Mind Mapping- Key to success

I always wondered how do the great directors like Peter Jackson, Spielberg and Spike Lee get to narrate the story in a such a beautiful way and hooks the audience till the end. The answer to my question was ‘mind mapping’. In today’s class, We all were introduced to the concept of mind mapping and we had to structure a story by using graph and the importance of character in numbers.

I found out that before bursting into the script, one must narrow down the key plot acts in the story as it helps set the mood and tone of the story. One common element that i discovered was that in all of the major blockbuster movies, the highest peak point of a story is usually towards end and the lowest peak is in the middle as what the lecturer said that the character is developing in these stages and thus the reason we as audience are intrigued into the motion of the story (keen to find out what will happen next).

This is how what normally a graph would look like for a good story, unless the character is interesting enough to hold the audience.

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And they viewed it

Today we all looked at each other’s Brief 3, and had to give some feedback and criticism. So here is what my mates told me regarding my video.

Emma:Really like the opening title, it gives a hint of what it is about to come and hooked me up to see what was coming. Here is a link to her video :

Backpacking and Other Traumas from Emma Armstrong on Vimeo.

Jack: The opening shot is fresh, but the rest of the video quality seemed low, other than that, the narration and the link between the found footage is strong.
Here is a link to his video:

TAHJ from Jack on Vimeo.

Gloria: The whole brief shows an immersive experience of the character and that the found footage matches his story.
here is a link to her video:

Someone from Gloria Tanuseputra on Vimeo.

Dylan: He liked the use of subtitles as it shows the roots from where the character belongs and the juxtaposition of found footages and the narration were ironic.
Here is a link to his video:
*Waiting to be uploaded*

Project Brief 3


I choose my cousin’s friend as my subject for brief 3 project. The successful part of my work would be the editing. I used a simple voice over narrative structure and observational style approach in my work. So editing had to be simple cuts and less transitions, By using less transitions the story flows smoothly and doesn’t feel dragged. With the voice over and the overlay of footages that I found from online really gelled in together and gave a clear meaning to what my subject was trying to communicate. The most problematic aspect would be the long interview I had with him. I had a 10 minute footage of him speaking. Sure it is easy to chop down a ten minute footage into two but the information that he was providing was vital to him and my project, so I had to clearly choose what to omit and what to add in the final edit version of my brief.

One of the key discoveries I made was during the editing of my project. When I first planned a story board, I was pretty sure that in the final cut i would be using the same footages but interestingly the footages and narration were not linking with each other and thus my story changed during the editing process and I’m pretty much happy with what I achieved in the end. Second discovery was the use of time-lapse. When Fahad mentioned about his work and his coordination with the staff, I was puzzled what to achieve in order for the audience to understand his hard work, so the time-lapse I reckon justifies the meaning that I wanted to achieve.

As I plan to become a documentary filmmaker, punctuality and trust with your subject is really important. Focusing on what I learned regarding collaboration and ethics of that particular environment; should be kept in mind because as a media practitioner, a strong relationship with your subject is required for a great story and with the respect to audience, you do owe them the absolute truth of your story. If you see my project brief carefully, I avoided using non-diegetic sounds, cause I feel they overshadow the important narration in the story.

Signs Everywhere

Yes, it is true, everywhere you see, there are signs. In one of my previous posts, I mentioned the presence of media texts everywhere and that by noticing carefully, we get to analyse the layers of information present in it. Brian talked about semiotics in today’s class. He mentioned key terms of analysis in semiotics namely, Signs, signifier, signified, denotation, connotation, codes, Myth/ideology. Then we had a small class exercise where we tried to signify the images according to our understandings. I discovered that it is really important for a media practitioner to have knowledge of semiotics as I reckon it will help me in the near future and to analyse the same information but with a different perspective to it.

What does a soundwave look like?

heal_frequency
Sound waves exist as variations of pressure in a medium such as air. They are created by the vibration of an object, which causes the air surrounding it to vibrate. The vibrating air then causes the human eardrum to vibrate, which the brain interprets as sound.
In the diagram below, the black dots represent air molecules. As the loudspeaker vibrates, it causes the surrounding molecules to vibrate in a particular pattern represented by the waveform. The vibrating air then causes the listener’s eardrum to vibrate in the same pattern.
loudspeaker-waveform

Photojournalism Pitch and Progressive Images

Title:

Yaree Dangal dee “The bond of our dirt”

Synopsis:
When we think of wrestling we think of entertainment, energy, rivalry and charisma but somewhere along the line there is one thing that as a audience may fail to notice is the bond that the wrestlers have.

There are many forms of wrestling but this documentary will be centered on a folk style wrestling called ‘Pehelwani’. It is a traditional style wrestling in Pakistan and has its root connected with Persian form of wrestling ‘Kushti’.

The story will revolve around a group of wrestlers who come daily to their practice area which is situated in a graveyard in the city of Lahore, Pakistan. Despite the lack of facilities, their mentor ‘Ustad’ provides his couching to students. Regardless being in a same sport and it is based on individual effort, there is no jealousy among the group and it is their bond that provides the joy of watching them perform. This documentary will focus from the preparation of the ‘Akhara'(square ring of dirt on ground) to their relationship, aggression and the excitement that they have in the ‘Akhara’.

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The Sound Drama

In this week’s workshop, we got a hands on experience of Zoom sound recorders. We got to know important key elements in sound recording and that there are actually 4 types of sounds, General sounds, vocals, speeches and noise. We were then divided into groups and went out to record different sounds for the class exercise. As such using the equipment was pretty easy but recording a conversation a metre away was challenging as the ambience sound was kind of overlapping with the sound that Maggie and I were trying to record.

But on the plus side, the ambience sound of water and train came out great. It is really important where you place the mic and perhaps now while I’m writing this post, I realize that is the only reason why we failed in the recording, perhaps i didn’t set it right or maybe the sound levels were not properly done right so we normalized it and it turned out the original recording was far better as the normalized version made the sound clip way loud.

Aspect Ratios- What are they and why are they important?

An aspect ratio is a relationship between the width and height of the image. It is usually shown in this format (W:H) where W is the width of the image and H is the height of the image. For example 4:3 aspect ratio means 4 units is the width and 3 units is the height of the image. The aspect ratios are important because it describes relationship between the main subjects to the sides of the frames and the amount of empty space left around the subject. In today’s world, there are many devices with different aspect ratios so it is important to display your product setting at a certain aspect ratio to make the most of the devices out there.

Reflection- Big Screen- week 5

Nervous? Yes I was nervous when my self portrait was being displayed on screen.The whole perspective changes from your laptop screen to big screen, I wasn’t sure how will the others find it as I felt the sound of my project didn’t worked well but fortunately everyone liked it. They all seemed to get what I was trying to say in that 1 minute video. Watching others work was intriguing, things like time lapse, multiple camera edit and creative use of texts really opened up my mind. I’m sure I might use one of these creative ideas in my next project brief.