Christmas!

Well unfortunately snow is not on the weather forecast any time soon so we will just have to hope for rain, or something other than sun. Although it seems strange to ask for such rubbish weather but the more variety we can get in the weather the better our footage is.

A bit chilly

Me and Elisha went filming this morning and oh my was it cold. We have got loads of great shot including an attempted canter angle shot but we are not to sure if that worked very well, we also used the gorilla pod today to get shots on the actual bike including the wheel and handle bars. Here are a couple of photos which show Elisha attaching the gorilla pod to the bike.


















This is the shot we managed to get from attaching the gorillapod to the bike.

Filming

We went filming on tuesday and here are a couple of photos. We got tons of footage and now have loads to do in the editing lessons. We are also hoping to go out filming wednesday morning so hopefully the footage will be piling up. A little explanation of the photos. Well filming has it's perks when your left with my iPod.


















Here is me in action, setting up a shot of Elisha's happy face as she comes down the hill.























And here is Elisha sitting in the lime light as i begin filming her coming down the hill.

Pocahontas

I'm in the middle of watching Pocahontas and have fallen in love with the effects. I especially love the way the wind plays a huge part within the film and I thought we could in corporate a couple of these techniques within our film opening.

Production company ideas

British film institute

We visited the bfi today on southbank for a lecture/presentaion all about film openings. Our examiner Pete lead the presentaion and as well as talking through what to do and not do in our film openings he also had a 2 guests that talked through their work in the industry of film.
Pete gave us a very useful website which i have added to my 'Extra Website' coloumn on the side which has a huge variety in different film openings and it also sets the openings out in several or the different frames that are within the films opening.
He also went through the 6 most common film openings,(luckily ours is not included) a few of them are:
*Saw- Someone tied up in shed
*Scream- A man following a young girl then killing her
*Wake-up- The process of waking up, brushing teeth ect.
I did find his presentaion on his blog which i have posted below if you wanted to have an over view of the different topics in which he discussed with us.
The day did have it's negatvies due to the repeated mention of animation which i found to be very time wasting due to A.S students not being ale to do animations due to the specfication specifically saying that we must include different acmer angles, although this may be possible in animation for pros, as A.S students i felt it a bit wasteful.
Other than that i found the presentaion to be very knowledgeable and productive especially when he went through what not to do and fnding that we hadn't done any of these mistakes yet.
Idents where also mentioned which are the production company's such as 20th Century Fox and Universal, which i found very insightful as what is most effective is the use of Foley which we can also use in our actuall opening to ensure that the sound bridge between the birds tweeting and the song is done smoothly.
Overall it was a really enjoyable day and i feel that as a group we can now add the different techniques that he mentioned such as Foley and Ident which will improve our film and overall grade consideratley more.

Film openings event

View more presentations from petefrasers

Representation of age presentation

Here is our representation of age using different film clips from Eastenders and Family guy.

Font

I was watching the film 'Horrible Bosses' and I really liked the font they used which got me thinking about the font we should use for our credits.
It needs to be simple but quirky!

Joely's Comment

Miss showed us this really nice comment that one of the year 13's posted about our film opening. It's great to get some positive feedback even for our first draft!

Age

Within Mrs Fitzjohns lesson were have been looking at the different represenations of age. Along with this we are going to be making our own clip of our representation of age. Much like this one:

Question

I was watching a football match today and there was a really interesting editing technique and I was wondering if it had a name. The camera zoomed in when the goal keeper put the ball down but whilst he ran to kick it the camera zoomed out, it may seem about as simple as zooming in and out but it went with the action and had a really Good effect.

Glossary of terms

I have recently added a list of links which lead to different slide shows that i have made. Each slide show conatins a list of key term under a different topic. The most recently added link is a general glossary of key terms in media but there are two others which com under the category Age and Gender.

I have also been looking ate the weather for tommorow in hope that we can do some more filming.

Fog could be a good weather to film in and i think we should get out there as soon as possible due to the more footage the beetter.

Research Homework

Marxist Media Theory on Prezi

First Draft

We uploaded and did some editing in our lesson today and ofcourse this is only our first section and there is always room for chopping and changing things but so far i think the group as a whole is pleased with the progress we have made.

