Category Archives: Tutorial

Advice on Brief 4

Posted on by

Last week, Rachel made some suggestions for how we could best progress with our final project brief.

  • Make sure that everyone is asking the same questions of the texts they are analysing (this prompted us to create a list of 3 questions to focus our work)
  • Keep the focus narrow so you can increase the depth of the work
    • Take out side ideas – remixing, Space Odyssey
    • Left with: Texts > Adaptations > Romeo & Juliet
  • Extra ideas for looking at Romeo & Juliet
    • Look at soundtracks separately from the films as this is a whole different medium
      • E.g. original soundtrack composed for West Side Story
    • Book of West Side Story

This advice was helpful for us as it gave us a better idea of the direction we needed to go in for our brief and helped us clarify in our heads the work we still needed to complete.

The coming week…

Posted on by

The next week will be busy in terms of working towards completing a polished draft of our media artefact. There are a number of things that still need to be done, which include:

  1. Watching each of the films and productions I will be analysing
  2. Researching academic interpretations and critiques of these texts to cement my own analyses in theory with a sound understanding of the context of each
  3. Answering in depth the three standard questions we are asking of each text
  4. Working on editing the aesthetics of the blog
  5. Adding to the “texts” page of the blog using information from further research
  6. Keeping track of new sources and write brief annotations for each

Aside from the project, I also need to write some more blog posts!

Brief 3 Screening

Posted on by

In Thursday’s Tutorial, we had a mini screening of everyone’s portraits. Once again I was taken aback by how different everyone’s work was even though we were all given the same brief. I think that says a lot about the range of creative people and ideas in our class.

The following are the notes I made on the portraits created by my group-members.

Ali:

  • Yellow: loved the opening and closing titles with the casual conversation and subtitles (looping back tied it all together too), 
  • Red: subtitles a signature for Ali’s work
  • Black: I didn’t always understand the connection to found footage (bright-coloured cartoon towards the end)

Gloria:

  • Yellow: Comedic, interesting connections between animals and subject (creative take on the concept of a portrait), subject’s actions and the filters on the shots matched up well with found footage clips
  • Red: felt a little sci-fi mixed with the wild
  • Green: could lower the opacity to see the shot of the animal and your friend at the same time
  • Black: the planes seemed out of place amongst everything else (have subject mention this in the interview/voiceover to make it clear)

Jack:

  • Yellow: there was a great integration of original and found footage, pacing was good
  • Red: the black and white film created a very personal atmosphere, felt closeness to the subject
  • Black: music volume was a bit too high, so sometimes it was hard to hear the speaking

I’m also really thankful to my group for the feedback I received, both good and bad, because it gave me a clearer look at how my work was received, which I could then compare to my goals for the project.

  • Yellow: found images focused on what the subject was talking about, sled footage was dark (symbolically representative of the traumatic experience), colour balance was good (not too harsh or cold), sound levels edited well, subject looked natural in the shots (not like she was trying hard to avoid looking at the camera), cuts between handheld and tripod cameras worked well
  • Green: show more about subject’s interests and hobbies (mixed opinions: another group member said they liked how everything was cut down and stripped away to something bare – ons story)

On a final note, I also particularly enjoyed Daniel’s portrait of his younger brother. The vibe of the video was very aspirational and the closeness between Daniel and his subject was evident in his brother’s demeanour, which is so important. The content was interesting listening to his brother talking about his dreams of becoming a music producer, and the video was edited together well.

 

Techniques for Project Brief 3

Posted on by

In our tutorial for week 6, Rachel went through some basics about coverage and sound recording to help us with the technical aspect of Project Brief 3.

Coverage

  • Interview
    • Camera setup: master camera (see the whole scene), additional cameras focus on specific aspects of the scene
  • Going about daily business
  • What’s going on in the environment
  • Close-ups of eyes, hands, etc. demonstrating a person’s subconscious behaviours

Sound Recording

  • Simplest form – changes in air pressure that changes depending on spatial orientation
  • Sound vs. Noise
    • Sound: intentional, public, specifically listen to it
    • Noise: unintentional, surrounds us
  • Hearing vs. Listening
    • Hearing: surrounds us, may try to block it out
    • Listening: intentional, pay attention, specific source
  • 3 main types of sound (all influenced by our own perceptions):
    • Music
    • Speech
    • Sounds
  • Space
    • 3-dimensional (think about depth, breadth, height)
    • Gain perspective by listening to the sound (decipher where the sound was recorded, the distance of the recording device/microphone from the sound source, how the sound was recorded – type of microphone, sound/noise ratio)
  • Reverb: multiple reflections of the same sound – direct and reflected sound
  • Signal sound should be loud in relation to the noise – largely dependent on the microphone used to record and the environment where the sound was recorded
  • Microphones
    • Dynamic – common, cheap, frequency not great
    • Condenser – much more sensitive, better signal-to-noise ratio)