Tuesday, 17 November 2009
Friday, 23 October 2009
Evaluation of 8 Shot Journey
Overall, I think that my 8 shot journey was really good and was what was asked of me. But of course, there were things that went well and things that didn't.
I think that my 8 shot journey could have benefited from some different camera angles and some strong shapes in the shots to make the finished product look exciting and be more interesting to watch. I think that I could have changed some locations as a lot of the ones I chose were very similar, and therefore lacked variety. I also think I should have been more patient with shots 2 and 7, as their were a large group of people in the way of each shot I tried to take. So in the end I settled for a shot that wasn't as good as I'd hoped due to the fact that I was getting impatient and couldn't wait for the people to finish using the vending machines and the lift.
I do think that my 8 shot journey was good because it was short and sweet. It had a clear beginning and an ending, and overall the shots I did take were good and worked well when put together in editing. I think that I used a good number of different camera shots that made the final product much more interesting and it showed my knowledge and understanding of the different shots. I also stuck to the 180 rule throughout, which helped with the continuity and made it look more realistic.
I think that my 8 shot journey could have benefited from some different camera angles and some strong shapes in the shots to make the finished product look exciting and be more interesting to watch. I think that I could have changed some locations as a lot of the ones I chose were very similar, and therefore lacked variety. I also think I should have been more patient with shots 2 and 7, as their were a large group of people in the way of each shot I tried to take. So in the end I settled for a shot that wasn't as good as I'd hoped due to the fact that I was getting impatient and couldn't wait for the people to finish using the vending machines and the lift.
I do think that my 8 shot journey was good because it was short and sweet. It had a clear beginning and an ending, and overall the shots I did take were good and worked well when put together in editing. I think that I used a good number of different camera shots that made the final product much more interesting and it showed my knowledge and understanding of the different shots. I also stuck to the 180 rule throughout, which helped with the continuity and made it look more realistic.
Wednesday, 21 October 2009
Rotation Week Three - Video Production
Video Production - 8 Shot Journey
Our third and final rotation was the one I was looking forward to the most; video production. I have done some video production before from when I was doing AS Levels, so I knew what to expect, and that I would enjoy this project.
On the Monday we did a lot of theory to back up what we would be filming on the Wednesday. The theory we did consisted of looking over camera shots / angles, techniques we could use to make the film appear exciting (diagonals, lines, curves, etc), rules of filming (180 rule, rule of 1/3's), etc. Everything we learnt on the Monday would help us make our 8 shot journey's visually exciting and would boost our grades significantly in the future. A lot of the information we learnt on Monday was stuff I had previously learnt in Sixth Form, so for me it was just revising what I already knew, with a few things I didn't. I really enjoyed learning the theory of the filming as I knew that this would help me in the future and I found it really helpful and enjoyable.
On the Tuesday we didn't have to be in until half 1, so I got a lay in =D =D But when we did go into college we did a hierarchy of the most important jobs in film production, and we watched a scene from a film that demonstrated the different jobs involved in a production. We also designed our 8 shot journey and what we would be filming. We created a storyboard to help us when we came to filming, as it would help us get through the filming process quickly and smoothly, due to the fact that we would have locations and camera shots written down, so we can quickly get on with the shot successfully.
On Wednesday we striped our tape, which is where you film over the tape with the lens-cap still on, so that you get an uniterrupted piece of footage that has a new time code. This will make it easier to edit at a later date. And so then we went out filming! It was so much fun! This was, in my opinion, the best rotation by far, and I really enjoyed everything about it.
On the Thursday we logged our clips, and then we edited our 8 shot journey on Final Cut Pro. Final Cut Pro was really simple and easy to use; it was literally just dragging, dropping and cutting in and out points for each clip we wished to use. I'm not usually very handy with a computer and programs such as these, but I found Final Cut Pro really simple and as soon as I started to get into the swing of things, it went really quickly and I managed to finish editing within the hour. I really enjoyed editing the 8 shot journey as it made everything we learnt come together and it brought my ideas and knowledge together. I was really proud of my work when I saw the finished prodcut, and I felt that I had really achieved what was asked.
Script For Radio Jingles
For my jingles I tried to keep them simple, so I opted for short pieces of speech just to let the audience know what was going on.
