Update… copyrighty o

Here is an interesting bit of correspondence regarding copyright…

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Dear Trevor Olafson,

As a media studies student I expect you will learn all about the tangled web of copyright.

The use of songs in films has to be cleared with both owners of the songs publishing and recorded work.

In turn, they have to come to me as a representative of The The to watch the film and clear it creatively.

What we could do is cut out the tangled web. If Matt Johnson doesn’t like the film, you will have wasted no time.

All you have to do is post the film onto a website with the song in place.

We can then watch it and, if we like it, I can put you onto the right track for clearance.

Thank you for taking the time to write and for thinking of using this great song,

Kind regards,

Cally

LAZARUS
The Concerns Of The The

Marlinspike Hall
Walpole Halesworth
Suffolk
IP19 9AR

Main telephone and messages: + (0) 1986 784 664
Field telephone: +(0) 77 67 406 486

On 25/3/10 22:53, “TREVOR OLAFSON” wrote:

Hi!

I am a media studies student located in Nanaimo, B.C. and currently working on my senior project; a video.  I am inquiring about using a portion of the track ‘This Is The Day’  as the intro music of an instructional video for use exclusively in the Resident Assistant (RA) department at Vancouver Island University.  A response would be greatly appreciated!

Cheers,

Trevor Olafson

Week…

Well I have gotten a pile of raw footage together on DVD it needs some shooting notes/descriptions to go with it.  There is almost an hour of it, amazing how little of the amount that gets captured is actually used; or in some cases is useable.  Making a film of this nature really involves a lot of planning and work, this project has required a great deal of both.  I will be meeting with the client on Wednesday this week, there are a couple short bits  of video to capture and we need to schedule them.

If all goes well by the end of next week I will be ready to put it all together.

Week 6 and 7, moving… slowly.

Well this is getting redundant,  I have given up trying  to get the raw footage to a format other than the Apple.  That does not stop my plan to do a voice over for the raw footage;  providing a description of what was happening behind the camera, and other miscellaneous production notes.  After the break I have to organize another couple of scenes that are small but needed to wrap things up.  Thankfully my project partner has offered to ‘backseat edit’ and I will have the opportunity to get some coaching.  Until then I will be getting the production notes together for the raw footage reel.  The end is in sight!!  Woo hoo!

Week 5

Have been making little headway in trying to get some of this footage available for me to work with…

Not having the mac workstation at home doesn’t help, efforts to get the video files transferred onto my pc and external drive had not worked, and this was a bit frustrating.  The weather was horrible.

I have spent a lot more time on this project than I have really wanted to…

Week 5…

Last night was all set and we showed up with the gear to make hay…  but the place we were to shoot was totally unacceptable and that was that,  pack it up and go.  Resume plan next day… which was today.

Shooting went tonight until 8:00, including time to take the  gear back.  There were three locations to set-up they were ‘Goodnight’ the ‘Bathroom’ and ‘Disturbance’ sequences. I have now  had yet a little more practice directing the action; and it is fun when you have to keep things moving along by giving the actors their instructions.  The first sequence was changed a bit due to the weather, but this might work alright if I am a little bit flexible with the script.  The next sequences got done in quick succession,  we got into the dorms and first filmed the two students  doing that thing and causing the disturbance in the shared bathroom.  Then we moved next door and got the shots of the ‘disturbee’  trying to study. We   then moved to building 255 room 203  for another set of RA talking head shots,  I don’t think they looked particularly good and it was unfortunate but I will see what it looks like on Friday and go from there.   I still have a few scenes to shoot, the’ Classroom’ and ‘Office’ are important to me and I want to take full control of the camera operation and movement and then let the chips fall where they may…  then I will  have to learn enough about FCP to do something with it.  I realize that it’s not enough to know some basic editing techniques and hope to    create a masterpiece with a program as complicated as that, so  a book is in order and quick.    I gotta make another to do list…

my 2 ¢

Week Four

Last Friday was my first introduction to using Final Cut…   it was only a few hours but I was able to get an idea of the the workspace, where to put assets and placing video clips together on the timeline. There are incredible transitions built into the program, but so far I have used only the standard fade/crossfade to link scenes together.  It would be helpful to have the software at home to get a chance to know it a little better…  oh well

