julie

I guess when you say these three words together you can only assume one thing? Well for my collaborative project I have decided to create a short film using these topics. This concept has come about with the help of Aimen Sleimen, a writer who I work with and this stage we are coming up with different plots and scenarios in which we can develop a script from. What I want from this project is that I want to make a short film around 5mins, one location, low budget and something that is unique. The story evolves as 3 boys who are working on their race car have a conversation about chocolate. What makes this story funny is the conversation they have is totally unrelated to what they are doing and completely out of context. I understand that this may be a problem in that the viewer may assume chocolate is a metaphor for something else. So in order for this not to happen I will play with this concept a lot more before devising the final script. Famous films in which chocolate plays a big part is Charlie and the chocolate Factory , Chocolat with Johnny Depp.

During this module, David had filmed a sequence in which we had to add sound affects too in post production using the program Pro tools

*A note to mention here is that I was told all editing should be finished before attempting the sound affect editing*

Atmosphere – This is location sound. It is best to record the location sound during a shoot, that way you can add it to the final cut and avoids all dead silences within the scene.

I really enjoyed learning about Foley Artistry and actually having the hands on experience of doing it. Foley is synchronizing sounds to the images in the film. In our case we had to hammer, make foot steps and also drill sounds and sync them up as the images can up on screen and believe me it is a lot harder than it looks. This website, Film Sound gives introductory information on Foley and post production sound affects.

FINAL CUT PRO

EDL – Edit Decision List

During production it is essential that the correct time codes are noted while on set. This is because when coming to edit in Final Cut pro, you are able to insert the times into the EDL, and it will then take the footage from the tape and transfer them into a folder within Final Cut Pro. This makes life easier rather than importing the whole project in its entirety, only the scenes necessary for editing will be in there. This means that once you have placed the time codes in the EDL you can go get a coffee and it will do the searching and importing for you.

A problem can arise if the correct time code hasn’t been noted. For example the tape may revert to zero if the director chooses to watch the footage again, and sets it back to where the footage ended. The time then starts again, once the director chooses to film the next scene.

This becomes a problem when entering the time codes into the EDL and the program recognizes the time code twice, it then may only be able to be imported manually

Helpful hints

-Label the real/tape pertaining to a location.

-While on location it is vital that the Continuity or Camera Assistant,
Logs the tape times correctly.

- A log sheet should have the three columns titled:
IN Out Scene Name

- A Time Code: 25 Frames a second.

Websites associated with Final Cut Pro-

- This Apple website provides support for those who are using the prgram.

- Ken Stone’s Final Cut Pro, provides Tutorials in Final Cut Pro

-And Digital Production Buzz, also provides information on how to use this program.

In media projects since the beginning of the year I have undergone two group changes for the collaborative project, I look at this a learning process. In this I have learnt some important things, firstly is to know what I want, Secondly to be confident in this decision and then be able to communicate this to those involved in my project. And lastly it is being able to stick to your original idea even when everything around you seems like its falling apart.
I’ve always had a strong interest in producing and it was my intention for the collaborative projects to be the producer, and in this year I have learnt that to be a good producer you need to pull through with the goods, in other words doing what you have said you would do.
It wasn’t until our first module, in producing, this semester that I realized how much work was involved in being a producer. They are there from the beginning to the end and involved in every process of the production.
The following is a list that I have come up with from the module and also from working in the collaborative projects as to what is involved to be a producer;

Developing a budget summary
-including Above the line and Below the line costs

Creating a Production schedule (containing the following information)
- location/date/ page number of script
- scene number, INT/EXT, Time, Set, Location, Characters, Extras, Props, Vehicles, livestock, Any special requirements and synopsis of the scene

Develop Screen Time Reconciliation sheet containing the following headings
- Day No.
- Date
- Scene No,
- Total Estimated Timing
- Estimated
- Actual Timing
- Cumulative total

Develop a Daily Footage Reconciliation Sheet containing the following headings
- Stock type
- Roll Number
- Stock Type
- Loaded
- Exposed
- Print
- N.G
- Waste
- Short End
- & totals
Time Code Shot List sheeting containing the following information
- Production Title
- Editors
- Shot
- Time In
- Time Out
- Visual
- Audio

Camera Sheet containing the following information

- Title
- Director
- Camera Operator
- Date
- Stock type
- Cam type and No
- Roll Number
- Mag
- Load
- Slate
- Take
- Duration
- Lens, F.Stop,Filt
- G/ NG
- And Notes

Medical Questionnaire
For all Cast and Crew to fill out to enable that those involved with the production are properly taken care of in an emergency

Standard Personal Release
This legal document signed by the talent/ actors gives the producer the right to use the images of the talent, in exchange for money( & it can be up to the value of $1)

