In week 1 of Zephyr we go straight into researching Pitch Decks. What they are?, their uses and even seeing an example of a docu series pitch deck in order to deconstruct and critique it for greater understanding. 

My understanding of a pitch deck is used by businesses to try to convince potential clients or investors to work with you. Pitch decks are a presentation or document that helps them learn about the business quickly. It involves explaining tone, target audience and setting, as well as its unique attributes. Its goal is a way of illustrating the creative vision of the proposed project and whether it is viable to be funded and published. 

Our goal this week was to deconstruct and critique the provided pitch deck. We did this by summarising the main points of the provided pitch deck and annotating the provided pitch deck with what the pitch deck was saying, how we could improve it and questions to ask for further deconstruction. Deconstructing the pitch deck allowed us to have a better understanding of what the client wants, their vision and goals, the target audience, core themes and messages, potential challenges we could run into, ways to improve the pitch deck, ways to bring in our ideas and more. 

This week we also learnt the usefulness of AI tools. How we could use them to our advantage but also how to use them properly to assist our learning instead of copying and pasting what we see. One thing that stuck out to me was Seth’s transparency of his use of AI tools, which made me feel welcome to use these tools and acknowledge their help. 

Finally, we got to understand the basics of the FX3 as a powerful video and photo camera. I’ve personally used the FX3 before in previous projects but the video shown in class helped me to understand the camera and its features more. The FX3 was also apart of our AV Kit which we also got to see including a tripod, LEDGO LED Kit, XLR connectors, microphone and lapel mics. 

Week 13 was the week where we got to see our works exhibited on the big screen and on the studio website. This was a great way in understanding ways to promote or showcase our film to make it attractive to our key audience, spy genre fans and young adults. Our synopsis of the film demonstrates a glimpse into Agent Whyte as a ‘bumbling spy’ and a goofy character, connecting to the key concept of having exaggerated characteristics for each character. Agent Whyte’s mission through 2024 helps her discover the ‘bewildering, unpredictable and bustling new world’ and her reactions to each situation. This idea taps into the idea of satire. We hoped to create an experience that the audience could relate to, seeing familiar situations such as an addicted vaper, a tik tok dancer, a coffee connoisseur etc. but also with a comedy spin. I believe that our exhibited work was able to communicate the idea of taking comedy beyond the genre through the techniques mentioned above but most dominantly, genre hybridisation. Combining the comedy and spy genre helped to connect to the interest of our intended audience, help balance tension and humour and demonstrate diverse storytelling. 

Looking forward if we were to continue to work on ‘Rogue’, I would like to improve elements such as creating an in depth storyline that dives deeper into portraying Agent Whyte’s mission and the satirisation of ‘modern’ technologies. This would raise the stakes of Whyte’s mission and make the characters’ struggles feel more meaningful to the audience. In regards to satire, I would expand on the topics and lean more into the message of the scene, not just for entertainment purposes but to provoke reflection or even change. Both these elements would come from having more time to work on the project and a stronger and bigger team. In regards to technical things I would improve our lighting and sound. As there was a tight time constraint, we had to fit our filming days over a few days. There were a few scenes in the film where the sun was coming down but in the next scene it was bright and therefore looked inconsistent. I would designate more time for shooting the scenes while the sun was up to combat this issue. We ran into issues on set in regards to our lapel mics not working and being visible on the actors, making the film look unprofessional and destroying the world that we built. We were able to fix this by using different takes in post production and fixing the sound quality, but for future reference, testing our equipment before filming is more ideal.

‘Operation Superstar’ was an enjoyable watch and stuck out to me because it tackled both the comedy and coming of age genre in such an effortless way connecting it to genre hybridisation. Their use of comedy through characterisation of The Elites or The Rat man are a subtle nod to teenage Melbourne culture, relating it to the theory of satire.  

On the other hand what ‘Situation Tragedy’ did well was to preface their story around the idea of absurdity. Making the caterer place a condom in a cast member’s sandwich without hesitation and openly admitting it to the investigators is breaking the norm and reaching absurdity. I also enjoyed how in pre production, ‘Situation Tragedy’ was able to use the technique of cutting on absurdity. An example is how Arthur believes he is liked by others but it cuts to everyone’s view on Arthur as the worst person on the team. 

Both projects were a treat to watch and seeing how the projects progressed and became reality made me feel more connected and made it personal. 

