GW: TV NEWS POST PRODUCTION

The post production of the TV News package was basically editing together of all of the elements that I had created and making a few motion graphics elements too. the idea was to execute the script idea but also to make sure that the mood, tone, emotion and feel felt right and authentic. As mentioned earlier TV news is a good vehicle for fast story telling as that is exactly what TV news packages/stories do. So length was important and the piece certainly needed to be no longer than three and a half minutes. The aim was to make it feel 99% right and do a lot of the background exposition and storytelling. The "borrowing" of the BBC logo also added the authenticity and kudos to the piece i desired.

In terms of the structure I followed my initial script to the letter and the structure was the following. I chose the most naturalistic looking talking heads from the reporter and the interviewees first as well as VO from the reporter and built the structure first making sure the narrative flowed. I then had to decide which GV's to use on the interviews and whereto put my created archive footage and photographs. I also recorded the created web-site being used on screen and was short of some book cover shots so quickly mocked some up in photoshop.

With this all in place the news package just needed the graphics to be added.

TV VT headers
These are primarily used when VT's were dropped into the shows but now that these are digital they are not used any-more. However they are something that audiences do not normally see and add a lot of authenticity to the news broadcast VT in my opinion and the BBC logo enhances this being a channel the audience are aware of with a generally good and trustworthy reputation. They also give the audience time to digest other information, dates, VT title, BBC logo etc. An added bonus with the HD clock that I sources online was the tone that kicks in at 20 secs, 10 secs, and 5, 4 and 3 seconds. It creates a little jolt in viewers when it appears and catches them off guard.

To create this I managed to source a clock online and then added the correct text to it exactly as original VT headers do. This was some technical details and a date as well as a title of the piece introducing the word Global Warmning. The date is set to 2/4/2015. The aim for this was for it to be the day after ben Wright appeared which would have been 40 years to the day he disappeared and started blogging again. That date would have been April 1st, April fools day. The font used was Gill Sans exactly the font used by the BBC. I also need to create my own BBC logo using the right font and squares in photoshop which I then imported into the editing software alongside the VT header.

The Lower Thirds

These are a TV convention for allowing characters to be introduced on screen with their names given and details about them. I wanted to use them for exactly this purpose and they also add kudos to the people speaking and eliminate an introduction to be needed from the reporter. I decided early on to use the BBC Look East news programme and in photoshop created the graphics to the exact spec of the original ones that they use. These fade on and off the screen at the start of each person first appearing on screen. As I have mentioned elsewhere the surnames of all of the people in the package are either famous illusionists or behind huge famous hoaxes. Copperfield and Blaine the famous illusionists and one of the men (Santilli) behind the famous hoax alien autopsy video tape. This goes along with Wright and Griffiths the surnames of the girls behind the fake Cottingley fairies hoax who are the surnames of Ben and Joseph who are mentioned elsewhere in the package.

GW PRODUCTION: CREATING THE ARCHIVAL FOOTAGE

Alongside the archival photos of Ben Wright and the Global Warmning movement I wanted to add some moving image footage of the time to bring Ben Wright to life a little. This could then be added to the TV News package to show off ben some more to the audience.

Planning and Pre-production.
To try and super-impose his head on existing archive footage would be too complicated so I decided to shoot some original footage and then try and age it. I needed to source a period or older looking location and costume and props chair and book too see below.

Production
The main issue with this was that it had to be done at the same time as the photos so I only had about 10 minutes to do it with  Tom my actor. I sourced some period looking costume trousers, jacket and shirt from the late 60's early 70s and used my front room as a location which does have an older feel if not exactly 100% period authenticity. I also found an old chair and a book for Ben to be reading.

