Blog Questions

1. Rate on a scale of 1 to 10 how did your group work as a team. Support your rating. What could have made it a 10?
2. Explain how you organized and prepared for the project. What went well and what could have been improved?
3. What difficulties did you encounter when filming? How did you overcome them?
4. What difficulties did you face when editing? 
5. Discuss how you prepared for the audio of your film?
6. If you were to repeat the project again what would you do differently?
7. Analyzing the final production, what aspects are you happy with? What could have been improved?

Audience’s (Two Step Flow)-in progress

The Hypodermic model quickly proved too clumsy for media researchers seeking to more precisely explain the relationship between audience and text. As the mass media became an essential part of life in societies around the world and did NOT reduce populations to a mass of unthinking drones, a more sophisticated explanation was sought.

Paul Lazarsfeld, Bernard Berelson, and Hazel Gaudet analysed the voters’ decision-making processes during a 1940 presidential election campaign and published their results in a paper called The People’s Choice. Their findings suggested that the information does not flow directly from the text into the minds of its audience unmediated but is filtered through “opinion leaders” who then communicate it to their less active associates, over whom they have influence. The audience then mediate the information received directly from the media with the ideas and thoughts expressed by the opinion leaders, thus being influenced not by a direct process, but by a two step flow. This diminished the power of the media in the eyes of researchers, and caused them to conclude that social factors were also important in the way in which audiences interpreted texts.

ITS A WONDERFUL LIFE MOVIE ANALYSIS

George Bailey has spent his entire life giving of himself to the people of Bedford Falls. He has always longed to travel but never had the opportunity in order to prevent rich skinflint Mr. Potter from taking over the entire town. All that prevents him from doing so is George’s modest building and loan company, which was founded by his generous father. But on Christmas Eve, George’s Uncle Billy loses the business’s $8,000 while intending to deposit it in the bank. Potter finds the misplaced money and hides it from Billy. When the bank examiner discovers the shortage later that night, George realizes that he will be held responsible and sent to jail and the company will collapse, finally allowing Potter to take over the town. Thinking of his wife, their young children, and others he loves will be better off with him dead, he contemplates suicide. But the prayers of his loved ones result in a gentle angel named Clarence coming to earth to help George, with the promise of earning his wings. He shows George what things would have been like if he had never been born.

A static shot that is used many times throughout the film is an over the shoulder shot. This shot was not just used when only one person was over a person’s shoulder, it was also used when there were multiple people over a person’s shoulder. Capra typically picked this shot when George was speaking with Henry Potter. Using this shot made, what could be a very boring scene, more intriguing. Because conversations between George and Mr. Potter were common throughout the film, Capra varied each of these conversations by adding over the shoulder shots. Switching between over the shoulder shots and medium shots.

It’s a Wonderful Life is very limited in its camera movements compared to todays films. This does not make Frank Capra’s film static or uninteresting because he varies his camera angles. Over the shoulder, low angle, high angle, wide shots and extreme close-ups help make up for the lack of camera movement throughout the film.

“GET OUT”-Conventions and codes

Get Out is a great movie for people who dislike or dismiss horror expecting “gratuitous” explicit violence and nudity, because of its humor, PG sex scenes, and the analogies drawn to contemporary lived experiences of race relations. Get Out is also one of the rare horror movies that features a black protagonist, playing with the generic adage that black characters are habitually the first slaughtered. It also challenges the credence of African American audiences that black characters would instinctively run away from danger rather than bungling towards it like their hapless white counterparts, and presents a black male as the vulnerable figure of audience identification. Peele shows empathy for his characters, seeking to explain the Other rather than presenting him or her as a beast or merely monstrous.

“RUN” Movie Reflection

My group and I started our second film with more confidence with the knowledge that was gained and the mistakes that were corrected from the first time around. Unlike preliminary task 1 I was sure to create my storyboard as detailed as possible so that when me and my group were filing we got every shot in the way that we pictured it. Although the idea of a storyboard has always been weird for me to wrap my mind around, I can clearly understand now that it is a necessary step that one must take when producing media. People could argue, however, that your environment should not limit the creative aspect of your film, but many professional productions produced usually have an environment that matches the topic of the film.

