Monday, 30 March 2009

Film Reflection 14

March 30th 2009 - Intellectual Property 2

This lesson, my partner and I carried on planning on our topics that best expressed to the theme of intellectual property. After consideration, I chose to do illegal camcording because I thought it would be very interesting and fun if I created a film about that just like the ones in the cinemas. Clare decided that she would do the manufacturing of pirated handbags, I thought this was also a fun and interesting topic to choose, because it occured in our daily lives, even we buy pirated handbags in Causeway bay. I did some research on illegal camcording and found that "Illegally camcorded movies cause significant harm to the economic success of movies,
the industries that distribute them and the jobs these industries create"(Sam Ho), and if anybody is caught breaking the law, they may be fined up to HK$50,000(US$6,410) and imprisoned for up to three months. "50,000 anti-camcording stickers to be fixed on the back of seats inside all cinemas in Hong Kong. These stickers highlight to cinema patrons that
camcording is a crime with severe penalties and promote the reward scheme of
HK$2,000 (US$256) for anyone reporting illegal camcording to cinema staff"(Ifact-GC, 2008). After researching this, I learnt a lot more about illegal camcording and the damage it causes to the economical success of movies by infringing copies and selling them to people or a cheaper price in public. Afterwards, I started planning the 30 second video clip that I will create from illegal camcording. I had a brief idea of what the video will look like in my head, and sketched it onto my storyboard. I also started writing my script for the video clip, it included the issue itself, how people are proventing it, the consequences and also the rewards. Overall, I thought this lesson was very helpful in terms of planning and structuring my ideas and organizing them into a brief video. I now have a clear idea of what my video is going to look like and what will be included for the dialogue. My goal for next lesson is to continue on my storyboard and finish the details of each clip; I will include the details of the shot, the distance, the angle of the camera, the action (what's being shot) and the dialogue. I plan to finalize my script next lesson and get ready to capture the footage by the end of this week, in order to edit the next week. After the last assignment, I realized that I was very bad at time managment, to prevent this from happening agian, I am going to plan out the dates in which I will film and edit in order to get things done more organized and in a shorter period of time.

Wednesday, 25 March 2009

Film Reflection 13

March 26 2009 - Intellectual Property 1

Today, I learnt more about the new assignment in more depth. For this assignment I did some research on Intellectual Property, and found out that "Intellectual property (IP) are legal property rights over creations of the mind, both artistic and commercial, and the corresponding fields of law."(wikipedia) My partner, Clare, and I discussed many of our ideas that we had on the theme of intellectual property. Clare had many great ideas that ranged from plagorism to selling pirated dvds. I had two ideas as well, one of them were plagorism and the other one was illegal camcording, I thought they were both very good ideas because it was something that happened in our daily lives. Clare and I went to www.mycideocompetition.com for more information about our task, we looked through the guidelines and it is clear that we must demonstrate our understanding of how sound and visuals can be used together to create meaning, in other words, we needed to address the use of sound design that was previously studied in our last assignment. Overall, I thought this lesson was very useful because my partner and I planned and discussed many of our individual ideas on how we could address intellectual property. My group for next lesson is to pick a topic that could express to the theme of intellectual property and start researching on that that so that I could create a script of what to say in the 30 minute video clip.

Monday, 23 March 2009

Film Reflection 12

March 23rd 2009

Today we finished off watching everybody's comic strips. I thought overall everyone did very well, though everyone had things that needed improving. Ms. Wong played our comic strip, and even though it wasn't that great, Clare and I were proud of what we had done because we spent a lot of effort finding background music, recording sounds, editing, etc. I thought that if we could have done this assignment again, we would have made the background music louder at some areas of comic and some softer. This was because when our comic was showing, some of the foley that we recorded were covered by the background music, and we were very disappointed because we spent most of the time recording the sounds. At some parts, the background music was too soft, because many sections of our comic did not have dialogue, therefore we did not add a lot of foley into it, this made it seem silent, and very boring. By having background music, we would have been able to improve our project a lot more interesting, it would have increased the tension within the comic and the audience. I thought we could have improved our dialogue, because as Ms. Wong said, there was not much emotion within our dialogue, and this decreased the tension within the comic and also made it quite boring. Since our group members were speaking in monotone, it affected our comic drastically. If there were no emotions, then there would have not been the dark atmosphere that the comic strip portrayed. Overall, I thought our group could have improved a lot, and after this whole task, I have learnt many new techniques on recording and creating foley, I also know what mistakes I made and could avoid them in future filming assignments. When our comic was over, Ms. Wong played our documentary. I was very disappointed with the outcome because it was very brief and all the information that we captured was not included. Clare and I were very confused as to how and why the footage that we captured throughout the process of create was not included. The documentary only showed a few examples of how we created foley, and many parts that we captured such as, filming the dialogue, the paper crumpling effects were all missing. Even though the outcome came out poorly, I know what could have been done to make it much better. If I had to do this project again, I would make sure that all our group members co-operate and work together well. Even though Kevin and Benny didn't do such a great job on the documentary, I learnt that this is an assignment that required group work, and we can't depend on one and other to complete things when we are doing another task. When the documentary was over, Ms. Wong gave us a brief description of what we were going to do next. She explained that we were going to make a 30 second video clip on intellectual property through creativity and innovation. She told us to plan and make some ideas of the topic, though I was unsure of the topic and I was determined to do some research at home. My goal by next lesson would have been to have an idea of intellectual property and think about how I can express my creativity and innovation to create a 30 second film on it.