I also wanted to get across the fact that he was quiet and shy unlike Joseph Griffiths his partner in setting up the movement. Whilst I did not want him to be studious I concocted a scene where someone unseen catches him reading and proceeds to annoy him ending in him waving them away slightly amused/annoyed. In keeping with the era I wanted to make the footage feel like it was shot hand-held on an old standard or super 8 camera. Time would not allow me to actually do it this way (although a have a couple of Super 8 camera) so I shot it loose and hand held with a fixed focus and loose on a DSLR. The lighting was natural throughout.

TOM EDIT SUPER 8 FX DEMO from Jon Saward on Vimeo.

Post Production
The post production was where the look all came together. The process is outlined below.

• I edited a couple of the clips together in Adobe Premiere Pro to create a 20 second mini movie. I wanted the cuts to be jumpy as though the film was edited in camera in two short bursts. 
• Once this was done the process was to add some film grain to the clip to give it an older feel. I tried some effects from software packages, to add noise and grain and hairs on the film BUT these looked too processed. 
• So I found some old super 8 footage online of a clear super 8 leader running through a projector with no image but just the noise, grain and dust on the film. I added this on top of the footage of Tom and it gave it that old feel and even the power of the light changed and it added this change to the clip of Tom. It is easy to overdo these effects and restraint was needed to not go over the top.
• I also experimented with colour. Old super 8 film has a highly saturated colour and I wanted to add this to feel to the clip. After lots of experimentation a mixture of playing with the contrast and brightness, changing the colour balance of the red and green shadows and some red channel blur got the effect I was after. 
• Finally I made the screen image ration 4:3 as it would have been back when it was supposed to have been shot.

I was pretty pleased with the effects and seeing Ben "in action" did bring his character to life and also capture a little of his personality. The effects do come pretty close to replicating super 8 footage from my original shots although the best way obviously would have been to have shot on Super 8.

GW PRODUCTION: CREATING THE ARCHIVAL PHOTOS

Once the shooting was done I also needed to create the fake archival assets to use in the piece of Ben Wright. As he never existed this involved finding an actor of the right age look and feel for a young Ben wright and then creating assets that could have actually been around since the late 1960's documenting him and the Global Warmning movement. These will be added to the news piece for a sense of authenticity and may also be used in the installation as ephemera from the time. The photoshop work is a little outside of my comfort zone and I wanted to outsource it but colleagues I approached were too busy to meet the big crit deadline but did say they may be able to help for the actual installation. However they did show me some tips and tools and effects to bolster my moderate knowledge and also I used them as sounding boards to prepare for the shoots to get these right.

Photo-Shoot of Actor for Archive Composite Photos

Shoot of the actor playing Ben Wright in a multitude of positions and lighting to match the figures in the sourced photos to be doctored. For this I was really restricted for time and only had my actor for half an hour as they are really busy. Due to a timing clash before they went away for the summer. I really liked the look of a friend's son Tom Amos and thought he was ideal so decided to try and work with it. The initial aim was to get him over to a real photo studio I have access to In Ipswich and shoot them there but time would not allow so I set up a makeshift studio in my house. Lights, white sheet tripod and camera. The white background was a necessity to aid the cutting out of the heads to replace the heads on the archive photos I had sourced.
The photos were of head and shoulders only as I wanted to keep the period dress of the original photos as sourcing costumes would be time consuming and expensive. The shoot went fast but OK I shot photos in a multitude of positions trying to capture the posture, lighting and mood and tone of the original characters in the original photographs. the lighting was the main issue due to the space that I had backlighting was an issue.

Photoshopping the elements together to create the fake archive photos.

Once I had created the new photograph of Toms head (Playing Ben) I needed to then get them into photoshop and composite them with the originals. The before and after of this time consuming process is demonstrated in the images below. 

