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.