"Today" (today with the quotes because it's NOT today) Vikki, Katrina and I went to film for our interview "task". We borrowed a tripod and a camera (no microphone because apparently we're not supposed to use it, but then it kind of caused some problems, I'll get to that later) and we went around the school looking for people to film.
Since this was our first filming task we were all kind of confused and we didn't know what type of shots we were supposed to use, so Vikki and I went to look for THOMSON LOONG (the NUMBER ONE FILM NERD) and asked him but *GASP* HE DOESN'T KNOW. Luckily we bumped into Alex, who is in our group, on our way up and he told us that we were supposed to use the long shot, medium shot and close up.
I was originally supposed to be interviewer but when I started testing the camera I kind of got hooked and I switched roles with Katrina so I became Camera Operator and she was interviewer. Vikki was the sound person/assistant camera operator (because she had the earphones).
We decided to film in the library since there are a lot of people in the library and there's bound to be someone who is willing to be interviewed, and also Lizzy is in the library and she promised Katrina that she will be interviewed.
SO ANYWAY. THAT'S WHEN THE PROBLEMS START COMING COMING....COMING!!
At first we wanted to film in the bags area, with Liz and Katrina standing near the counter and me at the shelf (so I could get the long shot, and NO I'm not very skilled). But then we sort of realized that we were BLOCKING A BUNCH OF PEOPLE and the people all thought we were from the CIS Friday Morning News (NO!!!) and started asking us stuff like "what's on the news?" "is this Friday Morning News?" "Can I be on the news?". So we moved away because that area was too cramped anyway. And then Katrina has a brilliant idea, WE GO FILM FROM THE STAIRS! So Lizzy and Katrina stood at the bottom of the top part of the stairs while me and Vikki stand on top and film down. We ended up taking up the whole top part of the stairs and no one could go up or down and a bunch of people were crowding around us waiting to go down (i don't know why they all suddenly want to go down, I mean usually not that many people go down anyway). I, being the awesomely nice camera person, let them down the stairs between shots and closed off the area when we started, BUT WHEN WE STARTED AGAIN KATRINA AND LIZZY BOTH MOVED so it won't have good continuity. PROBLEM. The thing is I don't know how to switch shots without cutting in between shots. Last year in film Ms Riddell said that in interviews they do the scene a few times, each filming from a different angle with a different type of shot, but we don't have the time so we had to pause! And I MESSED UP, you'll see why when you see what I made, but Lizzy did the interview very good and provided us with detailed answers.
The second person we interviewed was a Year 8 kid who was really interested in Global Issues (I know he is because I interviewed him last year for FMN and he said he liked the News as his favorite TV show). We filmed from the shelves at the back with me standing at the "front" of the shelves and him standing at the back. He did the interview quite well and understood the instructions that we gave him, but I MESSED UP because I said "go" a few times before they actually started so I think the microphone picked that up (PROBLEM with using the built in microphone), but we could always edit it out.
We had some problems looking for the last person, because it's about the Blue Sky Campaigne and almost NO ONE has heard of it. We tried asking the librarians, but they were all busy so in the end we asked Kenneth, who hasn't heard of the Campaigne, but I thought it would be good to have someone who doesn't know about it answer the question because that would probably show that the general public doesn't know about the Campaigne and that it should have better publicity. THE PROBLEM with this part was that Kenneth's friends were standing next to us and they were talking and Vikki and I could hear them from our earphones (the other people were all really smart and stopped talking when we filmed, but NO-OH...) so we had to "shush" them a couple of times before we started.
Overall, I think it was quite a fun experience and I learned quite a lot about the actual techniques of using a camera when we are given some shots that we HAVE to do. Last year we just had to find movement and it didn't matter how we filmed it at all; and in Friday Morning News, everyone just used Medium Closeups or Medium Shots and sometime Long Shots and edited in the closeups and everything when we did our editing. I also learned that MAKING SACRIFICES IS A PART OF FILMMAKING, because we had to SKIP LUNCH and stuff. Next time, hopefully we could be more organized and try not to block other people when we film, because I think we caused quite an inconvenience to those people. I think we should also USE MICROPHONES, but the chords aren't that long so it might be hard to do the long shot. ANYWAY, I have to SLEEP...
OVER AND OUT :)
QUOTE OF THE DAY: When life gives you lemons, make apple juice.
Friday, September 11, 2009
Tuesday, September 1, 2009
REAL reflection (September 1st, 2009)
OKAY, today I've decided to TRY to write a REAL reflection. Really, I try, but it's a really hard thing to do, write all formal and stuff. Especially if it's a blog, because usually for blogs you can use all sorts of slang and stuff.
