Screen Production, 2018-19
Zigzag – Pitching For A New Business
Zig Zag Big Warehouse Sale presentation
The presentation went rather well, as a group we worked on separate ideas with James, Harry and Adam working on the three concepts whilst myself and Eleanor helped with the power point and the presentation itself whilst also giving support on some of the concepts. Throughout the process we all split off from each other to work on what was needed and what I focused on mostly, was my presentation skills. One of the biggest ways presentations can fail is when people don’t try to connect with the audience, as well as thinking about the “attention curve, spoken vs written… build up visuals… the use of slides and ways of influencing audience size” (Leonard R. Burgess (1971) ‘Presenting ideas’, Monthly Labor Review, 94(12), p. 87). Firstly is the attention curve which we sorted out by having us all speak so even if the audience disliked one of us as a presenter they may like another. Spoken VS Written was something we initially struggled with, during our practice presentation one thing we took note was the large amount of written words, because of this we cut down on the written aspect, we still kept a lot of the information but added a couple of photographs for people to look at, as well as a couple of slides only having pictures so we could focus on just dialogue for those moments. Adam and James also created a mock video for the first concept which I sadly could not find, meaning if I was to do this project again I would have kept a closer eye on some of the additional pieces of work, I would have also wanted to make mock videos of the other two concepts in order to show a wider range of media for the concepts. I would have also come up with some additional ideas as some ideas were weaker then others, so if we had some additional concepts we could have chosen the best three, so we make sure to have plenty of ideas. Overall though I think the presentation went very well and we worked well as a group.
York Tourism Travel Vlog
When coming up with ideas for the Vlog we were initially unsure what to focus on as York has many activities, catered to many different groups of people. Meaning we had to figure out which group of people we wanted and eventually settled on the large student and 18-25 age group and also decided we wanted the Vlog to be a much more abstract but also seem like a short-documentary by showing the locations we visited to show the locations. We we’re initially unsure about this due to legal issues but the places we visited were very helpful and understanding so we were able to both show off the businesses as well as film in there. After we all agreed on the concept we chose roles clearer this time with Adam directing, Harry hosting, Eleanor operating some camera shots as well as semi-hosting, James focusing on sound and being the primary editor as well as myself being both a runner and also semi-hosting, during filming we focused much clearer on the documentary idea whilst still keeping the core idea of a Vlog. “Vlogs provide a record of real events that has been edited and annotated to reflect the creative influence of the person producing it” (Lajeunesse, N. (2018) ‘Vlogs are Documentaries, Too: While the label of documentary is often applied to a particular type of filmmaking with an educational bent, the original definition is actually much broader–broad enough, even, to include the vlog format as just another type of documentary’, Videomaker, p. 64), so we focused on the overall feeling of the vlog and made sure it was personalised to us with the overall fun feeling, and tailored that to the alcohol we were showing off for the vlog. Although if I was to do this again I would have added much more dialogue moments with Harry, myself and Eleanor, as well as possibly filming some more scenes at different bars in order to show an even wider range of places the younger adult demographic can visit, as well as fix some soun issues for the 1 minute version of the vlog. Overall, I felt like the Vlog came off amazingly with both the 1 minute and 3 minute version.
Advertorial
For the third project I was unwell and missed the initial concept phase but was able to join the group towards the end of the decision when it was decided we would do our Advertorial on Beats headphones as Harry has multiple pairs and is a fan of the product meaning he was already well acquainted with them, and since this is an advertorial the more information the better. We decided to go for the same roles as the last project, minus James, meaning that Eleanor was now in change of sound and Adam was also filming. We filmed throughout the day, and wanted to focus mostly on the noise cancelling aspect that Beats Headphones have, and the fact that “advertorial editors should provide detailed product information” (Chang, H. H., Wong, K. H. and Chu, T. W. (2018) ‘Online advertorial attributions on consumer responses: materialism as a moderator’, Online Information Review, 42(5), pp. 697–717), meaning that for my final edit (since we had to edit this on our own) I decided to show off several features that the headphones had. Speaking about and showing the visual parts such as the noise cancelling capabilities, the volume buttons and the fact you can answer calls with the headphones, and at the end of the video I mentioned the other bits of information such as what they are made from. Editing is not one of my strong points when it comes to media and I did rather struggle with this part of the project, whilst I find filming relatively easy. Most of my editing issues came from how much footage we shot as we did not fully take into account the 2 minute length of the Advertorial meaning the actual story footage only reaches 1 minute 30 seconds, leading me to use several cutaways so if I was to do this project again I would think more carefully about the footage I would use for the edit. Overall though the project was filmed in a single day an edited over 2 days and came out rather well, and is a project I would happily do again.
