AICE Media Studies

 POST-GAME INTERVIEW  QUESTION 4: How did you integrate technologies- software, hardware and online - in this project?

  COOKING VID BEFORE POST-GAME INTERVIEW  QUESTION 3: How did your production skills develop throughout this project?

  GAME WARM UP  QUESTION TWO: How does your product engage with audiences AND how would it be distributed as a real media text?

 PRE-GAME INTERVIEW  QUESTION 1: How does your product use or challenge conventions AND how does it represent social groups or issues?

  Here's my final project! There were some changes made from the storyboard and some hiccups along the road, but I am more than happy with how it came out in the end. It has been a great time working with my group and this could not have happened without them. Enjoy!

  We got all the feedback that we needed and regrouped. My group and I met up and told each other what the criticism that we got back was. Dylan and I found that we both got feedback based upon the volume of the dialogue. Seeing as multiple sources gave us this feedback, we knew we needed to change this. So, we got to work as quickly as we could. Seeing as the voiceovers needed to be heightened in volume, we made sure to use the proper software in order to raise the volume. The task was simple, since all I had to do was raise the decibels that could be heard from the audio. Cap Cut Has a simple feature for this, simply sliding the ba r. We replayed the edited project and noticed that it did sound a lot better. Thanks to the feedback that we received, we were able to make our project better. Now it was time to move on to other issues that were brought to our attention. The entire group received an overall critique that the film's brightness was too low. I've mentioned thi...

  The project was over, and my group and I thought there was nothing else to do. Until we realized it would be best to get some people to look at our project. My groupmates and I realized it would be best to send it to our peers taking the class and see what they thought. If the feedback was poor, then we would have to make some changes, but if it was good, my groupmates and I could confidently proceed with our project. Everyone in the group sent the video to different people . Dylan sent i t to his A level friends, I sent it to some of my other class friends, Carson showed it to his girlfriend, and Ben showed it to some people in another media studies class period. I received my feedback over text, and was proud to see it was all mostly good. There was some constructive criticism however, and I found that it did help us catch some things I ma y not have been able to catch due to watching the project so much. One thing that one of them mentioned was the volume of the dialogue. T...

  While the project came out good, it would have never been possible without the camera used. My group mates and I decided to separate ourselves from the others. We knew everyone else would be using their iPhone cameras for their projects. We wanted to differentiate ourselves, so I took the old Nikon camera I had and got to work. The camera may have been old, but it still made sure to provide great quality . The entire film came out looking much more cinematic than if we had taken any shots on iPhone. You can notice the difference in the first couple seconds of the project, The first scene with the butter sizzling on the pan was shot by the Nikon, Me opening the fridge was shot on the phone. The Nikon camera has many different features that allow ed for filming to be flexible. The feature that we found ourselves using the most was the l ive view option . Instead of only being able to look through the little peephole, The Nikon camera had a live view option which enabled the ent...

  The production process was long and rewarding. My group and I had many different areas of aspects that we focused on, one that we didn't know was so important was deciding on the location. Seeing as we were going with a suspense project , we decided that the locations needed to play towards the tones. We knew that anywhere would work as long as the story was strong enough and we had the right idea. Even though the location c ould be used in different ways depending on what it was , w e decided on having common places of location. This would make filming e asier, since everywhere would be easier to film at and get to. When me and my group were deciding on what the actual locati ons we would film at would be, we hit a roadblock. In between my group members and I, we disagreed on the most important locations to have in the film. I wanted to have a scene in a movie theater, even though it would be a harder one to film. I felt that a movie theater would play an important ...

  Writing the script was a fun process during production. While there is another blog titled “Script ” , this blog stated the script that was going to be used. It did not explain the process or factors that went into making it. To make the script, my group and I decided it would be best if we all met up together. We all got together, went to the gym, got food, and then went to Dylan's house. Here we went over the basic plot that we had come up with and we started brainstorming on what would sound best in the movie. The whole process took around an hour and a half since we were all gathered outside together and focused solely on the script. Dylan had some ideas, but I thought that they sounded a little bit corny, so we decided to compromise and meet in the middle of some of the dialogue. Carson and Ben also had some good insight on things we should say, so we took their ideas, and we all elaborated, making the dialogue fit best with everything. W e made s ure to keep the fu...

