Choosing the band

Since I'm not Estonian I didn't know any local bands, I only could help with Latvian or Finnish bands but it would be too complicated to bring either to Tallinn, besides the shooting is not a one day deal and that meant Latvian or Finnish bands were out of question. So our producer Lena found a group, or to be more precise only the lead singer of the group - Roman Nogin. He was so kind to agree to take part in our video, although such an opportunity - music video for free - was also good for him. He turned out to be a very nice person, and even if we were a bit annoying for him(too long scene set up, for example) he was very patient and didn't show any bad emotions. I'm very thankful to him for that!

Music Video II

In class of Music Video production with Liina Paakspuu we were about 20 people, so in the end we had four groups. I would like to post here all four videos, but none of them has very very final version yet.

Music Video I

Without a doubt one of the most exciting assignments last semester was making music video. We had a special course dedicated to this project. We had to divide into groups of 4 - 5 people so there's a director, a producer, a camera man, an editor and assistant in each group. We had to decide the roles by ourselves and then choose an Estonian band. It wasn't an easy task for any of the groups and there were many obstacles for all of us, but I'm sure in the end everybody was satisfied if not with final result then with the great experience we got for sure.

Meeting

Here's the picture from the set. Made By Petra Apers. Peter's pushing me on the "dolly".

Thanks to Peter's skills we shot the "Meeting" assignment pretty fast. And it was also a lot of fun to work with these people. Finally we will have edited 6 versions of the material and it will be very interesting to compare them all. Of course I will try to post them all here.

FCP

One of the practical classes we had this year was Editing on Final Cut Pro. We used to have two editing computers last year - one with iFinish the other one Adobe Premiere. But this year those two were changed with 12 brand new iMac computers with new for most of us editing software Final Cut Pro. So we had a class which helped us to acknowledge the new program. All together we had six assignments, most of them are not finished yet, as the deadline is in the end of January and we had million other things to do, like music videos which I will post later on. One of the most interesting assignments was "Meeting" - we had to split into two groups, shoot some material at school which would match the title and then edit it. My group consisted of:

Peter Kilkenny - Director
Peteris Rozitis - Actor #1
Allan Pill - Actor #2
Henri - Actor #3
Petra Apers - Sound
Me - Alise Lipska - Camera

Allan's Short Film

Allan Pill's Single Camera Final Assignment:

Single Camera

Allan also shared with me his Single Camera Final Assignment. The class was conducted by Arvo Iho. But as the class was not only Single Camera but also combined with Multi Camera class most of us didn't show excellent performance. Also Allan admits that he "failed with the story, cause the news page on the computer that was supposed to show the guy was caught on a stupid home video turned out too small and not understandable". And i have to join Allan that most of us failed somehow in making the short film in one way or another. But that's just fine, isn't it? We're here to learn! :)

Final Assignment Intro to TV

Check out Allan Pill's Intro to Editing Final assignment - trailer for the movie "Requiem for a dream".

Intro to Editing

Besides Intro to TV we also had some editing assignments. One of them was to take a movie and make a trailer out of it. Of course, we couldn't yet make voice overs as we just started to acknowledge the art of editing, so the editing techniques weren't very sophisticated, but however, effective.

Interview

And here's a mini interview with the main star of "Unusual morning" Gatis Licitis:

me: So, what did you like the most and what didn't you enjoy so much?
Gatis: Everything was very interesting, of course...hmmm...what i disliked...probably the early mornings, because we shot mostly very early in the mornings at about 6 o'clock AM! So it was hard to get up. And I also didn't enjoy so much the moments when I didn't have to do anything, when the guys set up scenes or decided how to do this or that...so I was bored at these moments, but still I enjoyed the whole process very much and it was very interesting to participate in the project.
me: Did your expectations of the film met the result?
Gatis: I can't really answer to this question, because I don't know what did I expect...
me: But would you change anything if you were the maker of the movie?
Gatis: Well, actually I changed everything I wanted to change...my arguments always were well supported for the change so others didn't mind to follow my suggestions.
me: What exactly did you suggest?
Gatis: For example, I suggested to put white screen instead of black screen between the shot transitions, as the whole movie was kind of "light". And also I suggested different small details so some episodes would look cooler and more interesting, for example, trick with picking up the phone or catching the glass. Many things we figured out together.
me: OK, Gatis, thank you very much for the interview!
Gatis: You're welcome!

