Andrei Allen UCA Broadcast Media Blog

Because when i initially thought of this idea, i already spoke to a few friends whom are fighters, letting them know of the idea/concept  to which they were happy about the idea and also the concept that i'd explained to them, acknowledging that that is the case when it comes to them fighting.

For this piece however, i'm going to have my main actor who's going to be the main focus of attention, a few trainers, and random people whom train at the same gym who'd be slightly out of focus in the background as my main contributor is training.

There will possibly be a crowd of people as well if i decide to film at my friends pro fight on the 29th.
Where i personally know the boxing promoter for the event, i've spoken to him in advance asking if i'd be able to film and record audio on the night, to which he said it was fine. (as it is a form of promotion for his fighter)


My main actor is

Grant Dennis

What i aim to do with this post is to try and articulate a logical explanation for the reason behind me adapting the theme from "Anthem for doomed youth" into my fight training video.

I'll give you an extended explination of my understanding of the out of sight out of mind theme for the poem, and then show the themes comparison to a sportsperson and their training.

out of sight out of mind

Anthem for Doomed Youth Theme

Out of sight out of mind

The main theme from the Wilfred Owen poem that i'm looking to adapt is the whole out of sight out of mind idea, as stated in a previous post.

The reason why i've drawn towards this theme is because one of the reasons Wilfed Owen wrote this poem was to let people know the true grim reality of what war entails, where a lot of people don't understand what happens during war, and the physical and mental implications that happen to the soldiers as a result of war. The civilians will either celebrate in success of defeat, or criticise some form of negative connotation towards the army, not necessarily taking into account the individual soldiers wellbeing and what they might of put themselves through in order to achieve their results; because when they're(civilians) told about war they're given figures not individual names (as Wilfred Owen says in his poem "What passing-bells for these who die as cattle")

So in a sense what this shows us is that, yea it's possible that they might celebrate in appreciation of what might have been achieved, or criticise the moral implications of war, but they're not truly appreciating the training and hard work that the soldiers have put themselves through in order to not only carry out their mission, but to survive on the battle field. And in this poem, this is one of the points i feel that Wilfred Owen is trying to tell.

Pro fighter training

When it comes to a professional fighter and the intense training they put themselves through in order to win a fight, the same notion of the theme for "Anthem for doomed youth" could be applied to their scenario, in that the spectators only see the fighters for what they are at the event, but do not truly know the extreme measures the fighter has gone through in order to perform well on the night to guarantee their victory. 
The dedication, strict routinely training, body straining hard work that the fighters put themselves through during preparation for a fight, is something that is overlooked by the spectators as they cheer and hurl comments towards the fighters during their fight. Only after a victory is declared do the spectators hear a glimpse of the training that the fighter/victor has gone through, if the victor decides to describe it, but often that is overlooked by the victory and celebration of the match, and the looser of the match and their effort is often overlooked too, only noting that they've lost the match; with everybody giving their opinion on where that person went wrong, again, not taking into consideration the training that person has put themselves through, and that they might have sustained injuries whilst preparing for the fight.

Finally, after the event is over, the spectators go home back to their ordinary lives, the victor of the fight goes home a winner, whose victory will probably resonate in peoples minds for a while, whilst the looser of the fight would be forgotten, just another number to add to the fight card, another person who's "died as cattle" with no "passing bells" to acknowledge the hard work in preparation for the fight.


Plan of execution 

With the fight training video i'm going to produce, i want to adapt this theme and show it visually, with the fighter training in various locations whilst he's preparing for his fight.
The training will include Cardio training, boxing, and strength conditioning.

There will be a narrator guiding the narrative of the visuals reading out the poem, however!! I'm not looking for the narrator to be the main focus of the production, just a voice to guide the visuals! The main focus will be on the visuals itself and also the soundscape from the various locations that the fighter is training at, focusing on the onomatopoeia that the poem uses, making an appropriated iconic adaptation of the sounds to give new meaning to the text, whilst still paying homage to the integrity of the meaning of the texts theme... For example "Only the stuttering rifles rapid rattle" this would be the boxer punching the punch bag with the chains violently shaking and rattling in oscillation.

Hopefully, with this post you have a general idea of what this short film is going to be about, and how it's going to be done. 

Because the abattoir idea was looking unrealistic for me to complete given the amount of time i have left, i've decided to scrap that idea and go ahead with my fight training idea, adapting the out of sight out of mind theme from the Anthem for a Doomed youth poem by Wilfred Owen.

Today we was reshooting our news anchor package, where due to feedback from our last rough cut, it was suggested that maybe we could change up the language and tone of voice in which our anchor was presenting herself to the camera/audience.




Ren

To get Ren prepared to read the script, i advised her to read our the script in a more relaxed tone of voice while still formal, but less serious and a bit slower than she previous read the script in. Because during our feedback, one of the remarks made about our news anchor was that the language and tone was too formal for our branding.





Ipad TelePrompTer app

In order to get Ren to follow the script whilst looking at the camera, i downloaded a free app on my iPad called TelePrompTer Lite by Matt Cowling on the app store https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/teleprompter-pro-lite/id578104295?mt=8

What this app does is prompts the person speaking with an electronic visual text of a speech or script.