• Firstly the original sourced archive photos were imported into photoshop.
• This photo was then duplicated so there were two copies of it in 2 different layers.
• Next the right corresponding photo of Tom was imported and the head only cut out from the background using the lasso tool. This was also scaled to try and get the pixelation similar to the original photos and of a similar scale.
• This cut out head was then placed like the jam in the sandwich between the two identical original archive photos in photoshop. 
• The cut out head was then scaled and positioned over the original head.
• The cut out head was desaturated to make it black and white and the brightness and contrast tweaked to make it closer to the original.
• In order to reveal it the top archive photo was then rubbed out in the head area using the eraser tool to reveal the image of Tom underneath.
• The image then could be re-sized and tweaked using the free-transform tool.
• Any background images where the heads did not overlap could be tidies up using the clone tool or  a mixture of this and the paint or blur tools. Zooming in on the image to see the pixels made this easier.
• Finally the added new head could be blurred a little if necessary to look closer to the original.

I chose the above image as an example. It is not 100% there but I had a lot of these to do before the big crit deadline so I got as close as time would allow. It is a hugely time consuming and skilled job which I am a little under-qualified for. Some of the images I created work better than others and are all Ok if you do not look too close. This is something that I will need to develop to get to the 98-99% realism I am after for the TV News piece and I am looking to hopefully draw on the experience of colleagues to help achieve this.

NOTE:
Some of the images needed text to be replaced on banners and this was even trickier to get to work. This also included the Newspaper headline I am really unhappy with as it was a very difficult job. The same process as above was used with a few new tools used to try and create these.

• Use the clone tool to go over the existing writing on the sign with the texture from the original photo.
• Use the font tool to write the new slogan for the banner.
• Use the transform tool to skew the perspective and scale to try and match the original photo.
• Pixelate and blur the new text to try and match the pixelation and blur of the original photo.

GW: FAKE TV NEWS PRODUCTION FILMING

The creation of the TV news piece involved several elements and shoots to create it. As mentioned in the planning these were considered and thought out for their reality to a "real" news piece. Due to availability and time these were carried out at different times over a week or so prior to editing. This post is a culmination of all of the different shoots that I undertook. I have outlined the production elements below with comments on the creation of them.

News reporter PTC at the location of Ben Wrights "suicide"?
Cast Glen White a close friend and radio DJ as well as a one time stand up comedian who has the regional TV news feel about him. he is a work colleague and happy to help out. We filmed at Aldebburgh as it was a close location. It had the right feel, not touristy, bleak and I liked the stones on the beach. The weather was right too in terms of being overcast but the beach was very windy and this necessitated having the dougal wind-gag on the microphone and close to Glen in shot. There was a wardrobe issue as I had asked Glen to bring a shirt but he forgot so we made do with the one he was wearing and added the sports jacket I brought and a tie from the selection I brought that went best with the ensemble.

Due to conditions and wind noise a walk and talk proved too difficult so we opened on a mid shot for the into and then used a tighter more of a MS-MCU for the outro and a slight change of camera position. As with TV news presenters they get to directly address the audience straight down the lens. These were filmed using a boat as a wind-break that was just out of shot to facilitate good audio recording. I then proceeded to get plenty of GV's for possible use in the piece of the following. Sea variety of shot sizes, lifebelt and signage, Aldeburgh landscapes of sea and beach, flags to show the wind and signage of Aldeburgh.
The kit was a DSLR with TASCAM sound recording unit, tri-pod and all necessary leads. The footage was shot in HD.

News reporter recorded Voice Over VO of the script.
This was done using a voice booth where I work as Suffolk New College for authenticity. It was recorded using Adobe Audition in stereo wav format from the script. This is how it is generally done in industry with the VO added when the footage gets back to the studio editing suite if the reporter is available to do it. A variety of tones, pacing and inflections were tried out as well as tweaks to the script to make it flow better. Glen obviously provided the VO.

