Final Cut Express- N Square

Today I was put into a group and faced with the challenge of working out how to use n-square on the programme Final Cut Express, with the intention of gaining enough knowledge to be able to present it and teach it to the rest of the class in our Media lesson tomorrow. First of all we realised that we needed some footage to use for it, so we went out onto the field and filmed me and Holly running towards the camera because we were told that for the grid effect (n-square) in the editing process, the shot needs to be quite strong. Afterwards, we went back to the computer, uploaded our footage onto FCE and then proceeded with working out how to do it. We worked out that you need to copy the footage as many times as you want it to be shown on the screen, and then drag one of the clips onto the timeline at the bottom and another onto the main screen where you can alter its size. This needed to be done many times which was quite time-consuming and repetitive, but in the end it comes out with a quirky grid effect, which looks interesting because it is different to the standard effects on iMovie. I think that this process has been helpful in preparing us for our real coursework piece because I know that n square is an effect that we are adamant that we will use, and therefore I am glad we have learnt how to do it early.

n-square

     In the past two media lessons, I have been learning how to use 'n-square' on Final Cut Express. At first it was difficult as there was not much information about how to use it on Google or Youtube. However, we then realised that it was similar to using split screens- except, you generally use the same shot and you split it into more squares. (e.g. 4 or 16) 
     Firstly, we went on to the school field and filmed a simple long shot of two of us running. Then, once it was uploaded, we copied the same piece of footage 16 times. We dragged one copy onto the timeline, then on the screen on the right we could change its size and position. With the following copies, you simply had to drag them over the top of the first copy on the timeline. We did this to all 16 copies (ensuring they were the same size) and then re-arranged them to form a grid of 16 squares. Although it was time consuming, I feel that n-square is really effective to use in our own music videos.   

Director Case Study

Jonas Akerlund

• Born Nov 10th 1965
• is a Swedish film and music video director
• was a member of the black metal band 'Bathory' from 1983-84
• has won a Grammy for 'Best Music Video' and 7 other awards for his video for Madonna's song 'Ray of Light'

Artists he has worked with include:

• Ozzy Osbourne
• Paul McCartney
• Christina Aguilera
• Madonna
• Robbie Williams
• The Rolling Stones
• Lady Gaga
• David Guetta
• Rihanna

Some of his earlier music videos sparked controversy (e.g. The Prodigy's- Smack My Bitch Up) which depicted drug use, violence and nudity.

His more recent music videos have surreal settings and use various effects and colour. For example:

Lady Gaga- Telephone ft. Beyoncé:

'Who's That Chick?' - David Guetta ft. Rihanna:

Both of these videos use vibrant and distorted colours and quite surreal settings (e.g. space scene in David Guetta's video). They also both use lyrics on the screen at certain points, making the video seem even less naturalistic. These features and effects reflect the fast pace of the songs, and in both cases the visuals reflect the lyrics which is one of Goodwin's theories.

Both of these examples and many other videos by Jonas Akerlund feature scantily clad women and often depict nudity. This has sometimes caused controversy and Madonna's video for 'American Life' was banned because of its graphic content.

Jonas Akerlund's other work:

• directed a full-length film called 'Spun' in 2002
• directed adverts for Swedish clothing retailer MQ
• directed Madonna's documentary film 'I'm Going to Tell You a Secret'

DIRECTOR STUDY

• Now 42 years old, Hype Williams was born in Queens, New York and earnt his nickname 'Hype' because of his hyperactive personality as a child (his original name is Harold).
• He attended the Andrew Jackson High School of Music and Art, graduating in 1987 and then going on to Adelphi University.
• He first set off in his director career when he started working with Classic Concepts Video Productions, Lionel "Vid Kid" Martin & VJ Ralph McDaniels created Hype's first opportunity with the "Filmmakers With Attitude" moniker (FWA), which became Hype's first video company.
• Hype has worked with many artists, such as Kanye West (see video), Christina Aguilera and Coldplay but appears to be more involved in the hip hop/ R&B scene more than any other, with work with artists such as The Notorious BIG, Kelis, LL Cool J and Jay Z (etc.).

