Media Studies (Film Opening)

How does your product use or challenge conventions, and how does it represent social groups or issues? Our team has chosen the genres of our film as 'Teen' and 'Christianity'. At first, we wanted to show and expose the main theme of our whole film, 'God', but after that, we thought that we should make our film very simple and not spoil the audience because it is not the full film but a film opening. It was really difficult for our team to change over and over again. But I've learned teamwork through this project. I felt teenagers age was the most difficult age in one's life. Because they are teenagers, they start to think, plan, and make what they want and need. And I think teens are the last preparation age to be mature. So I reasoned that if we took on this topic, we could elicit sympathy from the audience.  We tried to approach our intention with the common issues facing teenagers in high school. Which is, the trouble between the students at school. O...

16/Apr  Today, we finally finished our final production. Ruguosier did so many jobs for editing very well. Also, John and I did much detailing, feedback, and played some role in the editing process. We had a hard time, and we spent so many times thinking, talking, and rechecking the product. And also the editing part, where we couldn't meet each other, and other technical issues. But it was really great to work with each other. We spent many times discussing different things about our theme, story, and whole planning process. So we did not have enough time to film and edit. And also due to one of our members visa runs. But even considering that, we did so many great jobs.

 10/Apr  Today, John and I received the rough final production from Ruguosier. John and I were telling him the details and what we wanted more of.  Ruguosier only edited scenes 1 to 7. But the time was over 2 minutes already. Me and John gave him many feedbacks to reduce the length of the film and also to improve the quality of our film. What I asked for Ruguosier : Increase the clock ticking sound for the library scene. Make the shot a little shorter (back part). Title for shot 1, but subtitle and actress’s name for shot 3 Supermarket Olivia's walking scene looks kind of awkward, so I asked Ruguosier to use fade-in to start Olivia's walking scene (scene 4). Shorten Olivia's walking scene for the supermarket scene (scene 4). Shorten shot 1 a bit (like 2 seconds)    (it will stay on the screen for a while even if we make them shorter). Reduce the exposure for scene 2. Kid’s noise from shot 2 to shot 3 (first shot 3): make the sound f...

05/Apr  Today, me and John tried to work on soundtracks while Ruguosier was away traveling. We couldn’t think of much other than things written in our shot list since we weren’t the ones to handle the editing process, so we decided to send a document to Ruguosier to help him while editing. We briefly went through the audio section written in the shot list, and we added some concise details to give some kind of idea of how each scene was depicted. For the first two scenes, we will use one continuous sound and use L-cut in order to fuse two scenes together. Only after the ending of shot 2 will there be a bell ringing sound, indicating the location of the school. In shot 3, we will use a simple and clean soundtrack (maybe) that helps the audience concentrate on Grace’s facial expression more, and the music will gradually get louder until it stops at the moment where it changes to the next scene. The next scene is the supermarket scene; diegetic sound with natural sounds of the environ...

1/Apr  Today, we couldn't meet each other. But we did not have enough time to finish and confirm everything, so we met in chat and did some discussions together. Firstly, I have shared a drive that contains the confirmed shots. Unless we shot the scenes on my phone, I needed to choose to confirm each shot and share it. And I named all the films according to their scene numbers. I have reminded Ruguosier for shot 9 to crop out some edges to make a medium-closeup shot. We started to think about our background sound effects and music. Because Ruguosier found out, we cannot use more than three files from the website that we were planning to use and need to be paid. So maybe we need to find another free music website. Also, we needed to rethink the background sound because some of the shots included a lot of extra noise and unwanted sound. John and I were discussing Shot 7 as well. Because of shot 7, we were planning to use the cross-cut shot (separate the scene into two pieces) at firs...

28/Mar  Today, me and John had free time at the same time. But Ruguosier was having a class at that time. So me and John confirmed and checked the locations for the study area. We were thinking to use a library or cafeteria, but we made the shoot for scene 6, Grace's scene, and it looked good, so we decided to use them as a sample or the actual film video. I was also suggesting including the slow clock ticking sound for shot 6 to show how Grace got bored and how the time felt so slow to her. We also took scene 2, the school campus scene. Kids were playing, and Grace walked behind them intentionally. This scene will continue to the next scene with Grace walking on the school campus or corridor. And we also heard that Ruguosier is leaving us on April 2 for his visa run. Scene 2 Scene 6 29/Mar Today, we cast a different actress in Olivia's role. Because Olivia's character was very sick and could not come to school for 2–3 days, Even our media studies teacher suggested we chang...