Hi!
I'm James McConnell, sometimes MC_Onnell, and I make films. I'm currently 19, but if I forget to update this I was born in October 1997 and you can work forwards from there. I use this blog to show people like you my best work, including the films, pre-production, research, evaluations, volunteering and portfolios.
The earliest film you'll find is from 2013, a small film project I got involved in at my school in Norfolk. In September 2014, I started at East Norfolk Sixth Form College in Gorleston, Norfolk. My classmates and I made several films over the following two years, from animations to adverts and documentaries to a short film. You can see all of these, and the work that went into making them, using the navigation tabs on the right.
Right now, I'm studying at City College Norwich in (you'd never have guessed) Norwich. There's fourteen of us all working as a production company just a brisk fifteen minute walk from the city centre. Throughout the year, I'll make sure to post the work we make on here too, as well as posting my portfolio entries too.
As well as all this study lark, I like to keep myself busy volunteering. You can often find me editing a film for BBC Voices in the BBC East basement at the Forum in Norwich, or supporting young people on courses at The Garage Arts Centre just down the road.
My ambition for the future is to work on live productions, as a director/vision mixer. Being on air and making impulsive creative decisions really excites me. I also have an interest in the news and politics, so I think that would be a great area of broadcast to work in. Also there's always been something about the New Year's Eve fireworks on telly that gets me hyper to work on live broadcasts.
Finally, here's a few quick facts about me so you can get to know me a little better:
My favourite film is Saving Private Ryan
My favourite colour is orange (can you tell?)
My favourite YouTuber is Casey Neistat
My three cats are called Cleo, Alfie and Tom (the fact their initials spell 'CAT' was purely an accident)
My editing software of choice is the Adobe CC suite
My favourite song is Year 3000 by Busted
My favourite breakfast cereal is Weetabix, I've eaten 4 a day since I was 6 months old
There we are, all acquainted. If you'd like to contact me, the best place to do so is on my Twitter: @mcconnellmedia
Editing: Adobe CC (2015): Premiere Pro, After Effects & Audition (2015)
A short film that I wrote and directed for a single camera production unit as part of my media production course at East Norfolk Sixth Form College. I worked on this project with two classmates, Robert Lancaster & Alex Thorpe; together we cast three actors for the starring roles, and took assistance from other members of the class and our tutor's own production company, Trett Films. From shooting at the end of April 2016, the editing process took nearly three months to complete before its eventual release in July.
Pre-Production The first essential thing we had to secure for the film was a location. The film centres around a theatre, but we needed somewhere that also had a suitable lighting rig that we would be able to use. I had approached The Garage (a theatre and arts centre based in Norwich) in January with the film concept - before the project had even been given the go-ahead. After some slight script adjustments, serious negotiations around health and safety and several re-structured production schedules, we got permission to shoot Technical Deceit over two days - the 25th and 27th of April 2016.
I was then tasked with finding cast, as unlike some other groups none of us wanted a large role in the film. This was mainly conducted online through Facebook - finding friends of a friend - and by the Garage themselves promoting the opportunity to their drama students. As a group we chose Isaac Wright (15) to star as 'Dave', Bethany Lain (17) as journalist Kate Hamilton, and James Amey (22) as theatre director Damien Blake. I also cast Jordan Bushby and Connor Stevenson-Wright as the Macbeth actors, Adam Hunter as the voice of Damien's mysterious contact, Reuben Convery and myself as TV news anchors, and Robert as a cleaner.
Meanwhile, Robert was made Director of Photography and began constructing a shot list and storyboard. This included management of the newsroom scene, which had to be shot prior to filming starting at the Garage. Alex arranged for and made props, and some costume where necessary. I gathered some lighting equipment from a local school to be used as props also.
Production
Day 1 of production meant first meeting in Norwich, and collecting equipment from the Trett Films offices. Our first shots were up on and around the lighting rig itself - one of the only shots filmed in order was the opening shot (another was actually the closing shot which was admittedly filmed more as an after thought). For this whole day of shooting, we only required two of our actors so we shot all the scenes only involving Isaac and James. Alex acted as sound recordist for this day of shooting, whilst Robert and I remained in our roles as DoP and Director, with all of us taking a join role in production management to ensure it ran smoothly.
...It didn't! As with any production, things occurred which we weren't fully expecting, and some scenes took much longer to film than we were expecting. The main consequence of this was having far more that we needed to film on the second day, so for Day 2 of production we split our small team into two units. On the day off between days of shooting, Robert and I discussed at length what else was necessary to ensure we could produce a full film. We colour coded much of the shot list into categories of "completed", everything we were happy with from day 1, "essential", shots we had missed from scenes on day 1 and everything absolutely required for the edit, and "if possible", all shots that fitted neither previous category.
