Finally in week 11, I booked the lighting gears and we did kind of like a rehearsal in Wednesday night in building 80. We tried to set up the room and lighting.

It takes like to more hours to check all the staff going, and the position of flags, the solar lights and whether we need book some other gears.

The ‘rehearsal’ worked well, cause until Friday we didn’t realized that we only have half an hour to set up the room, got the sofa and food. Since we had set up once that we could set it successfully in such a short time.

Just right before the seminar I was helping setting up the lights and making another specific wallpaper for the seminar to project on the wall in the first half part. Also I was helping those audiences who came late to get in from the back door in case bothering the seminar.

I really appreciate to be with the small group holding this seminar in the last semester in my bachelor degree here. Though we just only got 11 people in this group, we really did a great job in my eye. Thanks those for coming for our seminar and those who helped us.

As I remembered, Social Media group held their seminar as the first group in week 5. And since that, every Friday our group may keep notes on Google drive and we could learn a lot from the other groups every time in order to make our seminar better.

And we have finished shooting and editing our first promotion video in week 7(or 8).

And finally we have confirmed our 3 guests, they are Josh McNicol (Marketing & Comms), Lee Rogers (Film & TV) and Charles Crang (Digital Media). But the pity is that Charles couldn’t make it, we got our third guest Bernard Wee (Photography).

We talked with the steering committee members, and got their suggestions and finalized the poster with our guests’ names on it. after this we could started promoting officially.

In fact we were worried about that our gender balance within our guests. Wondering whether all the guests are male will be not that good, and later the good news is that we got our forth guest Kate Collinson. But at the same time we started worrying about the schedule. The forth guests means we have to reschedule the time. And thanks to genius Vicson I think we have arranged time well.

And at the very end of promotion time I changed the poster for the last time. And it’s time for preparing the actual event.

And later on I just remembered that I came up with the question for our graduations, or I can say for myself, that after graduating will you stay in Australia or go other countries during the first workshop. And in week 2 I chose this topic and entered the group, it might my fortune to be in this group and meet my group members.

I wasn’t on the duty of making poster, but anyway finally I did the poster…

And at first I got two ideas for the poster, the first one is a cameraman with a camera and with the famous spots, and the second one is just the simple spots with a light blue background.

And with most of group members’ agreement the first and the simplest poster was done on 23 August. And it still lacks the details with our guests and QR code and other staffs. But anyway I’m quite satisfied with the poster, simple and look good in my eye.

And also at the same time I made the icons and cover photo for our SNS sites.

And finally I knew that it is not easy making a poster, always revising. But I felt good with it, which means I can improve. And initially our concept for the poster was done.

Media 6

Media industry Seminar

I’m a Media Graduate, Get Me Out of Here!

#1

As our group was arranged to hold our seminar in week 11 as the last group, we got quite a long (enough) time for preparing rather than the other groups, but the same time it means we would have a very busy final since week 11 with all the staffs in the last semester in university.

I was absent during the first meeting while the others are there, nearly every one of the group members got their roles initially. And of course while preparing every one of us did more than those roles on paper or got shifts changed.

At the same time we started to create our SNS accounts and Facebook pages.

And the most important thing in these two weeks is that we have decided our title for the seminar. Every one of us have came up with some ideas, and voted each title finally we decided it as “ I’m a Media Graduate, Get Me Out of Here! ”

Also we started to find our guest. At first I got an idea, last summer I was volunteering at Japanese film festival, and the coordinator of them has been working in Japan for 5 years and speaks Japanese fluently. He was based in Australia and now working for Japan foundation. I tried to contact him and invited him as our guest to share his experiences, he was willing to but due to his schedule he could not came this time.

Nearly all of our members showed up in week 4 , and started brainstorming our promotion video, and got our video crew lists done.

Not as Film TV this semester at the very beginning I didn’t make any specific target nor have strong desire to something. In fact at that time I was a little bit confused about what the scene is going to do during this semester.

From week 1 to week 6 I was just trying my best to attend every studio in case I would miss anything, and we did quite a lot practice shootings during studios. We’ve got many short scripts since the live acting in week 1 first studio. I found this subject quite interesting since then, it different from film tv but also they have similarities, and I did get more chance to operate camera and editing.

We were working on small scripts (and they are quite simple) and editing it individually then show it through the class to get feedback, and later which I remembered most was the stair scene. A same group was divided into two teams to shoot a same script downstairs at basement. And at this moment I think I was lucky to be the DOP in my team. It was a great experience to talk with the director Axel and discuss about the how to shoot and what kind of shot we are supposing to make, as we do not want to repeat another team’s work. During shooting I learned a lot, and I think the outcome was good for my first role as DOP. And I was the actor in another team, and it was also very exciting. I’m very fond of the close up shot they gave on my boots, that’s fantastic.

And later after week 7, what all I was concentrating on is my own project about storyboard. Initially I planed to do storyboard with action scene, mainly focus on action, but I was deeply attracted by the game movie and just want to reproduce a same script scene for it. And I started to think about how storyboard works and did some research of it. Just for this I shot 3 times and the first two were not good enough, or I can say they were just nothing special full of mid shots. Just because I didn’t design storyboard well, that’s why the first two videos make me feel quite boring when I watch them in a whole, but in single shot there were still some good ones. I’m making progress, that’s what I felt after I finished the last one. And also I think the 40s clip for screener I did was great, combing storyboard with my actual shooting clip together might be a great choice and thanks to Paul and Robin’s suggestion I could make it even better.

And not only I did shooting myself I was also involved into others’, because I was concentrating on my own staff, and through involving in their work I wouldn’t just pay attention on my own staff, I could also get a knowledge from their work. It was a great thing to see what the others are working and giving each other feedback. And thanks to this I got along better with some friends I’ve never know before and I knew but not that familiar with.

