𝐌𝐞𝐝𝐢𝐚 𝐒𝐭𝐮𝐝𝐢𝐞𝐬 ❀ 𝐂𝐡𝐞𝐥𝐬𝐞𝐚 𝐓𝐢𝐫𝐭𝐚

Sunday, November 10, 2024

Classwork: Clapboard

Here are the additional classwork about clapboard that our teacher explained during the lesson which would further help our project creation process. This blog post is written by me (Chelsea).

During a lesson class, our teacher explained briefly about clapboard and its importance for both production and post-production processes. Here, he explained how to use a basic clapboard and provided a visual explanation, making it easier for the whole class to understand. Using a clapboard taught me a few important things, one of which is that it can tremendously reduce time and allow for more efficient organisation. Since the scene number and takes are written as the thumbnail, it is easier to identify which scenes are which when compiling the files in, for instance, Google Drive because we can already tell from the cover which ones to select for editing. Furthermore, it is helpful to sync sound to the image because background noise may sometimes be a problem. Since students lack professional filming microphone equipment, our teacher suggests hiding a hidden microphone or using a phone voice recorder while filming. The sound of the clap also makes it easier to synchronise and helps identify the shot's starting point.

Here is a video from StudioBinder my teacher shared for us to watch:

https://www.studiobinder.com/blog/how-to-use-a-film-slate/

I've summarised what I learned from the video below:

What is a clapperboard?

A clapperboard (also known as a slate) is a piece of equipment used in film and video production which is used to sync picture and audio, as well as to present information about a scene.

Appearance of a clapboard:

- Initially, clapperboards were either wooden or chalkboards. They are typically whiteboard material these days, making them more durable and easier to light because they're translucent

- The strips usually have black and white stripes for maximum visibility in all settings. Occasionally, it includes other colours in order to provide a constant reference point during the colour correction process

- Some clapperboards have smart slates; electronics that include time codes and metadata. While slates without this information are called dummy slates

The 2 main roles of a clapperboard:

1.) It helps to keep all the footage organised and a way for editors to sync sound and picture during the post-production process. Written on the board is the information for each take or shot during production, the editors then can quickly identify which shot is which when they assemble the film

2.) It syncs the sound to the picture. At majority sound and image are recorded separately so matching the visual and the audio is the quickest way to synchronise. When editing, the editor can look at the sound waves captured by the in-camera audio and the sound waves of the sound equipment, and then line up the spike created by the clap

Here is what a typical clapboard look like:

How to mark a clapboard properly?

- Most of clapperboards contain the following information for the editorial team:

↪ names of the project

↪ director and DP

↪ camera roll or card number

↪ scene number

↪ take number

↪ fps & lens info

↪ whether there is sound being recorded or not

↪ if the scene is an interior or exterior, day or night

All these information is used by the editorial team to keep the footage organised and to cross reference the script supervisor's notes on additional information for each shot

- When the camera and sound are rolling, the 2nd Assistant Camera holds the clapboard in front of the camera, making sure the information is visible. They call out the scene and take number to be recorded on the audio, and then they say, “mark.” At this point, they clap the sticks together to provide that sync point. Then the director calls action and the scene is recorded.

┏━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━•❃°•° Self reflection°•°❃ •━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┓

I've never realised how important a clapboard is for filming until my teacher's explanation during class. I've always known that clapboards are commonly used in the film industry but I never dived deeper into what the actual purpose is. After hearing my teacher's explanation, I realised that using a clapboard can save a lot of time and that not using one can result in significant production delays. Clapboards are helpful for identifying clips from multiple takes and for syncing sound and audio, which makes editing easier. Based on that, my group and I decided to buy a clapboard as soon as possible. Once our clapboard finally arrived, it has been really helpful and efficient for me and my team during the shooting process. It also makes file gathering and editing much easier and faster. Overall, we had no regrets with buying a clapboard and would definitely use it for future projects.

┗━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━• ❃°•°❀°•°❃ •━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┛

Wednesday, November 6, 2024

Classwork: Technical Elements

Here I will summarise all the technical elements I learned during class (most of the material are taught by the teacher). Most of the notes are in written form, however I will be transferring most of them digitally here This post is written by me (Chelsea).