This week we need to confirm the actors for a couple of scenes,  I have been contacted by the drama students representative with a response to the call that I had put out.  There is a production at the school this week they are doing so I will be going down with a sign up sheet…

What else…  the classroom scene needs well, a classroom, I hope to get this sorted quickly because I am feeling a little swamped by  other commitments  that I have to keep over the next couple months…  I’ll level with you, coming into a university setting for the first time has been a challenge, I kind of had to jump into the deep end on this one and normally I am a good swimmer; but I am doing the dog paddle here, or at best,  side-stroke.

glub

Week Three…

This week has been divided up and the time for working on the RA film has been set aside.  This includes 3-4 hours of lab time editing, (Friday’s are set aside for this) and at least 2 hours of correspondence with the client, and also the actors we need.  The client will be sitting in on the editing session this week for a while to get a feel for the process and also know what the finished sequences will look like.   I have another couple of hours still to set aside to work on the course matrix, and the project proposal (which I would like to get finalized asap).   I will give an update at the end of the week about how it all goes….

Overall I feel good about the amount of work accomplished so far;  given that I have some other demands on my time at the moment.

Whew… Back

Just got back from the shoot tonight… we worked hard, and I think overall it went quite well.  We managed to use our time effectively and got the all of the footage we planned for.  This required a few hours of preparation beforehand on our part to get props, equipment and people set in place to film each scene.  The Party, No Show and RA-Interview went almost exactly as planned, which was nice to see happen.  I thought that the room full of people who came and volunteered their time to help us portray the party scene did a great job by not only showing up, but followed the direction and allowed the camera to move freely around while ‘acting natural’.

After shooting the party scene we then had many beer bottles, spilled snacks, cups etc. to clean up.  Immediately we reset the room and moved some furniture around then put up balloons, party decorations then set another the table with new snacks and refreshments and of course the untouched set-up game for the no show scene.

Once finished in building 3 we went to the international building to set up in room 205 to do RA interviews.  This required a bit of furniture moving to give us room to set up the lights and camera, and once we did the lighting check then we had about a half hour to wait before the subjects would arrive.  The interviews went  well,  the subjects were able to give us some good material to work with.  This was finished by 7:15 and we were able to pack up quickly and reset the room.

hours today on this project:

Communications  1hr

Equipment and Props 1hr

Shooting and Staging 2.5hr

Travel         .5hr

Lights, Camera….. ACTION!

Tonight is the second time we venture out with the equipment to shoot more of the RA videos.   There has been about an hour invested so far today with communications for this project.   As I write this I am preparing to head out and pick up some props for the shoot tonight.   There are scenes being shot in three locations tonight so we have to move quick to get it all in… gotta jet.

DIGI_496 Week 2

Tues, a busy day.  We have a major amount of filming to do tomorrow on the RA video project.

This will be done during the hours of 3:00 and 10:00 pm tonight in the International building.  There are three separate interviews, as well as the ‘PARTY’ scene which should be interesting we are also going to be taking the opportunity to shoot the ‘NO SHOW’ scene in the Common room.  The Theater department has also agreed to involve three students as actors for the ‘BATHROOM’ scene.  As yet they have not contacted me as per my email exchanges with the chair of the theater department and will have to drop by in person today.   I will have spent at least 5 hours on the shooting, 2 hours on client and talent meetings, as well as doing some dramatic writing for the Bathroom scene from the conflict resolution video.

There will likely be additions to the hourly budget for the week, if so hopefully it  will be on the minus side and we have overestimated the time required to shoot the scenes this week.
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