Unusual Morning

And here's the real stuff (first version though):

Trailer

Here's the trailer of "Unusual morning":

Intro to TV...

My initial idea was to collect as many projects as possible on this blog and not only upcoming ones but also those which were made in previous years. So I'm going to start with assignment which we had last year in the second semester in Intro to TV class. The aim was to make a 7-9 min long film, either fiction or documentary. I have to admit that that was our first assignment of a kind and we made it practically without no knowledge in the field, except if somebody had done something before entering BFMS. So on of the groups who consisted of Peteris Rozitis, Rihards Olmanis and Krisjanis Leitis made a short film "Unusual morning". They did a great job and there is even a plan to participate in some international student film festival. However, they have to tune up their movie before doing that, so I only have the first version, but without a doubt there's going to be a final version which I will also try to post later on when it's finished.

Photos I

Pictures by Petra Apers, Belgian ERASMUS student.

Other things

Besides short films and video clips, we also have to make music videos, TV News and other assignments including photography. There is always a whole class dedicated to the particular subject and all students have a photography class with the excellent professor and popular filmmakerArvo Iho. Me and most of AV (audiovisual) sophomores took the class already last year, so I asked some of the students who have taken the class last semester to share pictures with me.

Workshop II

Workshop I

Ok, finally I can speak on one of our projects...It all started in the last semester, somewhere in the middle of September. We had an opportunity to participate in Adobe After Effects Workshop with Tom Weitzmann. The workshop lasted for a week and pleasingly was free of charge.

In the beginning Mr. Weitzmann showed us basics of Adobe After Effects and also results of his previous workshops with some other students all over the world. And it was planned to make our own little test video on the weekend. Unfortunately every day there were less and less people coming (probably because the class was early in the morning) so in the end there were not many of us left.
The assignment consisted of two parts - we had to film some material and afterwards edit it in Adobe After Effects showing what have we learned. To decide what to film wasn't an easy task. Finally we stopped on idea with blue screen, because everyone wanted to try the interesting technique. We planned to shoot everyone from the group on the green screen and then place in different places and sizes at university. So the final idea was that we enter the university very small and after attending it we grow very big (and full of knowledge). And, of course, as soon as we started shooting we experienced first problems - the blue screen was too small and there wasn’t enough lighting equipment available that day. We had to change our plans and instead of shooting everybody in full size we decided to shoot separately upper and lower parts of the body and join them in editing. But even that didn't work too well, but as we didn't have any choice we had to deal with what we had. We shot all the material in about 3 hours and finished editing the next day.

Error

When you have to deal with technical stuff there is always a problem...why? Why there is ALWAYS an error? Seriously, has anyone ever had no problems while doing an important project? Also trying to make this blog caused me some technical problems, so not everything goes as I wished. I don't even feel angry or frustrated as the situation is so common, isn't it? Hopefully everything goes more or less fine...

Intro, DEC. 6

Hello, EVERYBODY!
I'm a sophomore of Baltic Film and Media School. From time to time we are doing this and that here; I mean we have some nice school assignments all the time. As the students of my university are creative and original individuals it's always interesting to have a look on what we are making. The problem is that not always it is possible, cause to collect works from media people (media people, by the way, are synonyms to chaos, late in time, strange, crazy, irrational, unusual, etc.) is a hard task. However, I (as well as many other people) would like to see them all somehow. That's why I have decided to set up this blog. I hope there will be a chance to get as many works as possible as well as get some feedback from the authors and I might even provide you with production pics. Wish me luck!