Author Archives: weiyunsoo

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Week 5a – Inner Thoughts: Lecture with Paul

  By weiyunsoo • September 1, 2015

creativity is not just raw talent but through experience and exposure to the art…

My perspective on trying to BE “creative” has been all wrong. I wouldn’t say it’s a mistake but I would say that I have been looking in the wrong direction.

We had a little film discussion with Paul today. He showed a few film clips and what we as media students should consider. I was exposed to lighting techniques that I have never thought of before. I could not tell whether it was practical to take during dawn or dusk. I could not even tell that the characters or even animals’ colour or appearance has to be considered to make the shot aesthetically pleasing.

This understanding of years of experience is what makes the films a “grade A” film. When Paul mentioned about collecting a bank of film shots or scenes that might inspire you or make you go “wow I need to know how they did this”, I thought back to how I sat and watch films. I realise every time I exit the cinema, I am already discussing with my friends my favourite shots or scenes but I never keep track of those scenes. They are usually forgotten. Now that I think about it, the best way to learn is going back to the inspirations that got me excited and to try and reconstruct them. My previous studio, Online Video Experiment, we went small and specific on an online video by reconstructing and recreating our case studies.

 

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A Photo and A Caption

  By weiyunsoo • August 16, 2015

I feel that I might be taking baby steps in this initiative work as compared to my peers but recently (since the start of this year, actually), I have been using my Instagram page as a platform for my creative ideas. When I take a good picture, I would edit them in the way I feel that would set the mood and then I would write a short prose for the picture (along with useless hashtags that should be ignored). Plus, I love framing it in 16 by 9 (anamorphic format, I think…).

EXAMPLE ONE

EXAMPLE ONE

This shot was taken when I was at a resort in Langkawi. I stood by the balcony of the cafe and I felt like I finally escaped the hustle and bustle of the the busy city life and felt relaxed. I used that to reflect and created a small character based on what I felt at that moment and wrote that prose. In a way, I had subconsciously followed the “create a character profile then write a story” style as practiced for Task 4A. I find this method more effective in trying to write a story. It helps you put yourself in the character’s shoe and find out how the protagonist / antagonist would react or feel towards the situation.

EXAMPLE TWO

EXAMPLE TWO

In this, I went for a more comedic punch. I felt I had to dramatically set up the mood and end it with a punch line. My friends and I have this problem where we can’t decide where to eat most of the time and so I thought it would be more relatable to end it with that (very pun-ny).

 

 

I have always been lacking in the creativity side so I thought that reading more stories as well as trying to conjure up short heartfelt proses might help cultivate and store a bank of ideas in my head or if I forget them, I can always go back to my Instagram for ideas. The pictures are to practice my cinematography and composition for camera angles and the short proses for my story ideas. I found my weakness even before the studios started. As I mentioned before, I chose this studio to challenge myself to get creative and understand the aspect of scriptwriting in more details. When the first class exercise came, reality hit me like a brick swung in full force for my head. I had trouble even coming up with a simple idea for the scriptwriting exercise. I literally went towards the most cliche story. It was embarrassing…

As I said, I may be taking baby steps but my tactic in improving is with photo essays or with short proses to compliment my pictures. Everyone has to start somewhere, so hopefully my next initiative post would have more impact to reflect on.

 

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Week 4 – Back to the Scripts

  By weiyunsoo • August 15, 2015

It’s been an exciting week! Unfortunately there was a last minute cancellation of class on Monday so I used that time to review my work during week 3 and export it out. Later in the day, I received an email on my task for that week – characterisation practice. We were to create a profile for two characters, put them in any one of the scenarios given and create a synopsis of the story. I went with the idea in mind of twins whose personalities are similar (with tiny differences). I created a twin brother who fears for his own life when up against his scary sister when she gets mad. A short profile of the characters with a tiny example:

 

1. Shane
Shane is a tall and attractive person, who has the typical “i-dont-care” attitude. He is clean and well kept. He loves to wear baggy clothing, an extreme gamer (and a competitive one at that), and eats twice the amount of a normal human but never gains weight. He loves reading novels despite being a sporty person as well.

