Since the last lesson, which is the lesson where we had a lot of trouble deciding on a song, we have come up with a solution to our agreement problem. Last night, we held a conference call and discussed our reasonings for our ideas and finally resolved on deciding to Harry's idea for a music video on politics.
So today, since we are already running a bit behind the rest of our class due to our slow decision making, we went straight to work on writing up a shot list. We all started to share our ideas for different scenes and wrote them down in the order that they came to mind rather than in sequential order as we figured we could decide that later, but first get all of our ideas out. After about 20 minutes of writing down all of our ideas, we started to notice how repetitive our scenes were getting in terms of location, shots, acting and theme. Therefore, I said that we needed to come up with a proper outline of the narritive structure of the music video.
So I wrote down on a piece of paper - conflict, rising action, climax, falling action, resolution. And I said that we needed to fill this in so that we at least knew what the story was and would therefore be thinking up the right types of themes. That is when we came up with this idea of "white-masked" people and a good plot behind it. We then discussed endings, as we want an interesting, unexpected ending and we have come up with several ideas. I really enjoyed this creative part of the process, although I feel our group generally needs to work on being more open-minded and appreciative of other people's ideas.We have an issue of continuously interrupting each other, and this needs to stop too.
Today, I learned more about how to make a music video and how it you don't realize how much thought and creativity needs to be put in to create a story in such a small period of time with as little dialogue as possible. I still think our group needs to work on being more open-minded, but I feel I, personally, was a lot ore open-minded, more "principled" from the IB learner profile.
I am very excited to begin filming, but before the next lesson, my group and I may need to meet up once more to catch up so that we can have a ready to hand in script of our film by the next lesson in a week's time.
Wednesday, April 28, 2010
Film Reflection – April 27, 2010
Today was not a very successful lesson at all. We began the class by everyone sharing their ideas for the music video, and then we were going to discuss them and choose one idea we liked the best and begin writing the shot list. Harry presented his idea of doing a music video on politics, whilst Zoe, Sophia and I presented an idea on the environment. However, we could not agree on a song. For the entire lesson, we were trying to come up with a solution to make both parties happy but could not figure out a way. We knew that by the end of the lesson, that we would have to come up with a solution at least, as we had already spent 4 single lessons trying to choose a song. By this stage, we were simply wasting time.
Unfortunately, we had still not come to a decision by 12:30, and thus had to pick it out of a hat. When we picked it out of the hat, the environment-themed idea won, and Harry demanded a change of group.
The two songs were Wonderful by Gary Go and Mr Writer by the Stereophonics
From this lesson, we have now learned more about each others personalities and who works well together and who doesn't. I feel that in order for us to work successfully as a group, we will need to come up with an entirely new idea that all of us can agree on. However due to time restraints, this will need to be done before the start of the next lesson, so we can dive straight into our idea in that class. If we still do not manage to come up with a new song by then, we will have to go ahead with the environment idea. I feel it would be a real shame if everyone in the group could not agree on a song.
I also feel that part of the reason that Harry's idea was not being so warmly welcomed, is that he was struggling to present his ideas in a comprehensible manner. This is another possible solution, to have Harry present this idea to us three girls before the next lesson and see if he can convince us to choose his idea.
Overall, I learned more about the importance of leadership in a group and how someone needs to take charge here or nothing is going to get done in our group, as we are all natural leaders. Our group needs to work on finding a solution to us being able to work well together without someone being largely unhappy and uninspired about what we are working towards.
Today I feel that the whole group needs to work to being more of an “open-minded” (from the IB learner profile) group member in order for our group to succeed.
Unfortunately, we had still not come to a decision by 12:30, and thus had to pick it out of a hat. When we picked it out of the hat, the environment-themed idea won, and Harry demanded a change of group.
The two songs were Wonderful by Gary Go and Mr Writer by the Stereophonics
From this lesson, we have now learned more about each others personalities and who works well together and who doesn't. I feel that in order for us to work successfully as a group, we will need to come up with an entirely new idea that all of us can agree on. However due to time restraints, this will need to be done before the start of the next lesson, so we can dive straight into our idea in that class. If we still do not manage to come up with a new song by then, we will have to go ahead with the environment idea. I feel it would be a real shame if everyone in the group could not agree on a song.
I also feel that part of the reason that Harry's idea was not being so warmly welcomed, is that he was struggling to present his ideas in a comprehensible manner. This is another possible solution, to have Harry present this idea to us three girls before the next lesson and see if he can convince us to choose his idea.
Overall, I learned more about the importance of leadership in a group and how someone needs to take charge here or nothing is going to get done in our group, as we are all natural leaders. Our group needs to work on finding a solution to us being able to work well together without someone being largely unhappy and uninspired about what we are working towards.
