29. The Singularity Effect - when crew act, & actors are technical. Is it just one new job?

The Singularity Effect - when crew act and present, and actors become technical and film themselves.

The Singularity Effect is the term used when two areas condense into one. The Bus Driver also takes the fares .. then the bus conductor vanishes. Soon there will be card payment on buses with driverless buses, then no one works.
Long gone are the guys who lit the gas lamps in streets and the telephone exchange people connecting calls with cables. Life moves on... so who will vanish next?

Before you say never, it could never happen in film, just about every industry has condensed jobs and the president has already been set in media. Siting just three examples - Millionaire YouTubers with millions of viewers and subscribers have already taken this well beyond journalists and TV news reporters sending their own piece back by their own phone. Actors now have their own voice over studio at home. Singers perform to a backing track whilst sporting the ironic 'keep music live' sticker in the car. Huge numbers of media people have vanished who is next? Because there will be a next and the wall falls down fast when it starts to go.

Sure there are still musicians, some have to pretend to mime to backing tracks, some play live, so there will always be survivors.

Let's be outrageous, if broadcast TV steps aside to selectable downloads, ... in other words lets assume Netflix overtakes the BBC .....then gone will be commissioning editors, the producers who sell to them, the program schedulers and many executives who thought they had more protection than a coal miner. Sadly, with the video juke box very few of them are needed.

It has happened, it is fast becoming past tense. The web series phenomenon is huge, not just large, it is huge. Furthermore BBC3 has gone on-line, Netflix spends more money on new drama than the BBC, so does Amazon and Sky.

Can the Broadcast soaps be justified in their current form when so many web performers are now making them with small crews in their bedrooms and kitchens. Time will change things, of that there is no doubt. Is it time you owned your own content and started a channel? The Emmys have announced they were to open a new award category for them!

What will change it is someone making it easy to find and view the many web series and maybe that is the next generations of MCN's, and if you do not know what an MCN is then my guess is you need to do a little catch up. Disney have now started as a label running the web program makers and it is called MAKERS STUDIOS, there are others, there will be others.

Kids watch Sky+ as their parents ignore them whilst they sit and eat in franchise restaurants. You have seen it. These kids grow up downloading. Lets be honest, we view on tablets and phones and it is not going backwards. We are thought to own 4 screens each at the moment and expected to own ten screens each within two years. Media is out there and made by a newer media educated generation.

So, the fact that Shades Of Bad now has NO technical crew is maybe not unusual, the actors in this case have taken over like the singers who sing to backing tracks and operate the tech stuff themselves. There was a director and a sound mixer / composer, but Buster left to do a movie and it was a case of necessity. Now Jean who plays Doris is making a series of films on how to make a web series, run a channel and market it, as well as her travel show spin off and the web series.And it is not preaching, she is just saying this is us learning, we are learning, this is how we make a weekly soap. She openly admits the use of filters on lens and colouring the end product is the biggest challenge, but one she will conquer.

Traditional Broadcasters are as important as the landline phone you leave at home.

Yesterday's generation of broadcast and media workers were never taught how to do it, they did one job in a huge team.
This new generation study it, study every job, do every job, and have a whole different mind set. They learn do degrees of competence that allow new forms of creativity.
So, will it all become one job? Like the journalist who has to send his own piece back, the news cameraman is no longer a must have item. The drama cameraman might be next, certainly hundreds of self made series on YouTube say maybe. And many are old school, Shades OF Bad is made by a senior group who are self taught and they are not alone.

YouTube has allowed groups of people who are not serviced by traditional broadcasters have their entertainment. There are channels on how to put make up on black skin, how to wear a hijab and shows for the grey pounders. Seriously, it is not just gamers, they just happened to come first.

Web Series are made by small teams of new-wave creative talent. Are they actors? Are they technicians? Are they YouTubers? Are they media Punks? What will their collective noun be..... program makers? In the past, program makers were not really program makers but enablers who watched many people do it for them.

Jean Heard and Lynn Beaumont decided one day to make a web series. Now there is DorisTV, or ShadesOfBadTV whatever the eventual branding becomes. But Jean now produces a channel and decides on program strains and is nearly one year into a 3 year plan. to have 300 films up.
Every part of the film making is done at home by the team and with 40 episodes up and 20 auto scheduled to release until August Jean plans to take the travel show to Russia and beyond.

Take a look at the first outside night shoot they attempted with two people into help move things and run light cables.

As well as the travel show Jean is shooting a playlist of tips, based on how she makes her channel. She expects to add one film a month to that list at least.
The travel show will be another two films per month, the drama is one per week.

