Malfeasance Reflection

• Was my project successful?

For what it was, yes I think it was successful. I did not set out to create a Hollywood level film, that would be very unrealistic. The perfectionist i me had to convince myself of this over and over again. I didn't try to cram an immense plot in that short time frame, resulting in a complicated and rushed film. So instead I set out to make something three minutes long that used context clues and broken dialog to give the audience a vague idea of a bigger plot, leaving the rest up to imagination. I was proud of what I produced, definitely a far higher standard of production for me. I was able to apply what I learnt about cameras, microphones, script writing, and directing over the last few months all into 'Malfeasance".

• What feedback did you receive from your peers?

What my peer had to say:

"Wow that was so epic, it's a shame about the noise of The Weir but that's just a problem with the location, the rest of it was epic, I loved the use of extreme close ups and the music, also the story was really good!" - Tom Arthur, 19 (YouTube)

• What would you change/do differently?

I would definitely try to improve the audio next time. The weir is far to overpowering most of the film. I thought I had the right microphone set up but maybe Lavalieres would of been a better choice over directional microphones. Or I could of overdubbed all the dialog.

• How will you improve for your next project?

I will use more interesting camera set-ups and movements in my next film. Like crane and tracking shots. Also I will get better audio and costumes.

• What did you enjoy/not enjoy?

What I Enjoyed - Directing, I love directing! Getting to film in such a beautiful location. Also I enjoyed every aspect of editing the film as I find it fun and incredibly relaxing.

What I Didn't Enjoy - My cast letting me down. They all forgot their costumes which I thought, really broke the characters. Jillian is supposed to be a hugely successful and influential politician, but is wearing ripped jeans, and our private detective is wearing a t-shirt under his blazer, instead of a shirt and tie.

• How effective was your production team?

At times they were very productive, and we were able to get a lot of filming done quite quickly. But at other times they completely switched off and no matter how frustrated I got or how much I begged they wouldn't cooperate.

• How effective was your planning in terms of execution?

Pre Production was definitely the most important part of the filmmaking process. It was critical that every aspect of the production is thought out and psychoanalysed Doing that saved us a lot of time and money. It also made the filmmaking process as smooth and hassle-free as possible. On the day of filming, besides them not having their costumes, everyone had their scripts and knew their lines and what they had to do, and where they had to do it.

My Week at the Bath Cronicle

Day 1 - Friday
We got to meet Alex on our first day. Due to the Bath Chronicle's new room being quite quiet my group and I were able to work on the spare computers in the office. We were tasked to rewrite some newsletters into a newspaper article. Fairly simple and menial job but good experience none the less. 

Day 2 - Monday
Today we got asked film a news video on police officers that were going to the Royal High School to show the students their police horse and dogs. It was a lot of fun filming the videos and then coming back to the college to edit it! I learnt a lot about team work and communication from this experience and would love to do more of it.

Day 3 - Tuesday
Alex asked us to scan the city of Bath for various landmarks that we can screenshot and put in an online gallery for people to guess where it is. This was quite a fun thing to do and I enjoyed doing it. 

Day 4 - Wednesday

As it was a bank holiday the following Monday, we were asked to come up with a list of activities around Bath that the family can do on the holiday. Going to the Clavedon Weir for a swim (pictured) was one of the 19 ideas we came up with.

Day 5 -  Thursday
for our final day we were asked to go all around Bath and compile a list of places that offer lunch specials for £10 or less. We tried our best to come up with a list of very popular places like, Wetherspoons, but also places people might never of heard of like a quaint little Thai restaurant in the back streets of town.

Step Brothers Overdub

For this assignment we had to pick a scene from a film as a group, and then try to recreate all the audio as exact as possible.

Here is the scene we picked:


And here is our overdub:

So as well as all those who were part of the cast having to learn our lines, those on the crew also had to figure out the best way to make the most accurate recreating of all the foley sound. Such as the cutlery clattering and the phone camera's shutter going off.