Music Video Pitch
As we were given a song to do a presentation for I felt with this project that options were rather limited. The song style is something I do not listen to meaning that most of my other ideas for music videos became unusable as I don’t think such a calm song would benefit from a Marilyn Manson inspired video. Instead my group decided to go for a 1960’s Jazz inspired idea and took large inspiration from videos such as Mark Ronson & Amy Winehouse’s cover of Valerie as well as Mercy by Duffy, which both had a very swinging 60’s feel whilst still having the production value of modern day songs. With certain critics focusing on artists such as Duffy’s “sweet vocals conjuring a keen ’60s throwback” (Menachem, M. (2008) ‘Mercy’, Billboard, 120(12), p. 66.), which is a similar tone to the song we were given with it’s slow tempo and calm vocals. For this project I went with a different group and we all focused on different aspects, myself, Mahri and Sean worked on the script and the overall concept, whilst Duncan and Jack worked on stuff for the presentation, with some help from myself as Mhari. Since I worked on the script the least, mostly being an editor and co-concept creator I decided to take on a large part of the presentation, using what I had learnt both through my research and from the previous pitch. The presentation itself went well until the last slide which was missing, luckily, I remembered most of the information an was able to present that from memory as Jack had sent me the finished PowerPoint the night prior. If I was to do this project again I would like to have multiple concepts created just so we would have a bigger choice when it comes to what we can show, as well as make sure that the completed PowerPoint is the one we bring to the actual presentation. Overall though since this was a brand-new group for me I felt we did a good job at bringing all our ideas together and showing them to the rest of the group.
Music Video
Our music video took some inspiration from the pitch we had for the last project, since it was mainly the same group (with the addition of Joe) we wanted to incorporate our past ideas. We only spent about an hour choosing a song whilst brainstorming concepts that would work. This lead to us choosing a story focused music video that incorporates both abstract shots of the lead character played by me and David Bowie, played by Jack, intercut with the story parts of the video focusing on the lead character struggling with being transgender and their issues with their identity and their relationship with family. Jack was the producer and an actor, with Duncan being the camera operator and cinematographer, Mhari being the director, Sean being the writer, Joe being the editor and myself being the main actor as well as helping with some of the writing when it came to how to represent the transgender character. Being transgender myself I was able to represent some of my personal issues since the majority of transgender people “encounter unique obstacles to identity development and socialization”, as well as “how transgender individuals use both traditional and emerging media to better understand their own gender identities” (Kosenko, K. A., Bond, B. J. and Hurley, R. J. (2018) ‘An exploration into the uses and gratifications of media for transgender individuals’, Psychology of Popular Media Culture, 7(3), pp. 274–288.). I was able to relate this to the characters love for David Bowie’s genderfluidity, eventually giving them the confidence they have to become the person they truly want to be, and it all comes together with the character rebelling and becoming the person they are. If I was to do this project again I would have filmed more sequences of the transgender character coming to terms with themselves, and maybe choose the longer version of the song to show more of the storyline. Overall this project is my favourite as I felt it was where I could both express myself as a person as well as through the media we produced, and I felt that this is one of the best projects I have been involved in so far.
Technology Review Video
For our final project we were given less then a day to prepare, only 2 hours to film, put in tiny rooms that we could hardly even fit a camera in and the video itself could only be 5 minutes long, so it was an extremely difficult project and one that did not leave much room for error or creative freedom. We decided to do a comparison style for the video with Jack producing and directing, with Mhari operating the camera, me presenting and Sean presenting/editing. Me and Sean gave ourselves a camera to speak about and research and then discussed the function of our cameras. Throughout filming we discussed many of the key features that each camera had and tried to compare between the two with my main point being about the fact that the 77D is more for beginners whilst the C100 is for people more familiar to cameras and have some decent training with them. We also spoke about the video quality and the additional functions that each camera had that the other didn’t such as the filters and zebra for the C100 and the picture taking capabilities of the 77D. Overall we filmed about 15 minutes of usable footage meaning Sean had to cut that down to 5 minutes but he did an amazing job. If I was to do this project again I would definitely film it in a different location as the small rooms had very bad lighting and did not have enough room for any proper sound equipment meaning we had to cover it up a little with some music, I would have also done some more research and maybe had a practice with Sean when it comes to presenting our points so we could get more information said in a shorter amount of time. Overall I did not enjoy this project as I felt it was too constraining, but it was good experience for future jobs where we will not have much time to prepare and will have to partially improvise.