Evaluation!

For this assignment I had to do a short film using only 8 shots.
The storyline had to be someone going from one place to the other and my job was to film that person walking to wherever he was meant to. The person I used for this was Matt, there's no real reason behind it we just ended up together; his trip was from the atrium to his classroom.
For this we were not aloud to use any camera movement which actually made this assignment more of a challenge and we had to use as many different shots we could.
My short film starts with a wide shot from the balcony to the atrium where we see Matt sitting on a chair and then he gets up and goes. I used this shot because we could see where he was so it was kinda of an establishing shot this way the audience watching it wouldn't be confused of where he was.
The next few shots were just me following Matt. There was a long shot, a close up of him passing his card on the swipe thingies, low angle shot of him going through the doors, medium shot of him getting to the door another long shot of him walking into the classroom and sitting down and finally a medium close up of him working; the shots vary and i think the story isn't that hard to understand, it makes since and they go with each other.
As i was my own producer i think i did everything right, i understood what to do on the story board and log sheet. I think I did both sheets pretty well and easy to understand. I missed directing and doing things my own way it does sound selfish but most people are like that, i think i was good at that because Matt always knew what to do and I'd go through it once before we did the real thing.
I thought that the editing was going to be tricky because I'd never used final cut pro before, but it's basically the same as the one we used last year, well it's better and as we only needed the basic skills to do this assignment it was pretty easy.
Overall i thought this was a very easy project, all i needed was the same basic skills we learnt last year. It was very good to refresh my memory on the practical skills and it was a easier way to start interacting with other people in my class. Also on editing it was nice helping people that weren't sure on what to do.

8 shot journey - The Film

This is my final ''8 shot journey'' i hope you enjoy it.

Story board and log sheet

Story Board:
This is my story board showing the eight shots i'll be using, with the appropriate notes and arrows showing the direction that the person in my video is going to be turning.



Log sheet:
This log sheet has every take of every shot i did, with the right time code on it so it's easier to use the editing software. For me not to get confused i used a different colour pen to show what shots i'll be using on editing. It will save more time this way.

Media Audiences

Everything that is a media product has a target audience that it needs to appeal to. The whole product and everything on it has to be there for a reason and the reason is to appeal to its audience. There are audiences theories used by the media:

-> Hypodermic needle: This theory says that audience receives the information that they are showing without actually thinking about it. As the name itself says is like they are being injected the information on their brains.

-> Two step flow: This theory says that the media works on more ''powerful'' people and those will pass the information to other people in greater numbers.

-> Uses in gratification: this meaning the personal satisfaction each person gets from media. Media is used for entertainment, education and information, people are influences 75% by the media. Their life decisions might depend on what they watch, play or listen to.

The gratification from each media product varies from person to person, it might be that they feel alone and need company, it might mean people are so worried about their lives they need an escape from reality.

8 shot journey

For this assignment we have to tell a story of someone going from A to B and we have to use 8 different shots to do it. Shot number one should show the person's department; shots two to seven should show the persons journey and shot eight is meant to show the traveler getting to his\hers destinations.

This is meant for us to get camera and editing kills and to have a go at working as professionals. The story board must have the shot number, notes describing the action, shot size and arrows if needed to show where the person is turning to.

For this assignment I'm going to have Matt pretending he was late for his lesson so he's going to run from the atrium to the classroom.

as this is not something that we actually have to worry about the audience i think i could say the audience for this is ourselves, we don't have to worry about meeting that target audience we just need to make sure it's done and we understand what we need to d and how to use cameras and software.

Film Language

When making a film there are two different types of narrative that you may want to follow:

Classic narrative text: This is the normal story we might watch the most, it's when the film has beginning, middle and end ; and it goes on that order.

Anti-narrative: This type of narrative also has beginning middle and end but it starts from the middle or the end and we watch how the characters ended on that first situation we see.

There are different structures:

-> Flashbacks, starts in present and then we see the past.

