Nisserin Bessioua - UCA Television Production

Self Portrait I feel that overall, I enjoyed creating my self portrait video. Although at first I struggled to come up with an idea for what to base it on, after coming up with an idea and putting it all into place, I really enjoyed the project and found it really good to be able to create something that was quite abstract and experimental. It gave me a good opportunity to plan some good and effective sound design and try out a different style of editing.  ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Drama - Fargo  Choosing which drama I wanted to do and which scenes was quite easy so I was able to start the planning process early in the project. Although I had a few issues in the production of my drama, I think i overcame these problems well because of the amount of planning I had completed. I am pleased with the outcome of the video however watching it back, there is a few thi...

During this unit, we had director Steve Finn come in for a series of workshops with us, talking to us about what it means to be a director and for us to learn from his experience. I really enjoyed these workshops and I feel that I've learnt lots from working with Steve. Steve Finn is a British director best known for Eastenders and London's burning.  We were given a script that we had to go away and plan how we would direct it. We then came into the studios and everyone got a chance to direct their script. This was good because it gave us a chance for Steve to see how we worked and for his to give us some advice on our directing style.  I learnt that it can be quite difficult to get your vision across to the people you're working with and that it can take quite a lot of explaining for them to understand what you are trying to achieve. I enjoyed working with 2 different groups of people in this workshop too as it was really interesting to see how differ...

When editing my self portrait, I first started with an assembly cut, where I chose the shots I wanted to use and put them in the order I had planned. I then went through and looked at each shot, cutting them to just the section that I wanted for each one. This gave me a basic rough cut for the video.  I added in an adjustment layer over the top of the clips to which I added a black and white filter. I also adjusted the colours by adding in more blue and taking out some of the reds to get the look that I wanted.  The beginning of the video starts off quite slow and then increases in speed towards the end. The clips at the beginning are quite long and cut together smoothly whereas towards the end, the clips get much shorter and edit together faster so it switches quickly between them. It then cuts to a black screen where another shot fades of the sea fades in. I put this shot in slow motion to bring the video down and gi...

I started with an assembly cut by just putting my clips in the order I wanted them. Then when I had all the footage together, I began to cut the shots to the length I wanted. Thought out my editing process I added and removed different shots and changed the order that they were in and the way are they now is quite different to way they started.  I chose some atmosphere that I wanted to have in the background and I made is so that some of my titles match up with the beats in the music. I also added an adjustment layer to the clips and made the lighting look more blue and give it a cooler tone. I did this by using the three way colour effect and changed the main and highlight colours.  For the second scene in my drama, there is one long shot of the same building which in the original they have move along as the building as the character inside moves however the camera stays outside. I tried filming this scene in the same way using a drone but we f...

For the soul design of my self portrait, I chose to use the natural sounds from my locations. For example, the shots filmed at the beach, I used the sounds of the sea, wind and seagulls to emphasise the location. For the shots filmed in the car, we recorded the sound of the rain from inside the car, we also recorded some other sounds like the general hum of the car and the sound of the windscreen wipers. In our brief we were told that we weren't allowed to use music so I thought that these sounds effects were an effective alternative and they matched with the video. 

Filming my drama went well despite having some casting issues. I only had one of my actors turn up which made things quite difficult as I needed both of them for things like two shots. When we realised the other actor was not going to turn up, I had to go through my storyboard and cut out some the shots I had planned to film as they weren't going to be possible.  I filmed all the shots I could of the character that I had and did my close ups and establishing shots of the location.  In terms of what we managed to film on the day, everything went really well. We started the day by setting up the location and dressing the set. We then set up the lighting kit and got a stand in to sit where the actor would be so we could make sure that the lights were in the right place and looked the way I wanted them to. I had Becca B as my Director of Photography and Troy as my sound assistant.  I then had to reschedule my shoot and to be able to get both actors in to be able t...