Thursday, 19 March 2009

Film Reflection 11

March 19 2009

Today, during class the first five minutes of class, my group and I rushed to finish off our comic strip. Since Benny and Kevin were in charge of the documentary and Clare and I were in charge of the comic, we split into two groups and worked as quickly as we could to finish. We were able to finish everything except for the background music, which Kevin was in charge of, but didn't send it to us. Clare and I were very frustrated, we exported the project and put it into the "drop box". Afterward, our class had the opportunity to watch all the other groups comic strip soundtracks and documentary. The first group was Issac Dunlop's group, and their comic was showed first. I was amazed by how well they created the foley, it looked as though they had lots of experience with this sort of work. I was especially surprised by their voices, and how well they matched the voices of the people in the comic strip. Francessca was the voice of the Princess in the coimic strip, her voice matched it really well and it made the tense atmosphere realistic. There was a lot of emotion in everyone's voice, even Tiffany, who played the voice of the baby was very realistic, and the editing made the voice seem even more real. Overall, I found their work very impressive, and since I haven't had any experience with Final Cut Pro, I felt as though I could have widely improved my comic soundtracks, and made everything more realistic. Afterwards, we watched their documentary, which showed the process of the making of the entire project. I fount it very interessting, and I also learnt many new ways of recording different types of foley. The second group was Andrew, Joanna, Justin, Joshua and Lucas' group. After watching the comic and the soundtrack they produced, I was more amazed. I felt terrified, and compared to them, I thought my work was horrible and was embarrased to show it. I loved the background music that they chose, it matched the scene of the comic as well as the atmosphere. The voices also matched very well with the characters in the comic strip, I especially liked Andrew's imitation of the bad guy's voice, it was terrific and very realistic; again, it was edited. Afterward, we watched their documentary, and we were able to see an insight of recording their voices, and their process of creating the comic. After that, we watched group 3's comic strip. I thought their one was not as realistic because there was no emotion in their voices, which lowered the gloomy atmosphere. I thought their trick of crumpling the pack of chips for rain was unsuccessful, because it was obvious that they were doing so while watching. Overall, it was decent and well done, the foley was nicely recorded, and the dialogue was placed in the right places. We watched their documentary afterwards, I thought it was very intersesting because again it showed the development of the entire process of create, and also whos voice was which character. Due to the lack of time, our group's video, which was supposingly next was not showed. I was very relieved because after watching some of the group's comics, I felt terrified because our's wasn't half as good. Overall, this lesson was very interessting, I saw the work of 3 groups, and I thought they all did a great job. I am looking forward to watching more projects next lesson, though a little nervous about ours.

Monday, 16 March 2009

Film Reflection 10

March 16 2009

Today, my group and I worked very hard on completing our comic strip sounds as well as putting them in the right places (editing). We split the group in two like last lesson so that it could improve our time management, getting more things done in a shorter period of time. We were informed that the "How to be a sound designer" project was due on Thursday. Clare and I were in charge of recording the sounds, as well as editing them. Benny and Kevin were in charge of recording the documentary and editing it as well. Clare and I discuss thoroughly about which sounds we needed improving, because even though some sounds were re-recorded, they still did not fit with the comic strip; the background noise was either too loud or the sound didn't match the comics. We prepared the equipment, since today we did not need to record the documentary anymore because we filmed all the footage needed already, Kevin didn't come with us to record sounds, instead he helped Benny edit the documentary on Final Cut Pro. Once we got all the equipment, Clare and I went straight down to the carpark and collected many pieces are large rocks and prepared to record the foley. This time, the sound sounded a lot more realistic than before, though there were still a little sound of air conditioners in the background. Afterwards, we went straight back up to edit all the footage, including the sounds recorded last lesson (including dialogue, narration). First, we captured everything, ranging from todays recordings and the ones from last lesson. Clare was researching on foley to find out if there were any ways to improve the "effect" of the atmosphere in the comic strip. We learnt that silence can be a powerful sound tool and that sound effects helped create dramatic meaning to the scenes. There were many foley and sound recording methods that we found, though because we needed to finish the project as soon as possible, we couldn't re-record the sounds for improvement. We edited and made many changes to the comic strip, many sounds were not placed in the right places, and the newly captured sounds were mostly placed in the right places. Though as we rewatched the whole thing to see what we got, I figured out that the volume of the foley did not match the image. For instance, a cart moving away. This sound should decrease gradually as the cart gets farther away, though we had trouble changing the volume, and we plan to do that next lesson. Overall, today was a very useful lesson, we worked very hard in order to get things done by thursday, and fortunately we are almost done, we only need to work on the volume, and we are missing a sound of birds wings flapping. We plan to get everything done during lunch breaks and recesses.

