Volunteering Field Production

Today was the first day of Offbeat Live Season One, one of RMITV’s live segments, and I was on the Tuesdays’ crew. Not only that, in the morning I volunteered to do field coverage for an event called ‘Craft Cubed: Careers in Craft & Design’. I had a wonderful experience covering. I even learnt how to use the ZOOM H6 from a fellow teammate, Baek Mijin. The team worked really well together despite the first meeting. To top it off, I made extra friends!

Being back on the field feels slightly nostalgic. I have done some of these field reporting work for school events before back when I was in my high school’s broadcast club. However, working in a slightly more professional standard feels more exciting. I am excited to learn more about lighting as well as audio work in a more advanced level.

In the afternoon, Offbeat Live was aired at 5pm. I was in charge of the graphics. It was fairly easy and not as stressful. I was allowed to tinker around with the Xpression software. I self-taught myself to change the colours of the templates and line them up in sequence. (the lazy me as usual tried to find all the hotkeys/shortcuts in operating the system) I find shortcuts more effective and I thought it was just me being a lazy bum but when Paul mentioned during our first editing tutorial, I feel like I achieved something in my life (FINALLY!).

Getting myself exposed to this level of professionalism in broadcasting will hopefully widen my exposure to the media industry. Be it film or television broadcast, I wish to absorb all the knowledge from the seniors or those people who have been in the industry for years. Like Carla Hackett mentioned in the interview of ‘Craft Cubed’, “It is important to have a mentor and it’s good to just soak up the knowledge they share with you.”

 

 

Week 8 – Pre-production Consultation

This week’s consultation was just to get some advice on how we would go about our pre-production planning stage. We talked to Paul to see if we were on the right track. The ideas we raised for our pre-production plan were:

1. Which scripts will we be using for the shoot?

2. How many extended scenes / opening trailers?

3. Storyboarding session

4. Shooting days? (Tentative Monday Week 9)

Over the consultation session, we had agreed that we would attempt to create the title sequence in various genres after shooting the extended scenes. We were throwing ideas as well like doing a “Shakespearean” genre as Brian Morris had suggested in the pitch presentation day. We also thought of shooting a locked script in various genres instead of writing in specific genres.

We agreed to the deadline suggestion of choosing a scene in a script (preferably two) before Thursday’s shoot so we can do a mock shoot to experiment on it before the real shoot on Monday. It is a stepping stone to our process of re-writing and re-shooting research.

Suggestions like redoing shoots really caught my attention. I always felt like when I film and re-watch my old films I would always think that I could have done better at certain parts. I am quite keen on creating more sketches and learn from it.

 

Week 7 – Pitching Week

This week we had to compile the work we have discussed and pitch it to the class. I created a rough timeline to organise our work and to be able to show our progress with clarity. Scripts were submitted to the group google drive so I could take some examples to show on the slides. (You could say, I was in charge of organising the work.)

STeve Timeline – Sheet1

Kerri had written our pitch guideline for us:

LORD OF THE LAND (TV SERIES)

PREMISE:
• Three people (20-somethings??) living in a share house.
• Two male, one female.
• Male 1 is son of the landlord, who happens to be his mother.
• Male 1 is dating the female housemate.
• Male 2 is a bit of a third wheel/butt of the joke.
• Landlord moves back into house following divorce from husband.
• Landlord is unaware her son is dating the female housemate

WHAT WE ARE RESEARCHING:
Our focus is not as much on the final product as it is on the process. We’re really honing in on the component of writing for genre, and how applying various genres to a consistent premise can affect the outcome. We’re completing everything in a very experimental and upside-down manner – instead of saying ‘we want to produce a comedy’, ‘let’s write a drama’, or ‘how about we conceptualise a reality show’, we’re angling in from the idea of ‘this is what we want to talk about or explore – that being 4 people in a share house – what tone are we going to explore this premise in?’

THE FUTURE
In the future we intend to create a multi-season TV series – the length of the show, number of episodes per season and number of seasons will most likely depend on the genre we decide to go with.

METHOD:
Once we had conceptualised our project plan, we divided up various genres and each wrote two one-page scripts to shoot as a rough exercise. These informal shoots will be using ourselves and/or friends as actors
Once we have shot all of the scripts, we will choose which genre we feel best fits the premise and will be strongest as a series.
From this we intend to create an extended scene as well a series trailer for our prototype. It is likely that we’ll first shoot these using us and our friends as actors, and then make a more finalised draft with professional actors.

SCRIPTS:
Each person talk about the scripts you’ve written. The genre/style/format.

TIMELINE:
Talk about/show our fantastic timeline

–– ––

With that, I created the slides as well as reference to the checklist we made during the consultation with Paul.

Here’s the PDF version of our presentation: 10SEPT PITCH PRESENTATION

 

Week 6 – Group Consultation Session

This week we had Stayci during our consultation. We went straight to business on pitching our idea for our group project. The idea was using a baseline of a serialised television show with different genres. We were trying to break out of the typical procedure in pitching and creating a new television series. Instead of selecting a genre and work around that, we decided to work our way into the series by filming the various genres of scripts.

In other words, our research is to figure out an unconventional procedure of creating television shows.

Stayci mentioned that we have a basic understanding on where we would like to head in the future. To get started, we decided that as a group, we would come up with as many scripts of various genres to help prompt our prototype. After that we would film the scripts as our sketches to try to find something. Then we would create a intro scenes to show for our presentation in Week 12.

For our individual assignments Kerri delegated was to write two scripts of two different genres to help kickstart our project. I chose to write a comedy first. It’s not completed but the idea is having a cook-off between the flatmates. It turns from daily sitcom show to a reality TV Masterchef competition.

Here it is: Yun’s COMEDY COOK-OFF

Week 5 – Show n Tell

On Thursday, we were presenting our edits for Week 4B’s shoot. Just to briefly jot down my thoughts on it.

I learnt today that there are just many ways to create or set the atmosphere with just a few shots. My edit and one of my group mate’s edit was completely different mood. Mine was the typical let the dialogue drive the film while my group mate’s black and white tone with the slowed down zoom created the  bleak and dramatic ambience. I am quite fascinated by the vast difference despite using the same shots. My greatest concern was the continuity of the shots from one angle to the other while his was just driving the narrative into his interpretation of the script.

Just like the previous exercise, my edits were quick and short while my peer had created a tension / suspense at the beginning of the edit. This style of learning has proved useful to me. I could try and incorporate that style of visualisation in my scripts next time.

Week 5a – Inner Thoughts: Lecture with Paul

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.

 

A Photo and A Caption

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.

 

Week 4 – Back to the Scripts

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.

Week 3 – Editing Week

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

Initiating / Prompting Myself to Write!

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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