Media Studies

Here is my Critical reflection, enjoy the Podcast.

Here you have it our finished project. It took some bumbs along the way and definitely shaped itself to what it has become. Never the less I am proud of our project and what we have created. Most importantly I learned a lot on what goes into making something of this sort and the effect media production can have on its  final product and its distribution. We made a collaborative project that included parts of all of us.
Enjoy

SINCERELY, YOUR BEST FRIEND

Make sure you listen to my critical reflection podcast as well to get an insight on production.

First of all it feels good to be adding finishing touches and adding the last sounds and transition to the video. After 2 weeks of in school and after school recording I started editing during the beginning of the week. I divided each job fist I did visuals then I began with the sound. Although our major sound here was the Narration by our “mysterious character”  there were other just as important ambient sounds and background music to carry the story along.
One major takeout I got from everything was how we would record and then get back home and I would realize I was not totally inlove with the footage and go back the next day set to better the shot as I realized the million and one ways to express the same scene.  That being said our project is not perfect and the video we have the moment is close to finish but not quite ready to ship. The narration is a letter being written, unfortunately we could not quite finish it today because of timing conflicts and some ambient sounds weren’t quite as crisp so we’ll probably go back to that as well. I think we would also appreciate critics and opinions I think after editing for so long and seeing the same footage over and over again I kinda grew numb to it, and would love to know how the viewer would feel.
I goal was to introduce our 3 character by showing a little about them and the connection between them and yet represent how to story would later unfold.
At the moment Im am analyzing my approach to my critical reflection, with plans of bringing insight on the process of developing the idea and its execution. While giving insight on the overall video itself.
Without out a doubt the whole process was chalennging but a great experience never the less.

Sincerely, Your Best friend (final Draft)

The week started off with a deadline for basically finished 2 minute intro. the big time as com and work has to start. First things first we set up a schedule. Each shot divided accordingly through out the week, 1 hour shooting per day. According to schedule our last shot would be Friday. Perfect right?
well things rarely go according to plan, and our group was no exception. First to days of setback involved having to change our location and our hour was stolen by the lack of our camera work practicality. From finding the right lens, to setting our mic boom to calibrating our steady cam all in all we were behind.
Wednesday we attempted to record our signature ‘one shot’ tracking shot by dividing them into scenes and stitching them together. This proved to be a problem because 1, we could not quite grasp our steady cam and how it  functioned but mostly it cam down to the fact that the shot itself proved very complex. Unexperienced actors and so many moving parts not only was the task time consuming but getting everything to work seemed impossible.
We decided to have one more go later that afternoon, with much more time and more time to really grasp the concept at hand. We quickly realized we had to make some changes, we would still introduce our characters individually but not by the fluid transitions from tracking one to another we first intended. I went back to our storyboard and added more shots and match cuts to blend them together. We got some footage but something was not quite right. We were missing background people.
Today We switched gears, before lunch was over we pow wowed into our group and went over everything. Got our gear, setting them up a lot quicker now, went over the shot and wait straight into it.
In the hour we had and little over we had around 4 shots done, they looked great and audio was crisp!
To be I was feeling a little frustrated in the beginning of the week now I really see the project come through. Tomorrow we shot more and hopefully have everything thing done by Monday. Shooting wise, then its editing which is another monster in its own, but I’m sure we’ll make it happen!

