Infections, Illness and Ideas

No posts for abit, but nevermind. I’ve been at home for the last week with a sickness and diahoria bug so not good, but I’m back in stafford now. However Kyle and Louisa  have been working on  an idea and have written a script.  The idea is about a man who is paranoid about infections after his best mate caught MRSA  and he now never comes out of his room. This is slightly different idea from the ideas that we came up with orginally but it would work within 3 minutes so we are all getting together later to develop the script.

Andy

All good ideas come whilst drinking tea

Kyle and I had a chat in our kitchen today, just thinking of random ideas and thoughts about the drama. Below is probably the best way of showing the ideas in a list:

• Film influences: 28 Days later, 28 Weeks Later, Resident Evil Trilogy, Out Break.
• Ideas:
• -Does the stoke campus have science labs that may be an interesting location to shoot in?
• What will be the tone of the piece? Day or night? Night is scarier but harder to shoot, will need lighting. Daylight=natural light and is easier.
• We originally had ideas to do a slightly 28 days later opening sequence featuring an idea about an exscaped virus and the conquences of that. We had striking visions of lots of collapsed people, students in a lecture threatre, people in cars collapsed at the wheel.
• An alternative idea based on the above was to have them turn in to zombies but this is too cliche and hard to pull off well.
• The Stoke campus had its water supply contaminated and lots of students have become ill. Could be a starting point???

However we came to a conclusion that all of these ideas although a starting point, were probably too long to fit in to 3 minutes. Well its a start none the less.

Andy

Take a break…

After our intial reactions to the feedback and hearing how everyone else has done, we all feel happier with the mark that we were awarded. We’ve decided to have a bit of break from film tech this week, as towards the end of the documentary people patience was wearing thin and its good to chill out and come back to the problem in hand with fresh eyes. That way we will still work well as a group. Andy

Marking Criteria?

Today, we went to get feedback on our short documentary and personally, I’m not pleased with the results. John, Jim and James are great lectures but I believe we had got a unfair mark (56%). This mark is above average (said) 2.1 which is just a bit above a simple PASS.

The problem I’m having understanding there grading is because I believe we followed the criteria document Film Tech 1 Assignment 1a which outlines what they will be looking for in the documentary but they fixated on the content.

They commented the following;

• Introduction too long
• History of superbugs
• Plagues are irrelevant
• Did not interview a patient with MRSA
• Medias approach

Im wondering what marking criteria they are using to grade our documentaries and if its really fair.

I think we made a fantastic documentary and deserves a far better grade then given.

About the Drama

I’m now concerned on how our drama idea will go, as we have a few shots we want to experiment with that are included in one of our drama ideas but I’m thinking they are just going to not mark it well when its screened.

I personally would like to know the full marking criteria if any different from Film Tech 1 Assignment 1b

Reactions to feedback

Well its fair to say that we are all disappointed with the lecturers feedback from this mornings session. We all thought that we had produced a solid mini documentary but the lecturers seemed to disagree. Personally I can see their point of view and the comments are fair but we all feel that our documentary deserved slightly higher than the 56% that it was given, which works out at a 2:2 and above average. Still a respectable mark.

Its caused us to wonder how it is that we are assessed on this video. With no indication of what it is we are supposed to produce, we have created what we feel is a good documentary. To produce our documentary and to get it looking like a documentary we used mny conventions of documentaries, still images, stock footage and interviews. We made a simple struction of intro, middle, conclusion and created a ‘mini documentary’ within three minutes. Maybe we tried to put too much in to the three minutes? We did this though to give our work the feel of documentary and I think we did that well.

They mentioned that the intro was too long, that we should have cut straight to talking about MRSA and our information on the plague was out of place. I agree that the introduction could have been shorter but we felt that we would put in a section on the history of superbugs, as that is what the documentary is about, and how they are prevented. The lecturers did not like this and said that it maybe uncessary and we should have saved time.

They mentioned they didn’t like the dark tone at the begining and the positive note at the end, they said that this wasn’t constant. This was purposely done, everyone sees superbugs as the new epidemic so we started with a dark tone to it, asking the questions, is this a new epidemic. The tone then shifts as the documentary goes on, as information is released about superbugs and it is revealed that MRSA is treatable. This was an intentional shift in tone. The lecturers however thought it was not constant and uncessary.

I can see their points of view and yes there is other things that we ‘could have put in’ and I understand their opinions but we all felt that we had created a very solid documentary that looked quite processional, compared with some other groups work.

It has been a learning curve which is great, but we are now slightly worried about the drama film as its still in the ideas phase. The documentary I feel had a structure and worked well and we were more certain what we were doing with it. And the lecturers disagree with the things we put in to it. So we now are uncertain as to what they are looking for and how we go on from here…

Rant over…Andy

Drama Ideas

After having tea, me and andy sat at the dinner table discussing ideas and shots we would like to experiment with on our drama piece. Some shots and structures where carefully planned on how we would peruse them and get a filmic look using the resources we have.