ANYWAY, today, Ms Wong wasn't here (*GASP*) and Ms Rosati came and taught us about film stuff. She put us into groups and I'm in the same group as VIKKI HUI, Katrina, Alex and Logan. We learned how to log in to the Mac system and went over our 5 questions and picked the "best" five to ask the people. I picked the one where I asked them to compare our air quality with the other places they have been to. Some of my groupmates and Ms Rosati all said that people may not have traveled and stuff, but really, Hong Kong people ALL travel. They must have at least been to Macau or something and YES there is a difference. Most of the people you see on the street in, say, Causeway Bay would have been to at least ONE place outside of Hong Kong. It's probably like Taiwan or something but it's still SOMEWHERE, you know? So I don't think that would be a problem. You know what would be REALLY interesting though? We could as a homeless person, or a beggar. Because they spend like all day outside on the streets, so they would probably be affected more than us, and it would be really interesting to see what they think. :)
After we did all those things we learned about doing camera work and we got to see different shots on the screen while Ms Rosati used the handheld camera to film the shots. I think that's a really good way to teach us camera angles because last year we only looked at the PHOTOS and it's sort of different looking at photos and looking at someone actually DOING the shot makes it easier to understand how to do it and what effect it has on FILM. And then we looked at the ending of Bonnie and Clyde. I've never watched the movie, though I have heard of the name somewhere. When I got home I searched the name up and found out that Bonnie and Clyde were actually real people who robbed banks in the 1930s, so I probably heard their names in some teenage book I read where the main character (usually a girl one) always refers to old things and compares her friends or people she knows. I actually kind of want to watch the movie now, even though it is quite old (it was made in 1967), but the clip we saw, the ending, looked really interesting and the editing and camera techniques are very good. I also have a feeling that the style of the film is different from the films we usually watch today and will be worth analyzing since lately I have been wanting to watch something that is different from the "mainstream movies".
We are supposed to draw a storyboard for part of the clip we watched. I had a little bit of experience with storyboarding because Ms Riddell told us to do a storyboard for our first assessment last year, but it ended up more like an artistic comic thing, but still...So ANYWAY, I'm going to work hard to try to fit all the different shots into SIX boxes and it's quite HARD because I'm really bad at "condensing" things. But then, I can still TRY. :)
The most interesting part of today's lesson (at least it's SUPPOSED to be the most interesting part) was the part where we got "jobs" and tried working with the camera. I was assistant camera operator, which means I don't do much apart from stand next to the camera and assist Logan, who was the camera operator. We were supposed to have a go at making a shot of something and Alex, who was our director, chose this horribly boring shot of the Mac computer screen and it turned out looking kind of weird. But anyway, I had fun being called a professional-sounding name AND I learned that the person who does lighting with the reflectors is called the Gaffer. :)
I don't think Ms Rosati likes me very much because I'm such a bad student and I talk a lot and I have really different opinions (compared to a lot of other people), but I think she's really PROFESSIONAL and stuff so it's really good to have her teach us and it's good that we could hear someone's professional opinion on things.
Vikki, Katrina and I are supposed to go and ask 3 people our 5 questions during the weekends, I don't really want to do it during the weekends and stuff because I don't have time and Katrina can't do it so we decided to do it on Friday. It'll be kind of hard finding people in school to interview, I know because I was with the Friday Morning News last year and we had a HORRIBLE time finding interviewees, really. But we'll try hard and I really look forward to doing our first real filming "task". :)
QUOTE OF THE DAY: PAIN IS PART OF LEARNING WHO YOU ARE.
