Here is the filming schedule for our project - completed by Gio Wong and Carrick Thring
No.
Scene
Date
Location
People
Props
Equipment
Other
1
1 Jaden's House
16th December 2024 (Subject to Change)
Jaden's House
Giorgio - Director and Cameraman
Old Telephone
Camera BT Speaker Light
Location is far from our houses
Carrick - Ast. Director
Kaka - Ast. Cameraman
Grape Juice and Wine Glass
Traffic is a big issue
Jaden - Actor
2
2 Bus Stop
17th December 2024
Sentral Parkir Kuta
Giorgio - Director and Cameraman
Headphones Bus
Having to go off peak times to ensure an empty bus
Kaka - Ast. Cameraman
Jaden - Actor
3
3 Beach
18th December 2024
Pantai Saba
Giorgio - Director and Cameraman
Ice Cream Umbrella
Have to work around private arrangements
Kaka - Ast. Cameraman
Jaden - Actor
4
4 Bar
19th December 2024
Soteria Restaurant
Giorgio - Director and Cameraman
Beer Bottle and Glass
Car
Rain
Have to work around private arrangements
Kaka - Ast. Cameraman
Jaden - Actor
Self-Reflection: This is really useful in organizing our time and helping us know when to do what we need to do. It helps us get things done in a timely & efficient manner. Once we get the small, nitty-gritty stuff and details done, we can pour our energy & long-term time into more important things like filming & editing. This also honestly both teaches & inspire me to be more organized as a person, maybe help myself by organizing the many things in my own life and school to-do-list (in which I have to get done).
Here are a few locations we've looked at as well as the potential risks of these locations - completed by Carrick and Kaka
Self-Reflection: I am not much of a Travelling and going-out type (I want to though) but luckily my friend Kaka was more capable of Travelling to place we needed to scout for good locations for our music video's setting and set design! Also saves time and money on petrol (even though I am yet to drive my own vehicle). However I did get involved a little bit, with having to take a picture of my own house, since it's one of the locations we're considering... however a small problem I had was the fact that I kept procrastinating holding it back, and Kaka got a little ticked off by it, funnily enough! But I eventually got the pictures right when he needed it. Taking pictures of my own house, inside and out, made me appreciate it a little more, I realize.
This is an individual-worked blog about how each of us differently learn about camera angles/movements, mise-en-scene, sound, and edit:
Camerawork
The 'Camera' is the most essential and, without most people consciously realizing it, the one that influences how the Media Text shown (like movies, shows, comics, etc...) has a narrative, meaning, and emotion of its own. This includes both camera angles, and movements.
Camera Angles
High Angle: Gives the characters a sense of vulnerability or inferiority
Low Angle: Gives the character a sense of superiority ot authority of some sort
Bird’s Eye View: Makes it so the camera seen from above everything so that everyone I the shot feels equally inferior or small.
Dutch Angle: The camera is tilted to give a sense of no stability.
Close-Up: Shows the characters facial expressions & emotions, close up.
Medium Shot: Only shows the character(s) fm waist up specifcally. Used for conversation or interaction with another subject of so sort.
Long Shot: shows the character's body in full, also shows the environment/background.
Extreme Long Shot: Shows the subject from WAY further distance - to have a bigger emphasis on the environment around them or maybe the size comparison of the subject and the environment.
Cowboy Shot: Shows the subject from the pistol holster up, to give a more heroic, confident stance.
Extreme close-up: to show really specific and small details or create tension, depending on what details.
Over-The-Shoulder: TO show or create a relationship between the subjects.
POV: Shows the relationship between subjects or outer environment and the character's perspective or point of view from their own eyes.
Establishing shot: To show background or the context of the location, or maybe show that the location is the context. Can also set a new scene or the start of one.
Camera Movements
Pan: The camera moves horizontally to follow action. Meant to reveal information or bring attention to something else in the scene or environment.
Tilt: The camera moves vertically, often used to show height or stature.
Zoom: Changes the focal length of the lens, either moving closer or farther from the subject. To show distance between the audience or the characts and something else.
Tracking/Dolly: The camera moves along with the action, providing a more immersive experience.
Static: Camera stays still to show calm, peace, or neutrality.
Push-In: Pushs the camera forward to the subject or an object, or anything really. Meant to bring the audience closer or more involved with it.
Pull-out: The camera is meant to pull backwards from a subject or object, and maybe show the general environment too, sometimes.
Tracking: Camera moves around on tracks, mainly to follow a subject or object, in a smooth manner perhaps.
Crane: A camera is used on a crane from a top; to show or reveal the epic size or scale of something.
Handheld/random: The camera shakes a lot randomly, as if it was being held by a person without any stabilizer. Meant to have a 'realistic' and more 'immersize' perspective of whatever given situation or scene of the environment.
Here is a video our teacher reccomended us to watch that explained about Camera Angles
Mise-en-Scène
MES explains what is actually in the shot/scene, and how the small details and visuals all add up to frame a certain meaning or connotation. Things like costumes/props, environment, blocking, etc...
