Wrexham Carnival, Peace Day, Zine Fair and SWICA Workshops

This is the first event I helped cover with the Wrexham Film and Photography Collective. Over three days, around 12 of us covered four different events. I was in film crew two, along with classmates Kathryn Lunt, Ryan Ankers and Will Aron. As part of this team, I covered the SWICA Workshops at Bryn Alyn School. This was our first assignment of the week and I was really excited to start. SWICA is the South Wales Intercultural Community Arts group. They originate in Cardiff. They create arts opportunities across the North Wales region and celebrate multicultural arts. On the day of filming, our job was to capture the children of the school whilst in a dance workshop with a member of SWICA. These workshops where intended to be a two day event but we ran into problems on the first day. The workshops were meant to be at a community centre in Plas Madoc. We arranged travel and drove to the community sentre only to discover that the workshops had been moved to Bryn Alyn School. We were not informed of this so we then had to get into contact with the organisers of the workshop. We then made our way over to the school. When we got to the school, they had no knowledge of us being there. We had also arrived before the SWICA team.This meant that we had to wait for them to arrive to confirm us. This is where we ran into our second problem. As the teachers at the school had no knowledge of us being there, there was in issue with consent. As the children participating in the workshop were under the age of 16, we needed written consent from the parents to film and photograph them. SWICA had also overlooked them. After a while discussing our options, it was decided that we would not be allowed to film that day. The good thing about this is that it has made us realise that we have to be aware of this on every job we take up. We managed to get some consent forms sorted and delivered to the school, courtesy of Steffan Jones-Hughes at the Arts Council to be given to the children for the next days worth of filming. This meant that, with enough returned forms, filming could go ahead the next day. .It was unfortunate about this set back and how long it took as the other film crew were snowed under and under-staffed covering the Peace day events at St Christopher's School.
     We arrived the next day at the time they asked us too and were given the go ahead to film. This was a relief and were glad of it. We discussed as a team how we would set up. We had one Static camera set up in the corner of the room with a boom mic and one handheld to capture cutaways and different angles. We took it in turns in our team of four alternating between operating both cameras, operating the boom, and shadowing the hand held camera operator. We thought this was best as then everybody got a turn at doing each thing. I feel that this technique worked extremely well.

Next came the editing stage. I did not have much input when it came to editing due to illness. We needed to edit the footage and create a DVD cover, as requested by the school. We also created a YouTube page for us to display our work. The link for the channel is below, along with the video from this project. http://www.youtube.com/user/WrexhamFilmPhotog

On the last day of the three days events came the finale in the form of the Wrexham Arts Council Carnival. This consisted of the Zine Fair, the Peace Day finale and the SWICA parade and street performances. The Zine Fair was in the Oriel and I was not on the film crew to cover this. The same crew that covered this covered the Peace Day Finale as they had been involved with that all week long, as we had with SWICA. Peace Day finale was a fair on the library field, including live music by local bands on the bandstand, to promote peace in the community. I was working on the parade and street entertainment, due to my previous work with SWICA. I was with the same team and we were produced by Dave Hale. He gave us a lot of hints and tips and was around during the day to help us out. We got to the Oriel early to film the SWICA crew rehearse and get ready. This was good as it gave us a backstage view and more footage for the edit. Next came the parade. When we arrived, we did not really know the parade route due to a miscommunication. We found out the route plan and decided on a static camera and a hand held. We also decided on a 'leap-frog' technique to ensure we captured all of the action. This meant that we would position ourselves in different locations and when the parade had passed us, we would run onwards along the route so that we were in front of the other two, then they would do the same. the Hand held camera was for filming cutaways such as crowd shots and feet shots. I was with Kathryn on the handheld. When the parade ended in Queens Square, we decided to use the same approach with the street performers. We set up one camera on a tripod with a boom mic and kept it rolling to capture all of the footage. The handheld was used for filming different angles and cutaways for editing. Dave and his film crew cam over and helped out by grabbing some interviews with the crowd, performers and organisers. It was a long day but it went extremely well and I really enjoyed my first week with the collective.
 

I edited the whole of the footage for SWICA's involvement in the carnival. I have realised now that i have more of a passion for film than I do for photography but still love to take good photographs. Editing has become a stronger point for me and taking creative control over this project has really helped me to develop my skills. This edit took me between 4-5 weeks and after this, it has been decided that I will become chief of editing within the collective, overlooking and tweaking all of the edits. I am really pleased about this news. This edit was also put into the main edit that went to the Arts Council.





In total, 5 films were made for the events over these three days. I was also involved with the filming of the footage in the Wonderbrass Video.