Filming blog: Missed Opportunities

two days ago, we were given the opportunity to bring a camera home on our own accord and decide if we should film over the weekend. We were given a digital camera, a charger, an adjunct card and the tripod. We decided not to film, mostly because of scheduleing problems and it just being too soon. Instead of filming, our group was seperate over the weekend so I am not aware of what my group mates did, but I stayed in and regretted not asking my group to film because i had nothing to do over the weekend. If I knew what my group did over the weekend privately, I would of written it here.

There are many reasons we decided not to film, the most prominent reason being that no one said anything abount filimg this weekend so it just kind of went over our heads. Another reason is that all of us live in very different places, and none of us have drivers licenses so we all needed to ask adults for rides separately beforehand wich none of us did even if I did ask, I am not assured that my other group mates did because I am not their father and do not know what they are doing at all times, and i am beginning to wish I did know what everyone was doing.

There are many drawbacks to not filming last weekend. One of my least favorite drawbacks is the drawback that we still have to deal with the stress and many logistical problems of filming even after knowing the shame that some people are already done. I am leaving over the break, so I will have to transfer the camera and tripod over to my group mates without them hopefully getting mad at me for not telling them that I am leaving in two days.

Storyboard 2

Our storyboard depicts a man's struggle with nature and one of its most unassuming creatures, the lobster. Our story starts with the hero relaxing by the beach taking the sun in, when he soon notices something amiss. music, from the corner of his ear. he looks and notices a jukebox being operated by a lobster and the lobster looking dead straight at him. instead of disturbing the lobster's peace and party, he decides to leave to a different equation, bothered, but that won't ruin his day. he gives the lobster a look and wanders off. not even two minutes after he leaves his little friend, he notices a lobster standing on two feet stairing at him, just as the last one did.

Our hero, now quite disturbed, feels as if something is wrong with his brain, so decides to replicate what a classic hero would do and splashes a bottle of water on his face. where the bottle is in the first place, we do not know yet. when he splashes this so called bottle of water upon his face, he realises soon afterwards that the bottle is no ordinary fresh water bottle, as it is a salty trap employed by the lobsters to convert him! all of this is portrayed through film with the characters emotion portrayed with easy to follow actions and readable facial expressions.

Horrified, our hero dashes away, hoping to find another person, which strangely he has not yet, even with the beach being ussualy packed on a weekend of a holiday. as he runs, he noticies more and more lobster infecting the beach and in silly positions. even looking out to the beach there is no escape, as the lobster is creeping its head out of the murky ocean and is staring at the protagonist. finally, the hero finds one other human-a cook no less!- and asks him in a panic if  he has seen anyl lobsters. laughing, the cook shows what is in his pot, an expensive lobster for two.

Planning Blog Project 2

In every project we will do in AICE Media, we will have to plan. the planning period is a critical part of the filming process, and we are excited to get started with this music video project. while this was our least favorite part in the last project, we are determined to streamline the process and make it as great and as easy as possible. Our current plan for the project is to film at the beach, as that is public property and hopefully not a lot of people will be at the jetty, which is a place far south of the beach which often does not have a lot of people and will hopefully be an optimal location. the jetty itself as lots of rocks and lots of sand (of course) and will be the start and probably the end of the video itself.  i am very excited to take the walk there.

In terms of health and safety, we know the dangers of the beach better than most people, so we will do our very best and take every precaution to make sure the actors, costumes and equipment stay safe throughout the whole of filming. we will do our best to make sure that the filming gets done in one day to minimize the risk of the elements destroying our equipment and ruining morale. we will try and ask the owners of the jetty if we can film there or not.

For props, we will have minimal because the core of the commercial will be the actors. in fact, the only two props will be an inflatable jukebox and a pot for the lobster to boil. that is virtually it for props, which is ok because the actors carry the scene completely. the props are just for immersion.

the costumes will be the driving force of the clip, as the costumes will show the two characters, the man and the lobster. the contrast between the two groups will be stark, and the viewers will obviously see the two groups as different.