Interview with a professor of climatology to verify the importance of Ben Wright and the Global Warmning movements research and, ideas and predictions. Adds integrity to story.
The professor is played by Michael Brown who was a jobbing actor before he started teaching at Suffolk New College. He had the right look and temperament as well as gravitas I felt the part needed and played the part well. Looking back I should perhaps have done more takes as in places he performed a tiny bit too much. This would be fine in a fiction film but when aiming for reality it is not as natural as usual interviewees on TV news although sometimes they are practiced TV interviewees and there is this degree of performance or polish to their performances.
This was filmed in a mini set at the college that I wanted to look like a professors office. I was restricted for where I could shoot and not make it look lime a classroom. So I kept the shot tight and made more authentic with some books on the subject, pictures on the wall and a screensaver on the computer screen. The lighting I wanted to be cold and clinical so i used some CTB gels over the lights to make the light a little bit bluer. Clothing was smart casual with a soft jacket from a wardrobe selection brought in by the actor.
The shot was a loose MCU to allow space for the lower thirds and he is looking just off camera to the interviewer as is the protocol in TV news and documentary IV's. I also shot plenty of GV's of the scene of Michael looking at statistical data on graph, reading and working on his desk, CU of him studying and also cutaways of the books on his desk for use in the package.

Interview with a past "friend/girlfriend" who was also involved with the Global Warmning movement about the fact that he may be back.
The actress for this needed to be in their late 60's as they were a friend of Ben Wrights from back in the late 60's and former member of the Global Warmning movement who knew them from university. I did not want to overplay that they may have been romantically involved but I did want to suggest it from her tone and the old photographs of them together.  I used my mum to play this part and not being an actress needed to read the lines from just off camera. This worked well and were only as a prompt but as she was not an actress the IV has a sense of the raw and unpolished and un-performative about it.
I wanted this to feel natural so set it in a home environment but someone who had obviously moved on from these days but remembered them fondly. I used some momento's from the room itself but I had managed to source an old picture of Cambridge university that I added to the background. I wanted the colours to be warm so used some CTO gels to give it a more orangey and that feel. The shot is a traditional MCU and the actress is looking just off screen the opposite way to the professor. I also shot lots of GV's of her pouring over a photo album and sorting it out looking at old photos. I did not have any of my created photos to add into the album at this stage so I shot the CU's of the Global Warmning images of her and Ben at a later date using the same lighting set up but in a different location.

The shoots went well and although short to shoot but the set up took time and they were a good half day each preparing, set decorating and setting up the equipment for. they were also filmed in multiple locations so travelling time was an issue. However I feel that I have some good footage to use. One of the issues is getting it right but not being too crafted. TV news is a sausage factory and it shoots happen fast and the shots and format is very formulaic. Yes they can look good but they are not often great in terms of cinematography. Bizarrely I had to not be too creative too keep the authenticity.

GW IDEAS: THE KID STAYS IN THE PICTURE (2002)

Starting to develop my Global Warmning multi strand narrative installation I wanted to-revisit some texts that really inspired me. One of these was the incredibly subjective The Kid Stays in the Picture a documentary Nanette Burstein & Brett Morgan. (2002). The film is an award winning documentary based on the autobiography of the infamous Paramount studio head Robert Evans.

The obvious “talking head” documentary is side-stepped using only a voice over from the great raconteur Evans’ himself throughout. This is accompanied visually by clever use of a range of archive materials from digitally layered and superimposed moving photos and film clips and news footage as well as stylistic newly shot footage from the locations mentioned. It is also very playful with the idea of objectivity and subjectivity from the very start.



Reviewing the film Maitland McDonagh sums it up thus “The result is a snazzy kick that's never less than hugely entertaining and should in no way be mistaken for an unbiased account. But then, Evans is the quintessential Hollywood character, and what's more Hollywood than crafting your own legend”. This is summed up by Evans’ quote “There are three sides to every story: your side, my side, and the truth. And no one is lying. Memories shared serve each differently”. Morgan himself in interview also defended the subjectivity of the film and it being only Evans’ side of the story by dubbing it “cinema mythologica”.

