Reflective Logs

Week 1 Reflective Log:

In this reflective log, I will explain the facts and characteristics of pre-classical early cinema I researched then analyse my practical work for its limitations and benefits. I will show the strengths and weaknesses of my practical exercise and at the end of the log, summarise what I have learned and what I need to improve to ensure accuracy in my shots.

The introduction of moving pictures was in the 19th century, specifically around the 1830s as an artist named Joseph Plateau drew drawings onto a disc to create the illusion that the pictures were moving: the same effect as a flip book. In 1889, an employee of Thomas Edison named William K L Dickson created the first known motion picture film in America. These were known as the Monkeyshine films and it lead onto Dickson creating the Kinetograph (a motion picture camera) and a viewing machine which was named the Kinetoscope. However, the true birth of cinema was in the 1890's when the Lumiere Brothers was inspired by the work of Thomas Edison and his employees and decided to create a new invention which would allow people to watch 1 film all at once at the same time. Dickson's invention of the Kinetoscope had a fault that only one person could watch the film at a time. In early 1895, they created the Cinematograph, a film camera which could record, develop and project and a camera which still has influence on the digital world today. The first ever footage shot on this camera were the workers of his father's company leaving the building at the end of the day. The typical characteristics of early cinema (also known as pre-classical cinema) are only having a single shot or a few shots, only using wide or long shots, mix of a documentary style and extremely simple narrative, and for it to have a short duration; for example, the first film that the Lumiere Brothers shot of the workers leaving the building was 45 seconds long. Also due to the lack of technology, it didn't have the incredible quality that we are given from cameras today. I know this due to my analysis I had to complete on 3 pre-classical early cinema films.

The practical task this week was to create a 30 second short narrative sequence. However, we had strict restrictions due to it being in pre-classical early cinema style. These restrictions were to use one single wide shot only and no editing, sound or intertitles. To begin the process, I made a plan describing the narrative, the amount of characters and their actions and where this is planning to be filmed. The plot of my film is that Character A is walking and Character B while walking the opposite direction trips them up. Character A is confused and mad and pushes Character B, then Character B retaliates and pushes him back. Both Character’s start punching each other until Character C comes over and breaks them up. Then Character A and B look at each other for a second start fighting Character C for no reason at all. Character C runs away and hides and then Character A and B celebrate. They realise he’s gone and run the opposite way to try and find him.

I believe that my film went well for the requirements I had to meet. The story was inspired from older films yet still had an original twist to it and it successfully told a comical story which is easy to understand. However, it could be considered out of focus. This was on purpose as it gave a worse quality to the film which I was trying to meet to make it seem like the film was filmed quite a while in the past however, for future projects, I must make sure the camera is in focused if I’m making a film that’s produced in modern time. I’ve learnt that filmmakers such as Edison and the Lumiere Brothers had so many barriers in the 19th century which would be difficult to overcome with the high expectation films that are being produced today have. However, I also realise that in the time they were in their prime, it was revolutionary to even have moving picture. I can use techniques such as the directing skills I used in this film in upcoming project.

Week 2 Reflective Log:

In this reflective log, I will explain the facts and characteristics of classical early cinema I researched then analyse my practical work for its limitations and benefits. I will show the strengths and weaknesses of my practical exercise and at the end of the log, summarise what I have learned and what I need to improve to ensure accuracy in my shots.

Classical cinema started around 1914 and had less restrictions when it came to producing films for filmmakers in the pre-classical cinema period due to increase in knowledge and technology. Some characteristics include more of a narrative construction, lighting, continuity editing, longer duration, and having character driven storylines. A major influence in this period is Charlie Chaplin who created works such as "The New Janitor" and "Charlot Pompiere". The major difference between this film from early classical cinema and the films I analysed from the pre-classical cinema is the multiple shots being used. Due to the lack of technology towards the ends of the 19th century, filmmakers were unable to have more than one shot in a film. Now we’ve evolved by 10-20 years by this point and technology is now allowing of multiple shots in one film. Another difference is that quality. Even though the quality still isn’t the standard that we see in modern day contemporary films, however it has improved. Finally, another difference is the longer films that are being produced. In the 1890’s, the average length of a film was roughly 30 seconds. Now we are receiving longer films with a length of 10 minutes or more. There is still an absence of dialogue however due to the multiple shots and longer time length, the storytelling through film has improved and it’s easier to gather what the director is trying to tell. Compared to previous films, it seems that these films that were produced in the 1910s to 1920s are more fiction than documentary like than the 1890s films. Instead of filming people in a location or someone completing an action, these films have multiple actors playing a character, which suggests they could be taking inspiration from theatre. Another work piece I done was my script.

