AICE COMPOSITION 2 ESSAY

CONCLUDING MEDIA STUDIES

Concluding Media Studies

So we've been through a lot this year and by "we've" I mean you and I. You've seen my commercial, music video, and final task. You've seen research I've done in the past and title sequence deconstruction and now media studies is coming to a close. I hope you've enjoyed observing my progress and projects I've created. Media Studies definitely solidified my love for creating film and media in general. I definitely envision myself majoring in film production when I go off to college. The entertainment industry is so interesting and I want to learn so much more. I hope next year I can be in A level Media Studies but only time will tell. I loved this class, genuinely I met some amazing people and usually in high school you learn a lot and take a lot of classes you don't necessarily feel like are useful or you won't use in life. But when it comes to media studies I felt like this was a class I HAD to take and I don't regret it at all. I look forward to blogging more when/ if I am in A level. I must go now but I'll leave you with some bloopers and pictures I love.

BEHIND THE SCENES OF CCR

Behind The Scenes of CCR 

The CCR, creative critical reflection took a very, very, veryyyy long time to edit. I had to first crop both segments of footage then crop them. I had to make sure the audio didn't overlap so it wouldn't be too much noise from the corresponding person who isn't talking. I had to change outfits so it wouldn't look like they're the same people. I didn't want my effort to go unannounced and I wanted to look different for both the host and "me" so I also changed the way my hair was because obviously my hair is two different colors and it's split through the middle, as if I don't look like a crazy person already. I had to make it seem as if the host was only blonde which actually worked out well. Besides appearance I also changed the seats as well so the "set" didn't look too similar. I had a lot of jump cuts sadly but I think the end product wasn't absolutely terrible. The main issue with editing was trying my best to have everything aligned as much as possible in the background but I tried. Anywho here are some behind the scene shots.

CREATIVE CRITICAL REFLECTION QUESTIONS

CREATIVE CRITICAL REFLECTION QUESTIONS

So this is my third and final time doing creative critical questions. This time it wasn't as easy. A lot of editing went into account this time. It was really fun and challenging having an interview on a "podcast" with myself. The main issue was trying to make the background align and you can see how the change in shots and questions causes me to have to change the alignment but I do think overall it was really cool. Very stressful at times but it was funny seeing two of me in one frame. I answered all four questions. I also inserted a scene from the movie and the music as well. I did want it to be unscripted so I wouldn't be looking on top of the camera or reading the whole time. I wanted it to feel real and look real at the same time. I did have to do a lot of jump cuts but I do believe it didn't change the quality too much. I do wish corona wasn't happening, I would've had my best friend interviewing me and she could've drawn up a logo screen for the beginning of the interview but we must stay home and social distance ourselves for the people we love and the better of the world. Enough ranting here is the creative critical reflection questions interview BE SURE TO CHANGE QUALITY TO 1080 HD, for some reason the quality has gotten really poor when I posted them regardless, enjoy.

......    ...           ...    ....
............       ...........

MY PROGRESS: FINAL TASK

5:05

This whole year has mainly been based on one thing, the final task. My movie 5:05 has been planned, drawn, filmed, edited, and now is ready for your viewing consumption. Its been a hard and long journey to get here but I have grown to love cameras and editing. Media Studies as a whole has solidified my appreciation for film and encourage me to push my boundaries in terms of fulfilling and executing my vision. Although there was a lot of altercations with the audio and lighting, I hope you enjoy. Its 2 minutes and 9 seconds and starts off with the music and announcer talking about the recent deaths that have happened. While that is happening you can see Z after killing her simulator, the weapons used, and her link board/planning board. I hope you can somewhat go into the mind of "Z" and feel on edge. I hope you can gravitate towards this psychological thriller and take it all in. Without further ado I present to you, 5:05.

.......................

MY PROGRESS: MUSIC VIDEO...

Music Video
The second project we worked on was kind of our midterm grade. It was a music video that I also worked on with Lucas. The main difference between the commercial and music video is that this time our project was the complete opposite in quality. It was extremely bad. We kept trying to schedule a day to film but we never could. Plus while all of this was happening it was the end of November close to thanksgiving and I spent it in Jupiter, Florida for a week. So I had to film scenes on the ride to and from Jupiter. and by the time we got back it had to be due. We used the song "Day n' Night" by Kid Cudi which Lucas picked. Looking back I wanted it to look like 5:05 or at least have some the same theme as the final task. I also regret choosing a song like this due to the fact it's extremely repetitive. We should've gone for a romantic music video with a romantic song and work with that but this definitely taught me much more than the other projects. It taught me to be more realistic in terms of being able to execute certain shots and to MAKE A SCHEDULEEEE. This was a bunch of chaotic of footage I tried to create LAST MINUTE. It WAS definitely not ideal but I tried to save it as much as possible.

MY PROGRESS: COMMERCIAL

COMMERCIAL

 To start off let’s discuss my progress throughout media studies. 

Our first big project was of course the commercial. I worked with my classmate Lucas for this project. We worked EXTREMELY well on this although we didn't follow absolutely everything on the storyboard we have a majority of the shots we wanted to film in order and came up with some really good ones along the way for stock/ backup footage. We filmed a "VANS" commercial, Vans is a skating apparel brand and due to Lucas and I owning ALOT of Vans merchandise we can to the conclusion that It would be extremely cool to do a commercial like this one. The music was a remix of the song Pride by Kendrick Lamar and went really well in correspondence with the conventions most commercials like for Vans obtain. One of the conventions vans commercials have is a filter overlaying the commercial to highlight and contrast scenes to intrigue the targeted audience. So for the commercial I decided to add a filter from an app on my phone with a variety of filters to choose from I thought this would be the be one. My editing in this was honestly probably my favorite, its short and sweet but extremely rapid at the same time. I used jump cuts to correspond with the music which I thought provided a better appeal to the overall product which I think it did just right. If I ever do get into serious editing and film production I would definitely want to make projects like this rather then the music video and final task.