Coffee House Sessions - Stephanie Fraser

Alongside WINOL I was asked to take over the filming of the coffee house sessions tour at the student union. I began by looking at Spence’s previous packages for the sessions to get an idea for a suitable structure to fit the performance and informal interview together so that it flowed together nicely in the edit.

I wanted to use three DSLR cameras recording the entire length if the performance so that it would be the best possible quality, but unfortunately they weren’t available to book out and I had to settle for the standard JVCs. Spence had advised me to use a Marantz to capture the sound for the performance because a sound technician could get a live line of audio to record.

For me the most important part of turning the performance into something watchable was the quality of the sound as well as a variety of camera angles so that it didn’t look static, so it was vital that the live line on the Marantz worked as did all three cameras. Though as soon as the footage was uploaded I knew that I hadn’t got what I wanted - one the cameras was so over exposed and they only way around it was ditching that footage completely. 

The live line into the Marantz worked perfectly, despite the length of time it took the technician to set it up to the PA system and was really the only thing that saved the package after the failure of the third camera. using the marantz meant that in post production there was a little more than cutting between shots  - the sound and video were separately recorded so they had to be pieced together by lip syncing the clips using markers in final cut, something I had practice doing from previous projects and felt quite confident doing.

I also did a brief interview with the singer about the tour and that particular performance, which was faded in and out with the music from the performance under laid.

Overall I wasn't entirely pleased with how the packaged turned out. I think that the interview could have been done better and the questions i asked could have been more specific/i could have pressed for more specific answers. The main thing i disliked about the package was the lack of the third camera because of how much it limited the editing process and would have jazzed up a very boring setting.