Fish Film - Final Films

"Fish Film" - Final Feedback

Today I finally had my final talk with the owner of the Fish Society who told me what the last changes he wanted me to make. They were all cuts and he just gave me the estimated times of the parts he wanted me to cut, which were:

The Fish Society fillets a halibut:

• 2 seconds off the title
• 0.21-0.29
• 0.36-0.42
• 1.15-1.35
• 1.51-1.55
• 3.23-3.43
• 3.57-4.05
• 4.15-4.36
• 5.02-5.13/14
• 5.50-6.02

To change the name of "How to fillet a skate wing" to "The Fish Society trims a skate wing"

"The Fish Soceity Cooks Halibut" Second Edit

"The Fish Society Fillets a Halibut" Third edit

Both Films Feedback

After uploading the two new films I sent the fish society an email to let them know they were up and to tell me know if they wanted anything to be changed in them. I got an email back a few days later with the following points:

The Filleting Film

• Change the title to "The Fish Society Fillets a Halibut"

The Cooking Film

• Delete from 01:34 to 01:41
• Delete From 02:26 to 03:10 (a bit rambling)
• Where Mark is talking about working at The Savoy (around 02:15) put text on the screen saying "Mark trained at The Savoy Hotel"
• Make the URL throughout white instead of black

"The Fish Society Does Halibut" Second Edit

I changed the film to have the changes given in the feedback:

Cooking Halibut First Edit

Cooking Halibut editing

Whilst waiting for the Fish Society to get back to me about the feedback I started editing the "Cooking Halibut" film. Straight away the biggest problem with this film was it was much less formally shot and there were 4 people sitting around a table just off screen eating some mussels that had been cooked just before. This meant that there was voices through alot of it and meant I couldn't use that footage. Another problem was where I moved in for close ups whilst it was on the side meant that the sound from the oven would disappear in a few shots but this didn't seem to matter too much! The third major issue was Mark (the chef) has a quite voice and is very hard to understand in the film at certain points. I put together a first draft and posted it up on youtube.

Fish Film Feed Back

After finishing the first edit i then put it up on YouTube and emailed The Fish Society to say it was up. They got back to me and said they wanted to call and go through the adjustments they wanted me to make. To do this we both hit start on the film at the same time and sat through it and stopped at the points that they wanted me to change, they were as follows:

• 0.16 Min's Delete part of the audio as he says "billings gate market" twice in about 5 seconds
• 0.40 Min's Take out the first fin flap being taken off
• 1.26 Min's Take out shot from behind and put in sequence after the first fillet has gone into the box (make it about 10 secs long)
• 3.00 Min's Take out 2nd fin Flap and put in 10 secs of dark side filleting
• 4.02 Min's Take out membrane being trimmed
• make the section on the off cuts half as long. keep from "they will end up as ..."
• 5.03 Min's Cut Filleting to where fillets are cut in half
• Put a black screen at the end with a link to "Cooking Halibut"

"The Fish Society Does Halibut" First Edit

Fish Film Editing the 30 kg halibut

The first issue in the editing that i realised i would have was keeping the film to 5 minutes. As i had 45 minutes of footage most of which was important to the filleting as there weren't any retakes or anything. I went throught the editing and didnt have any major problems other than the one already stated. I managed to get it down to 7 minutes 30 and as I said I would do a slightly longer version also I tried to render the video and then export it. At this point problems really started occuring!!

Every time I treid to render it I would leave it and go and do something else but everytime I came back and treid to do anything my computer crashed. After about 2 - 3 hours i finally managed to get it all rendered without it crashing and so then treid to export it as a video and then the problems continued! The first time it exported again the computer crashed after having exported it, but the exported file did not work, and so i treid again. This time my Adobe Media Encoder stoped working, I tried to do this multiple times but it failed and so i called Adobes customer support!

Fish Film Another Opportunity

After having filmed the filleting of the halibut i was given the chance to do another short film on the halibut being cooked. I said that I was deffinately up for doing this and so filmed another member of the fish society (who is also a chef) simply pan frying/ grilling the halibut. This will then also be put up on their website.

Fish Film Real Thing (filiting a 30 kg halibut)

The other day I went back to The Fish Society to film the final piece on the 30 Kg Halibut. The shoot went well. It took about 2 hours to shoot which was slightly less than i had originally planned it would take and I had about 45 mins of footage. I spoke to the chairman of of The Fish Society to see what he thought about the practice films i had done, and he was very happy with them but said he wanted:

• The Url to their site to be smaller but keep it through out the film.
• The film to be about 5 minutes long.
• For the title of the film to be "The Fish Society Does Halibut".
• That i put the fish society logo (which he emailed to me) to be placed in the film also.

After having shot the filleting I was given another opportunity...

How to Fillet a 14 Kg Halibut

How to Fillet a Wild Salmon

Fish Film Pracice Edits

Having got all the footage I then sat down and began editing. The skate wing came first and I wasn’t very happy with it really, as he did 6 skate wings and these were the first things shot, the camera was very wobbly I didn’t know exactly what he was doing next (I had asked him to tell me) and I was slightly nervous. There also was no real cut points as if I tried to take a shot from one skate wing and join it to another the fish would be in a completely different place in the next shot. I was much happier with the wild salmon and the halibut though as we took much more time over these and I made sure I knew what he was going to be doing next. I feel they flow nicely and they do what they are meant to as I think I could fillet a fish now! Here are the practice edits:

Fish Film Practice Shoot

I went down to where the shoot would be taking place. It was a large warehouse with a massive walk in freezer in it, as all of The Fish Society's fish is sold frozen. The main area for me was a squared off part of the warehouse with sinks along one side and work surfaces around the rest of it "the prep area". This is where they gut, fillet and whatever else needs doing to the fish before they are packed and put into the freezer, and this is where I would be filming. For the first half hour I was just walking around this area looking for where I could take shots from, and what might work well. Alistair, the owner of The Fish Society then told me he had three fish to practice on: skate wings, a wild salmon and a 14 kg halibut, and we filmed them in that order. Everything went quite well but Alistair would say something funny or something about the fish that ought to be on the film whilst the camera was off, which was a bit annoying!

I have some production stills that I will post ASAP.

Fish Film The Beggining

I have recently been given the opportunity to create a "How to Fillet a Halibut" for a fish company called The Fish Society. Obviously I snatched up this opportunity as quickly as possible! I spoke to them, to find out some more about it. I found it will be a 30 Kg Halibut! At this asked if it would be possible to do a trial run before hand as I imagine that it would be quite expensive!! I also needed to do a bit of a recce to check the lighting, if they have plug sockets, etc. They agreed that I could go down and get some practice there. The next thing I did was start looking on YouTube for any similar videos but found the only ones there were, were done on camera phones and were very low quality and did not look very good, but I took in account of how it was filleted so I had a rough idea of what shots I may use for different stages of the filleting.