Photos from filming

Here is the bike we are using in our opening. It sits perfectly in our opening due to its vintage and indie vibe that it gives off.

Here is the team hard at work with not only the camera filming but archiving on the film as well as Sophie's camera taking photos such as this one.

Here is Elisha having a break from the everlong cycling and our attempt to create a dolly out of one of Sainsbury's trolly. Yes it was uncomfortable but we did get some great footage.

The length we went to in order to get a birds eye view. We did end up getting a great shot for our opening but in all honesty it is higher than it looks!

The balancing game.. this is our attempt to get an over the shoulder shot of the ipod playing the backing song. Apart from the glare on the screen, which gives the opening a more realistic side, it turned out well.

First filming!

We were the brave ones this week and took the plunge into getting our free pass to do some filming during our lesson today. The filming went really well and we have got some really great shot including a birds eye view, literally, as i climbed a tree to achieve it! We also managed film the wheel, the opening part and we also fashioned a dolly/tracking device out of a trolly in order to get those much needed moving shots.We did come across a minor hic-up when we found that the handel bars to the bike are curved so instead of the opening beats to the song being along with the hands on the handel bars we sed the thumb to the bell on the bike. Overall the filming was really sucessful and I can't wait until we get back on the bike and camera!

Storyboarding

Here is a little clip that Miss Foster took which explains our story boarding ideas so far!

Song choice

We have come up with the song that we are most probably going to use which is 'run' by Vampire Weekend. The opening beat gave me the idea that at each beat the colours of Elisha's nails change colour symbolising the continuos continuity we hope to portray through out

Age in the Media

A few examples of how the youth and elderly are represented in newspapers such as: The Mirror, The Guardian, The Times, The Telegraph and The Sun.

Representation of age within the media

View more presentations from Megansouthern

Filmed location

Just walked through were we are filming our 2 minute opening and will apologise now for my dog and running commentary!

Location?

Really colourful autumn leaves good location for our film with the bend and trees?

Song

Se7en

I watched the film 'seven' the other day with Morgan Freeman and Brad Pitt. Such a good film and the opening titles although a bit disturbing have some really good techniques, maybe Mac 2 would find it useful seen as though they're doing a psychological film opening!

Pitching and planning

Our lesson today consisted of pitching our ideas to each other and getting feed back from the rest of the class. Here is a picture of the notes Elisha wrote out, I see them as the starting brick for our film and I can't wait to start storyboarding ideas!

Vlog number two

Seen as though we are meant to be vloging at least once a week i thought i would attempt vlog number two, i am apologising in advance for the excess stuttering!

Treatments!

Sorry that i wasn't in the lesson today but i love what the rest of the group have done during the lesson. The ideas are great and think we should pitch them all if evryone is okay with that and im actually so pleased you made this video because now i know what the three of you have been doing in the lesson!

Facebook Conversation

We decided to make a facebook inbox to talk about our ideas on film openings and other media related topics, so far these are the ideas we have got!


Our Facebook ideas conversation

Brain Storming

In our latest lesson we have been discussing different genres in which we should base our film openings on. I personally wish to stear away from the genre horror as it seems to common and i would rather do a more unique film opening and not fall into the trap of making a 2 minute film. However if it was our last option then i would not refuse to take part.
We have been talking about doing something vintage but i am not too sure as to were that could lead to and how we could describe the entire film in 25 words on the basis of vintage. On the other hand it has opend an entire can of worms on camera angles and ideas of shots for a vintage film opening within my mind.

iPod

This is the first post that I am sending from my iPod. Hope it works!

Binary Oppostions

One of the things that we looked at during our lesson today with Mrs Fitzjohn was Binary opposites. These are things like :
On  vs  Off
Hot  vs  Cold
We related this to how gender is represented during T.V. We also determined alot of gender specific sterotypical binary opposites, a few examples are:
Female:                      Male:
Passive                      Aggressive
Delicate                     Rough
Introvert                    Extrovert

As well as the above we looked at another clip in preparation for our exam and looked at the different Camera angels, Mise en scene, Sound and Editing techniques that the clip included. The clip in todays episode was from "Cutting", it was very different  to the clip we viewed last week which was a cooking programme and it just goes to show how much the genre of the T.V programme effects the techniques used within it.

