What seems like forever ago, but really just the beginning of April I started out on my second project through university and Go Wales as part of my professional development. It was to film a short commercial and shoot some staff portraits for a local company called Call Miss Jones. As my previous project with Gelicity had gone so smoothly I had mistakenly assumed it'd be pretty much the same for CMJ. Oh boy was I wrong!
When I first met Peter Belton who runs the company I could tell straight away that he runs a tight, but friendly ship and all his staff seemed very happy in their roles. Their office is a lurid green, which really brightens up the place. It was against this background that I shot the staff's portraits. One of which has gone on to be featured on promotional leaflets (of which I have several) and also a rather large banner that is taken along to seminars and conventions to help advertise the company. Here's a photo of the banner that Peter kindly forwarded on to me.
I was very proud to see my work displayed in such a way.
Here are some examples of the portraits I did for the staff at Call Miss Jones.
As you can see, there are a combination of 'working' shots and head shots. Peter wanted the photos to show the staff working, but enjoying themselves at the same time. In the end this was achieved through asking the staff to smile as they worked, it was successful for the most part but the work that the staff do here means you have to pay close attention to what you're doing to ensure you don't miss anything. With such a high call volume the agents can't afford to waste time on the phone. With this in mind, some of the photographs are therefore 'staged'.
Peter wanted the head shots, usually taken against a dull, or blue background and looking all formal, to be anything but. The lime-green walls provided a great backdrop, and although it took a few goes to get the settings on the camera right (I'm still learning all the buttons and ins and outs of our new kit) I eventually had it to the point where little to no photoshopping was required later. I had done and finished all the portraits by the second time I visited CMJ. Peter and the staff we happy with them, they're (hopefully) going to make an appearance on the new website.
Now onto the video, by this point, Chris and I had bought a shiny new PC from PC World, since we both enjoy photography and Chris is now getting into film-making and editing himself we also invested in the student Adobe package including Photoshop, Premiere Pro, Audition, Illustrator and many more we have no idea what they do! We were assured by both the very helpful staff at the Llandudno store, and after careful and meticulous research that our chosen machine was capable of handling the software and so off we went and two hours later we came home laden with shiny new equipment and a lovely matching black desk to put it on. (We also ended up with 3 mice and 2 keyboards by accident! But that's another story).
Also around this time I was in the early stages of filming my last video of year two, Your Friend, Luke and since Wrexham is now an hours drive for me, I figured being able to edit from the comfort of home would be great. Our machine is as fast and powerful as we all expected, but what we didn't expect was how rubbish and buggy Première Pro would be. Eventually, we figured out that the more clips you import, the more display as 'media pending' and you have to save every time you want to import a clip in case it crashed, which it often did. Eventually I trawled the internet after loosing my temper for the millionth time to find that this is a very common problem for Première. Doesn't make much sense to me to charge so much money for something that doesn't work well with larger projects.
Anyway, something or someone was looking down on me the day I finished editing Your Friend, Luke and not only did all the clips load when I was ready to render and export, but it did it first time! Happy days.
Back to CMJ, I was asked if it would be possible to have the video ready for May 10th, which was over a month away from the first date I went to visit the office. I was certain I could do it, so I said yes. Like most of my friends at university, I really hate letting people down, but when I sent my first draft to CMJ I received a list of changed that they wanted making to the video that meant I would have to revisit once more to get more footage for the video and meaning I'd never complete it by the deadline (which wasn't a deadline really, more a guideline) I got in contact with Lucy Jones at Glyndwr who was extremely understanding and supportive and along with her and Peter, we managed to make a date to get the last bits of filming underway. At this point, I'd neglected my own university work to ensure the video would be completed in time, so needless to say I wasn't exactly happy about the list of changes.
We also had multiple issues with sound, which is down to a combination of a noisy office and the cameras microphone was not much better than the external mic we had bought when we got our new Canon. So the 4th and final time I visited the office, I took Chris with me to help press buttons and for some moral support. We recorded the audio directly only Audacity on my laptop (which you can see in part of the video) and then later edited it to make it sound clearer and matched it up to the video.
I sent it off to Peter and Lucy last week, and I felt a huge weight lift off my shoulders. Admittedly I was worried about the reception it'd receive, but I got a very positive response from Peter, so I aught to be happy. In hindsight, I feel I've learned a fair bit about businesses and the way they are run. Having said that, I think I need to become a little more confident and assertive when dealing with the expectations others have of me. After all, I'm still learning to make film and the editing part is at times infuriatingly confusing and hard, I had to watch a lot of tutorials in order to create the 38 second clip. But in the end I am very proud of what I have done.
Link to the video here
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