-> Multi-strand: Multiple stories that might not connect between them but they work together for the main narrative of the film.

-> Episodic: isolated stories that run for quite a long time (soap operas).

When watching a film there are lots of ways of showing the audience what you want them to see in order for them to feel more involved in the story. Some of the techniques are:

Matched action: When action is the same in two shots.

Semiology: This is the study of signs and symbols - What is presented?, How is it presented?, and What does it tell?

Sound ellipses: This is when the sound of a scene continues to the next scene to establish a connection between the two.

Jingles

Jingles are the little tune that every radio has, that little tune that gets stuck very easily in people's heads so they listen to the radio stations. for example: ''This is Heart'' on Heart FM.
Jingles aren't used only as a radio identity like I've said, they are also used as advertising technique or to promote a particular show in radio.
There are also jingles for the news, you'd know it's time from listenning to the tune on the jingle's tune.
All jingles have pretty much the same codes and conventions:
You need clear speech, straight forward too so the audience knows exacly what you are presenting, the music opn the jingle can be made or they can use songs that already exist to set the genre of programme, show or radio station you're listenning to.
Depending on the jingle you need to make the length for example on a radio ident jingle you'd only need about 10 seconds but on show promo the jingle would be about 30 to 40 seconds because there's more information that must appear:
- radio station
- programme name
- who with
- when it's going to be on air.

My Jingles

For this assignment there are three jingles i need to make:

- Radio ident -> It has to be 10 seconds long just annoucing the radio station.

- News Jingle -> It has to be about 15 seconds long just to announce the news

- Show Promo -> It has to be between 30 to 40 seconds announcing everything that's needed.


The music I'll be using it's going to depend on the audience ; for example as I'm gonna be doing this for teenage people because it's a college radio and the most audience listening to it is going to be students I'll use rock beat for my radio ident and a proper news tune for the news jingle. for the show promo i haven't had many ideas but I'll be using something different.

My Jingles

News jingle :

http://www.zshare.net/audio/672334074217dc34/

Station ident:

http://www.zshare.net/audio/672334486060d10c/ Show Promo:

http://www.zshare.net/audio/67233474b4125813/

Jingles Evaluation!

Jingles are what we listen to radio between two songs or to advertise one individual show, to let the audience know it's time for news or to let you know what radio station you're listening to.
For this assignment we had to do 3 jingles:

-News Jingle (10 seconds)
- Radio Ident (15/20 seconds)
- Show promo (30/40 seconds)

We used Soundbooth to do these three jingles, we picked the bit of music we wanted then recorded our own voices with the dialogue needed for each jingle and then put it on top of the music.
Firstly I had to decide which songs to use so i went on YouTube looking for ideas, for my news jingle i found a sample of different songs used for the news so I used it on my own jingle. The script for this jingle is: '' This is the news on SNC live''.
For my radio ident jingle i used Faint - Linkin Park because I thought the beginning of that song was quite good for a radio ident the script was: '' snc, snc, snc live''.
For my last jingle, the show promo i used a sample of Disney songs because my show would be about the songs of Disney films that everyone likes. the script for this one was: '' Listen to SNC live Tuesday nights from 10pm to 12am with Ana. She'll be playing all the Disney songs you love. Go on to www.snclive.me.uk and make your request. Don't forget Tuesday nights with Ana''.
After picking everything it was time to work with the voice and music to make a jingle. Finding the right bit of music is quite difficult so I had to list to all songs and decide what to use, then i had to get my voice and put in the programme and adjust the levels. Because my voice wasn't very clear i had to copy it and paste it into the tracks on Soundbooth so it seemed like i spoke a little better but even so i sound really quite. This is the thing i have to improve the most; talking on a microphone.
After i put everything together for each one of these jingles I thought they sounded quite cool, the one i probably should have done a bit more work on was the Show promo because I had so many different types of music it was quite difficult to make everything sound brilliant. Maybe if I played a bit more with the sound levels I would have done a better job.
Overall I think this project was very well thought, even if it was just to get used using the software and understand a bit more about the radio and why are the jingles used. I really enjoyed it, apart from having to talk to the computer that's why I preferred to use an mp3 and record my voice somewhere else. I also thought that Soundbooth it's a very easy to use and I look forward to do my radio shows on it for the rest of the year.

