My Placement at White Collar Zoo

So for my second placement i worked at a company called White Collar Zoo. Though in the end it was starting to progress it had a very tricky journey which in the long run can be a good thing but at the time my god it was tricky. I'm going to a self interview thing its pretty lame but its my blog so i'll do what i want.

So what was my placement?

Our brief was basically to produce a pilot online show for students. The show was to be about twenty five minutes long. My job was in production was filming and sound(just like my placement at The Hive) i also helped out with some acting(Its fair to say i won't be winning any oscars soon). It was a similar project i was involved in with the Notts Tv project that i did before starting placement. The videos made would be aimed at students


What did i do first?

Well i did a bit of research as should all students when they are looking to start on a project like this. What is your target market? what kind of shows are similar? that basic stuff is the most important so always do your homework before starting on it. The style of E4 was the most well know platform mixing interviews with music, gags and reviews so we needed to make something on this line but with a different approach but it needed to be quick and snazzy

So what happened after this?

Everyone had different plans which was a good thing for us. But we came up with a great little idea for the show. Our boss Guy had gave us five tracks from his label and we decided that the show was going to be called Zoo Loose linking it in with the name of the company. We would have like a Top Of The Pops countdown of the songs. The the idea was each week to do this. Then the first video was made up by Nick Cook to have a student version of cribs where we go around student houses. Sheree wrote a script for the show(Zoo Loose) and then we was going to do like a prank show and i had thought of a few ideas but we went with a review show instead.

So how did it go?

Overall it was a success in the end but it took a lot of hard work at determination. I think we had designed some well thought material. I was involved in filming two projects. James Fairclough had designed a review kind of show about the Walking Dead and i thought i would be pretty cool if maybe i could in the back ground kicking some zombie ass and then i helped filmed the zoo loose production show and i had my flat mate Adam Wright presenting.

These are some of the test shots i got of Adam before the production of Zoo Loose he had only just received the script so he did well to remember his lines.

We was pleased with all the test Shots of Adam so we felt comfortable going on to filming the actual thing. But first it was time to film the review show first and James sent me the script so i could prepare myself for it. Production got set back two times due to the cold weather but we decided to film on Woolaton Park in Nottingham. The rural area gave us the perfect back drop for the show. I also made sure i had props and make up for the filming. That is the script i got sent by James.

The production of the review had quite a few set backs. First overall we had problem with the weather it was windy and it effected the microphone so we had to get a make shift cover from James sweatband. But overall i felt it went well we used a range of different shots and we really did manage to pull it off. This is  a shot from the filming.

Then we moved on to the filming of the Zoo Loose with Adam.

The location for the filming was at Broadway cinema. The lighting was brilliant it gave a nice backdrop for our logos that were up on the screen. For this production i was head of sound we to to use a radio microphone so i had to stay pretty close to adam during the filming. Adam didn't have very long to learn all his lines so we made sure we filmed him three or four times with his lines so make sure we had enough material. This is a few images of me setting up the set and making sure everything was ready for the filming to start. The shot used was a long shot because we wanted to make sure Adam and the logos could be seen.

What Problems did you encounter:

First problem was once somebody doesn't pull their weight it can cause major problems be it meant that people got annoyed with each other and it meant a lot of the time things got delayed. Then some people felt they didn't have anything to do. The thing was i felt that Guy miss-treated a lot and i felt that our work suffered a little for it because we never got good enough feedback and we didn't even know if our work was going to be used. Also we never really received an official brief so we had to make up everything ourselves really. A lot of times Phil our tutor had to step in and help us out.

Overall Assessment:

I have enjoyed making videos and this is something I hope to do as my future job. I like working within a team and being creative but in the future when getting feedback i would ask my boss for information because i felt that sometimes Guy lacked that passion as he seemed more concerned about his business then what we was doing. Also i would make sure everybody gets their job done. But i was pleased with the stuff that we produced and we will be presenting stuff to Guy on the 5th June. The problems encountered will happen at some point in my life and i will use the ways i have used now to get around them. I hope our show gets picked up because i enjoyed making the Zombie theme and i would like to do a few more with my collegue James. Also if we do get picked up we could make a partnership with Broadway Cinema to film at the lounge every week because its a nice setting and you can change to lighting around to suit the mood and it could be something Trent Tv could look at getting involved with.



What advice would i give to future students?

First overall make sure you research the company a bit before starting there White Collar Zoo was really confusing because they wasn't sure what they wanted to be as a business. Never argue with work colleagues its just mayhem if you do and it never truly gets sorted.

When preparing for filming make sure you back yourself up in terms of checking equipment and bring spare batteries for the camera and microphone. Weather will always be your bane when filming outside you can not control mother nature