For this task, we were given two characters and a setting. The two characters being Leo, the student, and Mr. Briggs, the headmaster. It was up to ourselves to create the universe around the characters while including the office setting. We also were able to choose the two character's personalities. My choices for Leo were to make him a 16-year-old student in his final year of secondary school. He is unbothered, airheaded and humorous. Mr. Briggs is a 51-year-old headmaster who is sarcastic, slack and miserable.

The reason for choosing these two personalities together was because I had the idea of the teacher being very fed-up of his career and life around him, destroying all of his energy to deal with the troublemaker, Leo. Due to his airheaded personality, Leo is very humorous to the viewer as he tends to reveal information he shouldn't say in front of the headmaster, use slang and create nicknames despite being in a professional environment. These two personalities clash and create a comedy of Leo's bold and comedic personality taking advantage of Mr. Briggs non-existent and tired personality. Overall, this task introduced me to the layout of scriptwriting and how to set them out for future projects. It also taught me that despite scripts being very heavily dialogue focused, it still requires a lot of description to describe the character's personality and appearance and the setting around them.

The reason why I chose the office style of it being very orderly and clean was because due to Mr. Briggs' personality being very laid-back, he won't have the energy to make it messy or decorate it.

The practical task this week was to plan and recreate the film "Partie de Cartes"by the Lumiere Brothers using techniques from Classical cinema. The guidelines for this film are as followed: the sequence must have a narrative, it must be 45 seconds long, 6 shots only with no camera movement and only using wide, medium and close up shots, no sound and continuity editing must be used. We had to begin this task my planning a storyboard. Despite my storyboard not being used for my project, it was used for another group's project and my input still affected the final product. In my storyboard, I planned out the actions of the characters, what shot was going to be used and how long the shot was going to be. I worked out that my first shot, an establishing shot, was going to be 10 seconds long. This meant the other 5 shots had to be 7 seconds to get a 45 second film.

After filming, we had to edit using Avid. In this part, I started by putting all my clips together and making sure it's continuous throughout with matching on action to not take the viewer out of the atmosphere. I then removed the sound (due to the restrictions) and changed the saturation with the colour correct feature on Avid to 0 to give the black and white effect.

Overall, I am pleased with how this film turned out as it represented an early classical cinema film style. We overcame the problems we faced efficiently however we do need to film quicker with less mistakes or we may not have time to edit and complete the rest of the work - such as the evaluation. I've learnt that despite having more freedom than the filmmakers of the early cinema period had, there is still a major lack of technology than what we have today. I can use techniques such as the directing skills I used in this film in upcoming project.

Week 3 Reflective Log:

In this reflective log, I will explain the facts and how sound is created through Foley artists as well as stating the difference between impressive and expressive sound then analyse my practical work for its limitations and benefits. I will show the strengths and weaknesses of my practical exercise and at the end of the log, summarise what I have learned and what I need to improve to ensure accuracy in my shots.

Impression sound is sound that represent the actual physical sound/quality of something which gives the film a sense of solidity. The sounds that can be included as impression sound are natural sounds, human sounds, mechanical sounds, signals, and acoustics. Expression sound is sound that expresses ideas such as the mood, tone and theme and has qualities of it being a metaphorical sound with emotional quality rather than physical quality like impression sound creates. These sounds can be made with music and special effects. To investigate this, we had to find two examples of impressive sound being made for film and two examples of expressive sound being made for film. For impressive sound, I chose Foley artists creating sound for "A Quiet Place" (2018) and "Bumblebee" (2018). The reason why all the sounds these artists are making are impression sounds in "A Quiet Place" is because they need to portray the atmosphere, quality, and solidity of the area around them to make the film seem like reality. If they were to use expression sounds, they would lose that suspense atmosphere and it would seem like an awful comedy. Some sounds are easy to create such as a gun loading or water splashing as it just takes them copying the actions of the actors with the same objects, however they had to get creative for other sounds. With impression sounds in "Bumblebee", they can create the solidity, quality, and atmosphere of the objects and space around the characters to give a sense of reality to the viewer while watching the film. A sound the Foley artists create is Bumblebee sitting on Charlie’s sofa and breaking it. To create this sound, they use an old lawnmower and a seat cushion and slam it down to create the effect of Bumblebee’s weight and the breaking of the sofa. For expressive sound, I went with "Tom & Jerry" and "Star Wars". In "Tom & Jerry", we see a perfect representation of expressive sound, as these musicians from Prague perform a live show of them playing their instruments to the cartoon show, “Tom & Jerry”. The first example of expressive sound is the instrument which represents the dog breathing out and relaxing. Putting the sound of the dog exhaling and the piano together expresses the comedic tone and theme of the performance. If the band were to use impression sounds, the cartoon would lose its playful and childish effect and would seem more serious and realistic – which is not usually tended for child friendly animations. The band uses percussion instruments and woodwind instruments to create their sounds. In "Star Wars", lightsabers are an expressive sound owing to the fact that they weren’t a physical object back in the 1980s when this film was produced, and still aren’t a proper object today in 2022 despite being so popular and demanded for however, there are safe and plastic recreations. Burtt used a mix of an idled inner-plex motor from a simplex projector and transmission from a television set. To create the sound of movement, Burtt played the sound over a speaker and moved a microphone close and away from the speaker. The practical task this week was to choose a 10 to 20 second clip from Steamboat Willie and using one piece of paper per group member only, recreate the sounds which are in your chosen 10 to 20 second clip. My group chose from 0:19 to 0:30 for our clip. We recorded these sounds using a zoom microphone. After recording the sound effects, we use Avid to overlay our sound effects onto the clip and muting the original sound to see if we matched our sounds well. Before we actually recorded our sounds, we created a table which showed our sound design choices and how we are going to create them.

