How we made the Application Video
|
The BIG ENZ Video
Size 1.8MB at 56k modem speed Update On a lovely Saturday 9 February 2002 afternoon, we shot some new material to spice up the old vid. I think it's much more interesting now, with lots of sheep, cows, mountains, and music. General Information Our
video was filmed unscripted. The team did an unfilmed test run of the actual lift. This was probably the cause of our later explosion as a bit of petrol would have been sitting inside the inner tube (and weakening the rubber) for half an hour or so before we got around to doing it again. On the first lift everything went straight up into the air and looked very impressive so the motto of the story is... film everything! Time Line Walk Through I think this is basically how it went, give or take a day or two. 1. Wednesday 25 January - Trevor recieved the invitation from our local TV company to put an application in. Argh! ONLY 4 DAYS till the deadline! Trevor is a High School Physics teacher. Usually a class can handle watching a video for only about 15 minutes. Scrapheap episodes (like the series one final with rockets) keep em wrapped up for 45 minutes, the students even start cheering for their favourite team! Yup, Trev is definately a Scrapheap fan. 2. Wednesday evening talked to Michael. About 6 months before I had been thinking of a "dream team" of engineers that could be on a "NZ version" of Scrapheap. My top choices were Michael and Brett, friends I first met about 16 years ago at a church youth group. They both helped me modify my chrome yellow Ford Escort into a rather fine machine. Michael completely reconditioned a Weber carb for me, a very strenuous exercise considering the junk condition it started in! And the silver Escort that Brett and Michael built... well, that's just legendary. One of our friends said this about his ride in it, "It was incredible! You were thrust back into your seat... and then the turbo cut in..." 3. Thursday evening talked to Brett. Dropped off video taped episodes of Scrapheap that the boys hadn't seen yet. 4. Brett confirmed interest of his Boss. Michael had already heard stories of the amazing bodging and building skills of Barry so we had the ideal team. They just needed to think about it and get permissions. 5. A long weekend and national holiday followed so it was the next Tuesday and Wednesday that everyone came back to Auckland. YES! Everyone interested. Well, that's an understatement. The exact words used went something like "I can't sleep at night!" Permissions granted from the all important family members. Actually, the guys didn't wait for the weekend to be over, they were calling my cellphone by Saturday :) Ideas being phoned, discussed and emailed around for the video. 6. Thursday 1 February set film time for Saturday morning. We had to finish by lunchtime because of prior engagements by the team. Michael and Trevor went into the University to film a bit of the particle accelerator that Michael built. I managed to forget a microphone adaptor (doh!) but we still used a couple of the shots in the final mix (in the end credit scene). I adapted an idea that Michael had talked about the previous night and Brett really wanted it for the video (Barry liked all the ideas): the basic one way valve, engine compressor, airbag thing to lift Michael's car. (After we sent the video off I noticed that the NERDS have the same idea listed in their FAQ - doh! Ah well, the point is in the simple explanation and good team work.) 7. Saturday 3 Feb - filmed the video at Barry's place. His garage really does look like a scrapyard! We used two digital handycams (single ccd). Ian operated a Panasonic mini DV (with the extra microphone attached) and Neil operated a Sony Digital 8. Very useful having the extra camera as the Panasonic ran out of tape about 10 seconds before the tyre popped! For sound, I duck taped a Shure SM58 to a microphone stand and used it as a boom. On Friday night Neil soldered an adaptor together to go from the 6.5mm mono microphone plug to the 3.5mm stereo socket on the camera. It gave us much better sound quality than just using the camera microphone. I had headphones on so I could monitor things like how much handling noise I was making. I totally recommend using an external microphone for filming application videos, regardless of the type of camera you use. It makes so much difference! We got home about 3pm and were exhausted. Watched the Sony tape and indexed it. Went to see Craig and edited until 10:30pm. (C, I, Br, T). After church the next day we went and did more editing until about 5pm I think (C, I, T). Michael turned up as well. What Craig can do on a computer is magic. Craig uses a DV Raptor card on a PC with Premiere and Light Wave. 8. Monday 5 February - after work. FedEx changed their mind and couldn't come and pick the package up so I drove out to the airport and sent it away. FedEx have a really cool tracking system on the internet. Just type your number in and they'll tell you exactly where the package is at any time. Most of the time it was just sitting around waiting for customs. It arrived in England at the RDF Media office on Wednesday morning. In other words, it only took us 12 days from first hearing of the invitation to sending our tape and application off. That's not bad going I reckon! After some communication back and forth from the TV people the deadline was extended to the 12th and then the 14th of February. After all that we were a week early! :) The video ended up being about 8 minutes long which was the same as, or shorter than, the NERDS video. Delivered
To: Recept/Frnt desk Delivered LONDON
GB 02/07/2001 09:14 Credits The Team:
Brett Wigg, Michael Harrison, Barry Freeman Spot Appearances by:
|