My photos ;)

The Outside

This is is the best outside picture i picked. we can clearly see that it's outside college, and for this one i had the shutter open during 20 seconds. The reason that i didn't do as long as i should have done is that when i first did it it all went black for too much exposure so Tim told me to do it for a shorter period of time. In my opinion this is a good picture for someone that has no experience in photography. On the right you can see the Positive of the photo, where i also played a bit with the contrast on photoshop for a better view and on the left we see the original negative.

The Inside

This image is the one i picked from all the photos I took inside college. I picked this one because it was the best one and it looked really nice. This one was taken in three minutes and it was the best one. The other's i had i left the camera for longer but somehow they weren't very good. This one is Kat's feet. I decided to take it because it would be different and luckily enough it came out quite well.

On the right we see the negative on the left we see the positive.

Pinhole photography

This week after learning lots about photography and how the cameras work Tim, said we were going to take pictures with a pin hole camera. Not a really old camera but one that we were going to make ourselves.

To do this we needed:
- A box or tin
- Black Paint
- Foil
- Gaffa tape
- Masking tape
- A bit of cardboard
- Pin
- Photographic paper

I choose to use a shoe box because they are quite big and easier to make holes on them. First I got my box and then painted the inside black. Then made a hole on the box to put a bit of foil that was going to work as a lens and used the pin to make a hole on it' then with the bit of cardboard we stuck in on top of the lens and that was our shutter. We then went to the dark room and put photographic paper inside it and closed the box and shutter. After all this we finally had our pinhole camera done.
we then have to measure the distance from the pin hole to the bottom of the box, it's called the focal lenght. The focal lenght on my camera was 92.

How exactly does the pinhole camera work?

A pinhole camera works by just liek the other cameras. It capetures the light coming from objects and putting it onto a photographic paper. Because it's not like one of the recent cameras where we push a button and in a second we have an image we need to leave the camera pointing at what we want on the picture for quite a long time.
The time depends on the F-stop, to find each camera's f-stop we need to do a calculation:

Fs = Focal Lenght = 92 = 115 The F-stop is 115.
Diametre of pinhole 0.8

Then, depending on the light reading of the day we calculate the ammount of time that we need to open the shutter for so we get the light onto the photographic film.

Cause I wasn't sure how to do that i asked Tim for an estimate of the time i needed.

Outside: 45 seconds
Inside: 12 minutes

After spending the time needed with the shutter opened, we were meant to take the camera to the black room so we could get our negatives. Depending on how it looked like we'd know if we needed to expose the photographic film more or less time.

A bit about photography...

Photography is the activity or art of creativity in still or moving pictures; objects reflect light patterns that activate a sensitive chemical or electronic sensor during a timed exposure usually through photographic lens. A different type of camera is used whether we’re filming of taking photos but both cameras work in exact the same way.

Camera:

The modern camera evolved from the camera obscure; an early mechanism of projecting images where an entire room functioned as a real time imaging system.
The lens on the camera captures the light reflected from an object and brings it to a zoom on the film detector.
The shutter allows the light coming from the lens to pass for a period of time in order to expose the [photography film or electronic detector.
The aperture is the whole in which the light captured travels and it can be measured in increments called F-stop.

Exposure Control

This is how the camera works in order to take a picture or recording something. The size of the Aperture and the brightness of the scene control the amount of light that enters the camera, the shutter’s job is to control the length of time which the recording surface is exposed to the light.

Welcome

Heya!

My name is Ana and I've made this blog to display the work I'll be doing during my course; National Diploma in media.

Thanks for visiting!