OVER AND OUT. :)
ANYWAY, today, Ms Wong wasn't here (*GASP*) and Ms Rosati came and taught us about film stuff. She put us into groups and I'm in the same group as VIKKI HUI, Katrina, Alex and Logan. We learned how to log in to the Mac system and went over our 5 questions and picked the "best" five to ask the people. I picked the one where I asked them to compare our air quality with the other places they have been to. Some of my groupmates and Ms Rosati all said that people may not have traveled and stuff, but really, Hong Kong people ALL travel. They must have at least been to Macau or something and YES there is a difference. Most of the people you see on the street in, say, Causeway Bay would have been to at least ONE place outside of Hong Kong. It's probably like Taiwan or something but it's still SOMEWHERE, you know? So I don't think that would be a problem. You know what would be REALLY interesting though? We could as a homeless person, or a beggar. Because they spend like all day outside on the streets, so they would probably be affected more than us, and it would be really interesting to see what they think. :)
After we did all those things we learned about doing camera work and we got to see different shots on the screen while Ms Rosati used the handheld camera to film the shots. I think that's a really good way to teach us camera angles because last year we only looked at the PHOTOS and it's sort of different looking at photos and looking at someone actually DOING the shot makes it easier to understand how to do it and what effect it has on FILM. And then we looked at the ending of Bonnie and Clyde. I've never watched the movie, though I have heard of the name somewhere. When I got home I searched the name up and found out that Bonnie and Clyde were actually real people who robbed banks in the 1930s, so I probably heard their names in some teenage book I read where the main character (usually a girl one) always refers to old things and compares her friends or people she knows. I actually kind of want to watch the movie now, even though it is quite old (it was made in 1967), but the clip we saw, the ending, looked really interesting and the editing and camera techniques are very good. I also have a feeling that the style of the film is different from the films we usually watch today and will be worth analyzing since lately I have been wanting to watch something that is different from the "mainstream movies".We are supposed to draw a storyboard for part of the clip we watched. I had a little bit of experience with storyboarding because Ms Riddell told us to do a storyboard for our first assessment last year, but it ended up more like an artistic comic thing, but still...So ANYWAY, I'm going to work hard to try to fit all the different shots into SIX boxes and it's quite HARD because I'm really bad at "condensing" things. But then, I can still TRY. :)
The most interesting part of today's lesson (at least it's SUPPOSED to be the most interesting part) was the part where we got "jobs" and tried working with the camera. I was assistant camera operator, which means I don't do much apart from stand next to the camera and assist Logan, who was the camera operator. We were supposed to have a go at making a shot of something and Alex, who was our director, chose this horribly boring shot of the Mac computer screen and it turned out looking kind of weird. But anyway, I had fun being called a professional-sounding name AND I learned that the person who does lighting with the reflectors is called the Gaffer. :)
I don't think Ms Rosati likes me very much because I'm such a bad student and I talk a lot and I have really different opinions (compared to a lot of other people), but I think she's really PROFESSIONAL and stuff so it's really good to have her teach us and it's good that we could hear someone's professional opinion on things.
Vikki, Katrina and I are supposed to go and ask 3 people our 5 questions during the weekends, I don't really want to do it during the weekends and stuff because I don't have time and Katrina can't do it so we decided to do it on Friday. It'll be kind of hard finding people in school to interview, I know because I was with the Friday Morning News last year and we had a HORRIBLE time finding interviewees, really. But we'll try hard and I really look forward to doing our first real filming "task". :)
QUOTE OF THE DAY: PAIN IS PART OF LEARNING WHO YOU ARE.
OVER AND OUT. :)
ABOUT the grammar of the film/shot/screen grammar/whatever...
I am not really sure what the grammar of film is, but from what I've read, it's the things that filmmakers usually do and have sort of became "rules", even though they're not. "Expert practitioners" break them to create effect, just like "expert" writers keep breaking the rules of the English grammar to create their own style.
According to the Wikipedia article, a frame is like a letter; a shot is like a word; a scene is like a sentence and a sequence is a paragraph. But the other thing I read started talking about camera angles and stuff, so this is where I got kind of confused. So I think it's like a mixture of both? Like it's the camera angles and the thing about the shots and the camera angles is kind of like the...vocabulary? I have no idea and now I feel so DUMB because I don't know. BUT part of learning is not knowing something and ASKING, so I will be an INQUIRER and start ASKING questions and probably read more about it when I have time (and believe me, I don't have time right now.)
OVER AND OUT. for now.
SOURCES: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Film_grammar , http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Documents/short/gramtv.html
According to the Wikipedia article, a frame is like a letter; a shot is like a word; a scene is like a sentence and a sequence is a paragraph. But the other thing I read started talking about camera angles and stuff, so this is where I got kind of confused. So I think it's like a mixture of both? Like it's the camera angles and the thing about the shots and the camera angles is kind of like the...vocabulary? I have no idea and now I feel so DUMB because I don't know. BUT part of learning is not knowing something and ASKING, so I will be an INQUIRER and start ASKING questions and probably read more about it when I have time (and believe me, I don't have time right now.)
OVER AND OUT. for now.
SOURCES: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Film_grammar , http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Documents/short/gramtv.html
FIVE QUESTIONS about air quality...
- Compared to other places that you have been to, do you feel that Hong Kong's air quality is good or bad? Why?
- Have you ever tried to contribute to making Hong Kong's air cleaner? If yes, how? (um...bad phrasing)
- Have you or anyone you know ever had health issues that are related to air pollution? If yes, what is it?
- In all the places that you have been to, which place do you think has the best air (quality)? Why?
- How do you think Hong Kong could learn from the place you've mentioned in terms of making the air better?
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