First Evaluation Vlog

This is a little snip of what we have been doing so far... The beginning has been cut of but it basically introduces that i'm doing AS media and that we have started looking at camera angles ect.

Pete's Blog

Found that the examiner, Pete has posted a really interesting post about pitching a film idea in no more than 25 words. Wondered if when our films are finished we would be able to do this.
His blog can be viewed in my "extra websites" section if you wanted to check it out.

Editing

We finished editing both our outtakes from our preliminary exercise as well as our first practice film using the flip. We found both to be very amusing to film, but even funnier to edit.

Tripod/Dolly

Whilst working on my prezi for Mrs Fitzjohn, i came across this video which i thought would come in handy when filming.

Camera shots, Angle, Movement and Composition

Media: camera shots, angles, movements and compositions on Prezi

This is my presentation of the different types of Camera shots, Angles, Movements and Compostions for Mrs Fitzjohn's lesson. I hope it is useful.

Finished Prelim

This is our fisrt piece of media work, fully edited and complete. Filming went really well and I think the editing went well too but there're parts were it could have gone smoother. I think that we included some really good camera angles and stuck to the 180 degree rule, it would have been better if we had gotten more shots like maybe a birds eye view shot or even attempted to track when sophie walked through the door. We didnt pay too much to the mise en scene which didn't effect the prelim too much because after all it is our first piece of work, however in future films I think that we should take extra care and pay more attention to our surroundings.

I was watching "Angus, thongs and perfect snogging" the other day and found the opening to be really good. There're some really interesting camera angles and i especially liked this one shot were the female charcter is running in an olive costume between two old people, its from a birds eye view angle and i thought it was a really clever idea for a shot.

Editing

We started editing our preliminary exercise and already it is coming along really well, we just need to sort out the last shot. Not really sure how we could end it so will be looking through the old preliminary's that have been done by the year above for some inspiration.
We will also be doing an out-take preliminary exercise and this should be very entertianing indeed, excited to pick different transitions to go with the ridiculous out-takes!

Prelim

It's official, we have made media groups and our group has already done our prelim. I think we got a few good angles in ours i just hope that when we come to editing things Sophie has kept her arm in the same place! Other than that i don't think we came across any problems but am excited to start editing on Mac 1! The software looks simple but then again looks can be deceiving...

Preliminary

Tommorow we will be doing our prliminary exercise and although it is not being marked the nerves are still building up.A few ideas have come to mind as to some dialogue but my main concern is getting the transitions to run smoothly and hopefully i wont embarrass myself this early on in the course. Here are a couple examples of the preliminary tasks done last year...

Definitions

Match on action: Is an example of continuity editing which allows the audience to know exactly what is going on in a particular scene. Match on action can also be when an action starts in shot 1 and finishes in shot 2 or the action in shot 1 is mirrored in shot 2.
Shot reverse shot: is a technique where one character is shown looking at another character, and then the other character is shown looking back at the first character.

ECS as and A2 Media Studies Course Booklet

Exam board Criteria

In our lesson today we looked at the exam board for our entire media course. Looking really good so far and I can't wait to get stuck. Also learnt a few new websites that I am sure will prove of use in the near future, especially Scribd and Wordle. I will attempt to embed the Student study course booklet into my blog so that I can constantly keep reffering back to it whilst progressing with the course.

I have just finished watching Doctor Who (I know, I know but there's a child in all of us) and found an amazing camera angled shot in which a women is dropping some paper. But not only do you see the paper slip out of her hand from a high angle, as the paper falls to the ground the speed alters to a slow motion dramatic fall. It was really impressive and I loved the way the paper gracefully hit the floor in this slow motion shot.

Examples...

In our latest lesson we have been looking at a few shorts films that have been produced by other schools. I found that all though a few did contain some really good camera shots, the majority were two minute films as oppose to a two minute opening of a film. This got me thinking about the opening i'll be making in the near future and how not to make a two minute film but the opening instead. Will have to find some good techniques and soon...

Assignment One

So our first real assingment for our media course is to learn all of the key terms in the film clip below by next lesson....

Piece of cake.

The start of all posts.