Today I feel that the whole group needs to work to being more of an “open-minded” (from the IB learner profile) group member in order for our group to succeed.
Monday, April 26, 2010
Reflection - Monday April 26, 2010
Today we continued to research into the new unit of Music Videos. We organized ourselves into groups of four and my group consists of Harry Salnikow, Zoe Horlacher and Sophia Nagar. I think I will work well with this group this term as we all usually find it quite easy to agree on things out of class, and hopefully this will continue within class. We found out that we will be creating a music video on one of the themes from the previous unit:
I found it surprisingly difficult to find songs that were appropriate to make a music video that were about fashion or the environment. I wasn't sure if I should look for a song where the lyrics all talk about fashion, or if I should choose a song with a rhythm and beat that evokes excitement and the mood of fashion. So I looked in online forums for some people's suggestions on fashion related songs and came up with many songs that were all either called fashion, or the lyrics were all fashion. They were appropriate but I felt they were very direct, and would not allow for an interesting abstract film that would evoke the atmosphere of fashion, rather than spelling it out. To try and help myself, I looked at the rubric for this unit, and saw that it was looking for things like lighting and camera techniques and editing so I then decided to stop thinking about the lyrics, but rather songs that allowed for an interesting use of these tools. I feel that an upbeat song would allow this, so now I am going to focus more on upbeat songs for fashion.
I did not have much time to research into environment as well, but now that I have an idea on how to research appropriate songs and what i should be looking for, it will not take me as long. Today I feel that I was the IB Learner Profile "inquirer" because I was still being introduced into a new unit and new area of film. I am still quite unfamiliar with music videos and how they work so completing this work has aroused my curiosity and encouraged me to investigate into the different aspects of music videos, while enjoying myself.
- education
- environment
- food
- music
- entertainment
- politics
- fashion
- built environment
- colonization
- race relationships
I found it surprisingly difficult to find songs that were appropriate to make a music video that were about fashion or the environment. I wasn't sure if I should look for a song where the lyrics all talk about fashion, or if I should choose a song with a rhythm and beat that evokes excitement and the mood of fashion. So I looked in online forums for some people's suggestions on fashion related songs and came up with many songs that were all either called fashion, or the lyrics were all fashion. They were appropriate but I felt they were very direct, and would not allow for an interesting abstract film that would evoke the atmosphere of fashion, rather than spelling it out. To try and help myself, I looked at the rubric for this unit, and saw that it was looking for things like lighting and camera techniques and editing so I then decided to stop thinking about the lyrics, but rather songs that allowed for an interesting use of these tools. I feel that an upbeat song would allow this, so now I am going to focus more on upbeat songs for fashion.
I did not have much time to research into environment as well, but now that I have an idea on how to research appropriate songs and what i should be looking for, it will not take me as long. Today I feel that I was the IB Learner Profile "inquirer" because I was still being introduced into a new unit and new area of film. I am still quite unfamiliar with music videos and how they work so completing this work has aroused my curiosity and encouraged me to investigate into the different aspects of music videos, while enjoying myself.
Sunday, April 25, 2010
Music Video Introduction Assignment
For this assignment, we were told to do an analysis on music videos in terms of its narrative structure, cinematography and editing. I worked on this in a pair with Harry.
Here is an analysis of Life In Technicolor II by Coldplay:
1. Narrative Structure
The music video opens with village fete in an English town and everyone is coming together to watch a puppet show. It opens with no music or direct relationship to coldplay or any music. As the puppet show opens, it is of two little men playing a xylophone type instrument and slowly it turns into a Coldplay concert where all of the singers are puppets. The build up is very effective, as slowly the lights dim, and as the audience is more captured and as the music builds up, slowly the stage extends out. Fireworks emerge and the faces of the audience change in astonishment too. It ends with a toy helicopter emerging into the room, and the puppets go onto the helicopter and fly out of a window, breaking it.
2. Cinematography
Rarely are long shots used in this video partially because of the small space of the room but is also not very appropriate for this content. The camera shots often do close ups on both the lead singer and a particular face of the audience, this nicely captures the relationship between the audience and players and how it evolves as the song progresses. The lighting also noticeably dims as the video progresses, as it becomes more of a concert and less of the puppet show. At the climax, there are fireworks with flashing lights and this really captivates the audience into awe. In terms of camera angles, it is mostly from the front on excluding towards the end where the atmosphere is at its height. This is when you become part of the audience and are looking up at the lead singer, making him look powerful, influential. When the lead singer does a crowd surf, the angle is from the birds eye view, but is still really front on since he is face up.