CAMERA

Camera Angles

View link: https://padlet.com/chelseatirta1/camera-angles-3r3y9y1vs4cezhai

Practice on camera angles short analysis from the movies "Cast Away" and "Revenant"

Camera Movements

1.) Static: Still, no movement, calm, boring, no action, usually to show dialogue and focuses on composition and what is currently happening

2.) Pan: The camera stays the same but moves left and right, this is used to reveal something and follow what a subject do and is often fast

3.) Tilt: The camera pans but it moves up and down, to make audience feel like they are moving their head, this gives the character dominance and can reveal more information (e.g. a character's setting)

4.) Push in: The camera moves towards the subject but the subject stays still, capturing the character's feeling and makes the audience feel connected

5.) Pull out: Creates a barrier between audience and subject, making them feel disconnected by detaching from a scene

6.) Zoom: Change the focal length of a camera, to reveal context and draws audience attention

7.) Tracking: The camera moves with the subject or where the character is going

8.) Trucking: The camera follows a subject from the side

9.) Boom: The camera moves up and down to reveal more information, capture surrounding, or to follow a character's action

10.) Random: Also known as camera shake, it is often shaky, handheld and no pattern, this creates a subjective experience, more realistic, creates excitement and energetic (e.g. a fight scene)

Camera movements summarised into a more simple and concise format:

MISE-EN-SCENE

- Definition: Mise-en-scene is the arrangement and design of visual elements within a frame or a scene, it is essentially everything you can see in the frame

- Mise-en-scene includes: props, set design, costume, hair, make up, colour, performance, lighting, blocking, focus, weather and environment

- Purpose: To convey emotions, theme, mood, character traits and atmosphere

SOUND

Written notes in class and practice on analysing diegetic & non-diegetic sound from the movies "Saving Private Ryan" and "Jurrasic Park"

EDIT

THEORIES

The classwork we have been doing has been really beneficial, since I will undoubtedly use all the materials and resources I have learnt about technical elements to my music video project. As I’m already familiar with these technical elements, this post made it easier for me to recall back what I have learned and how to apply it to my project. Creating this blog post is also helpful because I can simply refer back to it if I need to remember something again because all of the notes are arranged here and are not cluttered. In addition to making the lesson fun and enjoyable, our teacher always ensured that we understood the subjects being covered and always provided explanations in words that we could all understand. Generally, I find that writing down my notes is more helpful than typing them online since it helps me better with memorisation and recall. I also use highlighters to make the main ideas or points easier to read and identify. Additionally, we get to view many different films while practicing technical elements, which makes them quite fun even when at times they are challenging. By further practicing and assessing my critical thinking and analysis abilities, I will be able to get more knowledge and proficiency for my music video project or exam, demonstrating that I truly understand its meaning and know how to apply it to properly convey a clear message to the audience.

Filming Schedule

Here is the filming schedule for our shooting. I created this shooting schedule table and my teammates contributed to discuss and add any necessary information that is important for this production process.

Creating a filming schedule has tremendously helped me and my group to ensure that the production stays on track and uses time that is allocated for each scene shoot efficiently. A filming schedule gather the resources that we need to use during the shooting such as the cast, props or equipments. The use of the application Jotform has enabled us to organise everything in one place in detail as well as the calendar feature to serve as a reminder on when to shoot.

Location Scout & Risk Assessment

Here is my location scout for our potential locations for our music video made by Kalista and Rara.

My teammates (Kalista & Rara) made this location scout and risk assessment of all the possible locations that are appropriate for each scene of our music video as the pre-production process. They have listed out all the points that needed to be considered including the advantages and disadvantages of each location and any possible hazards and risks that might happen. This research aids us in making decisions of which location is the most suitable to shoot at without causing any damage or harm to the actors as well as the surroundings. Furthermore, the risk assessment table made me become more aware of the potential hazards and the need for increased caution.

Screen Test

To find a star for our music video, we need to conduct a screen test. Here I will explain the brief definition and purpose of conducting a screen test, the screen test video we conducted as a class and the review regarding the video. This blog is written by me (Chelsea).

Brief overview of screen test

According to studiobinder.com, a screen test is a filmed audition in which an actor demonstrates their suitability for a role, in this case, a music video. Generally, actors are given lines of the lyrics to lip sync and perform on camera. Other than that, screen tests are also utilised to see how clothing, makeup, colours and other accessories may appear on an already casted actor.