Day 2: Robert headed up Unit B, working with our tutor and filmmaker Josh Trett and Isaac to shoot all the required shots in the theatre control room. Simultaneously, I ran Unit A. This was a larger group consisting of Bethany, James, Jordan, Connor and Alex. Connor was also a member of our college course at East Norfolk, so he was able to help considerably when not on screen himself. Robert and I therefore shared the roles of Director and DoP for each of our units. This process allowed us to get nearly every single shot that was on the shot list, importantly everything that was considered "essential", and some of the "if possible" shots too. Some small scenes - marked as "if possible" - were completely neglected due to the small amount of time we had to film. Over the two days, Technical Deceit took eighteen and a half hours in production.
Post-Production
The scenes were divided up between the three of us for editing, Robert, Alex and I. Robert and Alex completed the first half between them, and I completed the second half as I had the ability to also edit at home - this included what is now the montage sequence and the final two scenes. The assembly process took the best part of a month, as we were still working on other projects and evaluation work for the course. Alex left the project at the end of May when we submitted a very early draft for assessment for the course. Robert and I, still unhappy with how the film looked, chose to continue work in our own time.
The main issue we took with the first cut was the pacing. Honestly, it was boring. We started hacking away at the second scene, losing over a minute of dialogue. A lot of the first scene was scrapped, and the music edited to be faster to allow for the jump cuts. Then the montage sequence was made a lot quicker, and another section of dialogue towards the end also scrapped. With that dialogue went some of the final scene - we chose to make the character of Damien more ambiguous and suspicious at the end rather than showing his innocence as the script intended. The end credits were also made snappier.
With an Offline edit we were happy with, we began the Online. Robert's expertise in editing is with colour grading and stabilisation so he began work on that. We had chose to try and replicate the style of Netflix drama series House of Cards in our cinematography and this is where it really started to appear. I also began work on the sound design and levelling which, for a script with not much dialogue, was quite difficult. The end result was finally published on the 18th July 2016 - 82 days after wrapping production.
Evaluation
We could have worked for months more on Technical Deceit before I was completely happy with it, but that wasn't realistic given the time I had already put into it. Looking back on our scene recreation of Above the Fold, which was the first thing I had taken an individual active role in directing, I think I have improved.
The cinematography of Technical Deceit is something I am equally happy about and unhappy about. I think the look of the overall film I had envisioned was realised to an extent in the final product, but not as consistently as I would have liked. The shot variation is interesting, 180 rule remains unbroken, and the framing is mostly good. I'd have liked to include some more dynamic shots to really amplify the House of Cards look into the film, but those shots take time to set up and were often sacrificed for the sake of just having something done. Being low on time also meant we sometimes ended up forgetting the basics, in this case too frequently shots appeared under-exposed and the process of trying to fix this has damaged the quality of the overall film. This wasn't helped by the fact we had incredibly limited lighting equipment, and relied so heavily on what was already available within the Garage.
In terms of sound, I think I learnt a lot from the Above the Fold scene recreation task, and consistently ensured as a director that it was well placed. There was some necessary levelling to do in post, but this was largely due to how wide the shot was that changed how close the microphone could be to the subject. Frustratingly, the one thing I forgot to do was record an ambience track in the theatre; things like the humming of the air conditioning and buzzing of lights that you don't tend to notice in person are heightened by the recorder. The last scene was the only one really affected by this, as I was able to hide it in other scenes with music and ambience tracks from online.
In the end, everyone we asked seemed to enjoy watching the film, and would ask us questions about whether Damien really had been breaking the law or not, and what happened to Dave immediately after? The film itself also achieved a Distinction grade, so I guess I can't argue too much with that! I'm already thinking about my next short film...
Project Name: "CHVCHES - Empty Threat" Music Video
Role: Co-Director
Date of Production: May 2016
Cameras: Canon 700D (with 50mm lens) and iPhone 6S
Editing: Adobe Premiere Pro (2014 version)
A music video I produced with a classmate Robert Lancaster for my media production course at East Norfolk Sixth Form College. The video was made in the style of a usual CHVRCHES music video. We came up with the idea based simply on the name of the song - a girl gets in an argument with a boy and threatens to leave him, it is only once they are apart that she realises how much she misses him and they soon reconcile on the beach where they first met.
Since Summer 2015, I have been volunteering with BBC Voices in The Forum, Norwich, to film and edit events, edit music videos, and assist with film making workshops for schools. This blog post explains how all of that came about.