The film was an influence for all of the above. I love the shameless subjectiveness as the whole story is purely from Evans viewpoint and perspective and is shameless about this. It is almost as though you have pulled up a chair next to him in a bar and he is telling you the story. Who cares if the facts are not all objective and Evans I am sure bends and stretches these. As I am working on a docu-drama whilst the facts will be true the delivery and perspective of them for my characters is fictional so this will be a liberating technique employed to some degree here.

The other technique I like that apart from a couple of archive interview clips you never see Evans. Clever use of the images mentioned earlier and especially animation of old photographs are a real triumph. I like the idea of creating a falsehood of footage from my fictional characters and I can draw on the techniques employed here. The not actually seeing the subject of the documentary is also really interesting and for the is he or isn't he IV style docu-drama it may be good to not actually see the subject as he is now also. It will leave a lot more to the audiences imagination and keep the mystery of my character too. Lots of food for thought and possible ideas and techniques to develop in my own work.

GW: PRE-PRODUCTION AND RESEARCH FOR TV NEWS

To prepare for the creation of the fake regional TV news element of the installation I undertook plenty of research then development to create some pre-production. This is an overview of the work I undertook and will continue to develop.

Researching TV News: Style codes and conventions.

The Script: Develop in the style of regional news.

Mise-En-Scene: Props, location, costume, actors (typage) lighting etc.

The Cinematography: Shots that are used.

The Sound: Sound effects and music?

Editing and effects: Pace, rhythm, titles, lower thirds graphics use of archive.

GW: FOUND OBJECTS, ARTEFACTS AND EPHEMERA

I want to use objects within my piece to try and convince the audience that what they are seeing in the video elements of the installation are true. Whilst I believe that the documentary and news elements can be made to convince the audience an audience I think that physical objects working in tandem with the video will be an ever better way of trying to construct my piece. Also all too often these are created  as set dressing or as action props within film. I will need to create some of them anyway to use in archive stills in the pieces I am creating so why not devise and make even more and make them part of the installation.

This idea also plays on "Found Object" art. The Tate website describes it as "Found objects (sometimes referred to by the French term for found object ‘objet trouvé’) may be put on a shelf and treated as works of art in themselves, as well as providing inspiration for the artist. The sculptor Henry Moore for example collected bones and flints which he seems to have treated as natural sculptures as well as sources for his own work. Found objects can also be modified by the artist and presented as art, either more or less intact as in the dada and surrealist artist Marcel Duchamp’s readymades, or as part of an assemblage. Extensive use of found objects was made by dada, surrealist and pop artists, and by later artists such as Carl Andre, Tony Cragg, Bill Woodrow, Damien Hirst, Sarah Lucas and Michael Landy among many others."

So there is a tradition of using found objects as art and those visiting a gallery may be aware of such pieces and artists as those mentioned. My spin here though is that they will be sold to the audience as found art (possibly roughed up and distressed) as a collection of artefacts in and almost museum like way. BUT they will actually be created pieces of work that help to develop evolve and corroborate the video pieces.

I have a close friend Simon Wild who is a graphic designer and illustrator and I have been discussing this with him. He has started doing just and creating what he calls "Graphic Props" and is looking to turn it into a career. He is really keen to collaborate and create some artefacts and ephemera from the late 1960's and early 1970's. Here are some of the other pieces of work he has created to build a portfolio to try and get his foot in the door. I am keen to not just let him create the piece but also to learn from him and help him with the process to add to my skillset.

The part of this aspect to the installation would be part of the world and story I am constructing so need to fit into the narrative, enhance it, reinforce it and be interesting. I see these as being displayed alongside the video work and complementing it. People could look at the artefacts and still listen to the video playing and two elements would play off and reference each other making up the whole.

Here is a long list of what Global Warmning movement artefacts it would be good to make for the piece.

• Posters of marches or events.
• Newspaper headlines.
• Flyers/handbills.
• Police, MI5 letters about following Joe.
• Threatening letters (fossil fuel giants & govt)
• Banners from protests.
• Badges from movement.