Overall, I think the practical task went well as we effectively gathered the sounds and put them over the video.

Week 4 Reflective Log:

In this reflective log, I will analyse my practical work for its limitations and benefits as well as explaining my script work that I completed. I will show the strengths and weaknesses of my practical exercise and at the end of the log, summarise what I have learned and what I need to improve to ensure accuracy in my shots.

This week was continued from the previous week. This week's practical was to watch a scene from "The Princess Bride" (1987) and choose a suitable sequence between 45 seconds and 1 minute to recrate the sound using Foley. My group used from 2:37 on to the end, which gave us a 45 second clip to work with. We had to dub the sound using objects and record them to later sync them with video in Avid. Before recording the sounds, we had to make a sound design table stating the sound we had to recreate, whether it is impressive or expressive, the type of sound (sound effect or ambience) and how to make the sound.

We were able to explore our creativity to see what sounds we could create and what sounds could be created out of the objects at hand that we had. I believe my group and I done well in recreating the sounds however, I think some sounds aren't properly synced to the video and it could've been better. We then had to sync the video into Avid after gathering the audio recordings. This went well as I managed to find all the sounds and sync them up correctly.

Overall, I think I successfully completed this task with my group and I successfully edited the sound to the video to replace the original audio. I can use these skills I learnt this week in future projects involving Foley or sound.

I also worked on my research and development of my Writing for Television. I analysed two scripts from the BBC Writer's Room. I decided to chose one TV Drama and one TV Comedy. The first script I analysed was the TV Drama named "Casualty". I liked that the chosen script was very easily set out, making it more accessible to read as well as all the characters were described with their part and occasionally a description. I would love to build up tension, suspense and show emotion as well as this script does in my own script. The second script I analysed was a TV Comedy called, "Beep".

I liked that the chosen script was very easily set out, making it more accessible to read as well as all the characters were described with their part and occasionally a description. I would love to involve comedy as well as this script does as well as come up with original and quirky characters which all have their own problems to add to the story.

Week 5 Reflective Log:

In this reflective log, I will explain the analysis task we had to complete which involved 3 films, the script work as well as stating the difference between impressive and expressive sound then analyse my practical work for its limitations and benefits. I will show the strengths and weaknesses of my practical exercise and at the end of the log, summarise what I have learned and what I need to improve to ensure accuracy in my shots.

The analysis task this week was to find 3 film shots and then critically analyse their use of colour to tell the narrative. We had to explain the why maybe the director or cinematographer used certain colours for the location, props, costumes or lighting. The three films I used were "Avengers: Endgame" (2019), "Joker" (2019) and "Star Wars: Return of the Jedi (Episode VI)" (1983).

For Endgame, I used the scene where Clint Barton, Hawkeye, and Natasha Romanoff, Black Widow, are fighting each other, trying to stop the other from sacrificing themselves. I believe the director or cinematographer used the purple sky as a sign of courage from the two as purple tends to mean bravery. There is also a whiter light in the sky between the two characters. I believe this could represent their bond and how it's strong and pure - due to it being white.

For Joker, I said that the lights around him represent his makeup, suggesting that all this uproar is his creation and his doing. I also said that his costume which we can see is green, long, greasy hair and clown makeup which has been applied awfully due to smudging. The colours of red, blue, and green all contrast one another (especially with red and green being at opposite sides of the colour wheel) which implies again that his whole personality and mindset is disordered.

