Reflection on Units 1-7

Units 1,2,3 media Pass Port
For the first three units we covered and range of moving image, Interactive and theory work.
From doing this work I learnt how to create a story and how to make it interesting. this is because we had to create a silent film. I also learnt a lot about recording audio which has helped throughout other projects.
In these units of work I also learnt a little bit about interactive and animation. We had to create info graphics and basic animations. I know this wont me for my FMP as I am creating a short film.
For the theory side of these units we learnt how to conduct Primary and Secondary research. This is going to be very useful for my FMP as I will need to make sure I have strong research and also the theory parts helped with my writing which again will be needed for my FMP

Unit 4
This unit was based around the theory side of media. Throughout this unit we learnt new terms and meanings. We learnt about advertising campaigns we also had to create one of are own piece of advertising. For my piece I looked at health eating and created a posted about muffins and their recipe. We also looked at focus group and how to create one. This will come in good use in my FMP as I will need to do lots of research.

Unit 5
This unit of work was based around audio. This was a shorter unit. The main goal was to create two promo videos that would put on our Instagram's. I decided to make a promo video for the Bath Abbey, for this video I focused more on the camera shot then added music in over the top. For my second video I recorded a music in the studio. This video had a bigger look at audio as this is a audio unit. This unit will some what help with my FMP as it was another unit of practising my skills.  

Unit 6
This was a publishing unit where we looked at website design. We were tasked to design a website around a project of our choice, we had to create a home and product page for computers and mobile. I decided to use my Bose headphones as my product. I really enjoyed this unit I was able to use my photoshop skills that I learnt form doing my photography A-Level. I also learnt new skills like how to create a skeleton outline for a website. This unit wont really help with my FMP but I know it will help next year when I want to design publishing pieces for my films.

Unit 7
This unit was based around animation we had to create a sort animation about popcorn. We had to use buttons to make it more interactive. I didn't enjoy this unit as much as the others because animation is something that I'm mot really interested in. How ever I am happy that I learnt a new program, which I might have to use at some point in the future.    

Mind Map

This is my mind map for my FMP I am basing my film are suicide. I have broken down the main points of the film and where i’m going to do the main shooting of the film. The reason I'm making this film is because its very close to heart and I feel like it is a very important subject to look at. The reason I have broken it down in to short clips is because I feel like it will show more emotion and it will help show the audience how the charter is feeling.

FMP- Secondary Research

For my secondary research I am going to start of by looking at famous film monologues, Youtube videos and the facts and figures behind suicide and depression I will also look at two different books. I want to look at how they are filmed and how they are presented. When it comes to the facts and figures I want to see what the true facts are behind suicide and depression.


Films
Good Will Hunting -My first monologues I looked at the bench scene from Good Will Hunting. I choses this monologue because it the camera work was simple there was one two different camera angles. This doesn't take away from how powerful this monologue. The way it starts you have Robin Williams character taring Matt Damon's  character apart say he is inexperienced and how he hasn't lived life. But when you get to the end the mood changes. The Robin's character changes he starts talking about how he doesn't know what Matt's character has been through. I think this is one of the best film monologues.


YouTube Videos
Teen Suicide and Drug Monologue 
-The reason I have chosen to look at this video is because of how simple it is. There is just one camera not cutting no special affects just one person talking to a camera. The reason this video is good is because of the way it was presented you can tell the person has so much emotion behind it. This video proves that the should be the main focus of a film/short film.  

Books
The Bell Jar- Sylvia Plath
SparkNotes- Plot over view

Quotes

“Death must be so beautiful. To lie in the soft brown earth, with the grasses waving above one’s head, and listen to silence. To have no yesterday, and no tomorrow. To forget time, to forgive life, to be at peace.”

― Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

The reason I wanted to look at this book is because I felt like it would give a really good view on depression. The reason I am doing this is because I want to get a good understanding of how depression and suicide was talked about and dealt with in the 1900's.

Suicide Rates
The Guardian
Office for National Statistics   The reason I have used this data is I want to have a proper understanding of the facts and figures behind suicide in the UK. I feel this is a important thing to do when making this film because I want to make as truthful as I can. To make sure it wont disrespect anyone who is having problems with any mental health.