Walking Sequence

This is my walking sequence! As you can clearly see, I was not able to produce a working one. Don't know exactly what happened here, don't even know why the background is that colour as it existed no where in my project. I couldn't for the life of me and my tutor work out why it refused to export, but I like to think that there is a little walking man hidden in this picture, and if you stare for a really long time and believe (and have a few pints) you can see him!

Things I wish I had done:
Created a walking sequence that actually worked when exported. I also wish I had backed everything up onto the server, or another storage device, because the computer I was using at college got sent away for repairs and has been gone for weeks, with very little chance of coming back with my data. So I can't even access the Flash file and try to work on it more.

What I want to do to improve next time:
Get to the bottom of why all my animations seem to export solid blue screens. I also want to be more diligent when it comes to backing up my work, because situations like this happen all to often, and I can't afford for this to happen in the industry with a client!

Phones Shouldn't Be Used In Class

I have been tasked to create a 15 seconds or less public safety video on "Phones shouldn't be used in class." The animation shows a phone game being played and then it cuts to a zoomed out shot with the same game being played but the classroom the character is in is on fire. Plot being that he was so focused and distracted by his phone that he didn't even notice what was going on around him in class, which is why it's important to not use phones in class.

The plot of the video has changed dramatically from the original script and storyboards. I find this always happens in all my productions though, I always bite off more than I can chew. I do really love what I was able to produce though. Considering I cannot draw to save my life! I was most proud of the elastic rope on my slingshot, it took hours of tinkering to get that to stretch out and then bounce back, and I'm really proud of it. I created it by using a number of different tweens, motion and shape, on different keyframed sections.

What I would of liked to do to improve it is add some background. For example in the phone screen while the ball is whizzing past, having clouds and landscape slowly rolling in the background would of really added a nice sense of depth.

Large Pepperoni with a Side of Racism

This Just In:

A group of professional footballers claim that Pizza Hut forced them to pay upfront for their meals due to their race. The claim that no other customers had to pay up front and were being discriminated.

Pizza Hut apologised for the way the footballers were treated, but reassured them that it was nothing to do with their skin colour.

It could be said in Pizza Hut’s defence that the reason Pizza Hut decided to ask them to pay upfront is because they were being disruptive or engaging in ‘hooliganism’ and didn’t want to risk them running off without paying, as they have probably experienced before.

But if this whole situation has discrimination at the heart of it, then Pizza Hut seriously need to focus on retraining their staff in equality issues.

As the football club’s spokesperson said, “In this day and age, it is upsetting to hear that people are treated differently because of the colour of their skin.”

Research Methodology

Define The Research You Will Undertake

Primary:

The primary research  methods I plan to utilise for this project are;

Audience Questionnaire - To be done at the beginning to get basic information about who’s answering the questionnaire and what their views and opinions are on politics and design concepts.

Textual Analysis - Based on a pre-existing and successful multi-page documents. This will allow me to understand why the designer chose to do what he/she did in the document. Why colours, fonts, styles, etc were used. I will be able to incorporate this information into my work, and inspire my work.

Interviews - This will be conducted one-on-one with the interviewee. This method of research will help by extracting crucial information on my research topic. The information I plan on receiving will be very specific and personal.

Secondary:

The primary research  methods I plan to utilise for this project are;

Looking to Twitter to see what young people are saying about politics by searching various politically inspired hashtags.

I will also do research on verified articles on the specific subject, as well as multi-page documents found across the internet and in the local library.

Describe How You Will Do It

For the audience questionnaire, I will compile a list of close and open ended questions based on my research topic and distribute them throughout my college and social circle. In addition to that, I will post an online questionnaire on various social networks such as facebook, twitter, and blogger.

The textual analysis will consist of dissection and break down of each individual aspect of a particular multi-page document. From the graphic design style used to the fonts used.

For the interviews I will

Outline What You Hope To Discover

Plan The Dates & Makes A Timeline