He is aloof and quiet. His face usually shows no emotions but when he accidentally broke one of his sister’s precious glassware, he was stricken with fear. The one thing he fears most, is a grumpy, “all-hell-breaks-loose”, angry twin sister after his life.

2. Sarah
A calm and collected person. Just like her twin brother, she has this elegant and sophisticated feel but in reality, she is an extreme klutz. Her mature face looks like she has never smiled even once before. She has long hair and well-dressed all the time.

She loves to read books, all types of novel genres. She loves snacking and if anyone touches her food, she goes into “hell” mode (mostly passive-aggressive but really scary). She would make the smallest problems into a life or death situation.

I think my influence on reading plenty of manga comics and Japanese anime is quite evident when I write these profiles. I had even envisioned Shane struggles to tell his sister that he had “accidentally” eaten her last cookie from the cookie jar. She calmly reads a book while Shane sits at the other end of the sofa fidgeting as he stutters his confession. The idea had hit me that I had to write down a draft script. I had imagine the monologues happening as well.

Screenshot of "The Last Cookie"

Screenshot of “The Last Cookie”

For more on the Task 4A, click here.

 

Moving on to the next studio class on Thursday, we were grouped into four groups and work on the Creative Writing students’ scripts. We were to shoot exactly as the script said to figure out whether it was workable, or if it was really suitable to be shot in that way. The difficult part of writing a script is you would not know if it could be possible to be shot in the way you envisioned it to be. Sometimes when you shoot, the writers have to do some changes on the spot to capture the shot. So, this time it was definitely a challenge if we cannot capture the way the writers envisioned it to be shot. Lucky for us, the script was short and simple and in a single location. It was workable because it relies on the character’s style of reaction and their way of delivering the dialogues. The group I was in had no problem following the script. There were no major changes in the script.

 

Overall, in the process of being put through the different stages of production, it kept me on my toes to understand the various tasks that had to be done in a production. This whole studio was to understand the filming aspect to enhance the writing skills. As I mentioned before, it is definitely difficult to sit and write the script without knowing whether it could be shot in that specific way you are thinking of. Being exposed to the technical aspect helps you learn the camera angles and the cinematography. I believe that if I expose myself more to the technical area, I would start thinking my camera angles and scenes in my head and I can write scripts that could give a closer representation of what a camera could capture. In editing, it can help me find different perspectives of framing the camera shots as well. Hence, I think every aspect of the production stages are equally important so this studio is helping me diversify myself to be able to write a screenplay type of script.

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Week 3 – Editing Week

  By weiyunsoo • August 6, 2015

This week was more focused on editing from our exercise from week 2. On the first studio session, we were given a lengthy set of instructions on how to operate the media server and where to save our projects to prevent any loss. I was barely keeping up with the rules (my brain processes things rather slowly in the mornings). Thankfully, I had the step by step sheet to refer to when I was doing it on my own the last hour of class. On Thursday, we were randomly grouped and learned the ropes of using the media server storage and how to save our projects and be able to access it anywhere in the editing suites.

I had finished my rough cut on Monday, it was short, simple and as stated in the storyboard we came up with last week. I was suppose to analyse and try to understand how I can better my scriptwriting by being able to visualise the scene coming together with the shots. A few mistakes I found while editing were:

1. I had to be wary of our background – Our bags were in the shot and it was not suppose to be there.

2. I had to make sure there was no eye contact with the camera- there were no shots that were supposed to be looking into the camera.

3. The script had very little storyline to play with – we could not use more camera angles.

Besides the edit itself, I was teamed up randomly with other peers and they gave me an insight on how they edit. We spent the first hour to refresh our memory on using Premiere Pro since one of my group member, Bianca was unable to attend the Monday class. We sped through everything as she learnt quickly and managed a rough cut within that hour. Since she was on a different group last week, I had a different perspective on their style of shots and how they created a dramatic effect for a suspense genre. The way they used the cast looking straight into the camera was very engaging. Next was a team member, Darren where he had a different style of editing with the six shots we had. I figured, just because we had six shots does not mean it was used for only six times as it can be cut back and forth, especially during dialogues. I had done straight to the point, conversation after conversation whereas Darren had created a tension between the mob boss and the two children. I loved that aspect (as expected from a creative writing student!).

