26th May, 09
We filmed Taylor's scene today at my home.
I already had Clair De Lune in my mind for quite a long time for her dancing scene so after letting Joyce the director listen to it, I played that song for her to dance to.
we only took two hours to film the scene which during the process, I helped give joyce some wkw-esque ideas. Idealy which means weird angles and stuff that shouldn't be in a film is in, AKA oddball images.
Most of the time, I just held the boom mike and made note of the things that needs sound fixing or when the sound turns wonky.
Sunday, 7 June 2009
WKW 3
27th May, 09
Since today would mostly be planning, I brought my laptop to school so that I could choose the songs that could be in my film.
I noticed that WKW uses canto pop a lot, but then I don't listen to canto pop at all, so I don't really know what to do until Ms Wong told me that I could use English pop. I also chose some soundtracks from other films.
Even though we've only filmed one scene yesterday, I got the mood that Joyce wants this film to achieve so,
At the time being, I chose these songs
There's A Girl by the Ditty Bops
I chose this song because it talks about a girl (obviously), but then the real reason was that I really like the instrumental parts. It's slightly canto pop like, and also, the girls in the band did an excellent job on harmonising.
Clair De Lune by Claude Debussy
This song is for the scene where Taylor (protagonist's dead girl friend) dances. It's a dreamy and slow song, and the chords are also beautifully played. It is also for the ease of Rebecca (Taylor)'s dancing because she knows this song, so dancing to it would come to her naturally.
Smellz Like A Party by B2K
To be very honest, I don't really have a reason to chose this song. I just really like it. Maybe I could use it in some of the scenes where Kelvin (the protagonist) is drunk
Blackbird by The Beatles
This could be the ending song for Kelvin's ending soliloquy because it is a very peaceful song. It is mainly just guitar strumming and a very light voice of Paul McCartney singing. It really suits our film because this song is very soft and somewhat melancholic, just like our film.
IB Learner Profile:
Thinker - By thinking and analysing each song in detail, i assigned a soundtrack to each scene of the movie. I think the decisions that i have made are quite reasonable.
Since today would mostly be planning, I brought my laptop to school so that I could choose the songs that could be in my film.
I noticed that WKW uses canto pop a lot, but then I don't listen to canto pop at all, so I don't really know what to do until Ms Wong told me that I could use English pop. I also chose some soundtracks from other films.
Even though we've only filmed one scene yesterday, I got the mood that Joyce wants this film to achieve so,
At the time being, I chose these songs
There's A Girl by the Ditty Bops
I chose this song because it talks about a girl (obviously), but then the real reason was that I really like the instrumental parts. It's slightly canto pop like, and also, the girls in the band did an excellent job on harmonising.
Clair De Lune by Claude Debussy
This song is for the scene where Taylor (protagonist's dead girl friend) dances. It's a dreamy and slow song, and the chords are also beautifully played. It is also for the ease of Rebecca (Taylor)'s dancing because she knows this song, so dancing to it would come to her naturally.
Smellz Like A Party by B2K
To be very honest, I don't really have a reason to chose this song. I just really like it. Maybe I could use it in some of the scenes where Kelvin (the protagonist) is drunk
Blackbird by The Beatles
This could be the ending song for Kelvin's ending soliloquy because it is a very peaceful song. It is mainly just guitar strumming and a very light voice of Paul McCartney singing. It really suits our film because this song is very soft and somewhat melancholic, just like our film.
IB Learner Profile:
Thinker - By thinking and analysing each song in detail, i assigned a soundtrack to each scene of the movie. I think the decisions that i have made are quite reasonable.
Wednesday, 3 June 2009
Wong Kar Wai 2
25th May, 09
Today, we have our groups sorted for out Wong Kar Wai film. Joyces script was chosen to be filmed. She also chose the people in her group, Me, Jingting and Chris Checketts.
Ms Wong wanted us to do our film in madarin, so I have started translating the script into chinese. It was very challenging because I had to keep translating colloquial english into colloqial madarin which is very very different from colloquial cantonese, the language that i usually think in. Though it's hard, I agreed to take the job of translating because I had the advantage of having mandarin being my first language.
