Week 10

This week things are getting pretty tough with all the assignments and final projects coming up. It becomes even worse for my group, as there is basically only one class left to edit because of the Anzac day. I find it impossible for finalise 2 different videos in 4 hours. I have spoken to Rommel about it because he is going to be a filmmaker too, but he wasnt bothered about it as his script is really basic and easy to edit. Moreover, it is really hard to edit the videos in free time because of the classes there (most of the time students need the computer with final cut pro for their own work) and because of our lack of time due to other projects. i wanted to edit it on another computer with final cut pro which I have access to but the version there is newer so if I will use it there I wont be able to work in class anymore. All these is pretty frustrating and confusing to an extend.

Anyway, we will try our best to finalise the project before the due date. on the last group meeting we have decided on the final titles for the video. The club documentary title would be "Trash Bags" as was suggested before and the name of interactive video would be "Wasted", creating correlations with money waste and being wasted on alcohol.

Next week whole group will help me with editing, Anita and Ying working on "Wasted" video and me and Nicole on "Trash Bags".

Week 9

This week I will write about second video. This semester break was shorter then always because half of it were public holidays and members of our group needed to spend some time with their families. Therefore, for second video shoot we had only one day to film. Therefore, we didnt have an opportunity to shoot all scenes according to the draft script. For example, scenes with the way to restaurant, taxi, giving the present and the crowded party. I have changed the script to fix this problem and also hope that shooting more photographs and editing will save the video.

Unlike the first video which was a documentary, for this one we needed a male actor. I tried to contact the same one we used in 3rd semester to shoot "Awkward conversation", but Arabella didnt answer so I asked my boyfriend to participate in the project as "hands of main hero". Another problem with the crew was that on the shooting day my friends couldnt come up for a party so the group members had to act in the final scene themselves. It was really hard because it was only 3 of us so the party looked quiet empty. So I asked Nicole to join us in this scene and my boyfriend was holding the camera this one time.

Luckily, whole kit was working and we could shoot almost everything we wanted and the way we wanted.

Week 8

Its week 8, a first week after our break. We didnt really had a chance to relax much on the break because we were filming during it. We were filming on two days: Friday 2d April for first video and Monday 5th April for second.

First, about the documentary. This time everything was working in technical aspect. But unfortunately, we couldnt get any more permissions but Nicole's workplace. So, we decided to use shots from previous time and new ones together to create intensive 3-minute video.

The hardest part was interviewing people. There were two extremely different behaviours of people we wanted to interview and it affected the process and the results. While guys either were jumping into the shot wanting to be filmed or didnt mind us asking questions about their outfits, girls were trying to hide their faces and themselves or were laughing and couldnt say anything in the camera. I assume that the behaviour patterns were so different because we were interviewing asian people near the asian club.

Anita was an interviewer as she basically wrote the script for the first video. So at some point, another problem appeared as she was that quiet that people couldnt here her at all though it was loud on the tape.

Anyway, we did it and we have some great and funny shots for first video!

Week 6

We developed a detailed script (as detailed as we can go with a documentary) for the first video and decided on the day when we going to film.

The test shoot will be held on Friday night near club Brooklyn hotel, as we already have a permission to film there. The next shoot we having on saturday night, filming different clubs depending on which permissions we gonna have: Club 77, The World Bar,  The Ivy, Hot Damn, Brooklyn Hotel, Trash.

Our documentary script consists of the introduction (including the quotation, the campaign logo, the production title), stylistic ideas, interview questions and the credits (plus funny photographs at the end).

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Today we worked in editing program Final Cut Pro Studio v.6.0.1

1. Logging sheet

2. Capture

3. Assembly

4. Rough cut

5. Final cut

Week 5

Its week 5 now and for today, we prepared our outline of the project and the presentation.

Outline

Essential idea and style

1. Documentary on club people

The documentary will be made in the form of interview. The interviewer will be asking people near nightclubs what they are wearing, where them got their clothes from and how much it costs (approximately). The purpose of this documentary is to show different ways how people find their outfits and might contain some interesting and unexpected results. Humorous, glamorous and colourful.

2. Interactive fiction

Second video is an interactive fiction, which is telling story of an average student’s day in the style of a game. The video is teaching how to manage money spending. A viewer has his/her own choice what to do and how to spend the amount of money, which they received in the beginning of the game. The task is to spend less money and have more “fun”.

Audience

We have targeted a wide range of people in some of our previous campaigns, but for our ‘Old School’ campaign we have chosen to focus on tertiary students, who are faced with both the financial difficulties of university life as well as the societal pressure to spend increasingly large amounts of money on whatever items are deemed ‘fashionable’ by the media and their peer group.