Drama Ideas

After having tea, me and andy sat at the dinner table discussing ideas and shots we would like to experiment with on our drama piece. Some shots and structures where carefully planned on how we would peruse them and get a filmic look using the resources we have.

Presentation tactics!!!

The final part of the project, the presentation is well underway now. We got together and discussed what we wanted to say about our piece and we all wrote notes to help us tomorrow. So hopefully it should all go well tomorrow morning…wish us good luck!!!! Andy

It’s finished!!!!

After out disagreements earlier this evening we got back together after a break and started to edit again. This time it worked much better as everyone had cooled off and started to listened to each other which really helped. We now have a finished edit and we are all really proud of it which is a good thing. 

We also got Colin (who supplied the voiceover for us) to come and have a look at it to see what he thought. We had a lot of good comments and a few suggestions which we corrected. My flatmate and his girlfriend also saw the finished video aswell. So far it all seems to be going well as the video is now completed!!!!!!!!!

Due to restcritons from the hospital we’re not allowed to upload our documenrty to the internet for public viewing. But we do have a Trailer we put together.

Stress

Trying to get a nice ruff cut of the documentary is not the easiest thing to do. With having no story board of where things are going to go, you’re swamped with tones of information, a very long interview and minimal filler footage. Having the group there to try and thrash out ideas of orientation of the documentary is a good idea at start but when you get a clash of ideas and misunderstandings, it does get rather argumentative. Group members feel pushed aside, others feel overloaded.

I’ve expressed my way of working, as having the only computer with Final Cut Pro installed the work is saved onto my computer. I try and get everyones ideas into production the second they mention them. When I’m trying to do this I put all my concentration into it, thus speech drive is disabled. Yes I have a flaw of not communicating back when more ideas are thrown at me. I null them out to focus and this causes other members to get annoyed.

At this moment of posting, we have all had a break from the documentary, to go do something else to empty our minds and chill-out from the project. Its due in in 2 days and I’m pretty confident it can be done. Just one simple request is to not to expect everything to be done instantaneously.

Editing Well Under Way

After all of the stress of trying to get the interview filmed on time, we have managed to make a start on the documentary. A trailer was created earlier in the week found here on vimeo. This trailer is the first test of our introduction sequence.

At the moment we have 1 fully edited minuet of footage and currently working on cutting up the interview sections to try and fit into the three minute documentary.

Interview!!!!!

We had our interview with Debbie Adams this morning. She was really nice and answered all of our questions. She even went to get the ‘Hands up for the cleanest hospital campaign’ poster for us to put in the background. We were interviewing  her for about half an hour which was brilliant as we now have all the footage to edit our documentary together.

We asked her some of the following questions:

Is the spread of super bugs the fault of the patients or the hospital staff?

 

Are government measures being put in place any good?

 

Would a ‘deep clean’ of hospitals be a waste of time and money?

 

Is it possible to screen patients for the infections such as MRSA

 

How can it be caught?

 

Have you had any first hand experience of a spread of infection/s?

 

What are the realistic chances of MRSA becoming an epidemic within a hospital?

 

Are viruses and infections a problem within this hospital?

 

Interview

Yesterday everything felt like it was going wrong because the hospital replied and said that the confidentiality agreement wasn’t good enough. This made us panic because it seemed unlikely that we would have it filmed by Friday due to the time it takes for getting what they wanted for the agreement done, and actually arranging a time since it always seems to take a long time to hear back from the hospital. Due to this we spent time discussing what we would do if unable to get an interview.

Thankfully things now seem to be working out as this morning we quickly got what was asked for on the agreement done and e-mailed, soon after we received a reply and are now due to film Thursday morning. We also now have the voice-over recorded, which while it needs some editing is good enough.

The events of the last few days…

Right…I shall fill you in on the events on the last few nights work. We’ve been so busy and stressed that we haven’t had time to blog all the things, its been crazy.

Right where to start…right well on Tuesday afternoon I had an email through from Debbie Adams from the hospital again. The board who authorised the agreement that we had created, said that it needed the be amended. This was a big problem as it had taken them four days in which to authorise that one, and we did not have enough time for them to take that much time again. This made us all really stressed as we thought that we couldn’t get the interview and so our documentary would be incomplete with out it.

   However we decided to amend the document and try and send it back to the hospital to see if we could get an interview anyway in the little time we had left.

  

We finished the end of the script for the voice over and we were ready to move on with the recording.

 

The next thing to be organise was the voice over which was originally decided to be recorded at 7 o clock. When we got there the person that we were recording wasn’t there and was 3 hours late. This added to the high stress levels. However we did manage to get the audio recorded for the voice over and organised everything for the next day. From 5pm to 1:30 am was an immensely stressful period trying to organise  everything.   