I think creating a brainstorming session and giving out ideas during editing session can help me visualise and copy some styles into my next writing exercise. The most valuable lesson I got from this was that there are plenty of ideas out there so we have to group together to gather ideas from different perspectives.

 

Here is my video of my rough cut! Exercise 2B

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Initiating / Prompting Myself to Write!

  By weiyunsoo • July 31, 2015

Before this studio started, I have been trying out my creative skills on writing a script. I had little knowledge on writing scripts so it was a struggle. This was my first try on scriptwriting:

Screen Shot 2015-07-31 at 8.31.17 PM

 

It was terribly written, as you can see my tenses were all over the place. I definitely did not know about the certain rules you need to adhere to when writing the ACTION section. It was confusing but I managed to get the gist of it when Jasmine described the rules. As I practice more, I am pretty sure I will get used to the format. As I mentioned in my previous post, I lack creative ideas to come up with stories or plots that are more unique and different compared to the overused plots. I am a fan of minimalistic film production and more intense, deep conversations. Moreover, with the lack of creativity, I have trouble creating a causal effect and completing the script.

The newly improved script, using the tips from the first class scriptwriting exercise during week one! (it’s not the same plot, by the way) CLICK HERE please! By the end of this studio, I hope to complete a script that could be ready for shooting a short film and add it to my portfolio.

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Week 2 – Continuing the Prose

  By weiyunsoo • July 31, 2015

This week’s task was more of making a more interesting short the short prose that the creative writing students had filmed. We were given tasks to write any interesting ideas that popped into our heads. For example, how would you act out the certain dialogue that was used or how to improve on the stage blocking. This exercise helped me open up my eyes on different possibilities of acting our a certain line from the short prose. I chose the “in danger” prose. When the mob boss said “let’s just say I’m taking care of business” I could imagine the mob boss being mysterious and they did not show his/her face at all or maybe an angrier approach of reciting that line because the minions did not trust him. Endless possibilities on the idea of filming and framing the shots.

On Thursday’s workshop, I had a valuable insight on scriptwriting. Stacey, our collaborative lecturer, had given me a few tips on scriptwriting. We had a glimpse on the script of Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver. The most important thing to keep in mind when writing a script is the tenses. Scripts are discarded the minute they see wrong tenses in describing the actions. The ‘to be’ verbs are usually disregarded. For example, we are not to use ‘is striding’ as ‘strides’ would be the proper tense to use in describing the action. The reason is because film catches the action as it is and not what would happen. I find this intriguing because when I think of describing an action I would use ‘to be’ tenses because I would be explaining to the casts how we would portray the action. A lesson to remember!

Another important tip on writing the action section of the script is to describe only the action that we can see while filming. If you do a background description of the character, it is useless because viewers can’t visualise the description. The action section cannot be about the psychological aspect of a character either because no one can understand what is happening to the character unless a monologue is used. Also, no use of the pronoun ‘we’, because the viewers are not to be mentioned in the script.

A great idea on improving one’s skill on scriptwriting is to be able to spot these mistakes on other scripts. This can give me a visualisation and understanding on the rules of scriptwriting and not make the same mistakes. A great tip to improve my scriptwriting!

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Week 1b – Wait… Filming now?

  By weiyunsoo • July 23, 2015

To think that we would be stuck in class learning more about writing and developing our skills on scriptwriting for another two weeks or so before getting out there and start applying in the field, I was definitely wrong! So today we were finally meeting with the creative writing students to collaborate and film our “homework task” that we media students did. We had a crash course on filming angles and movements. Then we were sent out to shoot our script. It was funny how everyone threw in ideas to replace some of the props we could not find in uni that we completely changed our script.

Overall, the creative writing students were a blast to work with. I had a chance on acting this round and I was slightly intimidated by how quick my group mates could get into their given roles. I can put acting right next to scriptwriting as my weakest link in the production. We had a few setbacks because we had no props or locations that would fit our script so we had to change a lot in our script. The spontaneous ideas when we found our location made the film more interesting.

Here is my script based on the prose my group mate, Michael, had written in class.

