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

The And En presentation

Music Video Script

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.

Media Production Skills 2017-2018

 

SequenceTask

When producing my Sequence Task, we were asked to produce a short 1 minute sequence about someone relaxing, being late, runs to the thing they are late for and then when they get there. For mine I decided to go with an idea of someone being late to university but it turns out they just fell asleep in class.

I worked with James for this project and he definitely helped to influence some of my ideas, just by encouraging me to use different types of shots as well as through my very loose story idea. Although most of the sequence was made through my ideas, his ideas allowed me to meet the learning outcomes much easier. When coming up with the ideas through I wanted to try something different, when I spoke to my classmates most of them had very similar premises and I decided to try to be different by using the “it’s all a dream” idea. That way I could get all the points needed for the story, as well as get all the wanted shots, such as establishing shots, match shots, cutaways and CU’s as well as following the 180 degree rule.

When creating this artefact I mostly looked at the 180-degree rule as it was something I felt I needed to sometimes break. I wanted to show early on that something was not right by using angles on both sides of my body. I ended up finding an article by Matthew York (1), he explained the time when the 180-degree rule can be manipulated, saying sometimes “it’s OK to break the rules, so long as you know why you’re breaking them”, for the 180-degree rule, breaking it causes “a sense of disorientation in the viewer”. I tried to follow this advice, by having most of the shots being at an angle on my right side, but at the start of the video and towards the end of it I shot purposely on my left side as an attempt to show something not being right from the very start, with the final shot outside of the dream being forward facing, to reflect that were back to reality.

Not everything went as well as I would have hoped though, as after filming I realised I only had a couple of cutaways (such as the hat) as wanted to do more, but by the time I realised that, we had to go to hand the equipment back. So next time I would definitely try to get those extra cutaway shots in, as well as just trying to use my time management better since I got distracted easily, and lost focus something, something I did improve on a lot after this though, by focusing on the tasks clearer and waiting until I was happy with my product before losing focus.

Overall this was one of my favourite tasks as I got to work with someone who I could bounce ideas off easily, with me suggesting the scene ideas and James giving some good advice on the types of shots to use. And even though there were no real health and safety issues with this production I felt that it still helped me to fill out a risk assessment to make sure there were no issues that could occur.

 

Instagram Task

My Christmas themed Instagram task for Media Production

A post shared by Sam Jackson (@sjacksonyorksj) on May 10, 2018 at 6:31am PDT

Instagram task

A post shared by Sam Jackson (@sjacksonyorksj) on May 10, 2018 at 6:39am PDT

For this Artefact, we were tasked with creating a short Christmas themed seasonal greetings card, with a one minute video and 4 stills to go along with it, showing the planning and production phases. The video was limited to one minute due to Instagram’s rules.

When working on the Artefact, I worked with Robbie and Ben, since we worked in a three instead of a two we had to manage time much better, eventually deciding on having one hour each in the three hour time window. Due to this we each lost 30 minutes of work time and helped each other out with ideas. I came up with the horror themed Christmas idea very early on, originally thinking of a Krampus style until our tutor Dan gave me the Freddy Kruger idea. Robbie and Ben gave me ideas for the types of shots to use, such as the closeups, but the overall structure oh the idea was mine. For the pictures that were needed, I took a couple of photos of the idea board I made when choosing what stuff to do, as well as some more pictures from when we were actually creating the artefact. When putting one in the video to continue the cheesy comedy horror theme.

When looking for clearer inspirations of a holiday themed horror concept I found a few interviews with film makers who had made Christmas themed horror movies, one which was with Bob Clark who created Black Christmas (2), where he spoke about the influences he had on movies such as A Nightmare On Elm Street and mentioning how he made it different, referencing the comedy with “Kidder’s character having a smart mouth”, and the more drama based stuff with “Hussey’s characterbeing pregnant”. I also read about film maker Craig Anderson (2.2), about his film Red Christmas, speaking about the best level’s of comedy and horror “I still made it very funny”.

The main issue we reached when creating the project was health and safety, since we had to make Ben look dead (whilst still keeping the theme comedic and seasonal) it was decided to make a fake noose out of some tinsel, it took some time and thought but we eventually decided to tie it loosely and hide that behind Ben’s head so it wouldn’t be obvious. Other smaller issues came from the Props we used, eventually using some stuff Robbie brought in, which I didn’t think worked as well as they could have done, Next time I would definitely have gone shopping for some more decorations to spread out easier and possibly have some that fit my more horror-seasonal theme.

Overall though I felt this project went very well, Robbie and Ben were very good to work with and definitely helped contribute to my ideas (as well as Dan), we sorted out a possible health and safety issue quite quickly with the overall product fitting what was needed from the brief, as well as being something I personally enjoyed creating.

 

Studio Task

When doing the studio task the duty of director very quickly fell on me when no one else wanted to try it, and I had done it previously during our practice runs. I did not mind being director as it gave me a good opportunity to lead a team. We were giving some ground rules when we started the task. The show must be 10 minutes in length, have 2 hosts as well as 1 correspondent , a live interview, 2 VT’s, an opening and closing sequence, be suitable for a pre-watershed audience, and must all be done in one go, with no additional editing.

As from the start we were a big team, ideas came from everyone very quickly, the New Years theme was decided by the tutors, with the New Years hangover idea originally being something we wanted to focus on by possibly having Nate and Connor act a bit hungover but that was dropped quite quickly in order for the two to be much more lively. Joe was soon chosen to be the producer and together me and him decided on who should be in what groups, with two VT teams, one led by James to do an interview with a local gym, and another one led by Ben Hollis to do a couple of top 5 lists. It eventually left me, Joe, Nate and Connor to plan out the sets, where the guest Abbie would sing. The way the desk was set out, and how to do the little yoga part in the middle. Everyone worked quite well together and even with a few disagreements all the VT’s went very well.