In engaging with ‘A Case of Scrambled Eggs’ from the Reimagining Crime Club studio. Their film engaged in creating a true crime style documentary. According to the studio’s description, the main idea of their studio was to explore the use of cinematography and sound design in regards to true crime. Aspects that illustrated the ‘A Case of Scrambled Eggs’ team’s engagement with the class were their stylistic choices; dated television overlays over their footage, recreations of the crime, crime scene photos, interviews, a voiceover etc. These elements were successful because it recreates the conventions of a true crime documentary differentiating it to a traditional documentary. In their documentary, when the murder weapons were described, the still image of the candlestick and scarf accompanied with the sound of a camera flash and camera recording overlay appeared. This connects to the key conventions of a true crime documentary but also demonstrates their exploration of sound design and cinematography. Overall, their film is scattered with true crime conventions that are hard to miss which engages well with their studios focus.

Vimeo

Week 7 Reflection

Week 8 Reflection

Week 9 Reflection

Week 10 Reflection

Week 11 Reflection

Final Reflective Essay

The premise of the class is to take comedy, beyond the genre and we achieved this through genre hybridisation, parody and satire as our main source of comedy, in our final media artefact. We were able to establish this through funny dialogue, exaggerated characteristics, situational comedy and satirising modern life. Our intended target audience for Rogue are young adults, mainly Australians and those who are fans of the spy and action-comedy genre. 

Our engagement with genre hybridisation was through the inclusion of secret agents, classifies missions, high tech gadgets eg. time machine, professional attire, with the help of colour grading and dramatic music. Genre hybridisation in our film is ‘a method of increasing the attractiveness of content by combining various elements of different genre patterns and styles’ (Czarnek-Wnuk, 2017), comedy and spy. Therefore engages with the audience by combining the best elements of both genres to create a multifaceted and rich experience.  

Our parody came from exaggerating common spy tropes. As explained by Neil Archer (2016) ‘parody relies significantly on the idea of incongruity’ and utilising this theory helped us make our comedy successful. An example was setting up and understanding the expectation of a ‘big, gold, flames flying out of it’ time machine but in the end ‘undermining such expectations’ (Archer, 2016) to a small button helped in creating humour. 

Satire, defined by Marx and Sienkiewicz (2018) ‘combines play with social or political critique, using wit to attack particular ideas or conventions’, demonstrated through Agent Whyte’s aggressive reaction to a vape, thinking that it’s a weapon or valuable or completely misunderstanding ‘google’ as a feature on a phone and going to ring google at a telephone box. Therefore, the inclusion of modern culture resonates well with our intended younger audience who have come across these experiences or live it.

In week 1, I defined comedy as ‘the art of making some amused or making someone laugh’, I didn’t recognise the techniques required to even acquire laughter, but after taking this class I recognised how complex and multifaceted comedy can be. Now in the media I watch, I constantly find myself thinking about how the piece of media I am consuming creates humour, Is it the performer? The timing of the clips? The context of the joke is being said? Therefore, making me more aware of how I can include comedy into my own works. 

If my group and I were to continue to work on the media artefact there would be many things that could be done to improve. I would allow more time for each of the creative processes. In the writing process, create more in depth storylines and reasoning to raise the stakes of the film. This would mean giving the piece more complexity and depth. Researching more about the 60s, in which Agent Whyte was from, to give a more accurate representation of her mannerisms and the way she would act and react to situations. I would like to have more people working on the project, pre-production, during and post production. This would allow us to get more done in a smaller amount of time. I would also have actors of varying age groups within the piece. As Agent Wolley is Whyte’s senior, she may be considerably older and wiser than Whyte. We also struggled to find people to act as extras, so having more time to ask friends or family around us to come in would’ve been more accurate. One minute detail that I would add is having a gimbal for our camera when on set. This would allow for more swift movements which would help us convey what is needed in the scene. 

Over the semester I got to work both independently and together in a group. Week three was the first time we got to work in a group which I believed was quite rewarding because I had help from my fellow peers to build upon jokes and ideas and further understand the topic for that week, which I struggled with working independently. These few weeks also helped me to develop my feedback skills. Thinking about ways in which to improve our work but also giving constructive criticism on ideas that may not fully follow the criteria of the week’s topic. Working with others also helped with creating groups for the final project, understanding who I worked well with and the vision that they had compared to mine. What I did find difficult was scheduling times to work together to not clash with other classes, work and other activities. Another difficulty was each group member had a different vision and therefore sometimes we had conflicting ideas. As well as getting everything done and submitted on time each week required a lot of communication, but the members that I did work with throughout these three weeks were very communicative which made this process smoother. 