Well it is clear that a great film not only has great sounds but excellent imagery. Having captivating visuals that bring a scene together. A very important aspect of imagery and pictures is lighting. From natural to artificial, cold to warm to their angles and quality and objective. Lighting can make or break a film. So lets consider lighting in this particular film, “The diary of a Teenage Girl”.
Take this scene for example we immediately get the scene of comfort and the pretense of our character in this environment. The lighting in particular creates a warm tone, subtle and homy.
experience how everything is lit perfectly to show the environment that surrounds her. allowing her room to help describe her.
1. This is the key light in this frame, the soft light that fills the right of our frame. It appears to be around the 1850K providing the feel of sunset.
2.This practical also serves to add to the shift of tones from right to left, like the sunset and adding to comfort. The lamp here also highlights the background while serving as a practical.
3.The window shows us the source of the light adding to the effect of ambient lighting that sets the mood for the frame.
Here the living room set is lit through different angles. Creating a detailed frame. the soft cold light creates a late night mood of tranquility. Like the tones of midnight this scene appears to be comfortable yet different from the expressive character Minnie is. Like when she’s drawing or in her room recording. When with her parents the mood changes.
1.The key light here is a soft light, a cold tone at around 6500k. It appears to be projected from the television. Again adding to the living room effect.
2. The warm light from the stairway behind her reflects sold on Minnie showing her disconnect with the current cold environment. also creating the blue and orange color contrast thats so visually appealing.
3.The background lights serve as practicals and light our background showing the entire house.
I love this shot because of its subtle simplistic look. The lighting here just encentuates Minnie and her emotion right before a life changing experience.
1.the Key light creates a soft light around her face and brings out the character in her eyes. It appears to be around the 2000k making the ambience warm yet subtle. The light her overall sets a glow to our character.
2.The light here is a fill light serving to even further the softness of the shadows and light coming in from the right. Again enhancing her eyes and features.
The window source creates the illusion that this is the source of the ambient light of the scene. overall the scene appears very natural.

The other day I watch Goodwill Hunting and I absolutely hate myself for not have watched along time ago. I loved it. Besides from there incredible task and the beautiful city of Boston. The story behind goodwill hunting is spectacular and an excellent piece of film.
The story of a highly talented teen with an almost supernatural ability for learning and solving complex mathematical problems. His potential is masked and hidden by his mundane environment and the lower class poverty he lives in. a foster child with no particular ambition but a talent that would say otherwise. throughout the movie he meets a professor who drives in to flourish and unmask this talent and a psychologist that helps him think within himself.
As I watched God will Hunting I noticed the parallels between it and Whiplash. A movie I personally consider my favorites. As it speaks of a young drummer that strives for greatness. The balance between personal life and the life wishes to have in music. As we know greatness comes with a cost and we are constantly reminded of this in this film by yet incredible story telling. We experience the characters growth and the relationship between his rather ‘Dictator’ like professor.
But why do I say i find the connection between them? well besides the obvious that there booth teenagers striving with their talents. And even though in Good will hunting our character has a raw talent and a lack of goals in contrast in whiplash the boys has various goals but his talents have to be extensively practices and worked on. I find the biggest correlation between both these characters and the overall theme these movies lies in self growth.
The idea that we are constantly growing as indiviidual and the constant strive to find ourselves. Both these stories highlight the struggless of doing so. letting go of our every day life and comfort of our teen reality stepping into new territory and Finding yourself through adulthood.  Mentor and teachers proffesors and psygologist both films highlight the presence of important figures guiding your inner being. Ultimately the struggle is not only psychical but mental and inner within oneself. In Whiplash for example our charcaters mentor is pure evil to say the least, yet he constalny pushes our character to be the bets he can possibly be and reach the greatbness he strives for. I think Fletcher is the of symbol the struggles of this strive. Alternately our character’s father keeps him grounded, he is the symbol to family and the comfort of ‘home’ and being young.
In Goodwill hunting the professor and the psychologist shape the story in a similar way. The professor helps bloom his talent and hone his abilities toward a greater purpose standing for our characters divine future ahead. The psychologist in the other hand is our characters ‘fairy god parent’ almost, allowing him to find who he truly is underneath.
In both cases the path our characters choose is ultimately left to them. The theme of self discovery and growth is a sole one.
I find this incredibly touching as I often experience similar thoughts, I alway say it is hard to be a teen in such an age because every one expects you to be an adult now, yet everyone treats you as a child still. I believe growing up is a process and one you have to face, surly it does not have to be alone. Ultimately as long as every decision and change is yours and based on the idea of who you are. Before then there is much too learn about the world around us and ultimately ourselves.