News Jingle:
"This is the News on SNC Live"
Station Ident:
"89.5 SNC Live"
Show Promo:
"The Dance Takeover, Fridays from 8 with Sharni, 89.5 SNC Live"
Looking back I think I did have enough speech for both the News Jingle and Station Ident, but i think I could have included more speech in the Show Promo to get the audience more interested in the show and to draw them in.
Codes and Conventions of Radio Jingles
Notes on Jingles - Codes and Conventions
Radio jingles can be used in a number of ways. A few include:
-Products
-Highlights
-Competitions and Events
-Fun / Amusement
-Jingles introducing the News, etc
-Start of a show
Basically, jingles are used for ADVERTISING.
Jingles on the Radio need a number of aspects in order to become noticed and make people listen to it. They need to encourage the audience to tune in to your show and to keep their interest. Our jingles needed to sound professional, keep audience interest and be exciting.
Codes and Conventions is where we analyse what every media product needs in order to become successful. It is where we decide how they work, what and who they are for, and what they have in common. We eventually decided that our jingles needed to be hummable, short and sweet, have all the necessary information, and be exciting so the audience wants to listen.
We listened to radio jingles in one of our Tuesday sessions and we analysed them. All of the jingles we listened to had lots of information regarding times, frequency, presenters and name of show. They all had sound effects to make it sound exciting, and all of the sounds used were relevant to the type of show they are producing. The jingles we listened to were all short and sweet, and got to the point (excluding Chris Moyles - his was a song).
From listening to these jingles I got a feel for what I had to achieve from the rotation, and I tried to achieve the same things that the jingles we listened to in our session had previously achieved.
Thursday, 8 October 2009
Rotation Week Two - Radio
Radio Jingle Evaluation
This week was the Radio Rotation, where we would be analysing radio jingles and studying the codes and conventions, and then going on to create three of our own jingles.
Show Promo
After listening to my show promo I felt that overall I had done a fairly good job in producing a promo for my radio show on SNC Live. I felt I had achieved what was asked of me and made it work altogether.
Listening back to the jingle I feel that I could have merged the songs better, to make them sound smoother when it was played. Alternatively I could have put some sound effects in between each song which would have made it run much smoother over the jingle.
I did think I chose a good range of songs that went well together and that I felt would sound really good together. The songs were of the same genre and were all fairly “bassy”, thus going well together and making the jingle sound exciting and something that will make the target audience look up and listen.
I think I could have altered the levels out on this jingle as you can hardly hear my speech recording. But I also think I could have re-recorded my speech as they weren’t very loud or very good generally. I was very shy, and it ruined my recordings as I built up this climax to the speech and then it was very anti-climatic due to my nerves. I feel I need to be more confident in the work that I do and not be shy on activities such as the speech recordings.
News Jingle
I felt that this was my best jingle as it had an exciting beat and got to the point. The jingle wasn’t too long and therefore wouldn’t bore the audience with unnecessary time spent playing music. Also, the beat was catchy and lots of fun to listen to.
I felt that this was also my best speech recording as I “manned-up” and said the line with authority and it was clear. I also think that I got the levels for this jingle right as you could clearly hear what I was saying and also hear the music fading out.
Overall I was really happy with this jingle and didn’t feel it could have been much better as I felt it was what it needed to be, and I really liked the result I got from it.
Station Ident
This jingle was similar to the news jingle as I felt they were both good, but this one was also let down by the speech recordings I did.
The beat was also fun and catchy; it made me feel proud as my boyfriend created both of the tracks for me to use! It wasn’t too long and was exactly what I wanted it to be, I was very lucky in the fact that I could get them to be exactly how I needed them to be.
I felt that overall I would have been really happy with the results if I had been more confident in recording the speech, or even getting someone else to record them for me to make the jingles better than I had made them.
This week was the Radio Rotation, where we would be analysing radio jingles and studying the codes and conventions, and then going on to create three of our own jingles.
Show Promo
After listening to my show promo I felt that overall I had done a fairly good job in producing a promo for my radio show on SNC Live. I felt I had achieved what was asked of me and made it work altogether.
Listening back to the jingle I feel that I could have merged the songs better, to make them sound smoother when it was played. Alternatively I could have put some sound effects in between each song which would have made it run much smoother over the jingle.
I did think I chose a good range of songs that went well together and that I felt would sound really good together. The songs were of the same genre and were all fairly “bassy”, thus going well together and making the jingle sound exciting and something that will make the target audience look up and listen.
