Introduction to main task

As a main task we must create the opening scene to our own teen horror film. This piece of media must be edited together and thought of with our own ideas. Over the course of the creation of this piece of media we must part take in several different pieces of industury research in order for our media to have desired effect. Things such as questionairre, research into the history of horror flms, conventions and codes within horror.

Introduction to Final Cut Express and practice edit.

In todays lesson a group of the class were asked to make there way to the Media Mac Suite and take part in a tutorial of the Macs and FCE. We were taught a number of different things such as keyboard shortcuts, how to edit clips, select and move clips, render, and finally export. I found this a worthwhile experience and felt I learnt alot and am much more confident on the Macs.

To back the above up we were given a 60 second file of a selection of clips including a number of different camera angles and shots that previous media classes had compiled, we were asked to edit them and make them fit nicely and compile it into a well made and presentable Preliminary Task. I worked with Dean Houghton during this exercise and my partner wasn't in school on this particular date.

Recent Events -

In recent events we have suffered the departure of a group member in Greg Lee. Greg was a major part of our group and plans and was to act in our preliminary task, this is a big loss to our group but we now have to change our plans, re-enforce our plans and re-arrange things in order for everything to run smoothly and to have our work at its optimum, including the preliminary task.

In other events, Mr Henton has given us a tutorial to the range of HD cameras the school has to offer, we were shown the basics of the HD/Canon and the Samsung. All 3 have different features to offer, the Samsung offers the time elapse feature, however this is not necessary for our preliminary task but may come into use further on in the course. We were also shown how to book the equipment out and made aware of rules and regulations of such hires.

Meet the cast - Tuesday, 20 September 2011

Now our group has the script in order we have started preparing for the casting period of the process. We have discussed our best attributes and who would suit which role best and decided to use are ready available in our two A-level drama students to do the acting. We have assigned them roles within the task already and they have lines to prepare for - Below are pictures of the two members of the cast -

(Above) Tim is a really confident and well spoken actor who isn't afraid of the camera. He relishes the chance to act in front of audiences or on camera and I believe is the perfect man for the job.

(Above) Greg is a good friend of Tim and has similar experience in Drama from GCSE Drama, he is also taking A Level Drama and has a wide range of acting skills making him well suited for any script.

Location Planning - Tuesday, 20 September 2011

Whilst planning our location we had to take our script into account in order to select a more suitable and relevant location. Our script is about a young boy who is studying hard and completing an essay, with this is mind we thought the class room setting maybe suitable, we enquired if a class room would be accesable at the times we needed only to find out it wouldn't be. This mean we had to come together as a group and re-think our ideas, we then came up with the idea of the computer room which on second thought is more suited to our script anyway. Below are some pictures of our first location and our second location.

Above is the classroom location we chose, we then changed our option on second thoughts to the one below.

We then went to this room, which is our computer room in MFL, we thought this would be better suited to our script because our character can be doing there essay on a computer and this room has good natural lighting aswell.

Storyboard

Now that we have the casting and location planned and completed, our thoughts turned to our storyboard. This is to give us an idea of what our final product of the preliminary task should run and look like. It consists of 12 different shots, including camera angles, movements and type of shots of each frame.
--------NOTE--------
GREG HAS LEFT THE SCHOOL SO WE NO LONGER HAVE ACCES TO THE STORYBOARD WHICH HE POSSESED, MEANING WE CAN NO LONGER PROVIDE PICTURES OF THIS.

Preliminary Task Script -

In todays lesson, Me, Tim and Greg began complieing a script, we gathered our notes from the previous lesson, picked out the best and most sutiable idea and went with that. We then went to the computer room and typed up our script. Our notes included who would feature in the task, storyline of the task and a location that may later be changed.

Media Target Grade - Saturday 17th September 2011

This week Mr Henton issued everyone in the class an individual target grade based on our GCSE results from the previous 2 years work at school in all subjects. My personal target grade was issued as C/D. I will work hard and focus well in order to try and beat this target and better myself.

Discussion of ideas for Preliminary Task

Now that we have been shown the basics of media and have a suitable set up to go onto start work for our Preliminary Task we have began brainstorming ideas for it. In todays lesson, myself, Greg and Tim sat round and began mindmapping ideas for the cast, storyline and location - Below is our work. availability character

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Production in 3 steps - Wednesday, 14 September 2011

In today's lesson Mr Henton explained to us in detail the 3 main steps of production for any type of video, film and T.V, they are the following -

Pre-production - The first of the 3 and it involves planning the concept of any idea you have in mind, then script writing and story boarding. This also consists of finding suitable locations, but only once a correct case has been selected,

Production - This is the second and the biggest step, it is the actually production of the media concept and involves all the filming of all plans.

Post-production - This is the final section of the 3 and it basically consists of stringing all the filmed clips together and making it all look professional with editing software, also adding any extra effects to help increase effectiveness.

Me and Tim have also been discussing ideas and planning thoughts out in order for us to be prepared to script write next lesson in preparation for our Preliminary task.

Introduction to basic camera angles and movements.

In todays lesson Mr Henton introduced us to a number of new and before unknown angles and movements that are used in film.

Getting Started

This is my first post on Blogger, this blog will be used as an online diary of my time studying Media at KBA. I will update about what I have attempted and achieved each week in lessons and personal projects outside of school aswell as schooling projects. I will post videos and pictures of my work and progress.

I have had 3 lessons in Media Studies so far, in which I have been had to get into a group of 3, my group consists of Tobi Kareem, Greg Lee and myself. This group contains the people I will work on The Preliminary Task with, that means I will carry out ALL Foundation Portfolio related work with them, this type of work involves things such as storyboarding, filming and editing a character opening a door, crossing a room and sitting down in a chair opposite another character, with whom she/he then exchanges a couple of lines, this is a continuity task and should demonstarte match on action, shot/reverse shot and the 180-degree rule.

I have also been asked to set up a Slideshare account, I had to go to the offical Slideshare website and set up an account. Slideshare allows the user to upload powerpoint's to there personal blogs on such sites as Blogger. This will allow me to share a variety of my own powerpoints to keep my Blogger updated.