Oxford: Location - Simms Sweet Shop

Whilst we were in Oxford we decided it would be productive to film in a few of the local shops in order to gain some footage of a part of the busy street scene in oxford but also to gain some insight into the local area and anything that what kind of shops most people would frequent, one such shop we decided to visit was "Mr Simms Traditional Sweet Shop", this seemed like a good idea to film in as locals of all ages would visit it at some point and the range of colours that would be present would prove a useful experiment for the cameras settings and various ranges of saturation of colour, also the neatly organised shelves would provide us with some good composition for our shots.

This is a montage of some of the footage we gained whilst filming in this location.

Filming on Location-Sweet shop from Lewis Mercer on Vimeo.

For this footage we used a range of different camera settings, the Aperture was set at f/22 in order to get everything in focus including the background, The ISO was set at 800 while we used a shutter speed of 500/1, a;so we needed to turn the white balance up to at least 8000 due to the lighting within the store otherwise the footage would of had an orange tint to it.

The release form signed by staff of Simms Sweet Shop

Before filming in this location however it was necessary to obtain a signature from the manager of the store on a release form explaining our task to give us permission to film on the premises as a requirement for us to be allowed to film anything. So of course we were polite and explained the situation to the shop staff and they were kind enough to allow us to use their premises to film in, although they mentioned that they would feel uncomfortable if we filmed any customers so we tried not to accidentally capture anything unnecessary on film incase a customer was in the frame, which would require us to get a release form signed by them as well.

OH&S: Occupational Health and Safety
During the time that we were filming in this location there were a few health and safety concerns that needed to be addressed as we were filming on someone else's property so we needed to ensure that there were no safety concerns before we began filming.

• Ensure all Equipment is safety placed in a location that is out of the way and doesn't become an obstacle to anyone in the shop
• Ensure that all Equipment is safely secured while in use to avoid damage to it and possible injury to oneself or others
• Take caution not to film any customers without their permission
• Do not get in the way of customers or staff to avoid injury
• Take caution when walking around the shop to avoid falling and injury to yourself or others.

These issues would need to be considered when filming in a location such as this, as it was such a small space that extra caution would be needed when walking around the shop especially whilst carrying equipment, as we needed to ensure we didn't unintentionally injure anyone around us or damage anything. Simple measures were taken to ensure that none of these concerns became an issue, by ensuring that we moved carefully through the shop and took care to keep the equipment in a safe and secure manner whilst filming to avoid any injury to anyone else around us.

Recording Session 2: Oxford Preparation

Before we visited Oxford first we had a recording session to discuss what we would do during our visit such as shot types,roles and what locations we would visit in order to better help plan the course of the trip to save us time and energy and to get as much work done efficiently.



Meeting 2 Oxford preparation from Lewis Mercer on Vimeo.

Recording Session 1: Future Film Shoots

In order to plan for future shoots that we would participate in we needed a way to discuss everything that would be needed in a way that we could easily go back to in order to check progress, so we decided to have a recording session where we would discuss everything that needed to be done such as shot types, locations, editing, different uses of camera tech and obtaining certain footage.



Meeting-Future Shoots from Lewis Mercer on Vimeo.

Contextual Study: Evaluation

At the start of this contextual study into cinematic New Waves I wasn't aware of neither the term nor the movement itself, so the initial task was to research and learn about the context and meaning behind a cinematic new wave and define it. To begin with the focus was on the French New Wave in cinema during the 1950-1960's, however as I learned more about the New Wave movements I discovered similar occurrences in other countries during roughly the same time, one such occurrence was the Japanese New wave movement that was happening in concurrence with the French New Wave, so I decided upon researching that particular movement as I thought it provide an interesting challenge.