• As well as directing many music videos. Hype Williams was also the director and writer of a film called 'Belly' (1998). However this was unsuccessful. Likewise, he was an actor in TV programme 'Lil Jon Makes a Video: Snap Yo Fingers' alongside Sean Paul but this was even more unsuccessful.

The reason in which I found this music video from 1981 interesting is that it includes a lot of the expectations of a music video from that time. Firstly, the video includes all 3 aspects: narrative, concept and performance. At the beginning we see Phil Collins fade into our screen which immediately tells the viewer that he is dominant and important and also that it is he that the video is promoting as well as his music. The superimposition edits of him with an image behind him suggests that his thoughts and feelings are of key importance because after all, it is his song and probably his concept for the video. Similarly, the narrative story played behind Collins ties in with the lyrics of the song, backing up one of the mentions in Goodwin's theory. Nearer to the end, colour is experimented with to give an edge to Phil Collin's frame dominating face and would have been seen as 'different' and 'experimental' in the 80's when music videos were fairly new. Overall, I think the music video is interesting because it highlights the change in music videos from then to today and also backs up some theory, therefore proving it true.

A-ha- Take On Me

A-ha- Take On Me

1985

This music video was iconic because it was memorable and cutting-edge. Also, the pencil-sketch animation style used in the video had never been done before. This created a lot of excitement and interest in the song and the band.

   The song was released two times before this video was made and both times were unsuccessful. However, when the song was released for a third time with this music video on MTV, it immediately reached number 2 on the UK Singles Chart. The video then won 6 awards, proving that it was iconic.



Evaluation!

We started our evaluation on monday and friday is the final deadline so we are working really hard to get it done in time. Yesterday, we filmed our answer to question 1, and today we are going to plan and film the answers to the remaining questions. We have decided that in our evaluation we will not have a lot of footage of just us talking to the camera. Instead, the majority of it will be a voiceover whilst we show still shots and footage from our thriller. We know that to get good marks the answers need to be really detailed so we are making the quality of our answers our main priority.
Hopefully we will meet the deadline!

Our Finished Film!!

'Repentance'

Repentance is a change of thought and action to correct a wrong and gain forgiveness from a person who is wronged. In religious contexts it usually refers to confession to God and ceasing sin against God.
We thought this name as our thriller title was extremely relevant to our film. This is because the main plot features the killer repenting his sins and feeling deep remorse for his actions. At the beginning, he is in a church, praying and having flashbacks of the murders. However, the question raised in the opening two minutes is whether there will be any further murders and obviously- will he get caught?

Update

Last lesson we 'burned' our film to disc after deciding it was finished. (We will upload it onto here shortly!). Since we have now finished the production work of our Thriller Opening, we have started work on our evaluation. We have around 5 questions about our work which need in depth answers, we need to make this into a video which should be around 7-10 minutes long. We made a start on this last lesson by going off to a classroom with a camera and trying to find an interesting way to show the questions, so we decided to write the words one by one on a whiteboard and take a shot of about 2 seconds after each word. We didn't really think this through in terms of time it would take, so about a boring hour later we had FINALLY got just the one question written, we did think about scrapping it half way through but then we would have just wasted a load of time so we carried on til the end and got it done! It does look pretty cool though, so it was worth it :) We took an easier approach to the next question, and we wrote the words out in bold on mini whiteboards and then asked Ella, Harry and Dave to hold them, this didn't take long which was a bonus. So at the moment, we have 2 questions written (or filmed) and then we have drafted the answers to a few of the questions, but they are quite tricky and we need to go into a lot of detail so that's our next challenge! :D

Film Complete!

