Hits - The History of Pop

Blog Diary

Starting

By researching my chosen decade (The 90's) I have made a script I think is suitable for my piece. I am still debating on whether I should use an Acting student to narrate for me, as I feel like they would present my piece much more better than me. I will get in contact with an acting friend (either Dominique or Rosa) over the weekend.

Whoever presents my piece will be sitting at a desk, it will be in the center of shot, while the green screen will show a possible white background. I will use a fair amount of cutaways of the different subjects the presenter will be talking about, and also both mid shots and close ups of my presenter for a little more balance.

I have fully finished a storyboard, explaining each shot I would like to use in the documentary. It is fairly simple. I have not made an intro to my documentary yet, but I believe this will also contain not much complexity, mainly because I am not skilled at the tools needed to create such things. I will be finding the clips I would like to show cutaways from over the weekend, this should be a simple task.

Progress

I have found clips I would like to use, and my presenter (Sam) has been filmed reading the script, the presenting all went great, sound levels, lighting, all good. Sam was wearing a dark green coat at the time which I did not notice, but during an edit test it seemed that the clips were fine to work with. I have found a music piece for background sound which suits the atmosphere. I have placed all the clips in order and things seem good, the clips I am using are low quality, but i feel that I should keep these like that, as it gives off the gritty, 90's vibe which I was hoping to go for. 

I have yet to complete a title sequence, I am not sure how to make them, I have been searching for tutorials online but I'm not sure where to start, since I have been focused on everything else.

End Result

 

https://www.google.co.uk/?gws_rd=ssl#q=history+of+pop+90s

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1990s_in_music

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_age_hip_hop

http://www.streetdirectory.com/travel_guide/31405/music/pop_music_remember_the_90s.html

http://www.thepeoplehistory.com/90smusic.html

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vDFeO7w7JJQ

http://www.theguardian.com/music/2004/may/02/popandrock#90s

http://top40.about.com/od/hitsofthe90s/tp/top1001990s.-CSM.htm

Unit 31: Social Action & Community Media Production

This blog will document my progress on this production, and also the groups progress to completing the brief. It will cover research and ideas that I come up with. This research will be added to my assignment folder.

Habit - An Anti-Smoking Video

Basic Ideas

The Audience will be for teens, specifically those who may be going through a hard time with exams or tests and think that smoking will help through stress/anxiety/mood ect. It will hopefully also effect children who have not started smoking yet, and convice them it isnt wise.

I will hopefully cover the mental health side of smoking.

I will need to research how smoking effects the brain, nerves, and anything that may help. I am currently adding pages of facts to my folder. Also making a mindmap on my basic ideas.

It would also be important to make sure everything I research is up-to-date information.





Pitch Complete

I have completed a pitch, ready for presentation. The idea will cover a girls journey as she takes up smoking to 'cure' her stress and anxiety. Multiple narrators will explain the negatives smoking has on the brain, as this is happening, the girl is gradually becoming more stressed ect. I will show this by using places like college to get more of a vibe of what typical teen life is like. As the short goes on, the saturation of the clips will slowly degrade into grey scale. I would like to reuse some of my locations from the PMP since they would suit the grunge/suburban type style.








Script and Proposal Complete

Habit is an anti-smoking video witch focuses on an place which smoking affects, and where a lot of teens look to smoking for help with it; the mind.

The piece will be informative, and hopefully hit hard with teens who believe smoking can help anxiety, stress, depression, and such. I think a unique selling point will be that the theme of the video will be a bit creepy and eerie.

A proposal has been made, as well a script which I have time checked and will cover roughly 2 minutes. I am very eager to pitch my idea, as I think it is a good contender.

Pitch Accepted!

Pitch presentations went very well, Habit got praise for being a unique idea, and the tackling on mental health was its unique selling point.

Neil said that it would be beneficial if I made the audience less broad; Habits main audience will be aimed at 17-18 college students. Also representation wise, it might be beneficial to research facts and statistics on the male to female ratio on smoking - who smokes more? Do they have different reasons?

I think that Habits audience should be for all genders, as the point I want to make in this video is about stress and anxiety due to smoking, and stress isnt restricted to just one gender. I can put more things into the script which suggest the video is aimed at all college students, not just female. One thing would be to mention at the start that Maisy (main character of the video) is a college student, who is stressed from things like college, social problems, ect.