For Star Wars: Return of the Jedi, I used the scene where Luke Skywalker is fighting Darth Vader. The main mention was that the props are lightsabers, the main weapon in the Star Wars Universe, and they both have different colours. Darth Vader’s is red, which could symbolise war, anger, and blood. Those sinister terms reflect on his character of the antagonist and his morals. Luke Skywalker’s is green, which signifies luck, health, and harmony. These admirable traits symbolise Luke’s character of the protagonist and his morals.

I also wrote my final script which will go towards my final scriptwriting project. It's about two detective investigators who are at a crime scene. Fred Mann is an alcoholic, very optimistic and friendly to all. Bobby Blake is a mysterious man, he is quite humorous due to his sarcastic nature and also very flirty. The whole main climax is when Fred is exploring the house looking for clues and leads where he hears a loud noise from the bathroom. Bobby also hears it and backs him up to check it out. The bathroom is empty when they reach it however when they relax, the front door slams. They chase after the culprit to realise that the culprit is Chris Mann, Fred's son.

The practical task this week was to work in teams to decide a scene from a movie of our choice which is 30-45 seconds long. We were able to adapt or recreate the scene. We had to plan the idea through a storyboard. We decided to go for "The Grand Budapest Hotel" (2014) which was directed by Wes Anderson. The scene we chose was when Zero hugged Agatha in the pink van with boxes as it has lots of colour that we can work with. We decided to adapt it a little bit. This will be filmed next week.

Overall, this week went well and I developed my script writing and pre-production skills which I can take with me in the future for upcoming projects. I also know that colour tells a lot of the narrative and to pay more attention to it in future.

Week 6 Reflective Log:

In this reflective log, I will explain the tasks that I completed this week then analyse my practical work for its limitations and benefits. I will show the strengths and weaknesses of my practical exercise and at the end of the log, summarise what I have learned and what I need to improve to ensure accuracy in my shots.

This week was continued from the previous week. This week's practical was to work in teams to decide a scene from a movie of our choice which is 30-45 seconds long. We were able to adapt or recreate the scene. We had to plan the idea through a storyboard. We decided to go for "The Grand Budapest Hotel" (2014) which was directed by Wes Anderson. The scene we chose was when Zero hugged Agatha in the pink van with boxes as it has lots of colour that we can work with. We decided to adapt it a little bit. We filmed in the TV Studio and used lighting to carry our narrative. In this video, we used blue to represent the actor, Kitty, playing Zero and pink to represent the actor, Evie, playing Agatha. We adapted the scene so it didn't have any boxes or dialogue and instead they done a playful handshake and looked up like they did in the film. We then had to edit the footage in Avid which I think I done well as a lot of the scenes has matching on action. I would improve the first cut as it jumps due to the lack of matching on action as well as the darkness of the whole film. I did colour grade it to be brighter however, if I did it too much, it would add a heavy amount of gain.

I think I successfully completed this task however I will try to improve on these mistakes next time. I can use these skills I learnt this week in future projects involving Foley or sound.

We also had to direct actors this week. This was also completed in the TV Studio. This consisted of casting our actors, which I chose two of my class members, Hallum, who played Fred, and Ben, who played Bobby, and then directing them to act the script the way we visualise it. This was just a reading of the script that the actors mainly had to use their voice to act. I believe this went well but I think I could have been more confident. This task is leading to complete our Writing for Television final project.

Overall, I believe this week went well as I completed the practical successfully as well as advancing in my project work. I can take the skills I learnt this week into the future for upcoming projects.

Week 7 Reflective Log:

This week was dedicated to finishing our final projects for our topics "Evolution of Cinema" and "Writing for Television". I wrote my notes, transformed them into a script, recorded and created my audio and visual table for my Video Essay task on Monday. This is for Evolution of Cinema. I found this task enjoyable as I was studying the evolution of editing, a path in which I wish to go down. But having all of this planned and ready to go for Tuesday allowed me to dedicate Tuesday to editing my Video Essay as I chose to be optimistic and adventurous with my editing and I learned how to use keyframes to introduce movement, making my video more enjoyable and interesting to watch and listen to, overall gathering the listeners attention and helping them learn. I also finished off my scriptwriting work, uploading my final script to my chosen website as well as finishing my evaluation. Overall, I believe I have tackled and challenged this task effectively and successfully developed and produced a script.

I believe I successfully completed these two projects and have a good chance at getting a good grade on either one of them. I thoroughly enjoyed these tasks and developed my skills in research, scriptwriting, idea generation and editing.

Overall, this week went well as I completed both my projects as well as all of my work prior to this ready to hand in. I can take the skills I learnt this week into the future for upcoming projects.