For the rest of the language, I was occupied with the job of translation, Joyce and Jingting planned the shots and planned the schedule and Chris continued with the story board that Joyce haven't got time to fininsh during the test.
Problems/ Difficulties:
- To be honest, Chris has not been very helpful to us. He only managed to plan 4 shots during the whole lesson when Jingting and Joyce mangaged to type out a complete schedule and I have managed to translate half the script. He has been spending most of the time chatting with people of other groups, and it was very frustrating.
IB learner profiles:
-Risk takers: we agreed to take on the challenge of filming in madarin, a feat that none has ever accomplished before in CIS. I felt very proud and happy to be able to be one of the first who ever did this in CIS.
-Communicators: We were using different languages in our film
Today, we have our groups sorted for out Wong Kar Wai film. Joyces script was chosen to be filmed. She also chose the people in her group, Me, Jingting and Chris Checketts.
Ms Wong wanted us to do our film in madarin, so I have started translating the script into chinese. It was very challenging because I had to keep translating colloquial english into colloqial madarin which is very very different from colloquial cantonese, the language that i usually think in. Though it's hard, I agreed to take the job of translating because I had the advantage of having mandarin being my first language.
For the rest of the language, I was occupied with the job of translation, Joyce and Jingting planned the shots and planned the schedule and Chris continued with the story board that Joyce haven't got time to fininsh during the test.
Problems/ Difficulties:
- To be honest, Chris has not been very helpful to us. He only managed to plan 4 shots during the whole lesson when Jingting and Joyce mangaged to type out a complete schedule and I have managed to translate half the script. He has been spending most of the time chatting with people of other groups, and it was very frustrating.
IB learner profiles:
-Risk takers: we agreed to take on the challenge of filming in madarin, a feat that none has ever accomplished before in CIS. I felt very proud and happy to be able to be one of the first who ever did this in CIS.
-Communicators: We were using different languages in our film
Tuesday, 19 May 2009
Wong Kar Wai 2
Picture I chose as an inspiration to my script:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c7/Girl_taking_picture.jpg
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c7/Girl_taking_picture.jpg
Montage / Wong Kar Wai 1
7th May, 09
After spending the first half of the lesson finish watching "Blanche", Miss Wong started us on a new project, Montage editing.
We watched a short film on an editing skill called the Kuleshov effect, developed by the Russians. The film was narrated by Hitchcock (the film genius). First, he showed us of an old man, frowning, then slowly smiling, then continuously, a young woman playing with her son. What this short film told us was that this old man may be the gentle loving grandpa, full of love, kindness, and happiness in seeing his family so happy. Then the next clip, the self same man, then the self same frown, then later, the self same smile. The continuously, a woman wearing an bikini, sun bathing. What this clip told us of the character was that he was a pervy sick old man. I was really amazed at how the same expression could have such a different effect on us when different clips were edited together.
We also watched another similar one where a man holds an axe with a fixed glare at a certain point, then with different clips edited in, showing completely different stories.
Later, we watched several montages, one that was most vivid to me was the one about religion. At first, it has shown religion in a scary eerie light, then as the montage builds up, the person who made the montage suddenly added "HOORAY!" to it, making me slightly confused, but nevertheless, enjoying the montage, and later understanding that the maker was mocking religion. Another one that I remembered the most was the one about the fate of a baby pram during a war. As the war builds up, the pram edges slowly, millimetre by millimetre closer to the edge of a long flight of stairs, then there are massive crowds marching, guns firing, people screaming, shouting, and back to the baby pram. It's amazing how discontinuity can build up tension so quickly and in so many different ways.
Later, we proceeded to analysing why don't we "get" Wong Kar Wai films. What the class thought was exactly the same as what I thought. We thought:
-the film is weird
-story is disjointed
-what seems to be the main characters just randomly appears or dissapears from the movie
-we feel alienated
-we ask "WHY? what is that guy doing!!??" sometimes
We later learnt that WKW wants to make his films non-generic, and they are never cliche. He makes odd-ball images during his film to get the audience really thinking deeply about what he is trying to convey to the audience instead of just watching a film. Same reason why there are parts of the film where he uses fish eye lenses and makes the film disjointed and jumpy.