Hyperlinks to useful websites
http://www.healthline.com/health-slideshow/best-videos-quit-smoking
http://science.howstuffworks.com/nicotine.htm
http://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/campaign/tips/about/index.html
http://www.tobaccofreeca.com/ads/videos/
http://www.cutfilms.org/

Effects of smoking links
http://www.healthline.com/health/smoking/effects-on-body
http://www.webmd.boots.com/smoking-cessation/smoking-what-will-happen-to-my-body

Father Of Lies - Blog Diary

Filming started on the 13th of April, Monday. After a difficulty with arriving to the location, we all managed to meet at Hartlepool a little behind schedule. We started filming almost straight away, managing to get around half a scene done, before our SD card in the camera ran out of memory. We will be filming both on the 14th and 15th, almost all day.

More scenes were completed on the second day, we were happy with the progress. I also suggested we use tilted shots more, to have more effect on the horror genre, the tilted angles make mid shots and close ups seem more creepy and eerie. These shots were influenced by the ones used on American Horror Story. Sam has said she wants to recreate an opening credits scene which also related to American Horror, by using cutaways lasting 1-2 seconds long and twist them about, making them fast, slow, cutting frames out, ect.

The third day of filming went great. All scenes are now complete, as well as our cutaways for the opening scene, and a photoshoot which we think went well. Actors were happy with the progress. I had to stop a few shots from happening as a risk was posed on the actress Amber. In one scene, the desperate Dallas tries to escape Abraxas, leaping out of her chained chair and making a break for the steps of the cellar. Abraxas pushes her back into the chair with demontic force, Dallas flying back without control. We tried it once, the chair flew back when Amber pushed herself onto it, the chair itself being incredibly unstable. Even though she said she was alright with another shot, I did not want her to injure herself by breaking the chair and falling. Apart from that, things seemed to go well.

Music is next. I have a lot of cuts from Habit, which are all from royalty free music websites. We will try to look for things like humming, laughing, and anything else that seems like it fits the eerie genre.


Amber worked incredibly well on the set of Father of Lies. She was enthusiastic, and pushed her abilities. She helped out with things that Sam asked.

Leo loved the subject of genre. With guidance, he achieved what Sam wanted.


All three shooting days are finished, now we move onto editing. Sam is taking lead, and I will assist in any way I can. Sam has already made an animated title for Father of Lies, and we are now working on opening credits, involving fast paced closeups of creepy things in the cellar, Leo and Amber also appear breifly, hiding their faces so to not give much away.

Editing is going well, it's mostly experimenting with what we can do. I've given Sam around 50 sound effects that I used from Habit. Placed over one another, it should create a creepy ambience that mactches Father of Lies. Sam is making incredible progress.

We will also have interviews with the actors, for something to add to her film, and possibly a blooper reel too.

Unit 58: DVD Menu Design & Authoring

A DVD (Digital Video Disc or Digital Versatile Disc) is a digital storage disc, which can be played in DVD Players.

Conventions of DVD's (Task One)

1. +R  (DVD+R) are record-able only once. They have a storage capacity of 4.7GB. DVD+R is more reliable than DVD-R because it will be much less likely to receive interference.
2. +RW (DVD+RW) are rewritable; meaning you can use it to record multiple times. They also have a storage capacity of 4.7GB, like the +R
3. -R and -RW (DVD-R and -RW) have a much quicker write speed. Apart from this, they share similarities with DVD+R and +RW.

1. Dual Layer - An upgraded disc with higher storage capacity within the DVD. It's storage can come up to 8.5GB per disc, almost double the amount on a standard disc. However this has a slower write time.
2. Writing Speed - The speed that data is burned onto a disc. This could be for instance DVD, CD, or Blue-Ray.
3. Audio - Can be in many different formats, with the more popular being Mono (1.0), Stereo (2.1) or Surround Sound (5.1). Mono is routed through one channel while stereo is routed through two.
4. Video - DVD Video format discs are primarily used in Asia, North America, Australia and Europe.
5. Menus - Almost all DVD's have a menu, giving the options to either play the movie, select a certain scene, use subtitles, find behind the scenes, ect. They are created on software such as Encore and After Effects.

