as ACTION was shouted, but in the end we got the dialogue and action that we needed for this shot before we went on a walk around the church to do some more takes. This was the hardest to film because there were cobbles on the roads and as cars drove over them they made the loudest noise possible, so everytime a car went passed we had to stop then start again, I ended up being the person making sure that no cars drove past and ran everyone over when they were filming on the road I was so scared because I didn't think the cars would stop, but they did and waited patiently. As we walked around, we found a small hole that looked like a port hole in one of the walls of the buildings that were closed up and when you looked inside it you could see miniature sowing machines moving ever so slightly, it definatly had the WOW! factor this ended up being used because it was just so cute.

At the end of the day, it turned out to be a very succesful day, with alot of good shots to be put into the film.

Day 1 of Filming

Before I even got there our actors had been working hard, recording the dialogue that was going to be the voice over for the church shots. When I arrived it was time to move onto set and begin filming. They were filming inside a big church which had been half converted into an exhibition space. The building was beautiful inside out. It still had some very traditional looking bits as well. One particular place in the church caught my attention. The hall was big and very empty, except from a patch near the side that had a small rug, on it was a chair and a table. It fascinated me as it was the only bit of furniture in the building, and it stood alone.
The crew got to work lining up the shots, setting up the camera. They filmed Patricia (who plays our main character) walking around the church. some of the shots they filmed were going to have voice over. They also wanted to get a few shots of her walking where they could hear her feet moving around. They filmed her walk across the vast space. Patricia was very professional considering how much experience she'd had. For the scenes where they wanted to hear her feet moving, everyone had to keep deadly silent. Of course as you do with filming we had a few interruptions. Unfortunately outside there was a lot of building work going on, so we picked up every noise via the boom. I also managed to take my picture at just the wrong time meaning the flash affected the shot and Maria had to shout cut. oops. All part of the process eh?
After filming inside the church we took a quick lunch break. Actors and crew get very hungry when they've been working hard.
I then went on to dress set the kitchen in Urmston. We set up the kitchen in the community centre to look like a kitchen in a home. It's now set up and ready for filming there tomorrow.

Aimee Sutton

Filming tomorrow!

So tomorrow, filming commences in Ancoats. First in a big massive church, then down Ancoats canal. From what Sasha told me, it seems like it's going to be such a good day. Some of the group are going into Urmston to dress the kitchen for the kitchen scene.
I'll keep you posted on the events of tomorrow right after!