Analyse the Brief

Suicide and Depression

For this FMP we have been given 10 weeks to create a project. We were given some ideas of what we could create our project on. Within the 10 weeks we had to plan and research our idea and turn it into a piece of work. For my project I am creating a short film about suicide in the style of a monologue. I will be doing research into suicide and the stats surrounding it. I will also look at how to create a good and powerful monologue. I want to be constantly reflecting on my work weather that will be using blogger or asking people what they think.
Once I have done this I will reflect on what I have found and how it will help with my project. After this I will be able to plan my film in more depth, after I have done a plan I will talk to people to see how the feel about the film and what they think I could do better. Also I feel like asking people how they think about the idea will help me get a better understanding of the people who are going to watch the film. I am planing on using music through out the film to help with the mood, I will be doing a mixture of sooting in the studio and out side on location.

Instagram Promo Videos

Abbey Promo

A video posted by Ben Wright (@bwrighty) on Mar 3, 2016 at 3:56am PST

Music Video Promo @niallconroy

A video posted by Ben Wright (@bwrighty) on Mar 3, 2016 at 4:00am PST

For this piece of work we had to create two Instagram promo videos. I have created two very different types of videos; I did this because I wanted to work on a large range of skills. I wanted to work on my audio mixing in postproduction.

My first video is about the Bath Abbey. For this video I focused more on the camera shots. I used my IPhone for a large part of it, I wanted to use the time-lapse mode. I find this to be the best way to get on also it is easier than doing it on a DSLR. I did also use my DSLR for a few shots, I did this because I didn’t want the whole video just to time-lapses. As this was an audio project I knew I needed to add sound in some way. I was going to get a ticking clock sound for the beginning but I didn’t work because the first shot was a time-lapse. So I decided just to music a sound track over it. For my audio track I used YouTube free music. I found two songs I liked. The first song I found was called ‘Tricker’ the reason I choses this song because I liked the tempo and the beat. The other song I had I felt like it didn’t work as well with the video. I kept the song simple and made sure there weren’t any words in it, I did this because I wanted people to focus on the camera shots. I am very happy with how this promo video turned out.

 

For my second promo video I knew I had to focus more on the audio as it was an audio project. I decided I would do a music video. I did this because I felt like you couldn’t get more audio than a music video. I decided to do it in the studio as it is a nice sized room for an acoustic song. As it was an acoustic song I wanted to make the set look a bit raw. So I left the mics in shot and I had the lights on display. When it came to recording the audio for the video, we had a mic for the vocals and one for the guitar. We ran them both through a sound desk where I could mix them. After that I put the track in to a recorder so I could then put it into Adobe Premiere Pro where I would edit the camera shots. When I started to edit the video I first had to sync the audio track with the camera audio. Once this was done I could start to play around with how the audio sounded, I decided I was going to add some reverb. This is what the reverb mixer looked liked. This is also what the timeline looked liked for the promo video.

 

I felt like this worked really well. It gave it a more acoustic sound which is what I wanted. After this I started to edit the video, I cut between the camera on the tri-pod and the camera I was walking around with. The camera on the tri-pod had a standard 18-55 mm lens. However, I put a 50mm on the camera that I was walking around with, I did this because I was able to get a bigger depth of field which I think really worked well. As it was an Instagram video it could on be 15 seconds, so I had to cut my video down. I did this by editing the whole video, so if I wanted to cut and chop it for the promo video I could. After editing the whole video, I decide that I would just use a 15 second part and not use different parts of the song. I did this because I felt like it would make more sense, as it’s a promo I added the musicians YouTube channel at the bottom of the video.

In conclusion I am very happy with how both promo videos turned out, I feel like I was able to capture two different types of audio. For the Abbey I only added music because I wanted people to focus on the imagery. I think this is a very important skill to have when creating films. You need to know when the audio should the main part and when the imagery needs to be. On the other hand, the music video showed my skill of live recording and mixing, also how to adjust the audio in post production. I feel like these two promo videos show a good rang of skills using audio.