“You’re just a kid, you haven’t the faintest idea what you’re talking about.” “I can’t learn a single thing from you I can’t read in a fucking book, unless you want to talk about you, who you are, and I’m fascinated, I’m in. But you don’t want to do that, do you sport? You’re terrified of what you might say.”

A good artist borrows and a great one steals. For this assignment we had to breakdown and analyze past projects from students that had to do the same project we have to for our final 2 minute intro. In an attempt to find inspiration from aspects of things we like to does we don’t.

Here is the Intro to Backpack
First lets start with what I like about. It starts with a steady cam that we then quickly realize is a point of view. The mystery and intrigue instantly get you hooked an interesting concept because one of the issues my group had was how to make our intro both entertaining and amusing enough to keep our viewer interested in the minimal 2 minutes that  we had. Straight out the bat ‘Backpack’ did this. The quick cuts from the news and reports of alien activity create a narrative as you begin to understand a little more of the story being told, or better the story that is going to be told. Giving us somewhat of an understanding of the plot and what the story might revolve around. again we picked up on this the use of implication and subtle remarks of the plot in hand allow the viewer to have a glimpse of the story that is to be told and allows space for interpretation. When it comes to shots, they vary from high to low. taking to stationary. Although none of these shots incredibly cinematic or to say impressive they are in there own right doing the job of carrying our character out of the house as they pack to later leave. The shots and the ones outsides i thought were good addition because show a variety. This is a problem my group previously had in our planning stages mainly because since our intro mosty revolves around the same space, we wanted to make sure our audience was not revolving around the same place but rather feel a sense of extensive location and characters. Through varied shots and showing different parts of the same location we believe we can achieve this variety in our intro.
Unfortunately there were things that did not quite resonate with me as well. For example the color difference between the shots in the house made me fill a discount between these shots, shots that should be fluid and engaging. This I thought reflected right to our project because in our intro we need our shots to move fluid from one to another attempting to use as little cuts as we can. using cuts only to enhance and bring attention to certain situation, like the akward zoom in, in certain old movies.
My biggest take and biggest problem with this intro is without a doubt the sound. ambient sounds are lacking and the sounds we get from reports and the news cuts do add life they are unfortunately not enough to save it. Instead of crisp ambience sounds from the natural world our character is in. Instead we receive a track from Justin Bieber, cleverly named ‘Backpack’ surly its a great song and the mention of  the actual word ‘Backpack’ in the lyrics is definitely a plus I feel the song has a complete disconnect with the story we are being showed. What is mysterious and intriguing is correlated with a pop song that does not do justice to anything being shown or told by the actions in this intro.
Through weekly updates and self research I am constantly reminded by the importance of sound in our final project. Without a doubt I know it is the glue that holds everything together. That being said I want to personally be in charge of making sure our sounds from everything to dialogue, to movement to ambience sounds are both crisp, clean and above all cohesive with our visuals.

The Blog

Well I wished I had found the blog behind the backpack and see the processes behind it.
Unfortunatly I did not , but fortunately enough I found others that do some what the same job.
Before anything make sure you check the Blog. I believe the author behind it does a good job of keeping the page up to date and defiantly has a healthy amount of posts. covering everything from shots taken and individual responsibilities toward the final projects. Along side everything behind there process from shot lists to scoreboards. shots taken and demo footage. Successfully keeping us up to date on their activity.
The problem is the blog itself is neither appealing and the short sentences and short undefiled descriptions in each post leaves me unpleased to keep it simple. Basically its ‘Boring’ the writing is not engaging and posts seem irrelevant even though they aren’t, a trait that I attempt to avoid in my blog. If there job was to keep us updated they did that, but if the question was if they did this well, well thats something else.
I attempt to keep my layout clean and have somewhat of a connection between posts and an engaging nature behind my writing.
Both these insights on other students work gave me insight on what to do similarly and what to stay clear of, what to improve on and what to rethink when it comes to our turn to do the same.

