Video and Sound Production / LECTURES & EXERCISES

01.04.2022 (Week 1 - Week 14)
Esther Vanessa/0350751/Bachelors of Design (Hon.) in Creative Media
Video and Sound Production
Lecture and Exercises

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LECTURES

01.04.2022 - Week 1

Mr Martin introduced us to the module and everything seems to be a little bit intimidating and challenging, however it also seems like this is going to be a fun course. He also mentioned group shooting so that'd be exciting. He explained we need a couple technical stuff like the software we'll be using and hardwares like headphones. 

For the first week :

• Watch stop motion shorts and shortlist 3 of them
• Also watch visual effect video and shortlist 3 of them 
• Explain both why they're chosen and post it in our blog

08.04.2022 - Week 2

Framing & Storyboard

Cinematography

• Motion picture/Film/Video is made up of many shots
• Each shot requires placing the camera in the best position for that particular moment in the narrative
• Shot is continuous view shot by one camera without interruption
• Sequence is a series of scenes, or shots, complete in itself
• Scene defines the place or setting where the action is laid
• May consist of series of shots or sequences depicting a continuous event

Shot Size 

Determines how large the area visible within the frame

• Wide shot
• A wide shot includes the entire subject and important objects in the immediate surroundings. If it's used at the beginning of a scene it's often called an "establishing shot”.
• Medium shot
• Gesture and expression, from the person waist up, letting hands and the lower half of his body fall outside the frame
• Medium close-up shot
• Tighter than MS
• Midway between waist and shoulders to above the head
• A variant of this is Over the Shoulder (OS) → shows the subject from behind the shoulder (or just the behind) of another person
• Close-up shot
• Close-up is used to isolate the most important part of the subject. For a speaker, this is generally the head, or small object. It emphasizes facial expression, details of an object
• Extreme Wide Shot
• Shows a broad view of the surroundings around the character and conveys scale, distance and geographical location. It’s used to show where a character is in his/her environment.
• Medium Wide Shot
• Character cut off across the legs above or below the knees, wide enough to show the physical setting in which the action is taking place, it permits a nice balance of figure and surrounding.
• Extreme CU
• Single out a portion of the face magnifies a detail. The object is to focus on important detail either to increase the drama or impact on a situation or to allow the viewer to see necessary picture information more clearly.

Rule of thirds and Composition

Camera Angle : subject height

Usually you want eye level – contributes to the story-telling aspect

Screen Direction 

Dynamic : Moving from spot A to B on a flat screen (Left to right or vice versa) 

Constant screen travel depicts subject motion in one direction only . A series of shots of a person walking, a car driving, a plane flying – should move in the same direction to show progression

Static : follows 180 degree rule. 

When planning shots with two characters, you need to understand the camera movement in relation to the 180º rule. The rule enforces the camera to stay on a horizontal axis and not cross sections so that it will disorient the viewer. The horizontal axis is called “ Line of Action”

15.04.2022 - Week 3

Plot segmentation -> to understand film's narrative system is to create a plot segementation, a scene by scene outline of the entire film

3-Act Structure

Beginning : setup / introduction of a story

Middle : confrontation of a problem

End : Resolution of problems

Act 1 - Introduce the world, the main characters, and establish the dramatic situation (plot point 1)

Act 2 - Known as 'Rising Action', to develop obstacles/complications and leads to climax of the story (plot point 2)

Act 3 - Ending of climax, answer to all obstacles/problems, tying the loose ends

22.04.2022-Week4

Storyboarding

Storyboard - When the scene has a complicated action involved or few perspective point of view, storyboard is the most effective way to map out the scene. 

Originally developed by Disney. These images/drawings are not static, there's a sense of motion to it.

Animatic

Animatic is defined as series of images played in sequence, often with a soundtrack. In essence, it's an animated storyboard.

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EXERCISES

WEEK 1 : Editing Exercise

We were introduced to a very simple Premiere Pro tutorial. Mr Martin showed us how to edit first edit and compile the Mints video, and afterwards we had to do the same thing with the Doritos video, which this time did not have the clips in order. 

 Here's the Mints video, and below is the Doritos video.

WEEK 3 

On our third week, we get a couple of assignments. First one being a dubbing exercise where we have to dub a scene from Soul animation movie. We need to also add extra foleys and sound effects. 

Figure 1.1 Process

Figure 1.2 Process

I added so much more ambience and foleys to make the video sound more alive. I do have a bit of a hard time dubbing (I really am not cut out for it).

The second assignment is we have to create a music video that consists of 7 shots stated by Mr Martin. I unfortunately forgot to put one last shot so I had to turn the "story" flow go a bit sideways, eitherway it still works. Viewer discretion is adviced! I can't dance to save a life. 

On this exercise I did a little bit of color correcting and added low pass audio effect.

Figure 1.3 Before

Figure 1.4 After

I think without me color correcting the shots I would look really pale. Here's the video ( i am so deleting this after this course end ).

For our last assignment this week, we have to breakdown the 3-Act Story from the videos Mr Martin showed us (Lalin, Guang, Burrow) and Munich.

Figure 1.5 3- Act Story - Breakdown

Figure 1.6 3-Act Story - Breakdown

Extra questions for Munich -

1. Story outline(One paragraph) 

Avner was assigned to lead a group to assasinate the 11 terrorists (called the Black September) responsible for the terrorist act to 9 israeli athelete in Munich. He and 4 other people was hesitant in the first killing but slowly gets accustomed to it. Avner also paid an informant named Louis which on multiple occassions would set Avner and team up (such as failed bombings, setting them up to meet group of Palestenians). They slowly started to question their sanity, resulting to the bomb guy committing suicide and Carl got killed by the one Dutch girl. They initially did not want to kill anyone besides the names on the list but ended up getting revenge, killing the girl, and also a back-up guy for one of the terrorists killed by them in the beginning. In the climax scene, they were supposed to kill Salameh (the chief) but got found out, got caught in a crossfire and had to retreat. He then quited the service. When he went back to Brooklyn and see his wife and daughter, he became paranoid and developed PTSD.

2. Describe the main character(One paragraph)

In the beginning he was young and impressionable. He was hesitant when killing the first guy. Slowly, after knowing Louis, and killing several more people he became more erratic. However, meeting Papa, we know that Avner cares a lot about his family and still is until the end of the movie. He is a Jew so he is an Israeli empatizer. After killing 7 of the Palestenians terrorists and a lot of innocent bystanders, he started to question himself is he doing the Jews a favor and be a hero or is he just a brutal murderer. Starting from the second act, we can see he was haunted by the guilt. He then quite obviously develop severe trauma and became extremely paranoid. 

3. What is the character’s goal? 

In the beginning his goal was killing all the terrorist involved in Munich, after his sanity was shaken, he became worried and his goal was to keep his family close and safe to him.

4. What are the obstacles that he faced?

He was met with several obstacles throughout the movie. In the beginning, it was leaving his family. Afterwards, he had to overcome his fright to kill the first guy.  The next he realized that he was killing innocent bystanders too, so he's met with the consequence of him questioning if he is still "decent" and also guilt. He was also met with several deaths of his closest ones. In the end he was faced with PTSD and severe paranoia.