To begin with the research was rather slow, as information on the Japanese New Wave was hard to come across, this is probably due to the movement not being well known in the west and was overlooked in the west due to the French New Wave occurring at the same time. Although information was initially hard to come across I was eventually able to learn of a few websites that gave details on specific directors which would help focus my research. There was however a large variety of different Japanese directors that were considered part of the new wave movement in Japan so I decided to only focus on one director, after viewing some basic information on a variety of directors I decided to go with the director I thought would be most interesting, Nagisa Oshima. As it would turn out the director I decided to research happened to be one of the most influential figures of the Japanese New Wave and drew many comparisons to the French New Wave in his films, which provided me with a range of useful discussion points for my research. I was also able to obtain access to a few books which I thought would be useful for learning about the contextual issues of the Japanese New Wave and for that I needed to travel to Coventry University library to obtain the information as they would have access to a wide range of texts which would help me gather information for discussion points on the context behind the movement in my study. As for the films by Nagisa Oshima, many of them are unavailable outside of Japan so many of the films by this director I was unable to access. The films I was able to obtain however caused a problem as I needed to order them from a retail website and I needed to wait at least a week for each of them to come which was very time consuming which set me back as I couldn't continue working without knowledge of the films.

After I gathered enough research on the Japanese New Wave movement and had watched the films by Oshima I could start work on my essay, The films I had been able to acquire gave me a lot of themes and context to discuss as they featured very controversial and extreme topics which provided me an insight into some of the context behind the movement. As from my research I discovered that Oshima was a political activist before he became a film maker, so whilst watching his films I found many aspects which expressed his views on the society during the 50/60's. One thing I learned that was not in my initial research was on the subject of a range of student protests in Japan during 1950 and again in the 1960's over the signing of a security treaty between Japan and the USA, I found this rather interesting and decided to research it to a greater detail and later decided to include information about it in my essay, as this subject was also a major theme in one of Oshima's films.

I found that during this contextual study I learned a variety of new information about a culture that I had no prior knowledge of and I've found it rather interesting, and I learned some of the issues that were affecting Japan during the time the New Wave movement occurred there and i now understand why these issues are expressed in the films that were produced. If I were to reproduce my contextual essay I would hopefully be able to further my research into this movement as it has proved to be very interesting to me, although if I were to improve on the research by viewing more of Oshima or any other directors work I would probably need to visit Japan to learn a greater amount of information on the subject, though this seems unlikely. Overall I think my research and essay have gone well as I managed to obtain viable sources of information that I was able to work with to my advantage.

Oxford: External Mic

During our time in Oxford we managed to have the opportunity to perform a vox pop interview with an employee in one of the locations we visited. We decided that one of the yes ways to go about this would be to use the external boom mic which would pick up the sound more clearly on the camera, so we set up everything we needed such as the camera and tripod, then one of us set up and operated the boom mic while another person was assigned to ask the employee questions about the local area or the culture.

This is the interview we had with the employee of the record shop we visited as one of our locations in Oxford.


Oxford - Interview from Lewis Mercer on Vimeo.

During the time we were filming there didn't seem to be any problems with this footage however after being reviewed once we returned we found that due to an awkward positioning of the boom mic it had been placed next to a radio speaker and the music being played distorted the audio of the interview so it is quite difficult to hear what is being said. However this type of footage is useful as it bears similarities to New Wave films, such as Godards "Breathless" that features a scene where a man is being interviewed at an airport but the sound of planes drowns out their voice and distorts the audio. This shows signs of being New Wave as since they are filmed on a budget they couldn't afford to reshoot and the background noise is natural anyways so they needed to just use what they got even if the audio was distorted, similar to the footage that we got and since we didn't realise what had happened until after we left Oxford we couldn't reshoot it. So through this we have captured some footage that is similar to New Wave due to the background noise of the location and the positioning of the boom mic.

Oxford: Problems

During the trip to Oxford, whilst filming we came across a vast array of problems over the course of the trip, as we were in an unfamiliar area some problems were expected but there were many that were unforeseen and most likely couldn't be prevented, including problems with navigation,timekeeping and the equipment we brought along as well. Many of the problems that occurred were relatively quick to resolve but some managed to cause us some trouble time and again during the trip although we were able to find solutions to all of them in the end.

One of the problems that first occurred to us was that for the fluid head tripod a vital component was missing from it as it had been left behind, the part of the tripod that connected to the camera was missing so it was very unstable for us to use a camera with it, although we did eventually come up with a temporary solution by having two people operating the camera at the same time one to hold the camera and the other to operate the tripod, we also tried to tie the camera to the tripod when we filmed to make it more stable although his was very time consuming as we needed to tie the camera, then when we had finished untie the camera in order to disassemble the tripod so we could move to a new location easier, and we did this for every location we visited that required the tripod so it cost us a lot of valuable time because of the loss of one piece of the tripod, even though eventually we made it workable.

