Monday 17 August 2009 Research
As our time-line stated, Nonna's Kitchen today to discuss and plan more of the project. In between classes, Matthew Maria and Myself went to Maria's house to do some research and gain further understanding on contemporary recipe books and cooking shows. Maria had a plethora of prerecorded cooking shows from the "Cook and the Chef", to "Nigella's Kitchen" to "Food Safari". Each different series had a unique way of telling the history of food. We decided to incorporate different aspects of each series mix them together to create a new and exciting TV series.
Our group decided that we should capture lots of extreme close-ups of food. These shots will include different things such as chopping, stirring, rolling. To capture these shots, we are planning on using the Canon 5D which has HD filming capabilities. This will also enable us to use a shallow depth of field and help cultivate feelings of warmth and homeliness that is associated with Mediterranean cooking.
During this meeting we also finished off the second stage of the process journal which was a tedious task. As well as this we also planned out next day of shooting on Wednesday. The plan is to work in the studio and capture the opening credits of the TV series. Maria is going to pre make a number of Italian desserts. These will be brought into the studio and we will capture these images with a camera and use them within the recipe book. During the past three weeks we have learn't about working together as a team and working off each others strengths and weaknesses. Each week our setup and pack up gets more efficient and we are continually learning how to improve our skills and use them in a way that will enhance the quality of the finished project.
Wednesday 19 August 2009 The Logo
Another day of successful shooting was completed and we're becoming more and more efficient as a group. We spent the day in the JCU photography studios where we filming our opening sequence for the TV series and took a number of photographs for the recipe book. On Tuesday Matthew finished a number of logos for us to choose from to be the logo for the series. We successfully picked a logo after a few minor adjustments and we are now officially branded.
We spent the first few hours of the morning trying to print the logo out on an A1 piece of paper to incorporate it into our filming of the title sequence. This was a length process but, the end result will look fantastic. After filming a number of different food products, we laid our supersized logo onto a table in the studios. From there, we carefully covered the logo with different food products, such as salami, sun-dried tomatoes, asparagus etc. Once the logo was completely covered in food, we filmed and photographed the newly designed logo. This footage will be incorporated into the opening of the TV show and also the book.
Once we were finished with the logo, we took some more product shots for the recipe book. The focus of the week was desserts. We photographed six different desserts in total from the Italian and Greek culture. The stock footage for the book continues to increase and we will have a great looking book as a result. However, like every week, we always have some sort of minor problem. We experimented with the Canon 5D today. It's an amazing camera that increased the quality of the images dramatically. But it was not all happy thoughts about this $6000 camera. When trying to transfer the images from the memory card to the computer, there were a number of malfunctions and we nearly lost 7GB worth of images. After a few tantrums and tears and lots of friends helping out, we didn't loose any of the images and we haven't lost or wasted any of our time.