3. Editing
At the beginning of the video, the film barely focuses on any scene going on in the room. Always jumping from conversation to conversation, the children laughing, the current puppet show etc. This conveys the message of how nobody is focused on one thing in the room. Whereas by the end of the video, the shots barely ever leave the stage, but instead just jump fron angle to angle, frame to frame, conveying how everyone's eyes are entranced and focused on the concert. Despite this, there is still the general pattern of never remaining on one shot, as it tries to capture every aspect of the atmosphere and what is going on in the room. What is really effective in terms of the editing, is the sequence in which they have put the shots. The jumping from the stage to the different expressions of audience members and how they change is very interesting to watch.
Here is an analysis of Life In Technicolor II by Coldplay:
1. Narrative Structure
The music video opens with village fete in an English town and everyone is coming together to watch a puppet show. It opens with no music or direct relationship to coldplay or any music. As the puppet show opens, it is of two little men playing a xylophone type instrument and slowly it turns into a Coldplay concert where all of the singers are puppets. The build up is very effective, as slowly the lights dim, and as the audience is more captured and as the music builds up, slowly the stage extends out. Fireworks emerge and the faces of the audience change in astonishment too. It ends with a toy helicopter emerging into the room, and the puppets go onto the helicopter and fly out of a window, breaking it.
2. Cinematography
Rarely are long shots used in this video partially because of the small space of the room but is also not very appropriate for this content. The camera shots often do close ups on both the lead singer and a particular face of the audience, this nicely captures the relationship between the audience and players and how it evolves as the song progresses. The lighting also noticeably dims as the video progresses, as it becomes more of a concert and less of the puppet show. At the climax, there are fireworks with flashing lights and this really captivates the audience into awe. In terms of camera angles, it is mostly from the front on excluding towards the end where the atmosphere is at its height. This is when you become part of the audience and are looking up at the lead singer, making him look powerful, influential. When the lead singer does a crowd surf, the angle is from the birds eye view, but is still really front on since he is face up.
3. Editing
At the beginning of the video, the film barely focuses on any scene going on in the room. Always jumping from conversation to conversation, the children laughing, the current puppet show etc. This conveys the message of how nobody is focused on one thing in the room. Whereas by the end of the video, the shots barely ever leave the stage, but instead just jump fron angle to angle, frame to frame, conveying how everyone's eyes are entranced and focused on the concert. Despite this, there is still the general pattern of never remaining on one shot, as it tries to capture every aspect of the atmosphere and what is going on in the room. What is really effective in terms of the editing, is the sequence in which they have put the shots. The jumping from the stage to the different expressions of audience members and how they change is very interesting to watch.
Film Reflection - 23 April, 2010
Today was the first lesson of a new unit on Music Videos. We were not told about it in great detail as the teacher was absent, but we still began on it nonetheless. We were told to analyze some music videos in terms of narrative structure, cinematography and editing.
I worked in a pair with Harry, and we found it quite difficult to find a suitable music video that we felt we could write about. We wanted to find one that wasn’t just of the band playing music, because that can be quite boring sometimes and doesn’t bring out the meaning of the song. In the end, we chose to analyze Life in Technicolor by Coldplay and Your Touch by The Black Keys. We chose these two because they were both fun to watch and had a good use of cinematography, narrative structure and editing.
Initially, I wasn’t entirely sure of what “narrative structure” was so I googled it and found out it “the structural framework that underlies the order and manner in which a narrative is presented to a reader, listener, or viewer.” I really enjoyed analyzing the music videos because not only are they really fun to watch, but I had no idea so much was put into a music videos to convey the message of the song.
I didn’t manage to finish analyzing both of the music videos and will finish it for homework. This assignment has helped me realize just how much attention to detail can be important in filming, and how it is those little things that spark emotions and thoughts into viewers subconsciously. I feel that today I was most like the IB Learner Profile “inquirer” because I was being introduced into a new unit, and this sparked my curiosity and made me want to research more into film making and music videos.
I worked in a pair with Harry, and we found it quite difficult to find a suitable music video that we felt we could write about. We wanted to find one that wasn’t just of the band playing music, because that can be quite boring sometimes and doesn’t bring out the meaning of the song. In the end, we chose to analyze Life in Technicolor by Coldplay and Your Touch by The Black Keys. We chose these two because they were both fun to watch and had a good use of cinematography, narrative structure and editing.
Initially, I wasn’t entirely sure of what “narrative structure” was so I googled it and found out it “the structural framework that underlies the order and manner in which a narrative is presented to a reader, listener, or viewer.” I really enjoyed analyzing the music videos because not only are they really fun to watch, but I had no idea so much was put into a music videos to convey the message of the song.