Benefits of using a screen test includes:

➠ To see how actor performs on camera

➠ Testing wardrobe, makeup, accessories on the actor to see if they fit the visual style

➠ Determining chemistry between 2 actors

➠ Having audition footage to help make decisions later

Below is the video of our class's group audition. We did this as a class, where we all simultaneously acted & lip synced to the song, "Don't Stop Me Now" by Queen. Although this song (rock) does not fit with our genre (pop), we chose this song because the lyrics were familiar and the song overall was quite upbeat (matching many of our chosen songs).

Screen test video link: https://youtu.be/LL4o9gvDgdw?si=Spm2JMCV3pYxYebL

Screen test review

As stated in the beginning of the video, for our music video (song choice: 'The Weekend' by BIBI, 88rising), we were essentially looking for an actor who is:

✔ Feminine yet confident and bold

✔ Comfortable on camera (not awkward)

✔ Had the charisma of a possible star

✔ Matches our planned wardrobe and makeup

➝ Our main star target is a female, as the song is sung by a female, hence we would eliminate all males from this screen test. However, we might use them as side characters as we want to incorporate male(s) in this music video as well (perhaps no face is being shown so appearance does not matter in this case).

➝ We want our main star to be feminine while also being confident and bold, which means she should be expressive on screen. However, according to the screen test, the majority of the girls here are quiet and reserved, which does not match our primary star's personality.

Overall, we did not find any suitable candidate for our music video, hence we will conduct another screen test that focuses on each individual to analyse their suitability more detailed and precise.

(individual screen test)

Conducting a screen test is quite new to me, especially when I'm participating in the screen test, and I've never done it before. Although I was a little awkward because I'm not used to being on screen, it was a fun experience for the class as a whole, and most of us are enjoying our time together. I also learned how important a screen test is in finding the right candidate for our main star through assessing how they perform on camera. In comparison with when the candidates were already chosen without any screen test, this will result in expectations or vision that is not met when they perform on screen for our final music video, so a screen test helps to ensure that the chosen star truly meets our criteria. Although the class screen test had no suitable candidates for our music video, we had other persons in mind outside of class as our main star, in which we conducted a separate individual screen test.

(reflection about individual screen test)

Tuesday, October 29, 2024

Storyboard

Here is the storyboard for our music video project made by me, Chelsea (scenes 15-outro) and my teammate, Audrey (scenes 1-14).

Since I already had experience in creating a storyboard during the past (last year's term 1 storyboard project and last term's crime documentary project), I am already familiar with how to construct a storyboard and what to include, although I still refer to my old storyboard to retain my memory. Creating a storyboard gives me a clear vision on what the scenes would look like and easier for me to visualise and draw, as well as for the actors, so they have a vision in mind of what they should perform, even though there is the possibility that our final shooting will require adjustments and may not follow the storyboard exactly. Overall, it was a really fun and quick process for me to conduct in which resulting me in completing faster than I had anticipated. I made sure to include details starting from the camerawork that is used, how long the scene should be and technical elements that could be used in the scene. I also used annotations with a different colour for a more clear explanation on what should happen on screen. Since the song is broken down into 10 parts in total, me and my teammate, Audrey, think that it would be easier to split the jobs into two, where she did the first half and I did the last half. This is an effective way for us to create the storyboard easily with shared and balanced amount of responsibility.

Lyric Sheet

Here is the lyric sheet me and my teammates did to discuss our vision and ideas for each part of the song. This post is written by me (Chelsea).

After finalising our chosen song, our teacher helped us to print our song's lyric sheet, and we began by verballing discussing our thoughts and ideas as a group after each of us had proposed our own ideas and brainstormed which of the concepts we all agreed with. We all agree that, because of the upbeat rhythm of the song, we want our music video to feature both performance (dancing or lip-syncing) and a little bit of narrative elements as well.

Below is the lyric paper sheet we've discussed during class:

At the beginning we all have various perspectives and thoughts, which leads to some misunderstandings and uncertainty. Audrey and I imagined the music to be angsty in terms of mood, and the star will radiate the vibes of a stargirl (confident, bold, and unconcerned about what others say), dressed in bold colours like red and black and wearing heavy makeup. Meanwhile, my other teammates, Rara and Kalista, thought the entire music video would feature a sweet, vulnerable, innocent-looking star wearing white or light-colored clothes and light makeup, which contrasted my and my other teammates' ideas.