Create Story Board Sheets

Create Breakdown sheets

Contains the following information
- Date
- Breakdown page Number
- INT/ EXT
- Day/ Night
- Page count
- Script page
- Scene Description
- Setting
- Location
- Sequence
- Script day
- Cast members
- Extra
- Props
- Stunts
- Vehicles
- Special Effects
- Costumes
- Make Up
- Set Dressing
- Greenery
- Special Equipment
- Notes

Develop a 2nd Director Report
Containing the following details;
- Actors Call times
- Crew Call Times
- Catering Times

Develop Daily Continuity Sheet
Containing the following details;

- Roll
- Scene
- Shot
- Take
- Description
- Duration

Develop an Actors Feature Agreement standard contract
Create Call Sheets
Containing the following details;
- Location
- Personel Involved
- Time and duration of each shot

Create Location Agreements

This Australian Film Commision website provides information on where Producer’s within Australian can get assistance and special resources in for their productions.

Another major part of the producer’s role is to obtain the finance for the production. The FFC ( Film Finance Coporation Australia), has application proceedures for obtaining finance for a films.

After the fall of Murderabilia, Kim and I had decided to work on a new project, a series of short films for mobile phones. The following is a design of the concept we have in mind

Product Advertisement
+
Short Drama Series

=
Short Advertisement Drama Series for Mobile Phone / Website

Series 1 (45sec) – Content - Climax - To be continued
Series 2 (45sec) – Content - Climax - To be continued
Series 3 (45sec) – Content - Climax - To be continued
Series 4 (45sec) – Content - Climax - To be continued
Series 5 (45sec) – Content - Climax - Final Story

Pre-production

 Finalize the script
The story is currently in a process and will be finalized by mid of September 2005.
The each series will be edited by professional script editor by end of September 2005.

 Finalize Crew
Director
Producer
Sound Editor
Editor
Gaffer
Website Designer

 Finding a product for product placement
 Location and get permission to shoot.
 Casting
 Shooting Schedule

Production

 Shooting Schedule: Early October for one day shoot.
 Rough Cut Editing process

Post-production

 Editing
 Put the series on Mobile Phone
 Create Website

As we all know at the beging of the year Paul from Catfish came in to speak to us in regard to his short film for mobiles. Kim and I had the same idea however it was more to have it as an advertisment, and perhaps get on board a sponsor. For example if our product was beer then we would have to get a particular beer company to sponsor the short series.

Here is another website , in this article it talks of mobile phones used as the cameras to shoot the short films. I dont think I would go that far, the quality wouldnt be great, unless you were looking for a particular affect then it might be an idea.

This website was passed onto me from a friend, and what I can say about this is that it’s very interesting. Not sure if I like the content, however I do like the messy design of this website, the more you search the more you discover of these web logs.
Its interactive, the links that it takes you have little relevance to other links on this web log, and some of the subjects covered in this site are really unusual, such as pictures of graves, moldy food..Just gross but it does have its distinctive feel to it, dont you think?

Also since I’m doing my short film on chocolate I found a website called Prevention , explaining how chocolate is actually good for us and that it can protect against heart disease, stroke, cancer, and diabetes. Now there is reason to feel guilty in having chocolate…

Women In the workplace:

After weeks and months of searching I have finally discovered why this subject is important to me. I think it has been an interest of mine for about ten years, since I have started working. Hearing stories and experiencing for myself, I was baffled why women are constantly under represented in top management in the workplace. Now I understand that this is a huge generalization and may not be the case in every company.

I started my masters not knowing what I wanted to do, but having a strong interest in this topic has helped in creating a starting point for me and my individual project. From day one in media projects I have thought of a number of different ways to make a doco about women in the workplace.
There are so many topics that I could cover in the doco, women and the generational gap, feminism, the glass ceiling, concern for my own future the list was endless.
To many options and not enough time, I had to think back to the beginning to how I admire women who are successful in a “mans world”, and manage to maintain a work life and have a personal life. A doco that portrays the lives of these women is what I want to do.
Now hat industry do I pick, one that I’m familiar with, either women in the church, or film and TV or women in advertising; so I’ve gone with women in advertising.

Why women in the advertising world? Personally I have landed myself a job working at an advertising agency. My job for the last 23 years has been done by a male. I then looked at the people who are in top management and the majority of them seem to be men, so on my search and discussion I found out there are a few women of the advertising world who are in top management and I went on a search for more articles and websites about this industry and particularly women within this industry.

The following is a list of online websites and articles that I have used in my research to construct my argument in this documentary.

Let’s start with an interesting retort, comments made by Neil French

Stating why women in Creative Director positions are underrepresented he states “because they are crap”. Now I won’t comment on this only because this gives the man more publicity than he is probably worth, but is definetanelty interesting to discover what his motives are.