We have finally finished the editing of our thriller film!
In today's lesson we made some small changes - like the name of our film. It is now 'Repentance' rather than 'The Sinner'. We just felt it was a better name and suited the storyline of the thriller well. When we were completely satsified with the whole film and couldn't make any other changes we burnt it to a disk.
In the following lessons we will concentrate on the evaluation and in particular, how we are going to present it on film. One possibility is that we might answer the questions in an interview style (answer questions together as our film is playing in the background) :)

The End Is In Sight!

In today's lesson, we have been finishing off our film. We were pretty pleased with our arrangements of the clips, and the size and transitioning of them so today and yesterday we have been finishing the music, and then adding titles (meaning we had to make a quick decision on what to call it... "The Sinner"). The music was a right pain because we composed it ourselves on GarageBand and we didn't want it to just run, we wanted it to come in and out and apt. points and in time with the clips, this took multiple attempts but thankfully we got it done in the end. Oh, and the titling was also rather annoying because the selection of fonts and animations for the titles on iMovie is poor so we tried using this other program called something which I can't remember and we tried to persevere with it but it was really difficult to use and time consuming (we need to hit this deadline!) so instead we chose a nice font, found out that you can use most of the standard fonts in iMovie and then did that. And then we got Miss Hill to watch it and she suggested we changed the colour effects of a couple of our clips which represent a flashback, so we have done that now and we agree that it makes more sense that way. So basically, we are more or less finished! All we need to do now is a couple last checks before we burn it onto a disc... good work!

Media Lesson- 8th Feb

We have until Friday to complete our thriller film, so today we worked really hard to finish the soundtrack. We only had the opening piece of music but using the same tune it was quite easy to put it where needed in the rest of the film. The music plays during all of the killer's flashbacks where he murders the two people. This is because these are the parts of the thriller where we want to build the most tension for the audience. Once this was finished we began to work on the titles. We experimented with different fonts and effects and we will hopefully complete this in tomorrow's lesson :)

Filming -1st Feb

Yesterday was our last day of filming. We only needed to take a few pick-up shots that we had missed out or wanted to replace. Firstly, we went to the park to film the shot of the swing. However, it was too dark by the time we got there so we were unable to get a good shot. This is not an issue though because we already have a fairly good shot of the swing (we weren't 100% happy with it at first and that is why we wanted to replace it).
We then printed off the family photo and filmed the killer scribbling out each face. The shots we got were good and we think they will look very effective in our thriller. Lastly, we attempted to film some extreme close-ups of Katie's dad but the lighting wasn't the same as it had been in the church so we may have to use the ones we already have.
Thankfully, we have now finished the filming and can now concentrate on the editing of the thriller :)

Audience Review

Today we were working on the music to go along with our film and it went better than we thought, because yesterday we couldn't get the timing right with the shots so we had to change the length of each individual shot. However, today we solved that problem and now have a little sequence which we are both happy with. We asked Leigh to listen and watch what we have so far because other peoples opinions are important to us, and he said that he was really impressed and couldn't think of any criticism. So, we are doing some extra filming tonight to fill in the dodgy/missing shots in our work and then we will carry on working to the deadline. All is fine and dandy :)

Media Lesson - 31st Jan

In today's lesson we focused on the music for our thriller film. We found it difficult to make the music play in time with the film clips as you couldn't use GarageBand at the same time as iMovie. However, Miss Hill showed us how to upload our film to GarageBand so we could listen/watch them at the same time. This made it a lot easier to play our music in time with the film.
We have 11 days left to complete our editing so we hope we will get the music finished in the next few lessons :)
From Holly & Kathy

Re-filming

Looking back at the shots we filmed we realised that there were a few we needed to re-film and some we just hadn't filmed at all. For example, although we had filmed a few extreme close ups of the killer, we were not happy with them and they are quite important shots for the thriller. We were also unhappy with the shot of the swing. So, we will be re-filming these on Friday ready to upload to the computer on Monday.
In that time we also need to film the killer scribbling out the children's faces on the photo. This is a shot we never got to film as we had not taken the photo in time for the filming week.
It will be fairly easy to put these new shots into the correct places of our thriller even though we have already ordered the clips.