I think I could have altered the levels out on this jingle as you can hardly hear my speech recording. But I also think I could have re-recorded my speech as they weren’t very loud or very good generally. I was very shy, and it ruined my recordings as I built up this climax to the speech and then it was very anti-climatic due to my nerves. I feel I need to be more confident in the work that I do and not be shy on activities such as the speech recordings.
News Jingle
I felt that this was my best jingle as it had an exciting beat and got to the point. The jingle wasn’t too long and therefore wouldn’t bore the audience with unnecessary time spent playing music. Also, the beat was catchy and lots of fun to listen to.
I felt that this was also my best speech recording as I “manned-up” and said the line with authority and it was clear. I also think that I got the levels for this jingle right as you could clearly hear what I was saying and also hear the music fading out.
Overall I was really happy with this jingle and didn’t feel it could have been much better as I felt it was what it needed to be, and I really liked the result I got from it.
Station Ident
This jingle was similar to the news jingle as I felt they were both good, but this one was also let down by the speech recordings I did.
The beat was also fun and catchy; it made me feel proud as my boyfriend created both of the tracks for me to use! It wasn’t too long and was exactly what I wanted it to be, I was very lucky in the fact that I could get them to be exactly how I needed them to be.
I felt that overall I would have been really happy with the results if I had been more confident in recording the speech, or even getting someone else to record them for me to make the jingles better than I had made them.
Thursday, 1 October 2009
Pinhole Photo 2
This is the first image I took; the random black square in the corner was a double sided sticker that I forgot to take out the box.
It was taken in Alexanadra Park and the exposure time was 1 minute.
Pinhole Photo 1
This is the last image I took, which actually turned out the best.
It was taken on the Bridge to the South Building, and the exposure time was 10 minutes.
It was taken on the Bridge to the South Building, and the exposure time was 10 minutes.
Rotation Week One - Photography
Photography – Pinhole Cameras
This week we did our first rotation project, which happened to be photography. I’m not a huge fan of photography myself because in the past I haven’t been particularly great at it, but I really enjoyed this rotation because I felt I could potentially become quite good at it with some training and tutorials. I liked the way that pinhole camera photography is very much based on guesswork, and can be quite hit and miss at times.
Photography is the process, activity and art of creating still or moving pictures via photographic film (which we used) or an electric sensor. Light patterns are reflected or emitted from the objects which activate a sensitive chemical or electronic sensor during a timed exposure.
At the start of the week we wrote some definitions of parts of a camera to aid us in understanding what we would be creating later in the week, e.g. a shutter allows light into the lens to take the picture, in optics an aperture is a hole from which light travels through and a lens captures the light from the subject and brings it into focus. We quickly talked about exposure control as we would need this information later on in the project to work out how much exposure our pinhole cameras would need. Our photography tutor showed us some of his previous work to show us what could be achieved from it; a few of us even recognised some of his work!
Pinhole cameras are cameras with no lens and a very small aperture; it is basically a light-proof box with a hole in the side. We measured the distance from where we intended to place the lens and where we would place the photographic paper, as we would need this value later on to work out the exposure time. To make sure our boxes were light-proof we painted the inside black to stop light bouncing around; this was lots of fun as Arti and I managed to cover our table and ourselves in black paint as well as the box!
After our boxes had dried (after some failed attempts to dry them under broken hand-dryers) we cut a 2x2 square in our boxes which will act as our lens when taking our pictures. We tell gaffer-taped a piece of thick foil (from a curry pot or Mr. Kipling cake) over the lens, and gave it a small hole through the foil with a pin. I then made a shutter to cover over the front of the foil to stop unwanted images being captured on the photographic paper. And that was it! Pinhole cameras were made!
Early Wednesday we worked out the exposure time each of us would need in order to develop an image for inside and outside. To do this we needed to work out an f-stop. And to get this value, we needed to divide the length from lens to photographic paper (which we calculated earlier) by 0.8 (the average size of the pin). Mine was: f-stop = 115 / 0.8; this worked out to be 143.75. Tim then worked out that for my box I needed to have an inside exposure time of 20 minutes, and an outside exposure time of 1 minute.
I decided to have my photographic paper slightly curving around the box, to get a panoramic image. The photographic paper can only be handled in dark conditions, otherwise it would be spoiled and it wouldn’t be able to capture an image. So we loaded up our photographic paper in a dark room and gaffer-taping around the lid of my box to make sure it won’t move during exposure time.