The target audience can shortly be described as generation Y (17-25) international and local university students, male and female. The target demographic has short attention spans, want everything now, love “stuff” and are addicted to internet (Huntley, 2006). The hypothesis needs to be proven by academic and independent research among Insearch and UTS students.

Distribution platform

The videos will be distributed through the internet on such websites as vimeo.com, youtube.com and our campaign website. Second video might be further distributed as an iPhone application.

Documentary

Duration

3 to 5 min

Logistics (location, crew, actors, technical)

Location: near clubs on George st, Kings Cross, Oxford st, New Town.

Crew: camera operator and cinematographer – Nicole, light and sound – Ying, director and editor – Val, writer and producer – Anita.

Actors: no actors, real people.

Technical: the kit + light.

Interactive

Duration

5 to 10 min

Example (if it has been made already)

‘Journey to the End of Coal’

Logistics (location, crew, actors, technical)

Location: several places including “home place”, “café”, “clothing shop”, etc.

Crew: camera operator and cinematographer – Nicole, light and sound – Ying, director, writer and editor – Val, producer – Anita and a photographer.

Technical: the kit + photo camera.

Draft script

1. Black screen

2. The title of the game (campaign) appears.

3. Text "Select a gender before you start".

4. Video. First point of view though character's eyes: opening the eyes, the lying on the bed. Sits, looks around the room. Its messy, clothes on the floor, etc.

5. Still photograph of the same room.

6. Instructional text appears on the top.

7. Control button appear in the right bottom corner.

Week 4

The first assignment is due today. It is a web documentary review. This interactive documentary impressed me so much and I came up with an idea that we can do something similar to that in terms of interactivity. We have lot of different ideas for the video and we are going to discuss it on our group meeting this week.

Our group also defined the roles in preproduction, production and postproduction.

Nicole - Camera operator, Cinematographer

1. Find location

2. Storyboard

3. Camera operating

4. Communicating with director, sound, light

5. Checking equipment, charge batteries

6. Tapes check, reflections

7. Focus, frames, setting of the camera, exposure shadow speed dial, white balance.

Ying - Sound, Light, Outfits

1. Check id sound is clear, test location if its suitable

2. Sound recording with camera operator

3. Sound effects and editing sound

4. Microphones and tech

5. Styling of the set and actors outfits if applicable

Anita - Producer, Project manager

1. Buy tapes

2. Copyright and locations' permissions

3. Budgeting, safety of crew and equipment

4. Manage meetings

5. Food, props, travel costs

6. Production scheduling

me - Director, Writer, Editor

1. Script writing/editing

2. Directing cinematographer

3. Working with actors and other crew members

4. Editing the video, edit script

5. Video logging sheet (the one Rommel did in previous semester)

At the end, we will need a DVD + cover and individual evaluations.

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We decided to film two videos, first one is an interactive mockumentary and second would be  documentary on club people (how much they clothes cost, where they got it from).

Week 3

Our group started to come up with ideas for the video we are going to shoot. It definetly going to be connected with our campaign, because it will make the campaign more visual and fun.

We are still deciding on the topic of our campaign, and basically it is a social awareness campaign aimed at students, the campaign is about student personal spending and student budgeting, clothes and anti-consumerism.

So far, we have several ideas for the video:

1) it might be several (three) short films in different styles: punk/grunge/bnw, retro/vintage and hippy/flowerpower.

2) video with reversed dressing: first we are showing several girls/boys dressed up in great outfits, then we are showing how and where they found them (op-shops, second-hands, retro vintage shops, hand-made)

3) interviews with people on streets, we will ask them what they are wearing, is it branded, etc

Week 2

During this week, our group decided on the topic for the campaign so we can start working on the project. We had different ideas, such as legalize, racism, women's rights, body image, etc but we have chosen slightly modified idea of Ying, student budgeting and money management.

We started to think about overall look of our campaign and video included. Though the topic sounds pretty dry and boring, our aim is to make it look cool in eyes of the audience, the eyes of youth. Therefore, started to discuss what type of videos will interest our audience. As we are students ourselves and we didnt start surveys to ask random students about what they want, at the moment we can judge what student will like only basing on our ideas.

So, key characteristics of the video (or videos) should be:

1) easy to understand

2) related o the topic

3) fun and viewer friendly

4) original

5) high quality

6) interesting to follow the plot

Week 1

MMMM, so, we are starting our project. Its first week and I was sick for all week so could not participate in shaping groups and topics. As Angelina told me, Ros decided to put me in the group with Anita, Ying and Nicole.