Media Lesson 26th January

In today's lesson we continued editing our thriller. Although two days ago we were concerned about how long our film was, it is now down to 1:37 with a few more clips to add in. This means we will probably not exceed the 2 minute limit.
We also used GarageBand to construct a good opening piece of music which would hopefully build tension for the audience. After a few changes of mind we are now happy with the music and next lesson we will be adding it to the film and making it play in time with the different shots. Overall, we feel we are still on track and are confident we will meet the deadline.

Media Lesson - 24th January

In media today, we did some more editing on iMovie but the more we do, obviously the longer it gets and now we are onto around 2mins and we are no-where near finished! The time limit is 2:20 so we are going to struggle to keep to that, this means that we will have to do a lot of cutting which is unfortunate but we have to keep to the limit!!! There is time yet, so hopefully we will sort it out before we go too overboard.

Media Lesson - 19th January

Holly wasn't in today and that meant that I had to work on the Thriller by myself, however I didn't want to do any editing because we both like to have an input and I didn't want to make any major changes without her say-so! Instead, I decided to do something useful and listen through all the tracks and sound effects that are on the Mac to see if there was anything we could use and listed all the contenders. Then I went on Garageband which I have used before in GCSE music and tried out a few tunes and basically started putting together a little spooky song that we might be able to use in our Thriller film but obviously if we do, it will need a lot of work because it didn't take me long.

Park Scene

Today we filmed our final scene which was set in the children's park. Unlike our previous filming days we filmed this at about 4pm when it was just beginning to get dark, rather than already being pitch black. The scene included the young boy on the swing with the murderer getting closer and closer. As there were only a few shots to film, the whole process was relatively quick. Overall, we were pleased with the final shots and we are going to begin editing tomorrow (:

Filming Continued...

We went out again tonight to film our scenes in the alleyway where the man follows the girl and then kills her. We weren't as pleased with our work as the footage we got the other day but looking back at the clips, they aren't as bad as we thought. Basically, the main problem we faced was the lack of lighting, because of this we really struggled to film our 'follow' scene where the girl walks home with the man closely behind. However, on a computer screen the lighting is clearer than it was when we actually filmed it. But it wasn't all bad because the limited lighting created shadows which were effective at hiding characters and showing silhouettes.

Filming

Tonight we went out and filmed our church scene, the inside of the church was much better than we had remembered which we were pleased about because this meant we had more to work with! The filming went really well, we think we have at least one decent shot for each part which is good and the only problem we had was the lighting because being a church at night, it did get quite dark but we tried to use this to our advantage with shadows and things! We have had a change of plan about what days we are going to film now because we went down to the park where we are planning to film one of the killings and it was far too dark for the camera so we had to rethink that and now want to film that particular scene on Saturday afternoon when its twilight. :)

Back To Work

We know we haven't blogged in a while since it was Christmas and everything but now we are back on task and are planning to get all our filming done for our Thriller Opening this week commencing. Since we are filming a couple of scenes in the church we thought it would be a good idea to get the Vicar's permission incase it was an issue which thankfully it isn't as he is OK with it. Last month when we went around taking pictures of our various locations, we discovered that the church was locked from a certain time which is why we didn't get any pictures of inside it, so we also had to call up the person who looks after the key and are arranging to meet her on Tuesday so she can let us in.

Our schedule...

Monday - no filming, my dad will be at a meeting and we need him in every scene.

Tuesday - we film in the church, this is the only day we have the key so it's important we get it all done then.

Wednesday - we film the killing of Miles (not literally!)

Thursday - we film the killing of Megan (also, not literally...)

Friday - nothing planned after school, but could be useful as we aren't 100% finished on our filming.