LESSON ONE: Don't Volunteer
For Anything
Neil Hodgson
Any ex-forces members will have heard this before. I never served
in the forces, but I
have heard it too. Pity I did not learn it!
About 5 weeks ago Brian Hibbitt asked for volunteers to film a charity
concert at the Rivermead Centre in Reading. There was only 2 weeks
notice but 3 of us offered to help out, Stan Vallis, Mike Stephenson
and myself.
We contacted the organizers and started to gather information and
plan the event. Cohn & Jenny Brown had a 5 year old son, Mark,
who had been diagnosed with Cancer. After several months of treatment,
and many worried hours for the family, he recovered fully. Such an
experience does tend to focus the mind a little and Cohn & Jenny
decided they should create a fund raising event to raise money for
the Children's Cancer Charity Trust in recognition of the care that
Mark had received. Thus Musical Capers was born.
8 schools and groups from the area were brought together on the day
for the first time having rehearsed a musical play called The Nutcracker
and the Mouse King. The author, Douglas Coombes, was to conduct this
choir. Although each group had practiced the music before this was
the first time they had got together in one place.
We had decided to cover the event with 3 digital cameras. One was
locked off high up in the auditorium giving a guaranteed wide angle
shot. The second camera was also static but just in front of the orchestra.
This camera also had a live feed from the sound mixer giving a balanced
sound quality of the performance. The third camera was roving around
either shoulder or dolly mounted and controlled by Mike.
Each of the 3 segments was started with a new tape; the rehearsal,
main perfornance part one and main performance part two. Mike and
I were in radio contact with each other throughout. Our brief was
to edit up to the interval as we wished but to run the second half,
the main performance of Nutcracker and the Mouse King, without cutting
it.
Everything was fine until I noticed that my tape had not been rewound
5 minutes into the second half. I told Mike I was going off air to
change tapes and to hold his position steady. This process took about
15 seconds. It was only later I realized that, in doing this, we had
lost the live sound feed for that period of time. Fortunately it was
during a narration section and Mike was close to the Narrator. It
was then a nail biting wait until we could get back to the editing
room and see what we had got.
This is where I volunteered to do the editing. I had in all, 10 tapes
with about 8 hours of video in total. The brief was for a 1 hour film.
The methodology chosen was to lay the two closer camera footage down
and synchronize them. By moving through each frame I could then switch
to the other track if one camera moved. If both moved we then fell
back on the static camera. Fortunately Stan had been very attentive
and had noticed that the choir had moved slightly and managed to realign
the camera very quickly. If he had not done this the entire footage
would have been unusable as the back row had all been decapitated!
It quickly became apparent that I could not get the entire film onto
my computer, large as it is. So I made section one up to the interval
first. Then I cleared everything down and moved to section two. The
part where sound had been lost was reached and thankfully Mike had
good sound from the on board microphone. Levels were different but
to overcome this, after filling the visual gap, I took about 5 seconds
more sound at each end and did a long mix. The join is now totally
invisible.
The procedure continued until we reached the end credits and closed
the film. Having saved it to a DV master, I then created a VHS copy
and contacted Cohn and Jenny. We arranged to meet and they were delighted
with the film which finished at about 44 minutes in length. They advise
me that they have sold over 100 copies to date and, once word gets
around, they expect to sell more.
This was a good exercise to get involved in for my part. We learnt
about working as a team and the value of extensive planning and preparation.
Attending rehearsals was vital and seeking, and getting, cooperation
from everyone essential. Given more time it could have been better
with celebrity introductions and some footage of the work of the Trust.
I certainly got a lot from it and thank Mike and Stan for their support.
Back to Top
