It’s February, which means our first-year Television & Video Production students are in the midst of commercial productions!
The projects begin at this time in the spring every year and are designed to take the foundation skills that students learn in courses teaching planning productions, camera, lighting, editing and writing, and apply them in team projects.
The first set of commercials that the student production companies are working on this term:
- BC Transplant Society
- Commercial Drive Midwives
- Nike 6.0 Shoes
- Press Start Video Games
- Muscular Sclerosis Society Canada
- Frank’s Red Hot
- What8ver Cafe
- BCIT SIFE
Big Info Session at BCIT
Come out and meet us at the BIG info session & Program Expo!
If you’re interested in seeing what the BCIT Television and Video Production program has to offer, drop by BCIT’s Burnaby campus on Wednesday, March 2nd from 5-8pm.
The entire Broadcast Department will be set up in TownSquare A/B so visitors can meet our students and faculty, and have a look at the Television and Video Production program’s P2-HD production workflow combined with our new Broadcast Pix and EVS replay unit for live production!
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This semester our first-year students will be producing 16 thirty-second commercial spots over the next couple of months (2 per week). The goal is to train students in the entire production process, from pitching an idea, right through to production and post. This isn’t all about just running out the door with a camera and shooting, but about the planning, logistics that need to go into making a production happen.
By strange coincidence, the first two commercials this year are alcohol-related!
For a bit of background, each student production company (usually group of 5) is required to produce two 30-second commercials this term, and we stipulate that at least one of them must be a real client (to give the project a bit more of a reality-check).
First up was a project for Heineken Beer which illustrates the old saying about, boy meets girl, boy chooses the wrong beer, other boy who chooses the “right” beer gets the girl.
Second up, was a spot for Industry Bar & Grill in Richmond selling on the idea that no matter what might happen by accident, it’s all good for this bar’s patrons!
Switching gears slightly with the first-year Television & Video Production students, we’ve moved from training on live multi-camera production to single-camera electronic field production (EFP). Check out our Gallery for more photos!
In order to develop these skills, our first-year faculty members, John Mills, David Griffiths, and Ashif Jivraj decided to model a small production for our students and shoot a 30 second commercial for Coast Mountain Bus Company (part of Translink).
This production process is not just about heading out to a location with a crew and a camera, but included everything from site surveys, to obtaining the necessary insurance and contracts to put this production together. Make no mistake, this is a lot of work, and our students will be doing the same on their own productions!
The process introduced both sets of first-year students to the skills and on-set coordination necessary to work in the film and television industry. While we’re not a film school (and we would argue that we are better), many of the same skill-sets apply no matter if you’re working with digital technology or film stock.
In this case, we are shooting on Panasonic HPX-300 P2 HD cameras. The first day of shooting was in AVC-Intra 100 at 1080-24PN, and the second day in DVCProHD 720-24PN, just for the sake of trying something different.
The students will be producing their own commercials in HD in the coming weeks, check back for more updates and the final products that are uploaded to Vimeo and YouTube!
By now you’ve probably had a chance to see some of the examples of the iPhone 4’s HD video capabilities. The HD video quality is very impressive (especially under controlled conditions), but what about the audio?
Using the built-in microphone isn’t an option for high-quality sound capture.
Did you know that you can use an inexpensive adaptor to feed microphone audio directly into the phone via the headphone jack?
Jeff Geerling has a great article up on his website that details exactly how to go about making everything work by creating a portable kit that can be used for capturing high-quality video with decent sound.
There’s another excellent on his site that focuses specifically on audio recording.
Having shot a number of videos on the iPhone 4 during my recent trip to Shanghai, the other major factor is that you will require a tripod or stabilizer. The phone itself is just too small to hold perfectly steady when you’re trying to shoot something.
Many people are probably familiar with open-source software, but when was the first time you’ve seen an open-source HD Cinema camera?
The “Apertus” is being developed by a team of international enthusiasts to give total control over inexpensive HD imaging hardware, allowing filmmakers to potentially develop their own alternatives to commercial offerings from Sony, Panasonic, Red, etc.
While it’s definitely still a work-in-progress, this sort of project would’ve been cost-prohibitive a few years ago. Now, the cost of the camera hardware (minus lens and audio) is only around $3,000 – and the software is free!
While it might not be as user-friendly or have a workflow as efficient as a camera from one of the major manufacturers, it does prove how quickly technology is changing, and how quickly people are exploring new options as they become available.
Check out a sample movie (click through to Vimeo for the HD version)
