Music Video

Heart's on Fire by Passenger

To imitate Passenger's music video we first had to find a location that gave the same concept that we were in the woods with nothing else around. We ended up having to climb rocks and cross creeks to eventually get the a small woodsy area. We came out coated in mud. Once we knew that the music video was possible and our location was adequate we began storyboarding and writing down each shot and exactly what time that shot appears in the video to try and make the process easier for us.
I learned a lot throughout this process. Quinn and I ran into difficulties when my dog ate my SD card with half our footage and when we had plans to refilm my car wouldn't start. We made do with what we had but it was very frustrating and difficult, but that's how it is in the real world.
If I could change part of our production process I would have spent more time planning because once we got into the woods we were confused about a few of the shots we had written down.

I love making music videos and the process was really fun, I learned a lot about how important lighting really is because we had to match our lighting perfectly to the original Heart's on Fire.

Leadership Strengths

My top 5 strengths:
1. Achiever
2. Futuristic
3. Includer
4. Positivity
5. Focus


Achiever-Executing- an achiever pushes to do more, to achieve more, they strive for the greatest outcomes and will take on whatever task it takes to get there. This characteristic helps me when working with my peers because I help keep the group on task and make sure the project gets done to the best of it's ability.

Futuristic-Strategic Thinking- strategic thinkers are often fascinated by the future leaving them thinking about what their future layout looks like. This helps me in a group setting because I tend to think about how the outcome of our project or task can impact the future.

Includer-Relationship Building- Includers tend to want to include everyone and make them feel apart of the group. I believe this is one of my strongest characteristics that benefits me in the outcome because I'm always thinking of others and discovering ways everyone can provide to the group which in the end can make the group prosper.

Positivity-Relationship Building- positive people are always on the lookout for the upside of the situation, they bring enthusiasm to people, groups, and organizations. Bringing this to groups and my peers is important because for people to succeed they need encouragement and positivity.

Focus-Executing- focused people prioritize and then take action by setting goals. This skill manifests me throughout teamwork because I let the team know when we want to be done and to want level we want the project to meet.

I most valued discovering what my classmates strengths were during the class activity with Mrs. Knight because I believe it taught us who we would work best with and how to work better with my peers that our strengths counteract.
I had an "Aha!" moment when my results came back with "Futuristic" because I constantly find myself thinking about my future years and college and what I want to do in college and even after college.
I will definitely approach group projects and activities differently knowing how many different strengths and characteristics there out throughout just our class. I will keep and open mind and attempt to be flexible around other personalities.

No Film School

There is more to film making than having knowledge of where to place the camera and display the lighting. The No Film School blog 'Profound Words of Wisdom & Inspiration from the World's Best Cinematographers' states that "fancy gear does not inherently result in the creation of memorable visual art." Shooting and producing a visually appealing film is based around creativity and having an open mind in order to create a memorable visual art.
Now it is becoming harder and harder for young teens pursuing the film making industry with visual content freely available to all. This makes it appear that to improve one must constantly be shooting footage to improve, when in fact artistic growth is developed when an individual has discovered their cinematographic voice.
During the process of creating our own short film 'As Though Lost' I have been hired into the camera department as continuity stills. This blog proceeds to explain the best advice for amateurs to get their "voice" out there. No Film school explains what makes an outstanding film as a whole and what up and coming film makers should be aware of, "well-constructed films that evoke every emotion imaginable, up and coming filmmakers should be aware of the cinematic ground that has been successfully treaded by their predecessors."

How Codecs Work

A codec is a device or program that compresses data to enable faster transmission and decompresses received data. Two principal techniques are used in codecs, pulse-code modulation and delta modulation. Codecs are often designed to emphasize certain aspects of the media to be encoded. For example, a digital video of a sports event needs to encode motion well but not necessarily exact colors, while a video of an art exhibit needs to encode color and surface texture well. Lower bitrate codecs allow more users, but they also have more distortion. Beyond the initial increase in distortion, lower bit rate codecs also achieve their lower bit rates by using more complex algorithms that make certain assumptions, such as those about the media and the packet loss rate. Other codecs may not make those same assumptions. When a user with a low bitrate codec talks to a user with another codec, additional distortion is introduced by each transcoding. 

Montage

Before film makers had realized that instead of having one entirely too long shot for a whole movie, and instead you could take certain clips of certain shots placing them together to create the same story, films were somewhat boring. When Sergei Eisenstein discovered this new way of film he called his films montages.
 The montage I have created with my classmates is about a girl that has bullied one of her classmates to the point of suicide. Now she has bad karma... Because she was so awful to the poor boy, he decides it's her turn to be bullied and he proceeds to torment and haunt her to the point of her becoming a demon.

We had a week to plan, film and edit this project. So my initial idea was to use a 4 year-old boy conquering his fears and in the end he is not a little boy, he's a grown man. I couldn't find times in the period I had to finish this project that worked with the actors I needed, so we resulted to creating this montage that we were able to shoot using each other and the ecomm studio.