I didn’t manage to finish analyzing both of the music videos and will finish it for homework. This assignment has helped me realize just how much attention to detail can be important in filming, and how it is those little things that spark emotions and thoughts into viewers subconsciously. I feel that today I was most like the IB Learner Profile “inquirer” because I was being introduced into a new unit, and this sparked my curiosity and made me want to research more into film making and music videos.
Film Reflection - Tuesday 13 April, 2010
By today, everyone had finished their films and so we spent the day beginning to watch the films of the different groups within the class. Today was really enjoyable and interesting as we watched all of the different ways students approached the project, and who they chose to interview and so on. Our film was the first one film we watched as a class, and when watching all of the different films, I felt I was most like the IB Learner Profile “reflective”.
When we were watching all of the films, we knew that we were also preparing for an essay to be handed in in two weeks. I had previously decided I was going to do an analysis on someone else’s film so I didn’t need to take notes on my film, but I couldn’t help noticing all the little details we missed.
Due to the lack of time, we had never actually had the opportunity to watch through our entire film in one go and noticed so many mistakes. For example, in the second interview on Fashion Past, we failed to notice that we didn’t caption one of the questions, and we could hear Zoe asking the question out loud. This really brought down the quality of our film and stuck out so much as it was the only question inconsistent to the rest. We also noticed smaller things we were aware of such as the boom mic sometimes being in the frame, and this is something I really have to learn to prevent in the future. I also noticed how the interviewee for Fashion Past was not necessarily the best choice because she was obviously more informed on the Present and would always manipulate our questions to talk about the present. This is also an example of how we should have thought through our questions more. Overall though, I was pretty happy with our film and with the only possible adjustment being adding captions to one of the questions, I would be very happy with our film.
I really enjoyed watching the other films too and noticed all different types of mistakes such as location choice where sometimes the background noise is so disrupting. I sometimes found it challenging to capture all of the points I was noticing on paper, and sometimes would be so focused on the cinematography of the film that I would not be listening to the interviews them self. When I analyze one of the films in depth, I will have to re-watch it a few times so that I can also analyze it on content.
When we were watching all of the films, we knew that we were also preparing for an essay to be handed in in two weeks. I had previously decided I was going to do an analysis on someone else’s film so I didn’t need to take notes on my film, but I couldn’t help noticing all the little details we missed.
Due to the lack of time, we had never actually had the opportunity to watch through our entire film in one go and noticed so many mistakes. For example, in the second interview on Fashion Past, we failed to notice that we didn’t caption one of the questions, and we could hear Zoe asking the question out loud. This really brought down the quality of our film and stuck out so much as it was the only question inconsistent to the rest. We also noticed smaller things we were aware of such as the boom mic sometimes being in the frame, and this is something I really have to learn to prevent in the future. I also noticed how the interviewee for Fashion Past was not necessarily the best choice because she was obviously more informed on the Present and would always manipulate our questions to talk about the present. This is also an example of how we should have thought through our questions more. Overall though, I was pretty happy with our film and with the only possible adjustment being adding captions to one of the questions, I would be very happy with our film.
I really enjoyed watching the other films too and noticed all different types of mistakes such as location choice where sometimes the background noise is so disrupting. I sometimes found it challenging to capture all of the points I was noticing on paper, and sometimes would be so focused on the cinematography of the film that I would not be listening to the interviews them self. When I analyze one of the films in depth, I will have to re-watch it a few times so that I can also analyze it on content.
Film Reflection - Monday 12 April, 2010
Before today’s lesson, my group and I had been coming in after school as much as we could to work on the film and had managed to complete a rough draft of all of the editing. We ran into many problems such as their being audio delay or some of our film being ‘unconnected’ and many more. However through all of these problems, most of the group, including me, are all feeling very competent in Final Cut Pro and are very familiar with a lot of its simple functions. We now had inserted captions to all of the questions, included relevant visual aid in media ranging from photos to film footage to youtube clips, cut out all irrelevant information and created a nice beginning to the film introducing what would be discussed.
We were told at the beginning of the lesson, that due to a number of films not being entirely finished that we would be given this double period to finish everything up and be exporting by the end of the lesson. We took this opportunity to try and watch through the whole film to fix any small things up and also to add in the credits at the end. We focused particularly on the last interview because that was the longest and also the one we had spent the least amount of time on. It was very challenging to get through everything today because we were really tight on time, a lot of the time we had to skip through long periods of footage that we felt were okay. After spending the first period or so doing this, we then shifted our focus to adding in the credits.
