a group effort

[GillianG]

I've mentioned a couple of times that I belong to a video club, well each year it has an evening when we split up into prearranged groups and make a film around a specific theme. Although planning and rehearsals take place in advance, the film shown to members has to have been made entirely on the same evening. This means that the film has to be edited 'in camera'. Filming takes place between 7.00 PM and 9.00 PM, and the films are watched at the club house from 9.30 onwards.

In 2003, the theme was 'Unexpected Guests'. My group, which we called the Oddbods, had a member who possessed a mini DV VCR, so we linked it to the camera, and actually recorded the film to be shown on that. This meant we had all the original shots, retakes, fluffs etc, on the camera tape.

There wasn't a script as such, just a general idea, and when we did a rehearsal the week before, the 'actors' adlibbed a lot, and we just kept, more or less, to the same 'script' on the actual night.

A second camera was used for additional footage, and to take a few shots of us filming, and I subsequently took both the original film and the second camera's film and remade it with the advantage of computer editing, this version being called 'Itching a Lift'. You can view this slightly better version here.

http://gilliangvideo.co.uk/SBFVC/Itchinghigh.wmv

I subsequently edited a tongue in cheek film of the group members at work, plus some out takes, called 'Not quite Itching a Lift'. You can see this here.

http://gilliangvideo.co.uk/SBFVC/Not...tchinghigh.wmv

It is really 'not quite' I want to show you, as it demonstrates amateur filming quite well, but to make sense of it, you have to watch them both.

By the way, I was behind the second camera, not acting

Gillian

[LJR]

Considering you didn't put any of the first film through a NLE and it was all shot within a couple of hours, I think you all did really well.