This idea clash took a long time to resolve, but we eventually came up with a satisfactory solution. To resolve this, we all went through the song's lyrics and original music video again, searching for the song's meaning (which will be explained further in the song research blogpost), and then we came up with an interesting idea. Given that the song revolves around a one-sided relationship in which the female star is being "played" (taken advantage of or manipulated) by the man, we want to add a twist to our music video. We decided that during the first half of the song, we would represent the star as innocent, fragile, and desperate for love (aligned with Kalista and Rara's idea). The second half of the song reveals that the main star is not as innocent as she appears, and that she is actually the "player" (aligned with Audrey and my idea). We also wanted to incorporate various connotations throughout the music video.

We were unable to annotate all parts of the lyrics on time since gathering thoughts that we all agreed on took up a significant amount of time in class. And, because meeting together face to face to work on this would be ineffective, we decided to change our lyric sheet discussion method by utilising digital media tools, which makes discussion more efficient, rather than one of us bringing the paper home and having to write all of the notes on their own.

Below is the lyric paper sheet we transferred and gathered our ideas on Google Docs:

View link: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1dFSjV0uFlihR2kF6A8h03tDQkNpydC-ySWnltlu8I44/edit?usp=sharing

We choose Google Docs to discuss and annotate our song lyrics because it is easier to highlight a part of a lyric and then adding comments to it. It is also more effective because it will not be a burden if the idea needs to be changed (which we have done several times); it is as simple as deleting and commenting on a new one, compared to doing it on paper, where you we must repeatedly erase and write a new one, which can be time consuming. It has also been easy for us to give comments and additional notes for a specific scene, especially if a member was absent while working and can be checked later, so not all members must be present at the same time but still collaborate together.

Selecting a part of the song lyric:

Adding comments & additional notes:

Here we also utilised Google Meet to discuss our ideas together via online:

Unfortunately, embedding the Google Doc file to this blogpost does not let viewers to see the comments we've made. Hence, we tried to find another alternative solution for this problem.

I began searching for whiteboard online applications that we could use and embed, and I came across one called Mural. I had no prior knowledge with this application, but I was able to figure it all out quickly because the user interface made it simple and guided me through the lyric sheet development process. So, I transferred all of the lyrics and annotations we made on the Google Doc, and my teammate Audrey helped me out with this.

I used different coloured sticky notes to make it easier to differentiate between each part of the song (e.g., purple for verse, yellow for chorus). Aside from this feature, I discovered what makes this application stand out compared to Google Docs. Aside from the vibrant visuals we can use, I can also embed YouTube videos (since we got a loads of inspiration and references from other music videos and movies), so we can easily refer back to the inspiration simply by just watching the embedded video in the same window.

Below is our final lyric sheet using the application, Mural:

View link: https://app.mural.co/t/mg255627/m/mg255627/1731420088615/f524415b7280cdafeabd1ec6d8bddcf9ec54d46b?sender=uc8120bfc400191f6550f4331

Discussion plays an important role in this this lyric sheet since we needed to make sure that everyone was on the same page and agreed on the same idea. Although there have been some issues with our different concepts clashing and contradicting one another, we quickly solved this through an innovative approach by merging both of these ideas into a one whole concept for the music video. I believe that by doing so, we can acknowledge both sides and create innovative and creative solutions. Even though our final concept seems to appears to be a lot of work and quite complex to execute, I believe that it will be a great way to experiment with new things and step outside of our comfort zone (as we always do) to challenge our capabilities. We also encountered challenges, such as the transition from paper to digital and technical issues with embedding. However, as technology advances in the digital era, we can now discuss, annotate, and add notes to lyrics anytime and anywhere. Overall, even though we experienced creative block at times, and some of our lyric parts, particularly the chorus, remain empty, I'm happy that we all contributed and continuously provide inputs and ideas through our active participation, resulting in all lyric parts being filled with all of our ideas.

Labels

Sunday, November 10, 2024

Wednesday, November 6, 2024

Tuesday, October 29, 2024