On top of this it has also inspired me to look to create some of the following too.

• Photos (May look to do myself with photographer friends) Uni, friends, protesting.
• Old film cans and film
• Old audio tapes.

THE K FOUNDATION

http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2014/08/time-k-foundation-burned-million-british-pounds-apparent-reason/

GW: HOAXES AND CREATED STORIES

The aim of my Global Warmning piece is to try and sell a falsehood to an audience. The aim is not to create a hoax but to use a dramatic, intriguing and interesting fictionalised narrative that can be used to help and sell the message I want to convey warning us of the Global warming issue. I have found that the Global warming issue is a little flat and a hard sell to audiences to get them to understand and act upon. This is because it does not seem urgent, it has become stale and it has been miss-sold for so long with spin by parties with self serving interests. I aim to try and make it more interesting by dressing up real facts in af ake or fictionalised narrative of a movement and characters that never existed. This will hopefully gain interest from the general publcicand get the issue talked about.

I have been researching lots of hoaxes to find out what it is that makes them work and tricks that they used to pull them off. I want to try and do this with my piece be it online OR as an installation. My current aim is for it to live online and be a variety of content linked together on the web that individually gives clues but all together pieces together the whole story.

I like the idea of these running through my own work somehow as little clues as to the true nature of the work that I am creating. Perhaps using images of them or the names of those perpetrating the hoaxes feeding back into my work as clues as to what is REALLY going on in the piece.

There is a huge variety here including the following.

• Cottingley Fairies 1917. Girls fake photos of fairies at the bottom of garden.
• Piltdown man 1912: Fragments of faked skull and jaw of HUGE man. Actually orangutan.
• The turk 1717: fake chess playing machine really a man iside.
• Alien Autopsy 1995: Two men fake alien autopsy footage.
• BBC Spaghetti trees 1957. April Fools day BBC joke with created spaghetti trees.
• Fiji Mermaid 1842: A mummified body that was actually grafted fish tail and baby monkey.
• Cardiff giant 1869: Giant man actually a model.
• BBC's Ghostwatch 1992: Spoof ghostly live show screened on Halloween.

The issue I will have is that most of these were in the days before the internet so I will have to be extra careful. My feeling is that one source will simply not sell my hoax and that I will need lots of threads to do this. This could be web-sites, mentions in Wikipedia, video, photos, filmed scenes and interviews and blogs etc. These will all be interlinked and provide a multi-thread approach to trying to convince the audience. On their own they will be a tough sell but if they all solidify one another the audience are more likely to be convinced by multiple sources all saying the same thing.

http://cassieshouseofhorror.blogspot.co.uk/2012/08/what-is-slender-man.html

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/8679113/Five-famous-hoaxes-which-fooled-the-world.html

http://all-that-is-interesting.com/famous-hoaxes-fake-images

https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn15012-eleven-of-the-greatest-scientific-hoaxes/

http://listverse.com/2007/08/30/top-10-famous-hoaxes/

GW: PERIOD FONT RESEARCH

After working on some logo designs the obvious thoughts set in and most of my designs had incorporated Ariel which unfortunately did not come into existence until 1990. Tricky when the period setting I was needed graphics for was the late 60's and early 70's!

This led to some research into fonts and the website fonts in use proved to be invaluable. It gives dated examples of artefacts (book covers, posters, album covers etc) and then says which fonts they used. This will enable the authenticity to ring true on the artefacts and ephemera I create for my work.

https://fontsinuse.com/tags/301/1960s

https://fontsinuse.com/tags/299/1970s

Another consideration would be the authenticity of the early logos and branding of the Global Warmning movement and how this may change. I think that as it got bigger it would undoubtedly move from a basic and handmade nieve design through to something with more polish. So a couple of designs are likely to be needed. The modern Arial font works I have designed could be used to bring the logo up to date for the new modern incarnation of the movement.