At the end, Ms Wong set us a task to write a short (less than five pages) script in Wong Kar Wai style. It would be very challenging, because I still cannot properly grasp the idea and style of WKW. I'm also slightly dissapointed, because I would rather do a Montage task.
Problems and Difficulties:
-I can't seem to find the differences between metric, rhythmic, tonal, overtonal and intellectual montage.
-I think it would still take me a long long time before I can learn to properly enjoy Wong Kar Wai films without saying "what on earth is he trying to say!?"
IB Learner Profile:
-Enquirers: we learnt about Montage editing skills and the style and reasoning behind WKW films.
After spending the first half of the lesson finish watching "Blanche", Miss Wong started us on a new project, Montage editing.
We watched a short film on an editing skill called the Kuleshov effect, developed by the Russians. The film was narrated by Hitchcock (the film genius). First, he showed us of an old man, frowning, then slowly smiling, then continuously, a young woman playing with her son. What this short film told us was that this old man may be the gentle loving grandpa, full of love, kindness, and happiness in seeing his family so happy. Then the next clip, the self same man, then the self same frown, then later, the self same smile. The continuously, a woman wearing an bikini, sun bathing. What this clip told us of the character was that he was a pervy sick old man. I was really amazed at how the same expression could have such a different effect on us when different clips were edited together.
We also watched another similar one where a man holds an axe with a fixed glare at a certain point, then with different clips edited in, showing completely different stories.
Later, we watched several montages, one that was most vivid to me was the one about religion. At first, it has shown religion in a scary eerie light, then as the montage builds up, the person who made the montage suddenly added "HOORAY!" to it, making me slightly confused, but nevertheless, enjoying the montage, and later understanding that the maker was mocking religion. Another one that I remembered the most was the one about the fate of a baby pram during a war. As the war builds up, the pram edges slowly, millimetre by millimetre closer to the edge of a long flight of stairs, then there are massive crowds marching, guns firing, people screaming, shouting, and back to the baby pram. It's amazing how discontinuity can build up tension so quickly and in so many different ways.
Later, we proceeded to analysing why don't we "get" Wong Kar Wai films. What the class thought was exactly the same as what I thought. We thought:
-the film is weird
-story is disjointed
-what seems to be the main characters just randomly appears or dissapears from the movie
-we feel alienated
-we ask "WHY? what is that guy doing!!??" sometimes
We later learnt that WKW wants to make his films non-generic, and they are never cliche. He makes odd-ball images during his film to get the audience really thinking deeply about what he is trying to convey to the audience instead of just watching a film. Same reason why there are parts of the film where he uses fish eye lenses and makes the film disjointed and jumpy.
At the end, Ms Wong set us a task to write a short (less than five pages) script in Wong Kar Wai style. It would be very challenging, because I still cannot properly grasp the idea and style of WKW. I'm also slightly dissapointed, because I would rather do a Montage task.
Problems and Difficulties:
-I can't seem to find the differences between metric, rhythmic, tonal, overtonal and intellectual montage.
-I think it would still take me a long long time before I can learn to properly enjoy Wong Kar Wai films without saying "what on earth is he trying to say!?"
IB Learner Profile:
-Enquirers: we learnt about Montage editing skills and the style and reasoning behind WKW films.
Sunday, 17 May 2009
SCREENING!
4th May, 09
We watched everyone else's films today.
I was disappointed to learn that Catherine has not completed the poster after she has declined my offer to complete it. We did not have a poster for our film.
First film we watched:
"Say Cheese" by (Sarah, Adrian, Bernice, Raphael, Ashley)
-the story was slightly weird, i didn't understand the first part where sarah was on the phone
-sound matched well with the cahse scene, though Miss Wong nad most of the class didn't think they matched.
