Welcome To My Blog

Welcome to my AS Media Studies blog!

On this blog I have made posts reflecting conventions, institution, media language and audience research.

It is a journey of how my group formed and all the struggles we have had over the months trying to get the best finalised cut for out 2 minute film opening task.

I have formatted the blog so that you can easily access my YouTube account and my partners' blogs (top). Take note of the amount of links lists I have created so you can easily navigate through my blog finding specific posts very easily. All the pink highlighted terms is media vocabulary I have used throughout this blog to help me and you, to easier grasp what is being said in each post.

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FINAL CUT Christmas Sleigher Movie Opening

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What we have improved:

• The texting scene has been removed
• Editing on when santa comes on screen is cut up to keep the audience engaged 
• The editing pace for the killing scene has been sped up to hold the effect of action/slashing
• Establishing shots are put in with music
• Sound effects put into places (Girl screaming for Michael)

EVAL: Q1a Conventions

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Question 1 of the evaluation for conventions used in our film opening, we talk about how we have challenged and used conventions and represented social groups and issues. The style is based on James Cordons carpool karaoke and sees us driving around Luxembourg while talking about our film opening.

EVAL: Q1b Representations

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Disclaimer *Christians microphone was having trouble picking up his voice so it is very quiet*.
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We have taken a YouTuber / Gaming channel approach to make a small interview about how we used representations in our film opening.

We covered:

• Age
• Stereotyping
• Gender
• Sexuality
• Ethnicity 
• Disability

EVAL: Q2 Audiences and Distribution

*Disclaimer for reasons of having a very old and slow laptop as the only use of media for this. I apologise for the poor image quality but the audio should be working excellently*

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A Skype interview where the interviewee asks me questions based on my knowledge and past experiences to see if I am eligible to receive a placement at a newly founded Indie movie company

EVAL: Q3 Development

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This talk show goes over how a member of one of the production companies of the film Christmas Sleigher experienced it and how the whole company progressed and developed throughout the months, to the point where they have a fully complete film opening.

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PRELIM POST

PRELIM VIDEO:

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PRACTICE SHOOT VIDEO:

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EVAL: Q4 Technologies

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A keynote speech of all the main technologies we have used and progressed with as a group. It reminds me a bit of the Apple iPhone launch events ... hmmm (Part of AS Evaluation)

Over this past year I have used many different types of technologies. All are in a list below:

Hardware:

• Smartphone 
• DSLR
• Camera
• Wide lenses
• Tripods
• Monopods
• Dollys
• Gimbal
• Gorilla-pods
• Stabilisation
• Macbook 
• PC
• Microphone 
• Action Camera
• Keyboard for music

Software/ Websites:

• Final Cut Pro X 

• Titles
• Transitions
• Keyframing
• Colour correction
• Greenscreen
• Animations
• Special FX
• Cutting 
• Freeze framing
• Voiceovers
• Adobe Premiere (when no access to mac)
• Basic tools
• Adding voiceovers
• Audacity
• Blogger
• Soundcloud
• Slideshare
• Office 365 Pack
• YouTube
• Uploading
• Embedding 
• Playlists

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A small vodcast going over the basic websites and how to briefly use them, as a means of planning for my blog!

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Here is the Adobe Premiere Pro tutorial where I talk about how to use the effects and tools in more depth

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Here is a tutorial about how we used Final Cut Pro X, Our main editing program

ROUGH CUT Playlist

This is a playlist with all our rough cuts and sample scenes so they are easy to find and look through to see the improvemnet from the beginning. We ordered it by date so the latest cuts are on top and the oldest are at the bottom.

ROUGH CUT 4 (With titles)

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We have changed the colour correction on a lot of the shots, made the sequence walking down the stairs shorter. We have tried to add more shot variety in the false scare but aren't sure if this works. We also re-filmed the whole first sequence up until the couple see Santa on the t.v as we thought this needed a lot of work.

Feedback

We got a lot of feedback on this cut both verbally and writen.

 Some verbal feedback we got was from a male within the target audience say that the texting scene ruined the continuity and killed the effect of tension, he also said that the killing scene was quite gory and that he would have faster paced editing to "hit the sweat spot". 

Some written feedback we got from a previous rough cut from a female who is in the age range 15-24 which we took into account for this one. 

To sum it up:

• Need to imply sex in a better way
• Facial expressions and feeling aren't very scarred 
• Narrative quite unclear in garage scene 
• Santa on TV footage was good 
• She noted some of the good shots