Week 3

For Week 3 we had to prepare our documentary pitch idea. Our group had a few ideas. We finally decided on two. One about a busker under the bridge just off campus. The other was about the fast food chain Grubbs; which is specific to Brighton. I had thought this might have been a good idea as I had overheard a conversation in one of their restaurants about their history. After looking into their company and food options a little more we decided to move away from this and do our project on The Hope and Ruin, a music venue and vegan pub in Brighton. We felt this place gave us a little more to talk about and film as we could focus on the live music aspects as well as their food and bar.

During this session we also recorded the pitches so we could get used to the camera and microphones we were using. The camera was the same Sony X70 and the microphones were a clip on lavalier microphone and a boom microphone. The lav mic was secured to the interviewee and boom mic was placed on top of the camera. It was important with both microphones the the gain was set correctly, this was to stop clipping or any distortion when talking. It was also important where we were filming as background sounds could possibly be heard. We recorded in the room the session was taking place in, this was not ideal as you could hear the air conditioning in the background of the audio. However as this was only a practice run we did not worry too much.

Another thing to consider whilst recording audio was which microphone to use when. The lav mic needed to be clipped onto a person, this meant it would pickup more of the person than the ambience of the room. This would be ideal for recording one or two people having a conversation as long as you had one microphone for each person. The boom mic was much more useful for general room ambience and room sounds.