Additional Features of DVD's (Task One)

Subtitles  - are available on DVD's for the hard of hearing, or to help someone who doesnt know the language of your film.
Different Languages - are options which allow the audio to be heard in a different language, as apposed to visual subtitiles. This can be useful for the visually impared, or those who do not understand the main language of a film.
Easter Eggs - are hidden messages inside the film for the viewer to discover by clicking on them. These can be in the main menu, and will often be hard to find. For example, a small button which is not highlighted may lead to a behind the scenes talk with an actor.

DTS (Digital Theatre System) - are more commonly known as surround sound. This was created to create cinema-like quality sound within viewers home. This is usually made up of 6 speakers - one central speaker, one sub-woofer and four surrounding speakers.
Dolby - the technology used to create the quality of sound, which is used in surround systems.
Printable Disks - are DVD's that can be printed on using a certain kind of 'ink jet' printer. These disks are printed on the non-recordable.

Regional Codes - are used to control distribution of films. There are 6 regions in the world, each with a regional code.
Copyright Protection - these are installed onto a DVD disk, in order to make the disk hard to copy and distribute illegally.
Parental Controls - are in place to prevent underage viewers from watching films above the rated age of the film

Case Study (Task One)

A case study is a form of quantitative descriptive research. My case study will be of Disk 1 and 2 of Pan's Labyrinth, detailing ways which the designer has tried to make a useful menu, the functions and elements, additional features, structure, and why the producers have chosen to design the menus the way they did. My case study will be printed out.

Designing a DVD Menu (Task Two)

Sketches, moodboards, navigation charts and notes have been made in preperation for my DVD Menu. I am confident with this planning, to be able to go ahead and try to make them using adobe software, with a little help from video tutorials.

Producing a DVD Menu (Task Three)

I have scheduled, produced, and tested and almost completed my production of my DVD. The only thing left to do is to put it onto my ready made disk and test it.

Evaluation (Task Four)

Software I used through this was Adobe Photoshop, Encore, After Effects, and Premier Pro.

After Effects - 

 

Creating a composition was first, I needed to make sure my Preset was in NTSC D1 Widescreen Square Pixel to create my design (though I exported it in Widescreen mode). The duration of this Menu Screen was 15 seconds.

 

I worked with creating solids at first, with dark pastel colors that matched Courier, I then masked these solids to create gradients, these were preparation for my buttons, so they could be seen easily. I then created my title, Courier, which was in the font 1974 Report. I then added buttons, 'Play', 'Scene Select' and 'Extras'.

 

I was then ready to add my footage I wanted to use for the menu. My footage was of Clover and Boe starting off-scene and then appearing, walking into the distance. As they got further into the distance, I wanted the screen to flash, pause, and fade in buttons and title. I needed to cut re-position my footage to make sure it was in the right place. I then tried to find the frame where I wanted my buttons and title to appear, then used the Layer 'Time Remap', which makes anything past my chosen frame to be paused.

 

After tweaking the color of my footage to match couriers saturation, and create a couple more gradients and color bars to make sure buttons and title were visible, I created a solid which I added where my footage pauses, to create a quick flash before it pauses, and when the menu actually starts.

 

I then made a new composition, this time in NTSC DV Widescreen, and dragged my main menu into this comp. I added audio that faded in and back out. 

Adding this to my render queue, I made sure my format was in MPEG 2 DVD.

Encore

I made a new project in Adobe Encore, dropping my main menu video and audio, and making sure the aspect ratio was 17:9.

 

I then began to create buttons by using Adobe Photoshop. By creating colored rectangles and placed then where I wanted buttons to be. These showed up in Adobe encore. In Encore I can duplicate these buttons, and matched them to the correct timeline footage. It was important to make Back Buttons too, to let viewers head back to previous menus.

 

Other Menus

I needed to create my Scene Select and Extras menu the same way as I created my Main Menu. These menus were not animated, they had still pictures from some of Courier's photoshoot's.

I then linked everything to where they needed to go. Previewing my menu's showed I have a couple 'Orphan' timelines which need to be sorted out, but apart from that, there were no issues.

 

Finished Evaluation

Watching Video Copilots tutorial on how to create a Menu, I feel like I have learned an incredible amount of valuable infomation about Encore and After Effects. I am more confident in using this kind of software. I am very pleased with the aesthetic of Couriers menus, and the accuracy of them to my sketches.

I was able to experiment and test out different layouts and styles of my menus, I feel like I have made great progress toward learning about Adobe software, I am confident enough to make more.