Monday, 9 March 2009

Film Reflection 9

March 10th 2009

Today, my group and I continued to work on our comic strips. We went in an empty music room so that there would not be any background sounds when we record a sound or dialogue. We prepared all of the equipment, two cameras in order to film the documentary, some of the soundtracks and also the dialogue. We used the music room and finished filming the remaining dialogue. For the dialogue, Kevin played the part of the "hero" in the comic strip. He had to make his voice sound serious and anxious in order to fit the role of the hero within the story. I was picked to be the voice of the young prince, I was only required to say one line, which was, "where am I...Where's my mother?" In this scene, I had to pretend I was a child in order to match the dialogue and the child's voice. Benny was the voice of one of the farmers, while clare played the part of the other farmer. While recording the dialogue, we took turns filming the documentary, where we would capture our group practicing the voices of our specific characters as well as the actual recording. After we finished that, clare re-recorded some of the narrator parts of the comic strip. This was because our group was not satisfied with some of the parts recorded last lesson, for instance, "The road of the village of Hapur". We needed her voice to be more dramatic, suiting the atmosphere of the comic strip. While we finished that, we decided to split our group in two to be less time consuming. Benny was going to film the documentary, while Clare, Kevin and I took turns being interviewed. While we were waiting, we had to edit our comic strip on Final Cut Pro, so we could improve some of the placements of the sounds. When it was my turn to get interviewed, Benny asked me questions such as: "What is the comic mainly about?", and also: "How did we capture some of the foley?". I answered saying that a middle aged hero was on a mission to save a young prince, and because I did not know much about the background of the story, since it is not included in our scene, I could not reply furthur. I also described how we captured many of the foley, for instance, in order to capture the sounds of horse galloping, I took two large rocks and thumped them against the ground with the horse galloping rhythn. At the end of this lesson, we were able to capture what we did today, which included the documentary, sounds, narration and dialogue; though we did not have the time to edit them yet. Our goal for next lesson is to start editing the footage we captured today, and put them in place on Final Cut Pro. I thought that our group worked productively this lesson. We were very focused in our work, and got things done fast and simple. We were very co-operative, and time managing, which helped with our overall team work.

Monday, 2 March 2009

Film Reflection 8

March 2 2009

Today, my group and I continued to edit our soundtracks into the comic strip, we were nearly done with the first recorded soundtracks. While we were editing, we found out that many soundtracks recorded either did not sound like what we were trying to improvise or the background was too loud and it covered up the sound we intended to record. For example, one of the examples are "horse galloping" sounds. The original sound we recorded was perfect, except for the fact that the background sounds were too loud, and we could only hear a partial part of it. Due to this, we decided to re-record the sound in order to make the background noises disappear. We prepared the equipment needed (microphone, camera, tripod, etc) and went to the climbing wall area. When we were there, we discussed what we were going to re-record, including the horse galloping sound, and marked down certain soundtracks that needed to be recorded again. Though firstly, we collected two large rocks and thumped them on the floor in a "horse galloping" rhythm. We practiced it a few times, and while we were doing so, Benny and Kevin set up another camera to film some of the documentary, and some of the process of sound recording. When we thought that the sound sounded realistic enough, we recorded it. After that, we also re-recorded the sound, "walking on soil". We did this on the 3rd floor, where there was a grass patch. While we were recording the sound, likewise, Benny and Kevin taped us recording for the documentary. Furthermore, our group went to one of the empty music rooms, and recorded narration parts, such as "The province of Eathaar near the river ganga". After that, we uploaded the documentary and soundtracks onto the computer and started to edit what we taped today. Overall, we were quite satisfied with what we ended up recording today. The "horse galloping" sound was very realistic, and fitted perfectly with one of the comic strip scenes with the horses racing off. We were also very pleased with the "walking on soil" sound, we thought it matched the comic strip very well as well. Our goal for next lesson is to start recording the dialogue for the comic strip and continue editing the soundtracks we recorded today. I thought this lesson was very useful, I improved and developped my confidence and skills in manipulating audio film eqquipment, as well as understanding the importance of sound recording on set. I thought that this lesson was very fun, most of all our group worked well and improved on our team work and time management.