Another problem we were sure we would face was the lack of memory cards for the cameras and sure enough eventually some of the memory cards were at full capacity and we could no longer film using them, and the memory cards ran out of storage at inconvenient times such as when we were in the middle of shooting a scene or trying to capture a certain shot. However we had fortunately brought along with us more than enough spare memory cards to replace the ones that ran out of storage space, including some that were of a higher memory capacity which would make it last longer.

One of the major problems we found was overall navigation, as there was constant disputes among the group as to which direction or street our set locations were and we often had to stop and consult either a compass or map, which caused us to waste a lot of time and sometimes led us in the wrong direction, however along the way there were many areas which provided the chance for some decent footage on the way to our locations so overall the loss of direction helped in a way.

A major problem however, one which we didn't even realise until after the trip was over was a problem concerning the external boom mic. As it would turn out whilst it was in use during a vox pop interview with an employee of a record shop, during the interview the boom mic was placed near a stereo speaker  with music playing through it so after we reviewed the footage we realised that the sound of the music was drowning out and distorting the sound of the interview. We realised that this was going to cause a problem as most of the sound coming from the person being questioned is somewhat inaudible, although a problem such as this should of been expected as it was our first use of the external boom mic so handling it was a new experience for us. Although later we realised that the footage while it had distorted audio was similar to New Wave footage which used almost inaudible sound also, so we thought that the footage may have been some use after all, however the footage still didn't seem right due to the poor audio even though we found a use for it.

Overall there were a lot of problems during the trip and they caused a lot of stress and wasted a lot of time during the course of filming although we eventually managed to resolve most of them they were still nuisance wether unavoidable or not, some of the problems may have been caused by poor planning and some were spontaneous so in future these problems must be ensured not to occur again.

Oxford: Evaluation

During our time in Oxford we managed to obtain a rather large quantity of footage from a vast array of locations within the area and I believe that the trip was overall a success. Although during our time there we experienced a lot of problems that wasted time and effort to correct and at times we needed to improvise on the spot, although it was our first time filming in a location unfamiliar to us so problems were expected. The amount of footage we obtained was also quite a surprise as we managed to film a variety of different shots during our visit, we initially planned to use a set shot list so during the time we were there we planned exactly what shots to perform and chose appropriate locations for each one which helped speed up our progress.

One of the things that had the most likely possibility of going wrong was using the external boom mic as it was a piece of equipment none of us had previous experience with, save for a quick tutorial the day prior to the trip, although the person chosen to operate it performed rather well, since we used it during a Vox pop interview with a shop employee the use of the external mic was needed, however when reviewing the footage we found there was a large amount of background noise that distorted the sound, so the first use of the external mic did not go to plan however the footage is still usable.

These images show us operating the external boom mic for the first time whilst filming. This was during our time in our second location within a small record shop.

Another new experience for the group was filming within location such as shops where we would need the owner/mangers permission to film anything on the premises, and we needed a release form signed, dated an with the address of the location clearly visible as evidence that we were given permission to film in that location. This was something we had never done before so it was nerve racking at first, but in all the locations we politely explained the situation and what our task was and they seems very cooperative and friendly and gave us permission, we did this in three different locations and each time the employees were very accepting in allowing us to film on the premises. During the time we were using the external boom mic we were in our second location and one of the employees was kind enough to allow us to interview him, which would prove useful, so the process of using release forms and obtaining permission to film in locations seemed to be fairly easy and would help improve our people skills and communicating, which proved very useful during our time in Oxford.

These are some shots of our group performing various shots during the time we were moving to and from our set locations, as during the commute between areas we were often distracted by certain places of interest that we thought would provide some useful footage and also we needed to perform specific shots that we needed and some of the locations we found seemed to be appropriate.

Among all the problems we encountered the trip was in essence a very productive day for us as we obtained a vast amount of different shots and locations which will provide decent footage for use in editing later. Not only was the trip productive but it was also entertaining and provided us with many new experiences and most likely helped to improve our work in the future as we gained some knowledge of using an external mic and developed our communication skills to some level.