In the past, my group and I have always used Cap Cut as our main source of editing. When it came time to start editing, we knew we were going to use Cap Cut . There had been a problem when we first started, however, as I've mentioned in past blogs . The US was going to ban Cap Cut , and they did. Use of Cap Cut in America was banned for around a week which frightened my group. Luckily, we still had not begun editing, so this was not a stopping point. My group and I just chose to use Cap Cut because it is the easiest and most diverse software there is for free . For one, the software's import and export features made it super easy to put in the clips and audio we needed. For the clips, all we had to do was drag the files from our File Explorer into the app. The clips were then put into CapCuts “library ”, And we're made easy to browse through. The same process happened with the audio. We would import it using MP3 from whatever website we found the copyright free a...

 As editing continued, the process that went easier and results came. When we all came together, we found that we were able to have more fun editing and get things done quicker. This would have been the preferred way to edit from the start if our schedules didn't interfere. Anyway, we capitalized on the moment we did have and decided to tackle the harder aspects. These harder aspects consisted of the color grading, making everything fit the wanted aesthetic, and playing around with the lighting. To go over the color grading part of the editing, it was a little bit harder than first expected. For one, each scene had different lightings since we did not use professional lighting gear for the movie, instead relying on surroundings. This meant there would have to be adjustments depending on each clip, in order for them to properly fit the vibe we were shooting for. To do this, and to get the darker vibe we were looking for, brighter scenes would have their exposure turned down, along w...

 The editing for this project went around the same as it did for the other projects. The first part of the editing went pretty smoothly, the part where I had to compile all the clips together and transfer and organize them from the camera into the software's they went into. We did hit a roadblock during the very beginning of the editing phase however, since we had planned to use CapCut to edit this project, but new laws/contracts were passed in the U.S which banned the usage of the software. This frightened my group and I as this would be our main editing software going into this project, luckily for us, the issue was quickly resolved and everything was able to go according to schedule. For the actual editing portion of the project, the organizing/combining of the clips was a tedious process, as we had multiple takes and each one on the camera was labelled something like, "DCS_1023", which made it harder to read the files from one another, also making it harder to keep tr...

 Filming continued to go smoothly as we went along, but this time it was different. In the past, we would film everything we needed to in one day or one night, most likely because those projects were shorter than the others. This project was around 2 minutes long, meaning we would not be able to film everything on one day, especially since our schedules now are much more packed. The beach scene was kind of hard to film, since it was difficult finding an area where we could make the car pass by and then get Dylan (stalker) to disappear with the car. For one, filming the shot was hard due to glare from the sun, once Carson realized this, we made sure to switch sides so that the scene would come out fine. Filming was also hard since we needed to make sure to not get anyone who didn't want to be on camera in frame, respecting their privacy. The beach is a busy place, especially right by the water, so getting the right angle and filming point was a little tricky. There was also a lot of...

Starting off this project, my group and I had some difficulties along the way, the most prevalent one being finding a date when we were all free. This impacted the filming portion quite a bit since we all needed to be together when filming for this specific project. Our schedules all crossed paths and were not aligning due to us having work, sports, academic commitments, and so forth.  Nonetheless, we were able to find some dates to film and got it done. Starting from the start, the first storyboard scenes were the easiest and nicest to film, as they were indoors with controlled lighting and gave us more room for creativity. With Carson being our cameraman, he did a good job at capturing different angles and positioning the characters to be in proper positioning for the title credits. When filming the dishwashing scene, it was important that the camera stayed away from the water, as if it got too close, the camera could ha...

  Scene 1: Camera opens with a birds eye view showing butter dropping on top of pan Scene 2:  Camera transitions to black after a swoosh or fade away and music begins to play Scene 3:  Camera is positioned inside of fridge, it is black, then fridge opens and shows character reaching in, pulling out eggs. Fridge closes and title shows Scene 4:  Cuts to show egg cooking, from a different angle now, TBD when filming Scene 5:  Low angle from position of phone on counter, man is out of focus but phone is in focus, Contact name of “friend” calling will be another title sequence Scene 6:  POV shifts to the man now clenching his phone between his head and shoulder as he finishes cooking eggs, dialogue will commence between him and his friend. Scene 7:  Over the shoulder shot of man grabbing plate, transitions to him sitting down and another title comes on screen Scene 8:  Camera shows the man washing his plate after he is done eating his food, showin...