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Below The Fold

Bideford, England On Summer's Eve

This is the first installment in a video movie production series by veteran news and video producer, editor and director Tony Koorlander at LimeLightHD in England.

Story Telling As Craft

Bideford, England — I grew up in southwest England, born in the picturesque village of Bideford. Being my hometown, Bideford has always had a special place in my life, but little did I expect that one day I might be asked to apply my talents and film making skills to share the beauty and romance of Bideford with the world.

Lynn and Tony Koorlander

While much of what we’re asked to do as videographers is reality-based, there are times, and this was one of them, when the challenge was to tell a story — the fullest expressions of the videographer’s image capture and editing skills. But, I’m getting ahead of myself — for this project was unique is other ways — a great script idea, minuscule budget and the availability of a well known movie star with a Shakespearian voice and dramatic nature.

Movie making can significantly refresh and improve one’s video production skills because it substantially increases the complexity of our work. Not only are there additional tools at hand ( music, dramatic arts, and thematic pacing ), entertainment and documentary projects demand that we work in a far more collaborative way. The result can be a refreshing experience — one that sharpens our skills, and, if we’re lucky, helps us to break some bad habits.

Bideford 500

I was engaged by a local voluntary organisation promoting interest in our town through exposing the history of its past for present day residents and visitors. The project is aptly named “Bideford 500″ spanning 500 years from the failed attempt Danish invasion of the area, Elizabethan pirates, the colonisation of the American continent with its associated maritime trading, the World War II training for D-Day, the top secret amphibious trials, with attendant 23,000 US troops in 1943, to the present times. I embarked upon a spare time shoot regime, accumulating various scenery angles in opportune weather and times of day, that I felt might at some time be of use in the grand scheme of things. We’ve all done this from time to time, but this time, that footage was what made the improbable and under financed project into reality.

The Team, The Task, The Problems

Doing a project of this size requires many talents, for unlike news gathering, story telling is inherently a collaborative effort. So, imagine my delight when one afternoon an email popped up on my desk with a note telling me that a twenty years past, one time meeting with an experienced broadcasting producer, Pauline Smith, had now put me in a working position with her, and that I needed to call her. It manifests that she has been employed with budget by our local authority, to research the very project outline that I have been amassing library for unpaid. Funny how these things work.

I called and ask what she needs. “Oh — I understand that you’ve got a load of video and an edit suite and I’d like to put together a 5 minute preview of what I’m proposing and hope that you’ll be willing to help.”

So .. we talk through the scant two week production schedule before the public preview. Given my work schedule, lack of script, non-existent music, and absent storyline, I’m happy to know she is to pull the project together. It’s up to her to provide script, narrator and music. I get any remaining shots and she is to do the rest — if only I show her how to use my edit suite. We all know how that goes — for editing is in the imagination and mastery of media, not in software or hardware facilities.

The Risks, Rewards and Opportunities

This is the typical nightmare of ‘no budget’ shoot — I’m expected to do half of everything for nothing and the result will be used to determine my capability and possibly destroy my reputation. I’m not sure, my ‘gut’ feeling is to say no .. but the idea captivates me, and so I have to decide to do my best, whatever the outcome. I have to try to ensure that I have sufficient control to get the best possible result, knowing that Pauline has a good track record.

Two days later, Pauline approves shots from my library of footage, but fails to see how she can move forward using my ‘non-linear’ edit suite. Her past experience with Avid many years earlier bears no resemblance to the Sony Vegas 8 edit suite with attendant processes that I have. She decides “How about, you come with me to the narrator, Joss Ackland, and record his voiceover, I give you the script and tell you what I want, you do the edit, and then we both view and agree on it before showing?” Oh — and she offers a small, but generous donation of her budget to cover my expenses — 0! I accepted, to assure that I would have control over the outcome.

At this moment, we had agreed on the selection of shots to match the script, a descriptive viewpoint of Bideford scenery. These shots were ‘nearest’ to the descriptive and not exactly what I would have used, I wanted to shoot new stuff, but there simply wasn’t time. I was also not at ease with the general flow of the proposal, but knew that Pauline had a vision, and at this time, had no firm ideas of my own to suggest. This scenario is typical of a rushed project, where the danger is to adopt short term solutions rather than assimilate an idea and develop it to an artistically acceptable solution.

Publishing Formats

While camera, editing and broadcast formats are fairly well defined for news capture and production, the movie world demands that producers know and understand how the completed project is to be used. For the Bideford 500 project I wanted image quality that would not become obsolete and deliverables that could be used for theatrical, broadcast, home and Internet showings.

For this project, my editing tools and digital compilation software were well suited for the task. My sense was to put some or all of the deliverables in flash format suitable for most non theatrical users. I had done some work in flash that made be believe that acceptable video and audio could be delivered as streaming content.

I used a clip from a shoot I made in London — at the world famous Temple Church — to define the Internet potential for the Bideford 500 movie. My plan was to make the Bideford 500 movie available to Newsroom Magazine readers all over the world, as well as for theatrical showing to my friends and neighbors here in England.

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What I learned about how the film would be viewed helped me throughout the shoot, edit and post production work. That done, I was off to find that movie star, and come face to face with the challenge of capturing the best quality and most dramatic voiceover of my career.

Tony’s back story about the Knights Templar shoot seen above is described in a special bonus article entitled

Day Of The Knights Templar

to be published on Monday September 8th, 2008