When doing the credits, we had fortunately already made a list of all the URLs from the pictures we used off the internet. Then we decided to use the scrolling text type of text to present that section of the credits. But before that we wanted to credit all of the interviewees and who did what in the different interviews i.e. cameraman, interviewer, audio manager etc. This took us a while because we wanted to use three different text boxes that we could position to create a nice set up. As the time ran out towards the end of the lesson, we were still trying to create the credits which was surprisingly time consuming. It was so time consuming because with final cut pro, if you don’t use ‘enters’ the text is one big long line rather than wrapping itself to fit the frame. Since there were so many URLs, this took us a really long time and therefore had to go slightly into lunch to just finish it off.
Today we worked very efficiently and although we faced many challenges, we got through so much managing to complete our project and export it by the deadline. I feel that today I was most like the IB Learner Profile “thinker” because we had a lot of things to do in an hour and a half, and we had to do it in the most efficient way possible and at the best quality we could possibly do it at.
We were told at the beginning of the lesson, that due to a number of films not being entirely finished that we would be given this double period to finish everything up and be exporting by the end of the lesson. We took this opportunity to try and watch through the whole film to fix any small things up and also to add in the credits at the end. We focused particularly on the last interview because that was the longest and also the one we had spent the least amount of time on. It was very challenging to get through everything today because we were really tight on time, a lot of the time we had to skip through long periods of footage that we felt were okay. After spending the first period or so doing this, we then shifted our focus to adding in the credits.
When doing the credits, we had fortunately already made a list of all the URLs from the pictures we used off the internet. Then we decided to use the scrolling text type of text to present that section of the credits. But before that we wanted to credit all of the interviewees and who did what in the different interviews i.e. cameraman, interviewer, audio manager etc. This took us a while because we wanted to use three different text boxes that we could position to create a nice set up. As the time ran out towards the end of the lesson, we were still trying to create the credits which was surprisingly time consuming. It was so time consuming because with final cut pro, if you don’t use ‘enters’ the text is one big long line rather than wrapping itself to fit the frame. Since there were so many URLs, this took us a really long time and therefore had to go slightly into lunch to just finish it off.
Today we worked very efficiently and although we faced many challenges, we got through so much managing to complete our project and export it by the deadline. I feel that today I was most like the IB Learner Profile “thinker” because we had a lot of things to do in an hour and a half, and we had to do it in the most efficient way possible and at the best quality we could possibly do it at.
Reflection - Tuesday 23 March, 2010
Today when we entered class, everyone assumed that it would be the last opportunity we would have to work on our film in class, getting ready to show the people from HK Heritage Group on the Monday we would get back after break. Although today was the last lesson, we would still have a week at school to work on it in our own time. Today we focused on finishing the cutting of mistakes, unnecessary or irrelevant clips and so on. Luckily that did not take too long, and then we shifted our focus to learn how to use captions.
Due to us running out of time we decided that instead of figuring out how to insert captions, we asked a classmate straight away. We understood the concept relatively quickly, and the more we played with it the more we understood it. For example, we figured out how to position it in different areas of the screen and how there are different forms of captions. Initially, we had decided we were just going to use captions to introduce the interview topics and interviewees name, date, time etc. But after inserting those and seeing how professional it looked, we decided we wanted every question to be muted and have a caption instead. After trying this out on one question, we imediately knew it was much more professional and helped the film flow more, with moments of silence to allow viewers to think. We then decided to do this for every single question, we all knew this was going to be very time consuming, but felt it would make the film much more effective and we all decided to commit out of class time to get this completed.
Whilst learning how to insert the captions, which was quite challenging at first. We also learned how to insert transitions in different forms for both video and audio. This also helped the film flow much smoother and blend nicely together. In between captions and visuals, we also inserted some visuals from both pictures from the internet and from video footage that we took. We found this quite challenging because we had to learn how separate the video and audio so that we could hear the speaker talking, but see pictures instead with a black background. Eventually after trying to figure this out ourselves by creating different layers and such we were told we could simply use the function “apple-L” to separate the audio from the video. This saved us so much time and is an example of how we can improve in finding more effective ways to use Final Cut Pro to save time and work more efficiently.
Today I feel that I was a “risk-taker” from the IB Learner Profile, because we were still feeling quite unfamiliar with the software but knew we didn’t have a lot of time left and thus had to just try a lot of things that could ruin our video footage. We were constantly just trying new things and hoping we were not making any grave mistakes. Taking these risks meant we saved a lot of time in the sense that we got straight to the problem, rather than dawdling around finding different ways to solve it and then choose one. However, there is still a lot to do and my group and I will need to come in a lot out of class time to finish by the Monday we get back from Easter.
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