And then off I went! In 4 hours I managed to take 6 images, 3 of which were worth using and had a recognisable image on the paper. To develop the images on the paper, we had to go back into a dark room and remove the photographic paper from the box. We then placed the paper into a developer chemical, where images sometimes appeared, but for me it was very hit and miss. We then placed the picture into a fixer chemical, and then into water to clean off some of the chemicals. We then came back into our photography studio where we used the quick-drying machine to dry our images from the chemicals and water. And that was it! =D
Overall I found this rotation very enjoyable and a lot of fun as we had no idea whether it was going to work or not. I had a lot of fun over this week and am looking forwards to doing lots more photography in the future!
This week we did our first rotation project, which happened to be photography. I’m not a huge fan of photography myself because in the past I haven’t been particularly great at it, but I really enjoyed this rotation because I felt I could potentially become quite good at it with some training and tutorials. I liked the way that pinhole camera photography is very much based on guesswork, and can be quite hit and miss at times.
Photography is the process, activity and art of creating still or moving pictures via photographic film (which we used) or an electric sensor. Light patterns are reflected or emitted from the objects which activate a sensitive chemical or electronic sensor during a timed exposure.
At the start of the week we wrote some definitions of parts of a camera to aid us in understanding what we would be creating later in the week, e.g. a shutter allows light into the lens to take the picture, in optics an aperture is a hole from which light travels through and a lens captures the light from the subject and brings it into focus. We quickly talked about exposure control as we would need this information later on in the project to work out how much exposure our pinhole cameras would need. Our photography tutor showed us some of his previous work to show us what could be achieved from it; a few of us even recognised some of his work!
Pinhole cameras are cameras with no lens and a very small aperture; it is basically a light-proof box with a hole in the side. We measured the distance from where we intended to place the lens and where we would place the photographic paper, as we would need this value later on to work out the exposure time. To make sure our boxes were light-proof we painted the inside black to stop light bouncing around; this was lots of fun as Arti and I managed to cover our table and ourselves in black paint as well as the box!
After our boxes had dried (after some failed attempts to dry them under broken hand-dryers) we cut a 2x2 square in our boxes which will act as our lens when taking our pictures. We tell gaffer-taped a piece of thick foil (from a curry pot or Mr. Kipling cake) over the lens, and gave it a small hole through the foil with a pin. I then made a shutter to cover over the front of the foil to stop unwanted images being captured on the photographic paper. And that was it! Pinhole cameras were made!
Early Wednesday we worked out the exposure time each of us would need in order to develop an image for inside and outside. To do this we needed to work out an f-stop. And to get this value, we needed to divide the length from lens to photographic paper (which we calculated earlier) by 0.8 (the average size of the pin). Mine was: f-stop = 115 / 0.8; this worked out to be 143.75. Tim then worked out that for my box I needed to have an inside exposure time of 20 minutes, and an outside exposure time of 1 minute.
I decided to have my photographic paper slightly curving around the box, to get a panoramic image. The photographic paper can only be handled in dark conditions, otherwise it would be spoiled and it wouldn’t be able to capture an image. So we loaded up our photographic paper in a dark room and gaffer-taping around the lid of my box to make sure it won’t move during exposure time.
And then off I went! In 4 hours I managed to take 6 images, 3 of which were worth using and had a recognisable image on the paper. To develop the images on the paper, we had to go back into a dark room and remove the photographic paper from the box. We then placed the paper into a developer chemical, where images sometimes appeared, but for me it was very hit and miss. We then placed the picture into a fixer chemical, and then into water to clean off some of the chemicals. We then came back into our photography studio where we used the quick-drying machine to dry our images from the chemicals and water. And that was it! =D
Overall I found this rotation very enjoyable and a lot of fun as we had no idea whether it was going to work or not. I had a lot of fun over this week and am looking forwards to doing lots more photography in the future!
Hey!
Hey and welcome to my blog =]
I'm Sharni, studying Media Production at Suffolk New College. My blog is going to be keeping you guys up to date with what's happening on my course and talking you through what topics and projects I've been up to.
Hope you enjoy it!
x
I'm Sharni, studying Media Production at Suffolk New College. My blog is going to be keeping you guys up to date with what's happening on my course and talking you through what topics and projects I've been up to.
Hope you enjoy it!
x
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