Film Class DW Entry

Monday, February 02, 2009

During film class today, we were briefed through some film basics including the unit outline and some of the skills we are going to develop over the months of our film studies program. The units were basically more or less similar to the ones we investigated upon, with the emphasis this time on footage editing and sounds. I was rather gleeful to hear this because I have always wanted a second chance to enhance these two applications - which were my weaker abilities in comparison to the filming, directing and scriptwriting I participated most actively in the previous film class. Moreover, we enticed our day further assigned with a "Recap Scavenger Hunt". I found this exercise useful to get things motivated since minor challenges were incorporated into comparatively fundamental basics. Overall, a little bit of every imperative factor in the recap exercise allowed me to get used to handling filming equipments, rudimentary directing/planning, minuscule pints of acting as well as capturing footage for both imagery and sounds.

During the given time period for our tasks(which was approximately 50 minutes), my group consisting of Jing-Ting, Elliot, Joyce and Justin Tay attempted assignment 1, 2 and Sounds excercise. Assignment 1 and 2 were "A student picks up a piece of paper, looks at it, then scrunches it up into a ball and throws it onto the floor" and "A student walks up the stairs looks up in surprise" respectively. For the first task, we were supposed to film the scenario in SHARP, DETAILED EFFECT and GRITTY, DOCUMETARY FEEL. Using my knowleageable skills as a intermediate IB learner, I was able to identify the factors that contribute to high-quality filming - which was to capture the details of facial expression changes by zooming into the character's face. Stumbling upon the second objective - the "DOCUMENTARY FEEL", I was unsure since I did not apply extraneous attention to the differences in filming techniques during last year's documentary unit, since I covered the scriptwriting, acting and editing procedures rather than the filming one. Hence, being a good IB inquirer, I asked Miss Wong for assistance. Fortuantely, she helped us greatly by providing us with useful hints: which was to create the "rudimentary" and "rough-edge" by handholding the camera. This turned out pretty great, turning Justin Tay (our actor) into a multifariously talented person under the great filming techniques.

In the second scenario, I was being an extremely open-minded IB learner by inducing an extensive act by portraying a "scarer" and placing a prop (bamboo cane) into the production. This was auxilary personal treatment to fit the scenario, since the student is supposed to look up in surprise after walking up the stairs. By incorporating the "cause" made the scene less skeptical. This also empahsized the two objectives - which was to show anger and shocked surprise for the first one and sad, melancholy surprise for the second one. We have also decided to change the colours of our footage on Final Cut Pro, since we found it difficult to tamper with the manual focus and colour filters of our camera, while video editing does the same trick but with better effects.

With minutes left, we quickly recorded sounds for "work" and "joy" for the Sound objectives. Immediately, we generated some quick ideas for "work", suggesting pencil scribbling, professor talking in the background, fiddling of stationary, typing of keyboard and clicking of mouse. This relates to the open-minded, communication and risk-takers factor of the IB learner's objectives, since we needed quick, spontaneous suggestions and role assignment. Overall, we recorded a natural work environment. As for the "joy" soundtrack, we could only come up with the sound of cheering, since we were in a hurry for submission as well as lack of props.

To be concise, we were principled and caring in terms of working in a group. All of my group members were enthusiastic and were eager to share and explore ideas and concepts. We took responsibility for our roles, and respected the final desicions. This was a great start for Film this semester.