All my 200 words

Thursday 22nd October 2020

During the first week back to school, our tutor tasked us with writing 200 words at the end of every week as a sort of summary of what happened, what we did, and how we felt about what we did. The reason why we were given this task was because at the end of the project we would have to write a 1000 word evaluation so to make it easier we were to write 200 words each week. So, here are all the 200 words of the past 5 weeks.

Week 1 - Research and investigation

During the research week, I felt very comfortable with doing tasks. There were clear tasks to complete and I did them. I started to find a little difficulty when it came to thinking about my own photograph. This was not because it was hard to think of ideas, I had quite a few, it was just not easy to try and see which ones were actually good and would be interesting to do. I really enjoyed researching and writing but had to remember to do some important things like proper referencing and considering the bigger picture. Most of my time was spent writing which many people could perceive to be useless as I already had the information but I thought it was important, or at least it would be cool/beneficial to have physical documentation of things I looked at and considered. The only thing I am worried about it whether I can adequately transfer this information to my blog.

Deciding on ideas was always the hardest when it was just down to two but it had to be done. Already, I have been able to consider new ways of working. I have been trying to use more mind maps, so I drew one, and I plan to do some prototype pictures which is something I haven't done before. Thanks to the lack of availability, I have had to resort to more analogue ways of working which I think suits me better, there are also less distractions and less disturbances due to a smaller class which has aided my working. Thanks to the advice of my tutor, I have tried to document my thought processes a bit more but there is still room for improvement. I know that I at least need to learn and use more subject specific terminology.

Week 2 - Photography based on the painting

I was slow to taking pictures compared to my classmates since I hadn't taken even one I would consider myself the outlier. However, I had "big" plans which maybe aren't that great but I'm here to challenge myself and I believe that is what I'm doing. I sought comfort in doing more research but still did some editing which I believe I am very bad at but I was able to edit some backgrounds that I may use for the posters because I want to keep the image without editing. I thought more deeply about what I wanted to do and I did a bit explaining on ideas.

I think the only thing I am good at is writing and research. I forgot to mention that the pictures also depend on the time of day because for one, it had to be dark and for the other it has to be light . I think storyboarding will be a better week for me. I don't feel confident about the things I have done this week but feeling demoralised when doing something you aren't used to is normal.

I tried to look up context things and make a clear plan, I don't know how well it was. I didn't talk to anyone about my ideas or plans and maybe that wasn't a good idea. Next time I should plan in more detail.

Week 3 - Narrative, Storyboarding, Film

This week hasn't been too great, what with being late and the lack of a good individual idea. However, there isn't much I can do about it. I was able to experiment with phone filming and I was able to see some benefit (it's faster, easier in terms of settings and set up and so on) but I don't think it's for me, especially with my phone quality (which is actually better than I thought it was). One thing I am not fully happy with is the simplicity of my story but I'm not sure whether it is worth trying to change it. I haven't filmed it yet - being that it is still Tuesday morning - but I don't anticipate that it will be easy to set up and get everything ready, to prepare for that I surely need to write up a plan or somethings that I am going to need. I need two models and I have people in mind but I don't know whether schedules will match. I seem to not be very prepared. I already learnt about narrative and looking at other stories I have written for school, it seems that I prefer (under pressure) to go with linear narrative stories that are ambiguous and mysterious, though I suppose that is the easiest types of stories to come up with. I seem to also prefer taking ordinary people and putting them in supernatural (seemingly) situations. Storyboarding was fun and even though I can't really draw and ended up with stick men, I think it turned out okay.

Week 4 - Editing

Editing week went smoother than I thought. After filming, I wasn't fully done with everything I needed for everything. Before editing, I needed to record voiceovers and write scripts for these voiceovers. I did more research. Research on improving loneliness and creating awareness. We learnt about editing styles . For some reason I didn't use any of them. I was able to edit everything in one Tuesday school day but I can't help but feel like I should have spent more time on it. I think the second half of the film didn't turn out quite right but it was a good try. I got the words for the script from mental health awareness websites though it was reworded by me and with a lot of words from me. I just edited how I would edit anything so I should probably improve my editing skills. I should probably get Adobe Creative Cloud to use at home for improving and easier editing. Being forgetful, I somehow left a bit of my recording at home, thankfully I was able to get it sent to me. I need to make a habit of checking things. I got the music from YouTube Audio Library by searching with the filters so it was royalty free, I also got the sound of the heartbeat from a Foley website so I didn't have to make my own sounds. I took screenshots of some mental health websites and advice to add to the end of the short film. The text at the beginning is meant to be Star Wars styles but looking at it again it is quite messy. Everything seems quite messy and rushed, probably because it was rushed. All these things to seem to further push the narrative that I am not cut out for Creative Media. Of course, if you are bad you can just get better, but it has been 1 year and if I really wanted to improve, wouldn't I have done so already?

Week 5 - EPK, marketing and promoting

I was very excited for this week as I would get to do something I had never done before. I had never heard of an EPK before this project but it was one of the first things I did because thought it was essential for the short film. I made a lot new things to go with the short film during this week. I made posters, a website, trailers and fake virtual magazines. A lot of the things were from templates but one day I hope that I can make things like that without templates (I have made a website without a template before but I have forgotten how to do it). I think the trailers went pretty well, of course there are places for improvement but they were still pretty good. Because my film is so short I made adjustments to some things, for example, the synopsis became 50 words as opposed to the usual 100 words and the trailers were a lot shorter as well. I had a lot of fun during the whole week, I liked designing the website and I think it came out well. I wasn't really sure how to structure the posts for social media but I did my best. I have yet to actually interview the cast and crew but I will be doing that as soon as possible.