The story continues...

Hello all!

So you'll be happy to hear that we've been really busy the past few days; collecting our footage, playing around with editing and composing music. It's been a bit hectic but we've had so many laughs! As we posted on Tuesday, we had already collected a lot of the footage that we're going to use in the final film but we felt after going over the footage that we needed some slightly better panning shots of the landscape, along with some better shots of our interviewee's excavating.

The whole heritage team looking happy in the sun
and trying to ignore the flies!

Katrina filming our lovely volunteer Johanna.

So, yesterday morning we took the long trek back to get some more footage. The day dawned with blue skies and glorious sunshine which made for very high spirits, despite the early start! Happily, the sunshine also meant that the quality of light which we managed to capture was really lovely; much better than on Monday. Unfortunately, Monday's video footage was very 'blue' (which apparently wasn't to do with the rain!). We've figured since then that it had something to do with the white balance on the cameras so we're therefore having to find a way to alter this, which doesn't seem impossible. But that's not all.. oh no. Unfortunately, when we reviewed the footage we had a problem with what we like to call "stripey lines" (imaginative, we know) whenever there was any movement on screen. Apparently the proper term for it is 'interlacing' and there is a way to fix it but... it's going to take time. Luckily, we have the expertise of Simon Davis who's been our hero and worked out the best and quickest way to solve this problem. Thanks Simon! Our plan this afternoon then, is to play around with this and correct our footage to make our video the best archaeological video ever made in the history of archaeological video's! We clearly like to be modest...

Another exciting thing which we'd like to share with you is our new test video! After we got the footage back to Kings Manor we started to discuss the best way to put it together and structure the video in order to make it engaging and stop people from getting bored. We therefore decided that we would try to split the video into the archaeologists discussing their drawings in the first half, followed by them talking about what is special about Star Carr to them in the second half. After piloting our test video to the class we had some really lovely feedback and we've concluded that we're going to stick with that format; it keeps the audience better engaged and on their toes. Take a look below and let us know what you think.

We also played around with the form the that introduction is going to take. This only took us ten minutes to mock up so it's a bit rusty but feel free to have a look anyway!

Following on from that - this morning we've started on our first draft of the final film which hopefully will be finished by the end of the day so we can pilot it to the museum. We think, at this stage, whilst we're still full and happy from lunch, that it's definitely manageable. Time will tell! We've had a lot of suggestions from Gavin and a particularly nice one which we're thinking about doing is drawing the questions we're asking in the video and hence, continuing the hand-drawn theme. We're going to drag the benches outside around Kings Manor a bit more this afternoon and attempt this whilst tanning ourselves!

So, onwards we go... and we'll have an update for your lovely selves early next week. Until then, enjoy the sunshine whilst it lasts!