Tuesday, October 18, 2005

7th Day Of Internship At Batey Ads

I didn't do much today. I was supposed to help Clifford on the event on Saturday and Sunday... and he had nothing for me to do today. So I was just surfing the Net most of the day until about 3 p.m., the Creative Director, Julian Yap, came over and told me to write her a report on the video shoot that I went to last week. She told me to write down my experience during the video shoot and she said I could hand it to her on Thursday. But I've already finished the two and a half page report today... just before 5 p.m. =/ This is what I wrote:


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A Report On My Experience During The Two-Day Video Shoot Of "Hentikan"

On October 12th and 13th 2005, Clifford, Puven, Ronnie and I went to a video shoot of a music video entitled "Hentikan" for the Ministry Of Transport. It is a public service commercial in a form of a music video. The music video features people committing traffic offenses. The purpose of the music video is to educate the public on the importance of driving, riding and walking safe. We were there to oversee the whole production and to make sure that every scene is shot. We each have a copy of the video call sheet to refer to. In the call sheet, there are sketches of how the scenes would look like and the location for each scene.

On the first day of the video shoot, which was on October 12th 2005, we went to two locations. The first location was in Kampung L.B.J. in Labu (somewhere between Nilai and Seremban). It took us slightly more than an hour to reach there. When we finally arrived there, we could not begin the video shoot as it was raining so we waited until the rain stopped.

After two hours, the video shoot began. Before every scene is shot, the camera crew took about twenty minutes to half an hour to set up the equipments. It was an exciting experience for me because I was sitting in the van while they were shooting the stunt scenes from the back of the van. The Stunt & Special Effects crew did a fantastic job in tailgating the cars ahead, swerving the car from side to side, and queue jumping. We were at Labu until 6 p.m. and then we adjourned to Putrajaya to shoot the final scene of the day. After they have set up their equipments, they recorded the red light running and dangerous speeding sequences. We were supposed to wrap up by 5.30 p.m. but due to the delay in the morning schedule, we wrapped up at almost 8 p.m.

I learnt about offline editing and online editing from Ronnie that day. Offline editing is selecting the best scenes, joining them together and adding layers of special effects to make the scenes look more interesting. Online editing, on the other hand, is changing the video format into a higher resolution format. That is why changes have to be made during the offline editing because changes made during the online editing could be very costly.

On the second day of the video shoot, we were in United Subang Jaya (USJ) from 9.30 a.m. to 1.45 p.m. The crew shot the scene where one Malay family was sitting in the MPV and the backseat was packed with kids who did not buckle up their backseat safety belts. Then they shot another scene using the same talents but this time, there were only two kids in the backseat sleeping soundly with their safety belts all buckled up.

At 2.30 p.m., we adjourned to a kampung in Dengkil. We only stayed for a while at Dengkil. We left Dengkil at 4.20 p.m. and we were back in the office by 5.15 p.m. so we did not see the scene where the father buckles up his child's helmet and then ride off into the sunset. On the last day of the video shoot, which was on Friday, October 14th, I did not go to the video shoot but I know that they went to Lot 10, Kuala Lumpur to shoot the pedestrian jaywalking scene.

These two days have truly been an eye-opening experience for me. It was thoroughly enjoyable as well as educational for me. I never thought that making a video could take up so much time as the crew needs to set up the equipment for about half an hour before every scene. The camera angles are important too so they usually have more than one take of a scene. These are the things that I have learnt through this experience and I hope to learn more things in the next video shoot.


Prepared by,
Michelle Kirsten Tai Sue Ping

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