Visit To The Egg Theatre

During March, our class took an afternoon out to visit The Egg Theatre in the centre of Bath. The Egg is part of a trio of theatre's all connected to the same company. Firstly, based just round the corner from The Egg is the Theatre Royal, which is used as the main house for all large performances and then for children they have The Egg and The Ustinov which is slightly further away.

We took this visit, because the theatre had asked us if we would like to shoot a children's adaptation of William Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Nights Dream" so we used the afternoon not only to have a tour of the egg, but also to recce the area.



3 of our students, Balvinder, Mike and Reuben took the opportunity to film the show, whilst our lecturer would do the sound. The show went without any problems and they came out with a well shot piece.

For more information about the play, check out:
www.theatreroyal.org.uk/page_attachments/0000/1274/SHAKESPEARE_UNPLUGGED_FESTIVAL_-_PR.doc

Editing The Bath Sparkles Footage

We reviewed the production material the day after the shoot and made a number of decisions and changes. The Audio we had managed to capture was nowhere near the quality we needed and often cheering, clapping and other background noise was present over the music being played. We decided that we would source the music ourselves and cut it in time with the models and the shots.

We didn’t realise the sheer scale of the footage until we looked back through it and found we had obtained around three and a half hours footage collaboratively. Cutting this down to a five to eight minute piece was a daunting task but we decided to edit it all together rather than our own retrospective tapes. We also found that having this much footage for something that needs to be cut so quickly made it easier to find the footage we needed. Due to the amount of footage we were working with, we made the joint decision of cutting out the footage of the bands and dance sets that were used as fillers between the fashion show, and to concentrate only on the models and the clothes they were wearing.

Some of Camera 3’s shots were quite unsteady because the lack of a tripod, which we couldn’t use because we needed freedom to move, so we had to review that material carefully and a lot of the shaky shots were cut instantly.

The problems with the lights that were mentioned in the production notes also gave us some shots that were very dark and couldn’t be used at all during editing, so were cut out after reviewing.

We also used a program called Livetype to create flashy subtitles for each of the fashion designers featured in the show.

Shooting The Bath Sparkles Fashion Show

On the 19th May, our group got together to film Bath Spa's charity fashion show, "Bath Sparkles".
We arrived several hours before the start of the show, in anticipation of setting up and found that we had turned up way too early. Whilst we were waiting for the seating to be put up, it gave us a chance to check out a lot of the rehearsals, check out some of the models and have group discussions about it.

We began setting up our equipment about an hour before the show, which gave us good time to check angles and to make sure all the equipment was functioning properly and all settings were set to how we needed them.

As people began to filter into the show, we realised we hadn't really accounted for them crossing into our shots so were able to manoeuvre ourselves and the shots around them. The lighting for the show also changed dramatically at this point so we were able to adjust for it, with adequate time. We also made the decision that the music captured at the show would not be clear enough to use in the final cut, so we need not worry about it.

The shooting of the show went very well and we all managed to get a number of good shots each. The show finished in good time and it went without a hitch. At the end of the show we equipped one person with all the tapes and disassembled our equipment.