Monday, November 30, 2009

Drama Presentation

Myself and Lola's presentation was about the Golden Ages. We had to present it to the class whilst being videoed by Miss Gouch.

Editing (24/11/09)

For our media lesson, we had to tansfer the footages that I filmed from the rehersals into the computer for editing.
First we had to rewind the video all the way to the begining. We opened the program, Finalcut, to upload our video footage. We watched part of the footages, and things that we feel needs to be in the traile, we captured it and gave it a title. Jordon recorded the time of capturing and the finishing time. After we were satisfied with the videos we got, we saved the document.
Before going home, we had to feedback to the class about what we did.

Drama Lesson (24/11/09)

In our Drama lesson, we had a lot to discuss about. These are:
  • Costumes - Miss Gouch showed us the type of costumes that are going to be worn in the play. She told us the colour scheme to define each group. She also told us that we'll be going to Streatham highway to shop for certain costumes that arent't going to be available.
  • Posters - The poster group told Miss Gouch about how they plan the poster to look like. Some people had problem with putting the chosen slogan. Miss Gouch had her view that the slogan shouldn't be included in the poster but it would be alright in the trailer.
Miss Gouch said as the director of the play, we should inform her of everything we're planning to do with our media project.
Apart from all the discussion, we played some Drama games and had some fun.

Monday, November 23, 2009

Media Lesson and Filming (17/11/09)

I Media Studies, there was half-day so we didn't get through as much as we should have. Because some people were absent last week, we had to explain out trailer plan and let them write down the rehersal schedule.
During the week, the rehersals were on 18/11/09, and 23/11/09. At the lesson everyone agreed to show up. We gave ourselves our individual roles when filming - I was the camera person.
I was let down by my group by none of them showing up at the rehersals. Some had a good-enough reason to not come, but some were just being selfish and careless.

When I was filming, it was quite hard to go according to our storyboard as all the actors were busy. We had to waite until they have a freee time and ask if we could film them. Other problems were not all of the actors showed up, and some of the scenes in our storyboard wasn't rehersed.
At least I got something that can be edited and hopefully produce a good trailer.

Sunday, November 22, 2009

Teacher Feedback

You are a consistent blogger, logging all of your activities.  In particular, you often explain what your specific role is. This is good practice. Well Done! To improve,

  • include more detail about you decisions along the way
  • give specific detail. Instead of writing "We discussed ideas," give specific ideas you discussed and why some were better than others
  • include images: photo, embedded links to video, etc.

Sunday, November 15, 2009

Media Studies (10/11/09)

Today in Media Studies, we seperated into our groups - I was in the Tariler group. We first had to redo our trailer plan, as the first idea was too big for the amount of time we had for completion. We typed up the storyboard and the different shots going to be used. For homework, I would be drawing the storyboard on paper.
After that we had to do our plannings. We wrote down the schedule for shooting.
  • 10th November - Storyboard
  • 17th November - Shooting Schedule, Shooting
  • 24th November - Shooting
  • 1st December - Editing
  • 8th December - Editing
  • 15th December - Roughcut
  • 5th January - Final Editing
  • 12th January - Release complete, TRAILER!

And would be arranging to talk to Miss. Gouch to find out the different days of rehersals and when each scene would be done.

Monday, November 9, 2009

Working on WSS's Trailer

In Media Studies, we were put in two groups - Trailer and Poster. I chose Trailer, since I'm more interested in movie making. Our group made a spider diagram of the ideas we think should go to the trailer then made a storyboard of the tariler.
Because most trailer have a short time limit, I researched on the time limit and how long every shot takes.

Drama Lesson

During Drama, we were put in partners to make a Slide Show about musicals in our given time period - my being The Golden Ages (1940's-1960) with Lola.
Lola and I first did researches on our time period before starting our presentation. We spent the double lesson researching, discussing our ideas, and doing our presentation.

Thursday, November 5, 2009

Trip to the Southbank

On Tuesday, 20th, we went to another trip to the Southbank. It was a great experience that was very interesting, knowledgeable as well as fun.
We went into a theatre and met some people that informed us about what we would be doing. We watched the trailer for the BFI London Film Festival and the guys that created it. They explained some useful information about the process they went through to make the trailer. They first had to do some sketches of the scenes they would do and the camera angle. They would then send these sketches to a director and try to have a contract to produce the trailer.
Whilst they were doing the trailer, there were some problems along the way. The team didn't have enough budget to do everything as planned - so for some things they had to emphasise. An example is when there wasn't enough time to go to all of the locations, they had to find a closer location. They also had to get rid of some scenes to save time. Also they had to use the money sensibly because of the low budget.
During the trip, we had an opportunity to interview more professionals. I learnt really useful informations from them. Our first interviewee was Ginger - a publicity person. She was part of a team who publicised movies - one of them being Fantastic Mr. Fox. We also met and interviewed Tim Platt, the creator of the BFI London Film Festival Poster.
After the interviewing, we returned back to the theater where we watched variety of short films.

Wednesday, November 4, 2009

Film Review

Film: Lögner (Lies)
Director: Jonas Odell
Writer: Jonas Odell (Screenplay)
Release date: 22nd October 2009 (UK)
Genre: Documentary, Animation, Short.

Lies is a mysterious short film documenting the adventure and tactics of conmen. This unique film has a mixture of live action and animation; with an exclusive technique of adding subtitle instead of the character's speech.
This film follows the journey of a conman who went into a company and posed as someone called, Accountant, since he was trapped by the security guards and couldn't find a suitable name to call himself. This man was able to make himself money, with the help of another conman. They went into banks and got out more money, but one of the men wasn't yet satisfied. He sent the other conman to collect more checks, but there was a mistake when he left his identity and they were captured.
An inspiring thing about this film is that it contains a moral. It shows the nature of lying and the consequences for your actions.

Conventions of Twilight Trailer



After watching the Twilight Trailer, I noticed lots of conventions that were used. The trailer switches from clips of the movie to endorsement. There was an intense soundtrack, hinting to the audience about the tension in movie.
Instead of the same continueous pattern of clips and endorsement, the director added dialogues. The dialogue that the director chose hints to the audience about the genre of the film, but with a little bit of enigma to persuade the audience to see more of the movie.
Without watching the movie or reading theb leaflet, this trailer foreshadows to the audience about the genre. There were clips of a girl and her dad, telling the audience that it's a family movie; a boy and a girl making-out, showing that it's also about romance, and a repeated dialogue of the word, 'vampire,' which shows that this is also a horror movie.

Tuesday, November 3, 2009

Research on Directors

Rafael Sommerhalder is the director and writer who was born on 1974 in Switzerland.
On the Jury Award 2009, he won Best Swiss Award for his film Flowerpots (2008), For the Hermina Tyrlova Award 2001, he won an award for Ely and Nepomuk (2000). In a Swiss Film Prize 2007 he was nominated for Best Animation Film for his film Herr Wurfel (2005). This year, his film, Wolves, is one of the nominee for the British Film Festival.
Rafael continue to make short animation films. He have made films such as: Wolves (2009), Flowerpot (2008), Ely and Nepomuk (2000), Herr Wurfel (2005).

Jonas Odell is a Swidish music video and film director who was born in Stockholm. He specialise on mixing animation and live action. He's won many awards and was nominated for a few. Some of his popular films that he won awards on are: Lies (2008), Otto (1998), Never Like the First Time (2006).




Alex Taylor is the director of the short drama, Kids Might Fly (2009). It is an offbeat drama set in East London. Kids Might Fly is one of the nominated short film in the British Film Festival.

Daniel Greaves is the director for Speechless (2009). He is one of the nominee for the British Film Festival.