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Presentation & Exhibition Report

  By weiyunsoo • October 30, 2015

STATEMENT OF MY INTENTIONS:

Yesterday was the exhibition for media 4, semester 2 of 2015. I volunteered to piece together the films and organise the films into the server. I had to piece together a one minute screener for the presentation during the exhibition. As Kerri had made a quick poster and Bianca writing the content about our process of research, I am left with the videos. On the day of the exhibition, I had no important role so we just sat and reviewed our work along with the other studios.

 

REFLECTIVE REPORT:

Creating this screener was not that difficult. I managed to finish piecing together in less than a day. This is because our group were experimenting on the various genres. Preparing these caused quite a confusion as the information and instructions were quite scattered. I managed to send Paul a copy of the one minute screener for checking. He mentioned that the audio had some problems especially the parts where I abruptly cut the conversations. I tweaked a little before heading to uni the next day to drop the full version of the films into the server.

I had a few bumps during the preparation for the exhibition. Had I followed the brief by itself, I would have gotten everything together. The day before the exhibition was the day I knew that there was a submission folder for all our prototype films. I had stored everything into the server so Paul mentioned that there was not much a problem since he could grab it from the server easily.

Another problem I encountered was not being able to get my hands on the proper files of our last prototype from Dylan. In the end, I had to grab it off YouTube, thus degrading the quality. It was a confusing preparation but completed nonetheless. I had given Jen, who volunteered to make the postcards, some pictures of our shoot when the emails were handed out as well. That was an easy job due to the fact I still kept all the pictures we used during our week 12 presentation.

ARTEFACTS:

This is the one minute screener:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/4npbcpxhewl5dhw/ONE%20MINUTE.mov?dl=0

 

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Final Week! Week 12 – Presentation Day

  By weiyunsoo • October 19, 2015

WEEK 12 – STeve Presentation

So the moment we have been waiting for is here! Six weeks of hard work all put into this one presentation. Here is the draft of our presentation!

Keeping Mum Presentation – Without Films

 

WEEK 12 – STeve Presentation (1)

Keeping Mum was not a project focusing on content but it was more of experimenting on the process of choosing a genre for the television industry. We had played around with various genres like mockumentary, sitcom, drama and slasher horror. We felt like we favoured mockumentary more at the end of the film. Due to the fact we felt that things became more organic once we started improvising, we felt that mockumentary became more compelling.

WEEK 12 – STeve Presentation (2)

During the pre-production, everyone took part in script writing process where we then chose the best scripts to shoot. We each took two genres to write. We ended up going for Dylan’s and Bianca’s scripts as they were short and simple to experiment on.

WEEK 12 – STeve Presentation (3)

We had a few setbacks due to everyone’s working schedule and so our only free day were Mondays and Thursdays before and after classes. We organised a timeline as well as the meeting agendas to keep everyone on track. Our primary source of communication were on the Facebook group and the Google Drive.

WEEK 12 – STeve Presentation

My role in the group was to organise the things we had on the Google Drive and make sure the agendas were updated after every meeting. Besides that, I was the camera operator for the films. I had to plan the shots on the spot due to the improvisations. I had edited the snippets of the Mock Shoots as well.

Making ‘Keeping Mum’ a.k.a. LORD OF THE LAND with Team STeve was an absolute pleasure. I never had so many creative people in a team before like our main scriptwriters, Dylan and Bianca. Kerri, our point of contact, always ready to organise group meetings as well as taking charge of our process of delegating our work. Raphael was always present for shooting dates, helping out with the filming as well as acting. All four of them were great in acting. We worked seamlessly together despite having setbacks of not being able to meet up face-to-face most of the times.

If time permits, I definitely would like to continue the project with Team STeve for sure.

 

Mockumentary TRAILER:

 

CLICK HERE! If you want to see the rest of the films.

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Week 11b – Editing Class (not so… 101)

  By weiyunsoo • October 10, 2015

Thursday’s class was more focused on editing and a bit of a organising for me. Kerri and I went through the colour grading tutorial on lynda.com and tinkered around in Premiere Pro. We took one of our clips and tried playing around with the colour grading. The first is the raw footage without any colour correction.

Mockumentary RAW

No colour grading.

 

We felt we need to give a bad desaturated colour grading for a mockumentary style so we started tweaking with the colours. We gave it a slightly cyan hue with desaturations. This was how it turned out:

Screen Shot 2015-10-08 at 11.13.38 am

Colour grading fitting for MOCKUMENTARY genre.

We had more time to experiment more so we tried colour grading for a more horror / thriller genre. We pumped up more blue hue in the mid tones and lower the exposure. It made the scene more horrific as below.

Screen Shot 2015-10-08 at 11.13.51 am

Colour grading for horror/thriller genre

 

After doing this exercise, Dylan and Bianca arrived! We went through our edits of the drama genre and the slasher horror. I watched Dylan’s editing style as he taught me a good faking of focus with just adding a filter. Here are some editing screen grabs. I definitely was surprised at this style of editing. I have never seen it before and I was thankful my group mate had shared this knowledge with me. I think you’ll probably see me playing around with focus more now (thanks Dylan!). If you see the middle of the frame, there is a play with filter on exposure. This allows the eyes to focus on the casts more instead of the messy background in the middle.

with letterbox + focus

with letterbox + focus

without letterbox + focus

without letterbox + focus

 

That’s it for editing (not so 101…) not an intermediate level nor is it a beginner level either. Overall, I have learnt something new in colour correcting and playing with the exposure. I have an idea in remaking my thriller/drama short film into a mini web series. So, I may use that editing style in that film. (this is really exciting!)

 

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Week 8 – Pre-production Consultation

  By weiyunsoo • September 15, 2015

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.

 

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Week 7 – Pitching Week

  By weiyunsoo • September 15, 2015

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

 

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Week 6 – Group Consultation Session

  By weiyunsoo • September 6, 2015

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

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Week 5 – Show n Tell

  By weiyunsoo • September 2, 2015

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.

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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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