-good use of the portal/cripple idea
-a bit too unreal, the victim should hae ran, instead of staying in one spot and posing for the camera
-shoud use more diagetinc sound instead of too much non-diegetic
-pacing was too slow
-well controlled,v understood how to control white noise better than any of the groups
"Babooshka" by our group: Catherine, Christopher, Xingyi, Camille (me)
-the directions from the portals don't match
-the scripting was obviously lacking in detail
-underdeeloped
-didn;t see portals, just cutting throught scenes
-good background sound capture
-story was little too unpredictable (in a bad way) and random
-POV are messy, mismathed
-need to balance the light and dark
-grainy (should have used HD)
"Wabbit Hunt" by Joyce, Elliot, Justin, Henry
-Very different, three chasing one instead of one on one, something nobody else have ever done before
-music matched the movie very very well
-great interpretation of the charlie chaplin style
-good portrayal of the comedy theme
-story line can get slightly messy
-some supposed diegetic sounds were too obviously fake and unnatrual
-subtitles were too small and hard to read
"High Octane" by Louise, Jeffrey, Ella, Andy, Louise
-music at the start didn't work out too well
-easy to get overrated
-artistically aware
-not enough portals, lots of just cutting through scenes
-music is too generic, like a teenage music video
-high production value
May 7th, 09
We continued watching the last film,
"Blanche" by Hannah, Julien, Jing-ting, Medora
-Background music quite inconsistant
-too abstract, audience hard to get what the story was trying to tell the audience. Because there was so little time to establish the the story, it has to be clear and direct
-taxi-office portal was really brilliant
-in some parts, the music was too intense for the vdeo
-story underdeveloped
-not enough portals
Problems/Difficulties:
-I think i had some difficulties to spot the problems or traits that make a movie bad from Miss Wong's opinions. Some movies I thought were really brilliant, like "Hight Octane", Miss Wong says that it is a bit too teenage music video. I think that is the problem that I may face when in future producing another movie. I need to learn how to see the movie in a different light than how I usually do to avoid making the movie generic, cliche and cheesy.
IB Learner Profile:
-Reflectors: watching other people's films made me realise how obvious it is that other groups have put in so much more work into their films than ours. I'm NOT saying that our group didn't put in effort, becuase I'm sure most of us did, but its just that our group didn't have really good chemistry. From interacting with them daily outside of film, I noticed our personalities and styles are very different from each the others, so while one of us likes an idea, the rest of the group doesn't like it, vice versa. It takes a long time for us to settle on one idea, and while we're trying to make one thing work, somebody from the group just had to do something to upset it.
We watched everyone else's films today.
I was disappointed to learn that Catherine has not completed the poster after she has declined my offer to complete it. We did not have a poster for our film.
First film we watched:
"Say Cheese" by (Sarah, Adrian, Bernice, Raphael, Ashley)
-the story was slightly weird, i didn't understand the first part where sarah was on the phone
-sound matched well with the cahse scene, though Miss Wong nad most of the class didn't think they matched.
-good use of the portal/cripple idea
-a bit too unreal, the victim should hae ran, instead of staying in one spot and posing for the camera
-shoud use more diagetinc sound instead of too much non-diegetic
-pacing was too slow
-well controlled,v understood how to control white noise better than any of the groups
"Babooshka" by our group: Catherine, Christopher, Xingyi, Camille (me)
-the directions from the portals don't match
-the scripting was obviously lacking in detail
-underdeeloped
-didn;t see portals, just cutting throught scenes
-good background sound capture
-story was little too unpredictable (in a bad way) and random
-POV are messy, mismathed
-need to balance the light and dark
-grainy (should have used HD)
"Wabbit Hunt" by Joyce, Elliot, Justin, Henry
-Very different, three chasing one instead of one on one, something nobody else have ever done before
-music matched the movie very very well
-great interpretation of the charlie chaplin style
-good portrayal of the comedy theme
-story line can get slightly messy
-some supposed diegetic sounds were too obviously fake and unnatrual
-subtitles were too small and hard to read
"High Octane" by Louise, Jeffrey, Ella, Andy, Louise
-music at the start didn't work out too well
-easy to get overrated
-artistically aware
-not enough portals, lots of just cutting through scenes
-music is too generic, like a teenage music video
-high production value
May 7th, 09
We continued watching the last film,
"Blanche" by Hannah, Julien, Jing-ting, Medora
-Background music quite inconsistant
-too abstract, audience hard to get what the story was trying to tell the audience. Because there was so little time to establish the the story, it has to be clear and direct
-taxi-office portal was really brilliant
-in some parts, the music was too intense for the vdeo
-story underdeveloped
-not enough portals
Problems/Difficulties:
-I think i had some difficulties to spot the problems or traits that make a movie bad from Miss Wong's opinions. Some movies I thought were really brilliant, like "Hight Octane", Miss Wong says that it is a bit too teenage music video. I think that is the problem that I may face when in future producing another movie. I need to learn how to see the movie in a different light than how I usually do to avoid making the movie generic, cliche and cheesy.