I first discovered BBC Voices several years ago, when attending a basic film-making workshop. I was the only young person there! The course taught me a simple introduction to making films professionally, as oppose to the awful films I had attempted to make since being 8 years old. I learnt how to use a camera, how to frame the perfect shot, and how to edit. Part of my work with Voices now is to help teach the young and old those exact skills Voices taught me.
In early 2015, I returned to BBC Voices almost by accident. Somehow Gary and Wendy recognised me, even though the short and spiky hair had long gone... This workshop allowed me to have my first shot at multi-camera directing, a career I had already decided upon and am still determined to achieve. After the workshop I returned to the BBC basement in the Forum - somewhat hesitantly - to find out how I could possibly do more of this. I was told I could attend an upcoming volunteering evening in a couple of weeks time and - not so long story short - I was later accepted as one of the volunteers.
Simultaneously, I was accepted onto another project with BBC Voices, involving the filming of events for the Young Norfolk Arts Festival. We were given complete creative freedom to choose the events to film and how to do it - I even had a go at presenting in one of them. This short documentary covered the Jazz Night at Epic Studios in Norwich, which I worked on with two other BBC Voices volunteers to film and interview musicians, and then edit the next day.
Since then I have been taking one day to volunteer at BBC Voices. Since then my roles have mainly been filming and editing music videos for some of the live sessions from the Introducing In Norfolk show on BBC Radio Norfolk, help teach editing at workshops, editing short school films together for showings at Cinema City, and producing short documentary pieces about local events. My role also extends to setting up the studio for events and tidying up after them, setting up computers, and of course making lots of tea and coffee! Below is some of my more recent work for BBC Voices, including edits of live performances for The Cut event and BBC Introducing Takeover Day, and a documentary edit on Pirate Radio.
Ref: Gary Standley / Wendy Witham at BBC Voices, BBC East, Norwich.
The Garage is an Arts Centre in Norwich, that runs classes and puts on shows for young people. I started at The Garage in 2010 as a nervous, quiet twelve year old who didn't know anybody there - but my mum needed me to do something for the summer, and drama had always been something I'd shown an interest in.
Every year, The Garage runs their Big Summer Production - a two week process of producing a show with a large group of 7 to 18 year olds - 2010 was the first ever one. In ten days, we pulled together the production of Urban Alice in Wonderland and performed it three times to a sold out theatre. Alongside attending drama classes, I went on to perform in the summer productions for three more years: Snow White, Vintage Cinders, and Peter Pan. After a while it became apparent I was a little too old to be in the shows any more, but they weren't going to get rid of me easily! I signed up to volunteer as a support worker, to help out the young people behind the scenes.
The role of a support worker over the two weeks is largely about ensuring everyone is healthy and having a good time. The support team is not there to be creative, but to look after and supervise the young people so that the creative team don't have to. In recent years there have been up to fifty young people, with a majority younger than twelve, and such a large group can be overwhelming for some. My role specifically is usually based in the area immediately backstage, the docks, to ensure they are quiet, well behaved and feeling alright before they perform (both during rehearsals and the shows). As a whole team, we integrate with the young people to learn group dance routines and songs to encourage them and provide a good example. When there are not any group or theatre activities, we run games, tasks, and creative challenges for the young people to keep them active. During lunch and breaks, we supervise them in The Garage cafe and studios to make sure everyone is well fed and hydrated to keep energy levels appropriate.
To ensure I can do my job as best as possible, The Garage provides training in safeguarding and team building so we can all look out for each other. Some young people have special educational needs that we have to learn to approach, and the excellent team at The Garage provide advice and techniques to support us as the staff as well. More recently, I have continued in a support role once a week at The Garage as part of the Youth Forum. The Youth Forum is a much smaller group of young people aged 12-18 who are involved in the planning and running of events at The Garage, including the quarterly SLAM Night. I look forward to being involved in future projects with this team, and continuing my role for future summer productions.
Ref: Carrie Mansfield / Adam Yaxley at The Garage Norwich.
First, some research I conducted into the themes, locations and characters of the short film I wrote and directed, Technical Deceit. This document explores how I came up with the concept, some of my inspiration whilst writing, and how I planned to explore the themes within the film itself. Also, my independent research into the techniques of single camera productions, in which I discuss and compare camera placements, lighting, sound, editing and formats.
The pre-production carried out by Robert, Alex and myself into the making of our short film Technical Deceit for the single camera unit at East Norfolk Sixth Form College. This includes a section of the shot list, prior to the colour coding we did during shooting, our prop and kit list, the final variation of the production schedule (which still changed!), some of the cast release forms, a risk assessment, and the start of the storyboard.