Setting: The actual location or setting.
Lighting: Helps either set the mood or put focus on something.
Costume and Props: No matter if they are wearing a regular outfit in a regular mundane city, or wearing a fancy sage robe, the costume and props help give the character a sense of identity or idea of what kind of character they are. (Hair & Make-up is also applied here)
Set Design: Just like costume and props, the design of the environment is meant to bring life and character to the background or environment of whatever given scene or shot, it helps make it distinct. (Colour & Weather also applies to here and, to an extent, Costume & Props)
Actor Blocking: How the characters are positioned in relation to each other. Can give a sense of 'whose side' we are supposed to be on, or some kind of personal connection to the character, or show who hawsw higher or lower position.
Performance: The presentation and action and emotion of a actor that plays a character is also important in bringing the character to life/characterizing them, giving them a distinct personality and identity for the audience to dissect or resonate.
Here is a video recommended by our teacher that explains about Mis-en-Scene
Sound
What we hear in media though our own ears.
Diegetic Sound: Sounds that are in-universe that should be heard or contextualize within the characters and setting of the movie.
Non-Diegetic Sound: Sounds that come from outside the movie world, only for us to HEAR. Can give a sense of background or 'general-ness' of the movie.
Trans-diegetic: One of the former two sounds transitions from one, to the other. Is meant to create a link between the fictional world and the audience themselves. Makes it more immersive.
Melodic: Positive and pleasing sounds/connotations. Enhance a positive scene or let's the audience feel positive emotions.
Discordant: Harsh & unpleasent sounds/connotations. Makes negative scenes more negative. Makes or creates anxious or suspenseful vibes.
Contrapuntal: The sound directly contrasts the sound of the scene. Perhaps too add a deeper, complex meaning to the scene, adding more layers to a scene, or more often it's used for *irony* or dark humor.
Sound Effects: Can enhance the in-universe world, and also bring or show the subtle effect that the characters actions have in inside the universe.
Dialogue: Conversation and words being shared between the characters.
Music: Can set the tone or show what emotions.
Here is video our teacher recommended to learn more about sound
Editing
Editing involves trying to take the individual shots together and sple them together to make a good, cohesive narrative and show the true connections between them.
Cuts
Straight Cut: When two shots directly go from one, to the other.
Jump Cut: A cut that issued to skip to another timeframe, to show disorientation or move on to another scene or shot.
Match Cut: A smooth transition between two, sometimes seemingly different and unrelated, shots to show a connection or parralel between the two.
Long Take/Lengthy Cuts: A shot or scene stays for longer; it feels slow, builds suspense, extends the feelings, more immersive.
Short Take/Quick Cut: A shot or scene that quickly switches or cut so another in a relatively short amount of time, usually in seconds; Increase pace; High energy/high excitement, action, usually has a focus on detail.
Transitions
Dissolve: When one shot fades to another.
Wipe: One shot pushes the other to another.
Special Techniques
Montage: A bunch of shots and scenes put together to show time progression or maybe the connections and ideas of something big and varied in scale, (I.e. a montage of many recorded scenes of a summer camp)
Cross-cutting: Constant Alternating between two scenes to show connection, but in a more fast paced and tense way.
Self-Reflection: As tedious as this blogwork is... I do enjoy learning about Media, it's the most interesting subject among the ones I've joined, content-wise at least. Technical elements are very simple to learn, yet at the same time are so versatile, it's not wonder the film industry is as vast and wide as it is. In retrospect, it's kind of interesting to think about how amazing it is small elements in a film, like the speicifc angle of a camera or set piece in the environment can lead to big meanings and symbolism in a Media Text. I hope to use the knowledge we have learned in Media to try and make the most out of the visual meaning & symbolism for out music video.
To find a star for our music video we need to conduct a screen test. Here is a video of our class's group audition - we did this as a class - completed by Giorgio and Carrick.
Advantages
The advantages of conducting a screen test like this is that we had access to over 20 people in the same room, which allowed us to see the various personas of each individual in a very time and cost effective manner. Not only that, but 90% of the potential stars knew the lyrics to this song which made things a whole lot easier too. People also were able to come out of their shell as this style of group screen testing made it so much more comfortable for everyone involved.
Disadvantages
The disadvantages of having this style of screen test is that we could not analyse in detail all 20+ candidates. This made it a little bit more difficult to try and see which candidate would best fit the persona that we're looking for. Another thing that would be a disadvantage is that the personas in this video may have been overexaggerated as they were performing with friends. This may not reflect their individual or solo performance which is something we must consider.
Considerations
There were some people we considered for the role of the star in our music video, one of them was shown at exactly 3:00 (the one with the glasses). He personifies exactly who we are looking to cast in our music video. His name is Jaden Mutty and he perfectly encapsulates the kind of persona needed. We like his style in front of the camera: very outgoing, open, not shy, and not afraid to be himself. There were others there we may want to consider but so far he's the best of the lot. There were some there who weren't even lip syncing to the same song, perhaps they were too shy in front of the camera and we do not want to cast anyone like that.