WRITING FOR FILM #1

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Week 1a – A Little Prose Exercise

  By weiyunsoo • July 20, 2015

Just to get the workshop going, we were given some exercise on writing scripts. We went through the script template for the first hour and tried to create a short script in five minutes just to get used to the template. Later, we were given a task to write a prose after picking out a character and an action from the bag. I had a soldier called Brody and my action was to cut the bicycle lock. Weird combination… But I went through with the story and as cliche as it was I shared it with my group mates.

Writing scripts made it difficult to write and it was time consuming. I realised after five minutes, I had only just started on the first character dialog. It was a little frustrating to figure out the story while keeping in mind of the script template. Creating a prose was a little simpler compared to writing in script format. It allowed me to write down my ideas first before translating it into the script format. I was lacking in creativity, hence my terrible story that thousands of movie plots were based around that idea as well. At least I tried…

This script format needs more time to get used to. I will have to practice until I am used to the format so that it would not be such a hassle to refer back to the templates from time to time, and then letting your ideas slip out of your mind. I found out my peers had far more interesting plots compared to mine so I should learn and read more stories to try to develop a better story the next time. This should be my next personal task to improve!

 

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Welcome back to Semester TWO Studio Sessions!

  By weiyunsoo • July 20, 2015

It’s the first week of uni and I am starting out my second semester for Year 2 studio workshops! This semester I chose a film writing studio because I want to work on my weakest link which was creativity and scriptwriting. It is called “Writing for Film , Filming for Writing” and I shall just call it “Film Writing (FW)” for short. I have had my fair share in filming and editing and now it is time to work on some pre-production. I can already foresee the struggle I will face throughout the semester but with group work, I think I will be able to pick up some ideas and maybe some tricks from my peers. So excited! Can’t wait!

The studio aim fits my goals nicely because I am only learning scriptwriting which would prove to be useful when I am in a production team. This studio aims to develop a competent technique (the best way) to compliment and strengthen the filming process. It gives me a sense of repetitive practice to get used to the correct format of the script that is used in the media industry. This studio is (finally) matching my expectation. Let’s just say I was a little surprised (not in a very bad way) with my previous studio as it was definitely NOT what I thought it would be.

The first workshop session on Monday was done and we were put into random groups temporarily to brainstorm ideas and gives me a chance to learn from my peers. ANDDDD…. we got “homework task” already! And it’s due the next workshop (meaning this coming Thursday!) Time to get out of holiday mode and back to study mode.

Ciao!

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Week 13 – My Portfolio Essay

  By weiyunsoo • June 7, 2015

The aim of this studio, Online Video Experiment, was pretty vague to me at first. I thought we would be learning to create videos that were made online, just creating another YouTube video. I can remember my first studio session, an early Monday morning class where I had to drag myself out of bed to get myself ready for the nine-thirty morning class. Seth had explained the studio outline to us and all I could remember it was one confusing mess with the various parts.

 

Looking back at the twelve weeks of five hours weekly sessions, I can proudly say that I definitely learnt plenty – went in with a blank mind (probably the blurriest as well) and came out with more knowledgeable information (but still a blur) about online videos. Two weeks passed and I was still mulling over the question “What is Online Video?” and we had discussions over our case study presentations on what we thought was an online video. This studio is all about experimenting where not making the right decisions are acceptable.

 

PROJECTS

My case study was these group of independent filmmakers, Wong Fu Production, who created a web series, Away We Happened, in collaboration with AT&T. I started breaking down this case study with my set of criterias to evaluate what an online video is. There definitely was not right or wrong answer but I could tell by the way I presented in front of my peers that my analysis might have been a little shallow. It was the third week into this studio session, so I was definitely learning from my mistakes. Seth had asked a set of questions and it began prompting me to keep challenging on analysing my thoughts more. For example, what element in that web series did I like about it? The answer was the interactivity and participation of it. I liked how they allowed the audience to choose the next plot and vote for it. These were the type of analysis this studio was looking for and I failed to bring forward to the table during my presentation. This experience made me learn that there are more to analyse not just the surface and I should sit and give more thought about it before thinking everything is settled.