How to Film is a growing playlist that is in addition to the drama series Shades Of Bad and the travel series Doris Visits. Click paragraphs to go to films.

Take a look at some of the available films. The Kit Jean uses to shoot  and post the web TV material. Jean takes you through the basic kit they use to shoot all the DorisTV web shows. Camera, Microphones, lights, grip equipment.

Using Puraleyes, the way she has learnt the way to sync the sound back to picture when shooting the drama series where the sound is recorded separately on many microphones into a TASCAM DR70D.

Final Cut Pro, starting a project in FCP, building a library, and dictating the destination of Cache, Render, and back up files. This video shows how the Library structure is set up and how you stop the files FCP makes from just filling your hard drive.

Where and how to place a Lavalier Microphone on an actress under the clothes, with the lead hidden. And also how to stop and avoid clothes noise given the movement they have to perform. The performers started by being responsible for their own microphones, testing them, and putting them away. Now they do the camera as well, download the material and edit.

Final Cut Pro, first editing of picture and sound, tricks on editing. Jean shows how she moves clips, moves groups of clips, detaches the audio and overlap picture on another clips sound. How to over lap sound edits so you cannot hear the, and move the sound edit away from the picture edit. Then how to lay a buzz atmosphere track over a number of video clips.

There is also a video showing how she now chooses the music from the written cues, and lays 'music on pictures'. Jean now does this because after 38 episodes of sending the sound to the composer and he did the sound and music mix and decisions, she now has to do it all. Start to end. Now the sound and music has to be done by Jean too, but composer to Mark Blackledge has given her a library of music cues from the first 10 episodes that is about 30 minutes of music.

There will be many more films, there will be many more film makers. Please enjoy and share and SUBSCRIBE.

For future film makers doing it all will be the norm' to multi task. Even now broadcast crews are getting smaller driven by easier technology and lower budgets.

The world has changed and the way people accept their media is no longer at home on the huge TV. Even if it is, those TV's are for the first time beginning to be smart; Android powered super UHD 4K TV's and yet broadcasters still shoot major TV shows on 2k cameras with editors that then reframe smaller..... go figure. The soaps are shot on interlaced sub 2k cameras.

The world has changed. It is no wonder the new YouTuber generation of film makers and entertainers have grown into this profession holding a camera, knowing how to edit, and being very confident in front of camera.
It is a 'duel'. Yes, the, 'you shoot me and then I'll shoot you', syndrome is here. Singularity has happened, media is now downloaded, and not just Netflix but BBC3 have now proved that.

Here's her latest travel show film. Doris Cruise stops at St Maartin, French & Dutch sides http://dld.bz/e2pmP

22. HOW TO FILM a web series - after 60 episodes they show how

A very useful web series on how Shades Of Bad is filmed and other films are made.

SHADES OF BAD web series comes from a team which have made a few movies and where one member spent 26 years attached to the UK daily soap, Emmerdale as a creative advisor; from plane crash to train crash is my pub line.

When Jean asked to make a web series, Shades Of Bad was born and although we planned to be

continuous I guess the odds were against us, however, the last of season 2, episode 40 has now gone live, and for the first time the three women have left the kitchen to dispose of their first dead body. Below in a film on placing music Doris shows how the music was placed on episode 40.
Season 3 is all but shot and it is far more ambitious with episodes in Barcelona, Norway, on board ship and in the woods. Although we can't wait to show it to you, before Season Three starts we will spend next week launching the HOW TO FILM series.
It will go from page to screen then onto marketing. We will touch on the organisation it takes to put out 6 daily episodes of a broadcast soap a week and how those plans and deadlines were enforced at Shades. Kicking off these films is one of three reasons we have planned a slight delay in airing the already shot Season 3.
Reason two is that is stars Olympian and World Champion Derek Redmond and we aim his episodes to lead up to the bug affected Rio Olympics. Eventually we will share videos on marketing and monitorisation. The How to series is a celebration of 40 live drama episodes and numerous Doris Visits films and what the team has learnt.
More films on how it is filmed will appear in the weeks as Season 3 plays out.

The third reason is that we do intend to start Shades Of Bad over. But they will be different. WE will have at least one, but maybe three re-edits of the start of Shades Of Bad in 10 minute episodes. However the urge to add new material still fights with a busy team (who are in Dubai filming and saw Carlos Santana with his amazing wife and drummer Cindy Blackman).
On our return we have the
week to engage the new ideas that have been around since mid last year.
Mega Episode 1 is kind of done and will follow the start of the How To Film web series, then Season 3 will start to air mid March.