Self-Reflection: This was a really fun experience, as doing a class kareoke always leads to fun, feel-good vibe. It was also a little bit of a challenge for me. This screen test was supposed to test my confidence for a music video, as I am the only contestant in my group who can be the main star, but doing this in this setting both felt really weird, and also had a short amount of timeframes or openings to do it, given how we all only have brief seconds or moments to act. My friend tried to push me to be more 'wild' - I came off as mroe reluctant but I'd say I had a few moments. I feel like doing it in the actual music video will change my confidence a lot more though - I'm in a much less awkward position, and with less people around except for my friends, I have more personal freedom to just 'be myself' and go ham or go crazy in the music video. Especially since I'm trying to practice to act like Bruno Mars in the music video.
Here is the research we did in detail on the song "Leave the Door Open" by Bruno Mars in 2021 which we chose to do for our music video - completed by Carrick and Kaka
In an interview with New Zealand radio DJ Zane Lowe for the Apple Music podcast Beats 1, Anderson .Paak said the song required a lot of "patience and delicate" to create. He added, "A lot of meat went into this song." Mars lamented the lack of live performances due to the COVID-19 pandemic, adding "While I'm writing songs, that's a part of my whole thing. It goes to like, 'I can't wait till people hear this.' And it's also, 'I can't wait to play this for people. I can't wait to be with my band.'"
In late February 2021, Bruno Mars and Paak announced on social media platforms the formation of their new band Silk Sonic and group's first studio album An Evening with Silk Sonic. On March 5, 2021, shortly after the announcement of An Evening with Silk Sonic, "Leave the Door Open" was released as the first single of the aforementioned project alongside the "Silk Sonic Intro".
We chose this song because it fits the persona of our potential star, and it's a very mainstream song which will allow us to unleash our creativity into this passion project. We agreed that its a song we can all listen and jam to which will make the progression of our project so much easier. Not only that, but original singer sings in an American accent. People with American accents are easier to cast in Indonesia as most Indonesians who are fluent in English speak with an American accent, making it more believable to people watching our lip synced music video as it wouldn't really fit or be right if someone with a British, Australian, or local Indonesian accent were singing. Furthermore, it helps with the social media as we are able to seek a wider audience, whereas if we chose a Christian song, we would have to cater to a more niche audience which is a lot harder to do in our case.
We intend on challenging the traditional conventions of this music video by making our star a young teenage Indonesian who is fluent in English. This allows us to further develop our star into a person who produces this style of music. Our star being so young but with so much life experience is what will make our star stand out. He's intelligent, but dumb at the same time. This encapsulates a lot of teenagers who are heading out into the world and they are the kind of people who we are targeting with our music video. We want our star to be seen as a role model, someone who our audience can learn from. "Mistakes made by our star will not be repeated by our audience" is what one of our friends said should be our key focus of our music video.
Self-Reflection: It's gonna be very very interesting for me to be the star of our music video. I've tried to learn the kind of presentation style of Bruno Mars, how he carries himself in music videos. I'm realizing that all he does is just be himself, act chill & casual. As for the music video itself, I gotta say I adore the rhythm and how everyone follows it, the song itself is pretty good too for RnB. It's gonna be interesting looking back and forth between the music video and our own, to see how well we did in comparison to imitate it to our best.
Here is the storyboard for our project at different locations - completed by Giorgio and Jaden
The storyboards were planned out the way that we wanted them to be. Giorgio and Jaden discussed this together based off the notes we all made as a group to try and bring a message to the audience of a man who gets rejected on a date by a girl. However, our teacher had some feedback to give us. One major thing he told us was that the chronology of our storyboard didn't make sense and that there was no meaning to it. We listened to his feedback and took it all on board. He suggested that we include a scene where the girl comes in and sees that the star is a bit crazy, and then runs out and finds another man. This made a lot more sense than what we thought of so we decided to take that on board. Unfortunately, our teacher set out a deadline which didn't leave us much time to insert and fix these changes to our storyboard.
Self-Reflection: It was fun to work with Gio in making the storyboard for out music video and get a general idea of the scenes. However, a problem arise where out teacher complained about the chronology of the scenes not making any sense, so we had to change some scenes a bit. I'm glad our teacher gave us a template paper, because doing without it would lead to much more tedious work.
Here is a copy of the lyric sheet we annotated to give us a better idea of each scene - completed by Giorgio, Carrick, Jaden, and Kaka.
Self-Reflection: The annotations were mostly done by Gio, but I have a bit of cooperation here as well, so I'll keep it brief, somewhat... I was able to give ideas for correlating shots and scenes toward the lyrics, however most of it were finalized by Gio, from what I've seen (though the red text may suggest that the others had helping hand too, I know Kaka did). I wanted to annotate tthe corresponding seconds/length of each line, but it took longer than I estimated, so I had to use a different practical suggestion Gio told me.