For the final media artefact, what made group work easy was having open communication with each other and having access to the work that was in progress. This meant keeping each other updated through instagram and creating a google drive for scheduling, ideas, brainstorms, contracts etc. Discussing what we were all confident in doing but also what we wanted to do that we haven’t done before. Each member of our group had strengths that we could all learn from. I learnt a lot about camera equipment, how long it takes to film and be on set, the logistics and preparation before shooting, script writing, idea generation and so much more. We did run into a few bumps along the road. A member of the group wasn’t able to attend a few of the filming days and would leave earlier which made the workload on everyone else a little bit harder. Overall, I believe group work was more rewarding than working independently. 

References: 

Czarnek-Wnuk, P. (2017). Hybrid forms of entertainment in the media. Acta Universitatis Lodziensis. Folia Litteraria Polonica, 43(5), 67–78. https://doi.org/10.18778/1505-9057.43.05

Neil Archer, A. (2016). Beyond a Joke: Parody in English Film and Television Comedy. Bloomsbury Publishing. https://doi.org/10.5040/9781350985506

Marx, N., & Sienkiewicz, M. (2018). The Comedy Studies Reader (1st ed.). University of Texas Press. https://doi.org/10.7560/315996

Project Rogue is underway! We were able to dedicate 2 full days and a half days to filming. From what we learnt from the Wednesday the week before, we were able to meet early in the morning and stay till later to get it done. 

On Sunday, we filmed the scene where agent Whyte teleports to 2024 and familiarises herself with all the new technologies of the 21st century. Her curiosity and clumsy nature was able to truly shine through Zoe’s acting. One thing that we had to figure out was making the scenes flow with one another when switching locations. If Agent Whyte left the scene through a door, we had to make sure the next scene was consistent. One shot that I found very fun to do was the dolly zoom, demonstrating Agent Whyte’s feelings of being overwhelming, but shown visually. 

Even though we had a shot list, there was a lot of communication on set on ways we could better portray the action and getting consistent shots but from different angles was very tedious. Some challenges we faced were the lighting changes, as it got later into the day, it got darker. We did try to combat this using a handheld light but also discussing ways to make it better in post production. It also took a little bit longer because we were down a group member but overall the rest of us got more than ¾ of our scenes done. Monday’s filming day was very similar, but learning from experience and getting used to the equipment we were able to work more efficiently. 

The filming process helped me learn a lot about camera work, using microphones, a slate and how it is a collaborative process. The slate is especially useful in the editing process to speed along the process of organising our takes. 

After all the filming was done, we met in the editing suites to start the editing process. We started to rename and pick out which takes worked best. Something to improve on for future projects is reshooting scenes that were out of focus. On set we would review our footage but it would’ve been helpful to have a monitor for another group member to review. Furthermore, constantly checking audio levels and wearing headphones while filming. We found out that one of our lapel mics had some glitchy audio in one of the scenes but ultimately we were able to manipulate it in a way that made the audio useful. 

In Monday’s class, at the presentation and table read we were able to get feedback on how to improve our work and suggestions on what we could do alternatively. 

One piece of feedback from Stacey that helped our work become more cohesive was understanding what era the spy agency and agent Whyte would be from. This would inform the way agent Whyte would act, react and speak. We had already written our script and the language that agent Whyte was using did not match with the 60s, as well as some technologies (eg. revolving doors) had already been invented. An alternative that we thought about was making Whyte travel back in time instead or be from another planet. This was hard because we had most of the draft done and we didn’t have time to do major changes. We ended up researching more about the 60s, changing her language and reactions to situations in 2024 and also leaving it up to the audience to interpret the era. 

Hannah said that there were lots of descriptive words of how the actor should act within the script, which takes away from the reader inferring how the reaction would be, as well as taking away from the acting. Therefore taking this away helps me portray emotions more naturally, instead of being told how to react. 

I was able to make the props that we used in the film. One example was the file which I had lots of fun curating. Taking inspiration from police documents and investigation files from other films informed this creative process. 

After working out the logistics of the film, we were able to finally shoot our film. The filming process was definitely the most tedious process even with all the preparations we did beforehand. Arranging times to film, going to locations, setting up lighting, testing audio levels, changing camera angles etc. Even with Bobby’s printed out shot list and camera angles, it definitely took a few takes to get the exact one that we all wanted. We all understood from all our experimental sketches that the more angles and takes the better and more room to explore more. Things that did go well was our group’s ability to give suggestions and constructive criticism throughout the process, which helped build upon and improve our overall vision for the film. To improve for Sunday’s shoot I believe we should continue to do many takes and get the technicalities like camera work figured out as fast as possible. 

For this week, the schedule that we drew up in week 7 put us in a position where we had to finalise our draft script. Our group was able to successfully complete this in a timely fashion ready for Monday’s in class presentation. This was achieved well because we would update each other on our progress while doing our assigned tasks and asked and received feedback. Overall, effective communication. 