When planning what to actually create a short film about, me and my group thought about cool genres in order to narrow the topic of our film. We ultimately decided on the genre of horror and focused our scenery around our local landscapes and environment. In this short film, 4 high school students get lost in the woods and are later followed and taken hostage by kidnappers. In an thrilling/ captivating experience my group and I were able to create a film that we were both proud of.

My group and I ran into some trouble when shooting some of the shots that we had illustrated on our story board. One issue that we kept on having was who would film and how we would get different aerial shots that we previously did not think would be an issue. Do to our extremely low budget, the aerial shots had to be cut out of the film because a drone would cost to much money to buy and produce for our short film.

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“CONSCIOUS” Movie Reflection

The one minute and 18 second short video, that my group and I created in our AS Film class, represents the struggles that bullied high school students face across the globe. This video was recorded, directed, and produced in order to promote unity amongst school children and for people who see or hear about bullying, to stand up and say something.

When planning what to actually create a short film about, me and my group thought about different problems that high school students are faced with every day. The reason to why we were limited to producing a film relating to high school was because we were only allowed to shoot this video at our local high school. People could argue, however, that your environment should not limit the creative aspect of your film, but many professional productions produced usually have an environment that matches the topic of the film.

My group and I ran into some trouble when developing our story board because we found it quite hard to first create the story board and then direct the video accordingly. If I were to redo this project, I believe that my group and I would agree that it would be easier to shoot the video first and then create the story board. The reason to why I feel that this would be a better approach is because when creating a story board you are not experiencing the environment but rather imagining it which can lead to a lack in creativity throughout the film, whether it be locations, lighting, shots, and even background noise (Mise-en-scene). A re-occurring issue that we ran into while filming this project was the ambient sounds that were present in the background which made it hard for dialogue to be heard clearly. Due to this, me and my group decided to cut out the dialogue and just edit in non-diegetic music in the background of our video to further enhance the films theme. Another issue that we ran into was time. When shooting this video, we only were allotted 25 minutes to capture all the shots we needed in order to present it to the class. For me and my group this was not a lot of time and made for many of the shots in the film to be lacking certain conventional aspects. Lastly, me and my group kept running into the problem of people constantly walking around in the back of our shots mostly because the environment we were in was always very busy and was very hard to capture a clean shot.

Although there were some things that did not go well for my group and I in this project there were many different aspects that made the film much better. One thing that made our video really good was done in the editing and color correction. Throughout the film you will notice that video has a black and white filter extending all the way to second 55 and then a color filter that lasts for the entirety of the film. The reason to why the editor decided to make the first 55 seconds of the film black and white was because many dark, muted, and neutral colors are associated as being sad colors (Mise-en-Scene). In the first 55 seconds the actor “Angie” is being bullied so in order to further emphasize this, the editor decided to add a very neutral and muted coloration to the video. These monochromatic colors add to the dramatic genre of the film and further exemplify its saddening effect. The reason to why the editor decided to switch the colors back to normal was a unique way of showing a shift/ transition in mood that the actor “Angie” is experiencing. Next, the film had many parts that were changed to a more slow-motion video, which initially further dramatized the actor’s expressions and actions.

All in all, I will be able to apply a lot of what I learned filming this project to many other projects in the future. I can now quickly identify the different types of conventions that are traditionally used throughout many famous films. By adding these traditional and unique conventions to my future films, it will further enhance its overall engagement to its audience. For example, in the future I now know that I must have a title when filming a trailer and that I must include dialogue or else the audience will not be able to clearly understand what is going on. Also, I will make sure that I find environments and different locations that are better for having dialect throughout the video. If I were to have many of these conventional aspects of film in my future projects I am sure that I will engage my audience better and further capture the integrity and meaning of the film that I produced.

ABOUT ME

Hi, my name is Jordan and I am a senior at MAST Academy located in Miami, Florida. Ever since a young age, I have been fascinated with film and always wondered the different conventional aspects that make up a great film. When I saw that Media Studies was an elective that I was able to take I took the opportunity to indulge myself into the film world.

AS Media Studies

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