We also had some issues with Health and Safety we had to think about, most notably trip hazards which were sorted out by everyone just being careful where they stand and tidying up wires, as well as the general for James’ interviews. But neither ended up being a problem in the end.

I felt that even with all the planning we still had some issues, most noticeably with the camera work, we were unable to get Abbie in sooner so most of her camera moments at the end were unprepared and led to one of the camera moving a lot in the end, as well as another issue in the middle of the production. If I was to do this again I would definitely communicate clearer to the camera operators and try to get a possible guest in sooner.

Overall though I think the studio was the best experience as it gave us a lot of time to listen to each others ideas, with good team communication throughout, as well as covering a wider range of Health and safety issues, inside and out of the studio.

 

Photography Task

The photography task was the only task that I felt truly out of my comfort zone, photography was never something I overly enjoyed and with this artefact we needed to do six pictures which had to demonstrate at least one of six techniques. Including a long exposure, silhouette, reflection, frame within a frame, forced perspective, and a shallow depth of field. 

Despite working with Ben and Robbie again, we did not help each other out as much as usual, instead we were mostly used for models or camera holding as this project was mostly to be done independently. But because of this, as well as my uncertainty in this field, it allowed me experiment more with the equipment. And focus more on the health and safety aspects over the teamwork. Whilst doing my risk assessment I decided to be as careful as possible and avoid risks with anything dangerous, only having to worry about weather issues and traffic. Due to some of my pictures being around cars. I had other ideas initially, when I decided on my theme of depression, such as using blunt razors but decided against it, as even though I felt it would be appropriate with the topic, it could have been dangerous to my model Ben, and it wasn’t something that was mandatory.

When doing this task I decided to look into photography and accidentally found an article on photography at protests which actually helped me out of lot for my theme. The author Anastasia Veneti (3), explains about the freedom of expression and that the “Images of protests” being very important to help show peoples “identity and their messages to wider audiences”. Which I felt was very relevant especially with a topic such as depression. It allowed me to keep the dark themes and explore different ideas. Such as one of the images being about the light at the end of the tunnel (Silhouette/Frame Within Frame),  having time pass you by quickly (Long exposure), bullying (Forced perspective), feeling constantly surrounded and scared (Long exposure/Frame Within Frame), feeling like everything is wrong (Shallow Depth of field), and finally being completely alone (Silhouette/ reflection).

My only real issue was with time, if I had an extra hour I would have taken more shots and therefore had more to choose from, so if I was to do this again, time management would be very important, as some of my pictures ended up being a little blurry meaning that for the edits, I had to spend a lot of time trying to sharpen parts of the images and make the parts which weren’t the focus a bit blurrier.

Overall though I felt this task went very well, I met all the criteria very clearly for this project and I’m quite happy with the overall quality of my photographs.

 

Video Essay

For the final project of this course, I decided to do a Video Essay, speaking about the similarities between the films, Halloween, Friday the 13th and Black Christmas. I chose to do this because of how similar they are and how much they influenced each other, starting with Black Christmas’ sequel concept becoming Halloween, then the Friday the 13th film makers copying Halloween’s formula.

For this production I worked completely individually, doing my own research for the whole project, which included watching over the films multiple times and writing down moments which were similar or direct copies of the previous ones, as well as looking at some texts on the films. Most noticeably from an article titled “A Historical Approach to the Slasher Film”, written by Sotiris Petridis, (5) which mentions that according to some people “Halloween  (1978) is the starting point of slasher films”, mentioning that before Halloween though “there were another two films which belong to the slasher subgenre. In 1974, Black Christmas and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.” as well as mentioning films such as Psycho.

From these influences I built up the argument that the two most famous and influential slasher films are just made from unfinished sequels and copycat ideas. Referencing that Halloween is made form an idea Black Christmas director Bob Clark had for a Black Christmas 2, and Friday the 13th is copied from Halloween, which the writer for Friday the 13th confirmed in an interview.

When it came to writing my script and editing this project I decided to look at other Video Essay styled videos on YouTube, most notably the channel “That Film Theory” which discuss fan theories about films, then analyse the films closely in order to determin there authenticity, as well as look at other outside sources such as interviews. I did the same approach by looking up the interviews Bob Clark and Victor Miller, the writer of Friday the 13th, did in interviews. Which I could link back to on my video and source on here.

I also decided to look at over videos including the ones we saw in class, such as the more visual ones, aka the Wes Anderson one, and the more dialogue heavy ones such as the feminist one. I eventually decided to be more dialogue heavy with the videos helping to prove my point and serve as my evidence, as well as showing the comparisons between the films much clearly then my words ever could. I also brought in some other films for the video, such as The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Psycho and Hatchet, showing the wide range of over 50 years of slasher styled movies, mentioning briefly how the formula has changed a little over time.

Overall for this project I definitely think that it was important for me to work on my own for once, that way I was able to focus clearly on my own vision for this project, and it allowed me to learn how to do my own research and editing, so I don’t end up just relying on other people all the time.

 

(1), York, M 2013, ‘Breaking the Rules’, Videomaker, 28, 2, p. 2

(2), Vlessing, E 2006, ‘Holiday spirit’, Hollywood Reporter — International Edition, 397, 14, p. 14

(2.2), HELLER-NICHOLAS, A 2016, ‘DREAMING OF A RED CHRISTMAS’, Metro, 190, pp. 26-29

(3), Veneti, A 2017, ‘Aesthetics of protest: an examination of the photojournalistic approach to protest imagery’, Visual Communication, 16, 3, pp. 279-298

(4), Petridis, S 2014, ‘A Historical Approach to the Slasher Film’, Film International (16516826), 12, 1, pp. 76-84, page 76-77.