 

On Wednesday morning we got up early and got the confidentiality agreement printed out on university letter heading and got a lecturer to sign it for us which is what the hospital required. Once that was done we had to email it back to Debbie in the hope that the email would be verified in time.

   Fortunately Debbie got back to me within a few hours and we organised a time on tomorrow so that we could interview her.

 

Panic over…  

Progress?

Yesterday we met up to discuss and do work on the documentary.

I made a title for the documentary but then decided I didn’t like it so created another which I believe to be better.

We also went to talk to a fellow student about recording the voice-over, he had already agreed to doing it but we needed to confirm it and arrange a time. We have decided to do it this evening since he like us has a lot of work to be getting on with so it can’t be done during the day.

I’m getting quite worried about the interview since a time still hasn’t been arranged. The process to get it officially arranged has taken much longer than we anticipated, and I’m not very happy about how we’re being forced to do it so close to the deadline if we can even do it at all since it may be that the hospital can’t fit us in.

New Vimeo Page

I have created a Vimeo channel dedicated to Blackout Production on Vimeo.

Vimeo is a video community website more directed to video creativity.

View the Channel Now

Finally…

Finally we got a call back from someone at the hospital this morning!!! sods law I got on the bus to go down to remind them about it, got to the main hospital entrance and my phone goes off and its the nurse Debbie Adams calling me back!!! slightly spooky!!!

An interview is not a problem but we have to send them a confidentiality agreement document first and then she said that she’d try and sort it out. I have a bad feeling though that to arrange this interview is going to take longer than we have for the deadline. Just a feeling I have, because by the time the department has authorised our request it could take ages and we only have a week and a half to sort it out!!! hmmm but worth a shot anyway.

I suggest that we just press on with the other footage we need to do and hope that the interview we need arrives in time. fingers crossed. Andy

Waiting…..

We haven’t heard from the people at the hospital yet, so may have to go down and remind them about our documentary. I dont think we should wait too late as it cuts off our options of finding another interview if we have to wait along time. We have decided to try get some of the post production work started such as the voice over and some of the titles and logos sorted. These are some of the things that we can get sorted out now and not have to wait until later on in the week. Andy

Breaking news, just in…(be prepared for a longish blog)

I haven’t written anything on here for a bit so thought I’d keep the blog up to date with all the new news on our documentary.  

 Interview News

 Firstly I went down to the mid Staffordshire hospital on Friday to go and enquire about an interview with one of the members of staff who deals in infection control. The ladies on the reception desk were really helpful and allowed me to use the internal phone service to call the departments and looked up some of the numbers for me. After a few phone calls I spoke to a nurse who worked in infection control who took down all my details and said she would enquire for me and would get back to me. I am hopeful that we may get the director of infection control Dr Helen Moss but not too sure, it may turn out that we can talk to one of the nurses who works on the department, in which case it would be just as good. Anyway, just waiting on a phone call back for now. If they haven’t got back to me by Tuesday I shall phone or email them and hopefully prompt them in to a decision. 

 Bed time reading??!!! 

Also my sister sent me a load of information through the email on MSRA, hospital polices, Clostridium Difficile, hand washing leaflets, and papers to do with Cancer which contains info on infections to do with cancer related treatments. All useful research which is fantastic, we just now have to sit and read it all. 

 Research and  good luck

 On a different subject, I picked up a local newspaper this morning during food shopping and as luck would have it, inside was an article titled ‘Hospital winning battle against superbugs as rates fall’. The article is about how well mid Staffordshire Hospital is doing against the threat of superbugs. We can use this in several different ways,

1)     Its full of information regarding MRSA so is great for research.

2)     The information is relevant to the hospital we are hoping to get an interview from.

3)     It contains comments and quotes from other members of staff and local governors and so would be useful to quote in our documentary.

4)     We can use it physically in the documentary as a still photograph of the article and use it as a topic point.   

Shot Types   

We have also thought about the different shot types that we want within the documentary. Some of these ideas came from watching news articles and clips on you tube and from news reports seen on TV.

Ideas for shots include:

1)     Interview

2)     Close up of microscopes and test tubes

3)     Still photographs with panning movement on them.

4)     Images of walking feet seem to be a prominent symbol that appears in news reports as an insert shot (usually associated with voice over about the spread of infection) this is featured in several news clips, both British and American News clips.

5)     Clips from news bulletins.

6)     Stills of news articles.

7)     A scene featuring someone washing their hands (apart of the hospitals infection control policy).

That’s all the exciting documentary news for now folks, we hope to be shooting footage at the start of next week. That gives us a week for footage collection and a week of editing.  

Rock and Roll.  Andy