This week right ahead of fine tuning our idea and solidifying our concept for our 2 minute intro. Still inspired by our sound project and my new grasp of observing intros and their role in the storytelling the film presents.
We laid our script and precisely imagined the sequence of events. After which we began planning our story board. Keeping in mind both character, and camera movements. The angles and overall look of each particular shot and how they lead to one another.
We new initially that we did not want many cuts, but rather a fluid movement of both character and movement that seamlessly lead to one another.
Our Storyboard for our first 1 minute is as follows:

The intro sequence  begins with a meysterious shillouted character writing what appears to be a letter, after that it we open to the begin our tracking shot. We used this for our video storyboard. From it we learnt to make a few adjustments including the need for more people around each shot and importance of dialogue to add life to our shots. The importance of fluid movemt that appears natural.
Watch our video storyboard clip here :
STORYBOARD VIDEO

Within our group we were all very excited to present our ideas pitch in our creative mindset for our big final project. a 4 minute intro that showcased both creativity and hinting to great storytelling. Well this was much easier said than done, it turned out we each had very precise ideas and they were all equally as good. Ok maybe some where better than others, but that was just it that was the hard part, how to collectively decide on an idea we all thought was spectacular. We had to start from scratch write aside aspects we liked, and those we didn’t, present new ones, and delegate and discuss and really plan things out. This obviously took some time and a lot of going back to. We pulled our strings together and presented a story a one sheet for a plot we thought was solid. of course the initial one sheet was not incredibly loved by everyone, at least not enough to really advance. So it came a time things had to be tweaked, and ideas had to be shared critiqued and decided upon. I know I had to sacrifice ideas I thought were spectacular and I am pretty sure my other group members probably did the same. Ultimately this project was essentially a collaboration , and like every collaboration everyone has to have a say and a collaborative enthusiasm that is the only way to achieve cohesive thoughts everyone can appreciate and in the end ultimately maximize there efforts. It was clear to me that a certain degree of passion  for the project from each member is essential to make astonishing results. After much delegation and process of eliminating both serval ideas for intros and stories. We decided on our  final one sheet, one we can proudly call a collaborative effort and a design that went along with the premises we strived for.

For this sound project we were required to do something very different from the normal. instead of focusing on our visual we directed our attention to sound. Thinking on how sounds can help tell a story just as much as any visuals.
Whit in our group we first had to decide on an adjective, one a that embodied all our sounds into one. We began to decide and started to name sounds and group them according to adjectives that described them. Sounds like chewing gum and scratching a chalk board fall under Annoying and sounds like birds and bells feel under melodic and so on.
After our discussion we decided on “satisfy” satisfactory audio that was pleasant to the ear. A broad term identified for each person differently.  Sizzling sounds and the sound of the rain.
After which we added the sounds and matched it with the visuals present in our storyboard sheet. leaving space for experimentation, we where certain there would be much of it.

Recording
We studied our surroundings and had pretty solid ides. After splitting up and roaming around to collect sounds we then came back with all sorts of  pleasant audio. From fire cracking to the movement of rocks in the ground. The stream of water and even the natural rain that fell. It came dow to just doing stuff experimenting and seeing the sounds we produce. Like taking a broom stick and swinging it around produced a distinct swoosh sound and burning leaves cracked with a unique crisp.

Making Connections
Our next goal involved taking the sounds out of the context in which we found them and finding a connection that resembled that sound. How forceful stream of water hitting on concert sounded like static from Tv or resembled the sound of Sizzling bacon. Other sou ds were Satisfying but a context to put them in appeared challenging, like crackling fire.
Even when I got home I made sure to keep my senses sharp and find audio connections and interesting sounds everywhere. The sound of the celling fan sounded like the build up of an action scene or a mini helicopter about to take flight. And brushing my teeth sounded like someone scratching there head. In the end it made me focus on sounds a lot more and require me to make creative connections.