It was important to INDYUK to keep the feature film making side separate from the web series and the web TV channel, so SHADES OF BAD TV was set up with their own kit and I guess Jean and the crew were lucky that they had what they asked for. First up in the How To series, Jean starts with the organisation of the kit.

There are a number of hard lessons the prospective film maker learns apart from 'you have to clean muddy cables and boxes', and 'no, not everyone can be a director'.
A great lesson is, 'if you want better pictures, improve the sound'. I love this ironic juxtaposed position of film, because on set without a doubt you are shooting pictures and the sound person or sound team is often not given what he or they require. Shades does NOT have a sound person at all. The actors have to learn to do there own microphones and check them, or they have to do ADR. Here is a great film from Jean on how to place a Lavalier in which they have conquered clothes noise.

But, sound is what makes a film work, in horror, romance, or drama. You can imagine it as you read this blog. You know the difference. Sound is important and in post it saves pictures and stories. See Episode 16 when Mark invested an unwritten character that chatters through the whole episode, it is marvellous. We start with the sound from set; in the next film Jean explains how to take the sound rushes and sync them back to the picture rushes using Puraleyes. For those of you who have to do this you will know the nightmare.

The reason Shades Of Bad does not record sound in the camera is not because sound professionals may suggest the digital recorders are far better than the camera digital recording which may add possible automatic limiters that make the background sound vary. It is that Shades Of Bad the drama uses more than one microphone and as we have NO sound man on set to mix the multiples into a single source as happens in much broadcast TV.
That is worth noting that TV sound recordists are often pre mixers, film sound recordists can be a different art form, sound recordists with no dream of mixing but looking for many multiple sounds and atmospheres they can record and supply.
In Shades Of Bad the multiple microphones have to be mixed in post production. You cannot plug multiple microphones into a camera and record them separately. (not yet, no doubt that will change).

In Doris Visits, the travel show spin off the radio microphone does go straight into the camera with no problem. We have a single source.
I guess if a drama had a good sound mixer on set then maybe he could use a radio link to send to camera via a radio receiver so avoid cables.


But forget that, Shades does not have a crew. Buster has done it all for 60 episodes now and he is ready for something bigger and may have a movie to direct. So has it been worth it. Ask him in ten years.

Most industries have condensed over the years and as students grow up being one man YouTubers and FilmMakers we could be heading towards THE SINGULARITY EFFECT.  I love that term, which is used by Ray Kurzweil to explain the cross over between robots becoming human, and humans becoming robotised. Each industry likes to think it will not happen to them but we have already seen news crews and documentary crews go as the reporter uses his phone or some other device to do a 'selfie'. Actors now work from home in their own studio doing voice overs. One cannot say it will not happen, the web has proven the inevitable, but we should ponder will crew learn to act or actors learn to be technical, or will just the smart ones survive doing both with ease?

Moving on, we highlight the demise of the musician and the orchestra before you feel I am picking on any particular group. For years, the digital orchestra or bedroom band has been mixed on a lap top whilst in a train or a plane. I am lucky to have as one of my best friends and collaborators Mark Blackledge. I have willing given his very talented son Buster the chance to direct Shades Of Bad and I have sat back and blogged for them occasionally.
Mark has provided us with the sound mix and music composition up until about episode 38. We now have a library of music composed for the first ten episodes and Jean and the team have had to learn a lot more about sound in FCPX. Wow, that has been an experience and now she has to choose and lay in the music from the library. So, the following films Jean working the music into episode 40, making choices on what works and what does not.

It reminds me of a lecture I went to years ago by John Hegarty of Bartle, Bogle and Hegarty, I see they are still around. It was the Levi commercial, the one where the sex symbol male model puts the Levis in the fridge.  It was conceived and created with a piece of music in mind. Hegarty played it with that music and the commercial looked rubbish. The room was amazed at the difference the new music track made, the one the viewer saw and heard. So do you see music and sound - you bet!
This is a great film from Jean.

In closing, there is one thing I mention when lecturing and that is TRUST. How film making is assembling a team of EXPERTS and letting them do their thing. On Devil's Gate Mark Blackledge had been working the score and I had been keenly asking to hear it. I heard sections but he asked if I would mind not asking to hear the end, he had an idea that he felt could only be seen and heard in a full viewing. He had my full trust. He added a French opera and the end destroys you to tears - spoiler alert.......

So thanks Mark for the music library, and thanks Jean for the films showing how you achieve the rightly award winning and recognised Shades Of Bad.

Jean is editing Dubai travel then more How To Film films.