Day One - Alexander

I started my work experience on thursday the 17th of September. I arrived in Cambridge town center at nine o'clock, and luckily saw Bill walking down the footpath with a copious amount of electrical equipment under his arms. I decided that rather than wonder around shops for an hour I would start my work experience an hour early. I went up to him and offered to join him to the picture house and help, at which point I was rewarded with a torrent of cases full of recording equipment, cameras, leads and pretty much in his own words 'everything we'll need for the festival'.

At the door of the Picturehouse we were accompanied by Tim and we made our way into the building. We sat down for a shot while before we were again presented with something to do. We were asked to hole punch and attach lanyards to all of the identity cards for the important people at the festival. To our great disappointment we were informed that we would not be receiving a lanyard.

After this almost everyone had arrived, we sat around for quite a while before a few of us asked for something to do. We were given copies of 'Film Festival Daily' and asked to distribute them around the town as best we could by giving them to shops/people. I walked with James for most of the time and we managed to give out all of the papers after around just over an hour. We found that it's very difficult to hand them out, but often if you get the words 'Film Festival' out as fast as possible, people's interest seems to grow and they often take the leaflets/papers when they realise what you're offering is more interesting than most of the things given out free on the street. There is large public interest in the Film Festival, so it raised my spirits to discover this. Subsequently, I found myself saying the words 'Excuse me, are you interested in the Cambridge Film Festival?' a very large number of times that day.

When we finally got back we were almost immediately thrown into to helping the others baggage the VIP bags. Eight of us were split into two groups of four. Our group dealt with the more important of the VIP's bags (They were larger, had bigger chocolates and an extra magazine). I was in a group with Matt H, Loz and Dave. Whilst Matt and Loz put all of the leaflets and magazines into the bags, I loaded them with perfumes/shower gel (three to a bag) whilst Dave finished them off with chocolates. Using this method we finished off the bags very quickly.

The other group finished their bags to find out that the number of chocolates was greater than the number of perfumes. This meant that they couldn't carry on packing the bags and the chocolates were therefore given to us (success!). After this I was sent out with more leaflets to hand around town. I went with Hayden and Matt H. I had three different types of leaflet to hand out so after a while I stopped handing out one at a time, and started handing out three. That way, I get the job done faster, and people are bound to find something they liked. I found that (especially among younger people) they were far more likely to take the leaflets if I put the 'Spying Game' leaflet on the top. I guess it was the colour scheme of the 'German Film' leaflets that people didn't find appealing...

We also asked a few shops if they wouldn't mind us leaving some of the leaflets in the shops for consumers to look at and read, most shops said yes. After a while of doing this Matt had to leave and Hayden had to go back to the Picturehouse to do some editing work. So I offered to stay out and finish off handing out the leaflets. When I collected them from the other two there were a fair few left, so distributing them took at least another hour, possibly more - I lost track of time.

When I got back it was getting quite late and a lot of people had already started to leave. At this point I went up to the editing room and started helping Loz who was in there editing a Film Festival trailer. After a few minutes of doing this I set out with Jasmine to do some establishing shots for the Festival. We filmed people going in and out of the screenings/getting their tickets torn etc. After the first film had finished (Bird Watchers) I asked a few people what they thought of the film using a mini HD video recorder supplied to me by the Festival staff. Unfortunately, the thing ate batteries and the best interview I got wasn't recorded because the second I hit record the battery died.

We found out that filming inside the cinema screen is almost hopeless. There simply isn't enough light, even when the house lights are on. Despite several attempts Jasmine and I simply couldn't get any good shots of the audience sitting. I was also helping out with the ushering, and as a result I was allowed to borrow a Cambridge Film Festival t-shirt which I was delighted to see everyone was jealous of. Everyone seemed to want one for some reason. I also got to see the beginning of Bird Watchers, which I have to admit, did look very interesting. This theory was backed up by the fact that the people came out literally buzzing from the experience of watching it.

I carried on to work, film and edit until the film 'Army of Crime' was about to start. This was the film that was considered to be the real start of the festival. This was quite late, and by this time it was only Sam, Loz and myself still working. I was asked to film Tony Jones and the director of the film talking in front of everyone introducing them to the festival and talking about Army of Crime. I noticed that three seats were free in the front row, so I waited until they started talking and dashed over to occupy one of them so I could get a better camera shot of them talking.

There was also another hand-held camera at the top of the cinema, and a piece of recording equipment plugged into the microphone feed to get a clear audio track of them talking (as there wouldn't be one from the cameras). After they had finished we rushed back to the editing room and Loz, Sam and I started working on making a video of them talking to go up onto the website as quickly as possible. I suggested that what we do it to dub the audio from the recording equipment over the video to make the sound quality seem perfect. I'm quite good at doing things like this as I do it quite a lot when making my own videos, so I offered to align the two to make it optimal. It only took me a second and turned out brilliantly.

At just after nine o'clock I left the picture house to go home, completing my twelve hour day.