As Oscar and Chloe are the main writers of the script, the rest of us fleshed out exact ideas that would be within the middle part of our film; the montage. This process made it easier to write up these scenes because we weren’t starting from scratch. This was my first time really writing up a proper script with proper conventions. In previous projects we would write it up, sometimes roughly and even improvise when filming. Script writing made me realise how much planning goes into a project before it is even filmed. Not just this but location scouting, costuming, logistics of the film, preplanned jokes etc.  

We were also able to do a table reading of the opening scenes of our film, to get a better understanding of what the script felt like aloud. This also helped us visualise how the scenes would be acted out and as I would be working as a director and working behind the camera, it helped me picture what angles and shots would work the best with the scenes. 

Once the script was finalised, I worked on the presentation slides. This stage helped me centralise what exactly made our film comedic. The conceptual theories and ideas that were taught throughout the weeks were incorporated into our film such as incongruity, benign violation, parody, genre hybridisation and more.   

Hopefully for next week, once we get the feedback from the panel, we are able to quickly improve our script where needed and get the filming process underway. We have already done location scouting and as a group decided what days are designated to filming. Our timeline is to get most of the filming done in week 10 and get underway with the editing within the middle of week 11. I am definitely nervous to actually be onsite and act in the film but confident that I have a strong group that will support me throughout the process.   

This week my group and I finalised the ideas for our major project. We changed it a bit from last week’s idea but our final decision was more informed and cohesive then when we initially pitched it to the class. Our story would involve an agent who is from another time and era, who time travels to 2024 to go on a secret mission. Their mission, set by their boss, is to catch a rogue agent and along the way experience the day to day experiences we go through. Our work is not intended to be outwardly funny but is a hybridization and satire. Hybridising an action sci-fi movie and satirising the digital age. 

We found out that we needed to create character profiles for each character in our short film. This would help us develop the story and inform the way the character would act and react to the world surrounding them. Our main character would have heightened characteristics like a prim and proper appearance combined with a serious overlay but have childlike innocence when discovering ‘new things’. These things would be rotating doors, vapes, escalators, street crossing sound and more ordinary things. 

My group members were able to start on the script, writing scenes that would be included in the short film. As script writing is not my strong suit, I started some location scouting to best fit the setting of our film. Our sets include a sci-fi office which would work well at RMIT Building 50 with the rounded windows filling the entire exterior. Shadows and light casted through these windows could create an interesting visual. Another sight could be the South Lawn Car Park at University of Melbourne with its dark atmosphere and curved pillars that makes it look very futuristic, perfect for an epic fight scene. 

In the next week or so my group’s goal is to write and almost finalise our scripts ready for filming. I’m concerned our ideas may be ambitious, with all the scenes, settings, props and lines, as well as not meeting the time constraint. Although, this can be solved in post-production by adding or subtracting scenes and I think the more ambitious the more ideas and dedication to the work.

Images sourced from Google

Ideas, Mood Board and Reflection:

Group contract and expectations

Mood Board

Major project ideas, planning and organisation.docx

Brainstorm:

• Revolving around one character, out of touch with reality.
• Some sort of social issue or external topic that we comment on through the character.
• A bunch of small sketches revolving around the same character.
• Perhaps a character who is super old-fashioned (like 1924) dropped into 2024. A comment satirising how times have changed or not changed. – Ideas:

Ideas:

• A person who’s been transported from an older time suddenly having to navigate life and society in 2024.
• Some aspects can be satirical, and comment on how times have changed or NOT changed from the past.
• The character is bewildered and confused of modern times.
• A group of sketches each showing the character navigate a different aspect of modern life, e.g. going to uni, social media, slang, clothing, technology. · Using elements of incongruity, satire, parody, genre hybridisation (drama and comedy).
• Start of one sketch: silent comedy OR black and white, giving background on the character’s previous life.
• Wanda Vision reference, The Wizard of Oz – Tone shift. She’s transported into today’s world.
• Each sketch revolves around her navigating different aspects of modern society; going to uni, social media, slang, clothing, technology.

Reflection:

This week we formed our group for the major media project. We outlined what we wanted to do and actually discussed ideas for the final piece.

For my mood board I just wanted to explain some of the ideas. Our groups premise was to do an episodic piece around one character. They come from another era and get transported into 2024 and go through experiences of a gen z. We want to play on the juxtaposition of the times, using black and white to show the era that they are from and colour to show this era. Also using costuming to show this, yet we still haven’t decided from which era. Our sketches will most likely be satire and hybridisation. Overall I’m super excited to see where this goes!

Week 4: Parody

Week 5: Satire

Week 6: Hybridisation