Christmas Video

For the television assignment myself, Charlotte, Stacey, Jamie and Mike worked in a group of five. Our brief was to go out into Farnham town centre and to film a report on Christmas shopping including, a voiceover, piece to camera, VOX POPS, PIX and interviews.

We shot the first film and decided we need to add more, so the group went back out to re-shoot the film. I had a lot of involvement within the first film, where I worked on the sound deciding where it was best to place the microphone for good quality. We all had an input on writing the script, giving ideas and opinions on what we all thought was best for the reporter (Mike) to say. We then also wrote our own scripts on what we were to say for the voice over’s and links.

For the second film unfortunately I was ill on the date of shooting, so I put my efforts in on writing my script for my link, which I recorded the following week.

I felt I learnt a lot during the filming process, especially whilst out filming in a public place where you have to be aware of the others and also the road traffic. The sound was also quite difficult as we were filming in a busy high street, so there were a lot of traffic noise and busy shoppers. It was also tricky to stop the public for an interview, as they were many busy shoppers that didn’t want to spare their time to talk to us, although we finally got some members of the public to give us their opinion and they were very helpful.

Although I think the Christmas video was a success, next time I would aim to shoot in a less busy place and also somewhere sheltered so the wind doesn’t affect the sound. I also feel that as a group we could of all had a larger impact on the editing, as it was mainly one person in the group editing the video and it would have been good experience if we all had a chance to have a go at it.

I have also realised how different it is to write to radio and television. In radio the stories are very short, no longer than four sentences long and it should grab the listeners attention without telling them the whole story. Whereas in television, the story gives much more detail and is quite descriptive.

I have very much enjoyed studying television, not only writing the stories but also the practical side of filming them too.