With the app, i loaded her script onto the auto cue software so that she could read it off of the iPad. 



During filming Mark held the iPad above the camera



Green Screen

Using the pegs provided and also the stands, we hung up the green screen as straight as possible, making sure that there was no creases in the screen to prevent any shadows being casted onto it.





Base Room
+lighting kit + Reflector

We had the curtain down, using the lighting kit to create our own light source, because where the weather was random; we could not rely on the daylight, with risk of the room going from light to dark during our shoot.

Where we were using the lighting kit to provide our own source of light, in order to reduce some of the glare on Rens face due to the powerful fill light, we bounced the fill light off of a reflected that was some distance away from the light, and then bounced the light from the reflector onto Rens face. The reason that we done this is because, light looses its strength the longer the distance it travels, also, if it's being bounced off of a material on top of this; it will further diffuse the light making it weaker, but bright enough to cast a nice fill light onto Rens face, and not seem over exposed on camera.



Wireless mic

Ren worse the wireless mic, running the wire from underneath her top and up through her shirt collar.



Camera

We used the Sony PMW100 camera again, with the wireless mic plugged into the camera to receive the audio from Ren, and the camera was mounted on a tripod in order to get a stable solid shot.

Unfortunately i didn't take a picture of the camera settings, however, i remember what our settings was...

Our Kelvin was set at 6500 to emulate a day temperature, to give the footage a slight blueish tone before lighting up the set

Our exposure/aperture was set to f5 to control how much light was coming into the camera that was reflected off of Ren's shirt, and also the green screen plus wall behind the green screen.

Here is the final image... unfortunately a light went out during our shoot so there was a slight shadow casted on the right side of Ren's arm, however, it shouldn't worry too much because there was no green spillage on her from the green screen in the background.






Overall i feel today went really well, Ren performed exceptionally well and was really quick to adapt to the changes we suggested that she made in reading the script. It was unfortunate that a light went our during our shoot, however, this should not affect our post production process as the footage was still evenly lit and there was no green spillage onto Ren herself.

Because of the feedback we received about our news footage, the main thing that was mentioned during the feedback was how formal Rens language was, and also the tone of voice and seriousness she was speaking in and how it seemed to differ from our branding, especially when compared with how Mark presented his live package.

So in order to prepare to re-film her news anchor section, i worked on the script again just to make sure that the listenability of the script was not too formal in comparison to Marks live, but also timed the script in order to make sure that enough space was left so that Ren could slowly pace herself whilst reading the script, knowing exactly when and how long to pause for.

So today i've been cold calling a load of abattoirs throughout South England to see whom i could convince to let me film inside there place of business.

In order to conduct my research i went to the internet to see what i could source.

While searching i came up with some good websites to help me with my research.

This website i found not only gave me the name and address of the business, but also shown me where they were on the map, so that i have a rough idea of how far it is from my location. On top of that, this website also told me what the abattoirs specialised in providing!

www.soilassociation.org/farmersgrowers/technicalinformation/abattoirs

Because i know that abattoirs are a very secretive place (hence the name abattoir french for slaughter house) i was careful when i phoned them up.

At first i had no joy where i was working off the top of my head, but then common sense kicked in and i decided to create a script to help my pitch with the abattoirs, as where i use to work in a call centre many years ago we had to work off of a script in order to guarantee our success at holding the customer on the phone for the initial introduction, to then pitch our sales to them.

Script





When i was contacting the abattoirs, none of them were too open to the idea of me filming there as they were scared about the possible bad publicity they could receive as an outcome. One of the businesses i contacted mentioned receiving bad publicity as result of letting someone film on there premisses, and that the production company manipulated the footage to create a slander piece towards their business.


Conclusion

Although i had no success today, i only contacted 5 business... Tomorrow however, i shall contact more companies with my revised script and see if i have more success, also, whilst talking with my farther he gave me some advice and mentioned that if i manage to get a business to here me out, that i should tell them i'll write up a disclaimer form to let them know that i will be held liable for any damages that their business could incur; and that i'm not going to defect from the script.

Hopefully if i mention this, it will give the companies more confidence to let me film.

The two main ideas that i've been contemplating to do for this unit is either filming in a abattoir or filming a fighter training.


Slaughter house idea
warning contains footage of live animal slaughtering!!

The whole idea with this piece would be the out of site out of mind notion adapted from the poem, mainly focusing on the sound of the location to emphasise certain words throughout the piece.

It would be voiced over by a narrator speaking the poem, possibly one line at a time, allowing the images to be the main focus of attention; supported by the sound of the rattling machinery and animals, sort of like a sound scape.






Motivational Training

With the motivational fight piece, the idea behind this would be to again adapt the whole out of sight out of mind notion from the poem, but this time in a more positive way

Ideally, if i were to do a piece like this i would not want to use music, but only the natural sound of the environment that the scenes are taking place in.








Conclusion

In regards to the Motivational fight training idea, i've got people in mind whom i've already spoken to and they've said that they're up for filming, however, i'd ideally like to film in an abattoir as i believe it would be more of a relevant and powerful piece to suit the poem.