IB Learner Profile:
-Reflectors: watching other people's films made me realise how obvious it is that other groups have put in so much more work into their films than ours. I'm NOT saying that our group didn't put in effort, becuase I'm sure most of us did, but its just that our group didn't have really good chemistry. From interacting with them daily outside of film, I noticed our personalities and styles are very different from each the others, so while one of us likes an idea, the rest of the group doesn't like it, vice versa. It takes a long time for us to settle on one idea, and while we're trying to make one thing work, somebody from the group just had to do something to upset it.
Saturday, 16 May 2009
Twilight 7
I'm not very happy with our progress regarding sound editing. There are some background noises in the clips that needs editing, and the sound editor wasn't doing it!
Xiangyi, who isn't the sound editor, and I worked together and added sound effects on FCP. While editing sound, Xiangyi stumbled upon a special effect where everytime the character goes through a portal, the whole screen warps and turns green in a flash. He added this to most of the portals, and added another effect, where the screen appears to be "blown off" and comes back in a flash.
We also fast forwarded the sound while the screen warps or flashes, and while doing that, the white noise became a more high pitched, "teleport" like sound. We thought using that would be great.
Chris the sound editor finally made his appearance in the film lab and gave us the songs, then he quickly left. We thought that the song didn't match and they weren't the ones that we picked, so we tried contacting him, but failed. So we had no choice but to use that song.
We encountered another problem while watching our film. There was a partduring filming when catherine was holding out the matryoshka above the camera to drop it, her hand appeared on the screen. Mr Chang helped us and taught us the steps to blacking out the the portion of the screen. This is a skill that i have not previously learnt.
After Xiangyi added the subtitles, we exported the film to the dropbox
Later that day, I contacted catherine and told her to bring the matryoshka doll so that we could make a poster of it. I had a few ideas in mind on making the poster, like:
-a black background with harsh lighting upon the doll. (I don't think this will work out very well, because i don't think it would suit the theme of our film very well, because its not so dark and serious)
-two overlapping opaque matryoshka dolls (This would suit the film better, because at first, the doll did show powers of portalling of its own.)
Xiangyi, who isn't the sound editor, and I worked together and added sound effects on FCP. While editing sound, Xiangyi stumbled upon a special effect where everytime the character goes through a portal, the whole screen warps and turns green in a flash. He added this to most of the portals, and added another effect, where the screen appears to be "blown off" and comes back in a flash.
We also fast forwarded the sound while the screen warps or flashes, and while doing that, the white noise became a more high pitched, "teleport" like sound. We thought using that would be great.
Chris the sound editor finally made his appearance in the film lab and gave us the songs, then he quickly left. We thought that the song didn't match and they weren't the ones that we picked, so we tried contacting him, but failed. So we had no choice but to use that song.
We encountered another problem while watching our film. There was a partduring filming when catherine was holding out the matryoshka above the camera to drop it, her hand appeared on the screen. Mr Chang helped us and taught us the steps to blacking out the the portion of the screen. This is a skill that i have not previously learnt.
After Xiangyi added the subtitles, we exported the film to the dropbox
Later that day, I contacted catherine and told her to bring the matryoshka doll so that we could make a poster of it. I had a few ideas in mind on making the poster, like:
-a black background with harsh lighting upon the doll. (I don't think this will work out very well, because i don't think it would suit the theme of our film very well, because its not so dark and serious)
-two overlapping opaque matryoshka dolls (This would suit the film better, because at first, the doll did show powers of portalling of its own.)
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