View: all project ONE posts

 

Project two was a group work. I was one of the last few to find a partner. Seeing as one of my peers, Peter, was doing something on interactivity, I decided to ask him if he could work with me since we were both heading in the same direction. We ended up using his case study of the 89 steps documentary. One of our biggest problem was that we were thinking too far ahead, being creative and trying to produce a video with our own narratives. Clearly we did not understand the criterias of project two. We were supposed to pick out elements from our case study and create something with that element in mind. We chose a difficult theme by using interactivity and participation. It was a challenge but I definitely did not regret choosing this path because it only made me explore more to understand and to learn from the ideas.

View: all project TWO posts

 

Project three was probably the most fun I had in creating the sketches. It was due to the fact that I had a clearer idea of what we were going for. We had narrowed down to using first person perspective and trying it out on a narrative and non-narrative structure. As our probe for project three was about using first person perspective and how it is conveyed through the different video tools and services. We had to make seven sketches and I exhausted every way of editing the clip. It was a long take and I didn’t know if I had to cut them or should I leave it as a long take. The different platforms we used and suddenly an idea came while I was reviewing the films on the YouTube Doubler parallel narrative. In between working on my number of sketches I posted a blog post on my work progress. It was definitely exciting to see it come together. I thoroughly enjoyed this project, learning about narratives and non-narratives, seeing how non-narratives did not work well with the first person perspective and how it failed. It was an experiment nonetheless.

View: all project THREE posts

 

Project four had gave me a panic attack. I was stuck for a period of time and I could not get any ideas from all the little experiments on the past videos, trying to change the timings, reversing the shot and so on. It was stressful and worrying as I could not come up with any ideas while others had a few sketches in mind. Thankfully, after a few feedback sessions (and constant worrying), I managed to pull out a few narrative ideas. It definitely is a work in progress but I can tell it was a good prototype that might start a new style of online video.

View: all project FOUR posts

 

SKETCHING

This has been the center of attention in this entire studio (besides reflections and presentations). Sketching is creating quantity of videos, experimenting and researching on different elements and aspects you picked out from your case study. I agree with this technique of practice-based research. In order to understand that certain technique, you need to reconstruct and recreate that technique. By doing a number of sketches only helps you understand how it was made, why it was used and what it means to the audience. Sketching was a new style of research to me. When I first started, especially my project two, it was a mess.

There are three stages of what I learnt in sketching. The first was simple innovative sketching where we experiment and making new discoveries by large quantity. Meaning, we create more sketches to discover more. Then comes speculative sketching, where you think about the form of the film more than the contents of the film. In a way, giving a simple plot  and work out it’s form. For example, what would happen if I use this plot in a non-narrative style with this online service? (It’s that kind of form). Lastly, the prototyping where you create a proper final prototype of what could be your next online video. These stages were important in discovering the various techniques and styles that went through before coming out with a few (passable) sketches. It makes you reconstruct things you have seen before.

 

PRESENTATION

Speaking up in front of an audience has always been a little terrifying for me. I get the nerves when I go up to speak. When I get nervous, I tend to choke on my words and forget to say the important things which results of not being able to convey my message across properly and the audience fail to understand my concepts. Being up front with another person did calm my nerves, however, that did not stop me from forgetting the important ideas again. As I mentioned during my reflection for Week 5, I failed to time my presentation and because I was so nervous, I did not deliver my speech well and that wasted my time as I went around the bush. Peter had also went out of time, leaving me the last 2 minutes for me to explain my sketches. Seth had mentioned that project one was just the warm up for presenting and I believe the more presentations I made the better. Results were shown as my presentation in Week 8 for the panel of judges for project three was better than I had expected it to be. The practice had definitely paid off because I felt a little less nervous as I delivered my speech well (with the help of my cue cards on my phone).

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Overall, this studio has shown me a different light on the works of online videos. It was definitely not what I had expected online videos to be as I took for granted the knowledge of online videos are solely based on entertainment when there are many elements to take into consideration and the reasons why it was catered for services online only. This studio had a fair share of theoretical and hands-on learning experience. Practice-based research has proven, to me, the best technique of understanding the piece of work we are experimenting on. I intend on using these techniques in the near future as well. As a media practitioner, this would be the steps I would choose when I want to be more innovative and creative. Just like the video on innovative sketching, having fun and just making a huge quantity of sketches can bring about a new discovery and from there, we will learn from it.

 

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