Besides actual practices staffs, the blog I’m working on is also fine I think. I did every week’s reflection and also did investigations, grabbing theory as well while doing practices.

Overall through the scene this semester, technically my skills and knowledge were enhanced. And I think I feel more confident rather than before, it might be that I got more chance to deal with camera and learned from practices. And finally I really enjoyed the scene this semester.

Reflection on the last shot.

Here is the third version for Lighter, which was shot on May 30.

Generally speaking I think this version is very good, comparing with the former two I’ve done, I can feel that I’m making progress with a better storyboard. I used too much mid-shot in the former exercises and it looks quite boring and there’s no spotlight there. This time I try to put more close up shots, and Kai said that it looks smoothly and the edit was good, and I’m happy to get this kinds of feedback.

Nevertheless, as a director of my small scene I didn’t do my best. As I intended the character Jack should hold a stronger emotion for smoking whereas he still looks quite calm. But eventually the outcome was great, Tim is also a very brilliant actor thus the small scene could be good as it is now.

And as I said I planed to mainly focus on people’s action, I think I did ok in the last one thanks to some close up shots. For myself I’m quite like he looks underneath and the putting back the letter. And Robin suggested giving a CU to his hand while he is finding lighter in his pockets. I am satisfied by the detail.

As I explored that storyboard for film and animation is quite different, animation is well designed through drawing the storyboard and the staffs only need to produce the exactly clips they conceived and put them together, but it to be drawn in very detail, whereas for movie we just need a roughly one. And to make storyboard depends on the pace of the film and the length, as for a small one it could be easy to draw of the shot, but for a longer one might be quite hard to draw each part a very detailed storyboard. Just know that some famous director won’t use storyboard while shooting, and I was wondering then how to get a whole control of the movie without it. This kind of director might be very good at controlling the whole staff going on, or maybe they just do not care for it is a total commercial movie, they are all my guesses.

And effectively it shot very smoothly and successfully with the storyboard and shot lists. It does help save time and I think the continuity was pretty good as well, though there are some small problems.

Overall I think I did a great job on it despite the fact that my storyboard is ugly. And even if I try to follow all the steps but the outcome might not totally same as I drew. But it is natural that the final staff is different from planed, the final edited one must be the most satisfying and maybe just while shooting a better idea comes out. So there’s no need to strictly follow the storyboard while editing, and while shooting I think it’s better to shoot both.

During week 12 there was no specific content for studio thus each of us got a chance to have a 15 minutes meeting with Robin during studio time to talk about our own project.

At this moment I had already done two practices of lighter for my own, and I was still planning for the final shooting with Tim. And then I just finished another storyboard and listed the shot lists and thought I did prepared well for the last shooting. Robin told me as he said before to make my one more intensive, and do not put mid-shot too much. That’s what I agreed since the first shooting.

And during these days I did quite a lot of exercise with the others, helping them as different kinds of roles for their project. Not only acting but also for sound and lighting, and it was a great experience to witness how others are dealing with their staff and it is meaningful to communicate with them by showing our work to each other. And I was not limited just for storyboard staff of my own and could get in touch with more staffs.

Investigation of storyboarding

A storyboard is a graphic organizer in the form of illustrations orimages displayed in sequence for the purpose of pre-visualizing amotion picture, animation, motion graphic or interactive mediasequence.

Wikipedia

A storyboard is said to be the inspiration heart, mind and soul of a movie. What I am concentrate on foe this semester is to explore the usage of storyboard during shooting schedules.

Storyboard could be a visual guide for all production crews, it can also said to be pre-visualization.

In my eyes storyboard for anime, manga and film are different, though they have similarities to each other. But all of them do need a well plan before it was actually making by their producers.

Each medium has evolved its own version of what is included in storyboard based on the artistic and financial needs. In animation every aspect of each scene has to be designed and created. Storyboards for animation have to provide a clear deception of the acting for the film. In live action the storyboards do not need to depict the characters’ emotions because the actors themselves provide the emotions. And it is just a visual guide for director. Storyboards for live action scene could be as simple as an overhead diagram or map of the action.Storyboards help plan complex action sequences with moving cameras. (Glebas Francis)

Having a well-prepared storyboard may be very effective and help save time.

Its most important function is to preview the video that will be completed. The completed storyboard works as a guideline in the field for filming and editing. In the field also is the central piece for communication between staff members.( Hye-Kyung Choi)

Generally speaking, storyboards help to save time while shooting and lead a better way for shooting and make shooting more effectively, that’s the basic thing of it.

References,

Choi, H. K., & Cho, S. H. (2014). Development of effective pre-visualization authoring tool using conversion technologies—based on film storyboard application. Cluster Computing, 17(2), 585-591.

Glebas, F. (2009). Directing the story: professional storytelling and storyboarding techniques for live action and animation. Taylor & Francis.

I was planning to shot with my cast on May 30, and this blog post is about my plan for the shooting.

I revised the script for a final version and here it is.

Here is a simple room seeting.

And here is the storyboard for this time.

Shot list

In this week I planed to shoot a second practice for Lighter.

Last time I thought there was always lack of something in my video, and after talking with Robin he gave me some suggestions about it, and told me to put some more CU shots for in the next exercises.

As I see for the first and second practice the pace of the whole scene was quite so calm and there is no lightspot in them, I agreed with Robin that it need to be more intensively. And the character needs to hold a stronger desire for smoking as I designed at the very beginning.

But in during this shooting time I was in a hurry and someone others need to use the theatre I gotta to leave, also the chair was not the one I wanted but just for exercise it was fine. So I was not satisfied with the second one neither.

I am still working on the third exercise in the next days, and I will shoot a final version with my cast in this Saturday. I will put the final storyboard and the other preparations later for the final one.