The Hive Project

So as part of my course we get the chance to gain some work experience in the form of a placement. I actually ended up doing two work placements and the first one i will be doing a review on is The Hive. This was a brilliant chance for me to get some experience i have taken a lot away from this project.   The brief was to produce three videos for our boss Sean that can be shown to his students as well as at meetings.

The first client was Boo Boo Kitty Couture. The company is owned by Aislinn Ball and she hand makes vintage dresses  for her clients. She was a real interesting character to look at as well she had a very vintage to look to her and had some massive tattoos. Filming her was great because it gave us the chance to get creative and Sean had gave us total control over the video just as long as we keep to the brief that was set by him. My role in the team was filming and recording i also took the role of sorting out meetings with Sean and keeping him updated with how we are getting on.

So the filming of Aislinn started when Sean offered us a job to film a big lecture he had put on called Fusion we spend the whole day filming and Aislinn gave a speech about her company and we found out a lot about her past and who she is as a person. Below is an image of me filming at the event. We was there for about eight hours in total and learnt a lot with setting up and filming for long periods of time. I took a few notes about what Aislinn had said and also managed to get a copy of the presentation she did at fusion.

Filming went great as well for me it was my first experience of going out and filming a client. We had prepared some questions for her to answer and she was more then happy with them and she had invited us to film at her studio. We took a risk of not going out before and doing a recce so the storyboard we prepared was not hundred percent accurate but we knew we could solve any problems that arose.

When we got to her office is was very obvious at first that she seemed a bit nervous and she said afterwards she found it more difficult talking to us then she would a big crowd but we remained professional and this helped her relax a lot more and the shots we got were great we used a Panasonic 151 for the still shots of her talking and the cut away shots used were with a DSLR. Afterwards when we was packing up Aislinn offered us a bit more work for some of her clients and she gave us an email for a burlesque dancer called Scarlett Daggers. This was such a pleasing result for us and for anyone looking to get into the media world need to get to know the importance of networking and building up clients because that way you may know somebody who perhaps wants you to make a video for one of their clients and it builds up a big network of people who you can turn too.

Once the filming had been done for Aislinn and edited it we could move on to the second client Pip Spoerry at Studio Made at NTU and interview her and the students she has had. Sean was impressed with the work we had done with Boo Boo Kitty so he said to put more effort into Pips video and if we had time start work on the third video but as it turned out we didn't have time for third video and Rachel Hayes the client was not happy about.

But back to Pip we actually had two meetings with her where we got given her brief and what she was expecting from the videos we was going to produce for her. Then the second one she gave us some images for cut away shots and also we had made some questions for her to answer and she organised the filming dates due to the students work so we had to make sure we kept time free for Pip as she was going to India for business.

Filming went just as well and this time round we learnt a bit more we changed certain positing's of the cameras that Pip wanted and it felt a lot better then the Boo Boo Kitty were was a bit nervous this time we wasn't scared to say if we didn't like something and this meant that the shots we got were a lot better and the editing was a lot more smoother and its basically learning from the past mistakes. Also we was working with more people this time. We interviewed three students with Pip. The shots above was us setting us the background and seeing if it looked good in the shot. We asked Pip to change it around a few times to make sure it looked good.

After all the editing had been done it was time to show Sean the work and we was happy with the work we had done and once we had shown Sean he was blown away. He admitted to being a bit nervous at first with us being students but he said that conducted ourselves in a great manner we had produced the videos he was looking for and it was smiles all round.

It all finished with the team presenting the work to staff at the university and The Hive. It was just an informal kind of thing but it was a big thing to me. This is something i was worried about because if  we did bad all the praise Sean has gave us would of made him look stupid and we would of let him down so the pressure was on during the presentation of the work. I was a little nervous talking in front of people so this is something I have to work on but i managed to get though say my bit and then it was on to the premier of our work. Thankfully i went down well and we got a lot of praise and some decent feedback on where we can improve next time which was brilliant. A picture of some of the staff waiting to watch our videos

                                                                   

Thankfully we got a good reception and Sean has invested a lot of time into this project and i am thankful i had the chance to work on this project as I have learnt a lot from it just just in terms of being a creative worker but also being professional and in the long run this will benefit me greatly.Speaking in front of a crowd, working to a brief that a client has set for us. But really i was thrown in the deep end with no arm bands but i managed to swim and it has been a great learning curve. Sean has even offered us a bit more work for the summer which is great and i hope to keep in contact with him as he has gave us a reference and even said he would work with us again which is great.

If i was going to do a project like this again i would make sure i improve on my editing skills to make sure the videos produced look a lot more glossy and maybe use better cameras. But overall i felt my team work improved on this production i got a lot better at talking to people i know and even spoke in front of people which always makes me nervous.