As I knew from my friends Clement, Jo, Andy and Kiota who graduated from Insearch UTS a semester ago, in the 4th semester our work in groups would be devoted to creating a social awareness campaign. On holidays I started to think what kind of theme can we cover and how to present it through video made in comm416. Of course, I was excited about this work as in the previous semester we didnt have a chance to edit and finalize the project dragged into a routine of paperwork.

No matter what topic we will choose to cover for the campaign, the video would be related to it and the visuals of the video would be: saturated colors, brightness, fast motion effects, funny parts and originality.

week1-YING

In week1, we were informed about what we have to do this semester in this subject.
Our final project include making a single or a few seperate short videos which will have a total duration of around 5 minutes. Unlike last semester, for this project we will be learning and participating in the post-production stage of making short films which include alot of image and sound editing using a software called Final-Cut-Pro. we are required to hand in the complete, edited videos on DVD to be marked.

week2-YING

In week 2, we have finalised our group members and individual roles.

Valeriya- director
Anita- producer
Nicole- cinematographer
Ying- sound operator

As our group has set up a social awareness campaign for other subjects this semester, we have decided that for this subject, we will make short and entertaining videos relating to the theme and topic of our campaign. The videos can then be embeded into our campaign's website and act as part of our promotional strategy to create awareness and to reach our target audience.

week3-YING

In week3, we watched an interactive web documentary in class, called 'Journey to the end of coal' and were inspired by its unique form of filming and editing. We liked the visual of the documentary which consists of earthy toned still photographs, the simple but effective sound design and especially liked the interactivity of the documentary where it is like a game where you can find information for yourself. Our group has decided to make one of our two short films as an interactive video which will be similar but simpler version of 'Journey to the end of coal'.

week4-YING

In week 4, we worked on finalising ideas for both of our videos.
As the topic of our social awareness campaign is about financial manaement for students and reducing unnessesary expenses such as fashion, we have decided to make our first video a documentary which involves interviews with students on a night out to clubs and bars about their spending habits on fashion and entertainment. The second video would be our interactive video(game) which involves the audience to plan and make financial decisions for one day in the persona's life.

We simply prepared how to pitch our ideas of the project to class next week.

Week 8

This week, we looked at our rushes in class and learnt how to edit them on Final Cut Pro. We went through all the footage we'd filmed and worked out what we wanted to use and what we didn't, and discussed ways to edit the footage to achieve the effect that wanted, e.g. editing so that we emphasise the pauses in people's answers for comedic effect. 

We didn't get all the footage we wanted so we also discussed how we could use the footage we do have. 

week9-YING

Today in class we are working on our blog which is due next week.
We began our post-production stage which involves going through the tapes, filling in video logging sheets which helps us to determine the good and bad shots and the minutes to capture for final editing.

week8-YING

Today in class we went through both of our rushes tapes. We connected our cameras with our tapes in it to the computer and opened up final cut pro. Lighting and framing was great in both videos, and sound was better in the club documentary than the interactive video. However, we will be doing more post-production and sound editing on the second video. as regarding to image quality, Little fuzz appear on both videos in preview, hopefully it will disappear once we finish capturing and editing.

Week 7.5

This week we filmed all the footage for our interactive video- which was basically just us filming a guy waking up after a party and surveying the damage done to his room ( there was, conveniently, broken glass outside the balcony that we worked into the shot, and we added some clothes on the floor, a very large ashtray  and lots of bottles of alcohol to make it look like there had been a party there the night before). There was also a bit in the city, where we filmed a guy walking around the shops and going into a few...one tiny problem was that people walking past kept giving us weird looks/waving so it looks like the person we're filming is really ugly/popular! But that can be edited out. As the producer, I didn't have much to do on the day besides offer suggestions as to how to set up certain shots, and how to film the party scene at the end and make it look like there were lots of people in the room when it was really just the four of us.

Last week, we also filmed more footage for our documentary 'Trashbags' outside the Brooklyn Hotel. No other places got back to me, but we did manage to get quite a bit of footage of people talking. A few people were a bit shy, though, but I interviewed some interesting people.

week7B-YING

On tuesday, we shot our second short video. We finished the first part of the filming in QVB in the city with Valeriya and nicole taking the camera into the building and shops, and the second part in Valeriya's house. As the sound operator of the project, I had less responsibility in this shooting as sound recording was not important in the production stage. However, in post production, background sounds and music are needed.

week7A-YING

This thursday night, we went to Brooklyn hotel again to shoot at a special Easter event with special guests from overseas performing. There were more people this time comparing to last week and our shooting went smooth besides a few girls who did not want to be interviewed. As a sound operator, I tested both the level of sound of interviewees and background noise from the earphones and sound was great and there was not a lot of noise interference during interviews.