For software, we will be using the same program as normal, pinnacle studios. we will be doing this because our teachers require it and it is a pretty well of the program. I sill hope we do not have the same slowness problems that we had with it before, but we are prepared to deal with them.

The music we will use we do not have to ask permission for because we will not be selling this music video. if we were, we would have to pay royalties and those are way above our paygrade and definitely not worth it.

Music Video Intro

After finishing our commercial, our teachers have told us that we are going to be working on a new project, that new project being a music video that we will be directing, editing and dancing to. I am very excited to start this project, as making a music video is one of my dreams. the time limit the teachers have given us have allowed for much more creativity and modularity when directing, as it is three times longer then the last project. this means this project will be three times the work, but also three times as fun! i am excited to storyboard and do all the things that are required to make this project as great as it can be. the whole of the story will take place at the fort Lauderdale beach, as that is the one all of the team members are closest to.


 we had to choose a song for our team, witch took longer than expected but we ended up settling on "Rock Lobster" by the B-52s, an old band from the eighties. We chose this song because it had a nice beat and the plot in the song was open ended, meaning that we could assign meaning that the original artists might have not intended. It is repetitive, meaning we could cut suddenly if we need to and it will not sound awful. the voices in the song have minimal percentage. the song was recommended by one of my team members with a comedic tone in mind. the song is upbeat, so the story that we will make will be upbeat too.

Our group chose the song Rock Lobster by B-52. We got the idea when I just listed out funny songs. We thought that this song could be funny, unique, and have a story that plays along with it. We are planning on having a beach theme which means that we are going to have to plan our mis en scene to fit this theme. There are 6 parts of mis en scene that we are going to use:

C- Costumes. Like I said before, we are going to have beach themed costumes, and maybe a lobster. However this seems very expensive so we may rethink that.

L- lighting. We are going to use natural lighting, because we do not have any of the materials to have professional lighting. It would also fit with our beach theme.

A- Actors. We plan on having most of our group doing the acting. We may also ask some friends on my swim team if they want to participate. Many of them have fun personality that we think would fit  well in our funny video. 

M- Makeup. We probably will not be using makeup for our project, unless we want to dress someone up as a lobster.

P- Props. We will use beach props like beach umbrellas, beach towels, sunglasses, hats, a rock, and a toy lobster to make our scene come to life. 

S- Setting. We will have a beach setting, and maybe another place. The setting will bring out the elements of our film.

The camera angles that we will use will be simplistic and can easily follow the story, such as medium shots, close ups, and establishing shots.

We will use mostly digetic sound, sound effects, and score. The digetic sound will fit the beach theme. We can use sound effects throughout the film to make the film pop out more. Obviously, we will use the music that plays over the other sounds.

To edit, we will be using the same editing software, Pinnacle studios.

Editing 2

Today we continued editing from 2 classes ago. The reason we could not edit in the last two classes is because the computers that had pinnacle studios did not wok and pinnacle studios needed an administration password, meaning we could not work. Instead of editing, we went ahead in preparing for the Cambridge AICE media quiz in watching the Mr. Robot clip from last year. I had some trouble, but the teachers explained some key points and I was alright after. We watched the video 4 times, learning how to look for the mis-en-scene and the overarching theme that the director was trying to portray. Through the whole excercise, I learned more about the exam and film making.

The computers being broken was extremely frustrating because we had just filmed and was ready to learn more about editing styles. You could say that all of us had momentum to learn, but that was sadly squandered by technical difficulties and the major problems plaguing our school infrastructure in terms of permissions. It was angering and frustrating because one of the main draws of this class is  learning how to edit. I wish my school had been more responsible when dealing with this. In the end, we’re were  able to get laptops and to work on it, and our teachers pushed back the date it was due. So alls well thats ends well I guess. I still wish we got to work earlier.

This time I had a much less prevailent role in editing, but it was a role nonetheless. I helped pick out the transitions because as a result of working on a new computer we had to rearrange all the footage back which made a chunk out of our class time. The transition count was low, but when they were used the really added to the movie. Our whole group is excited to show the class our commercial.