This is an article by a lady named Nancy Vonk, Co chief of Creative officer for Olgilvy has strong opinions about Neil French comments.

B and T Magazine , an industry based magazine in advertising. Publishes articles about current issues within the advertising world.

Ad News another online magazine that comes out for women in advertising

Australian Government Equal Opportunity for Women in the Workplace website gives information of the representation of women in top management within particular industries.

After Effects

I must say that I’ve had the most fun in this module out of the ones we’ve had this semester. I have learnt so much and found it really interesting at what we can do to our projects in After Effects. Below are the notes that I took in these modules, I will use them as a reference and hope they help anyone who comes across them

Basic information that we should know as media production students:
Pixel: is the smallest unit that makes an Image, and is square in shape
32 bit images make a pixel
Each pixel can be broken into 4 channels
8 Bits each to –
Red
Blue
Green
&
Alpha Channel – Transparent

Shooting in 4:3
25 Frames per second
&
768wide by 576 length pixels per frame

Types of TV Standard

PAL

- usually associated English Countries it has 625 lines per frame

NTSC

– 525 Lines of Frame usually associated with the American Countries (29.97 Frames per second)

SE-CAM

The website TV’s World Wide gives more detail to the types of World TV standards.

The Keys on the keyboard for after effects:

I” and “O” represents the In and Out point of the Footage
“S” Scale Key
“P” Position Key

Key Concepts of After Effects:

Layers –

Being able to manipulate transparencies

Animation-

Taking something that is still and bringing it to life by making it move.

K

ey Frames –

Making changes to the image, for example, the Key frame is represented by a stop watch and it is used to make a change in an image, from 0-5 secs an image can change from Pink to Blue

Interpolation Linear –

animation that moves steadily over time

Alpha channels –

transparency of the images

The possibilities are endless with After Effects some features you have on Affect Effects are

Motion Tracking
Time Re-mapping
Chrome Key
Paint + Clone, used for retouching a shot, for example a boom in shot
The Visual effects:
Image Manipulation
Stabilizing the image, used for hand held images
Matt Tools

Leo said if we take one thing away from this module it is to know 3 very important steps of working ( Animating an affect) in After effects,

Step 1

Press the Stop Watch, which creates a Key frame

Step 2

Change the time

Step 3

Change the Property

Pretty simple after this you can apply any affect to any image.

Death and Down sizing

During the Melbourne Fringe Festival I went to a play Death and Downsizing held at the Croft Institute. This play for me was about the relationships of people within the workplace. The basic plot is that someone within the factory has died and the top management is trying to pin it on someone who they work with.

What I liked about the play;

The CEO, great acting
The trivial laws that are in place at a work place, underwear have to be of a certain color etc…

What I didn’t Like about the play:

The acting: some characters where over the top
The casting: The CEO’s assistant, her petite frame just didn’t make me believe that she was straight out of boot camp.

How does this Play relate to my individual project?

A discovery that Acting and Casting can be of crucial value to any production, this can make or break the story as it unfolds. Secondly was the relationships of the work colleges, in my research of women in the workplace I am constantly aware of these relationships.

To sum up the play: The scapegoat was a female (who had the surname of Lamb, as in a Lamb that is about to be slaughtered), the CEO was played by a man who’s assistant was an ex-army petite girl who wanted to bomb everything. The person responsible for implementing the ridiculous rules ( worker must wear specific colored underwear) in the workplace was female who got naked to tell a male journalist information so that he could leak out information of the company’s intention, and when things didn’t go her way put her underwear on her head.

As part of my research into women in the work place I have been watching and reading anything that is remotely related to this topic. Then last weekend I decided that enough was enough, brain overload and it was time to veg out in front of the TV with DVD’s and pizza. We went down to our local video store, and me being a sucker for predictable American romantics, I saw on a cover of a DVD there was Britney Murphey, titled the Little Black Book. As I was watching and trying to escape my realities, I couldn’t believe my eyes when the movie was about relationships, not only with her man, but also with those in her work place, especially women.

A bit of back ground on the movie, Britney Murphy plays, Stacy, a girl who wants to make it as a Journalist, she scores a job on the Kippie Kann (Played by Kathy Bates) talk show. While working there she befriends a girl named Barb, played by Holly Hunter, who encourages Stacy to look at her Boyfriends PDA while he is away for work. As the story unfolds, Barb encourages Stacy to find out more about her boyfriends identity through the PDA. While Stacy believes Barb’s intentions are sincere, her motive is to create a explosive talk show for the Kippie Kann show to help increase the ratings.

Since I’m exploring the relationships of women in the work place, I would like to comment on two relationships within this film:

The first being the relationship with Kippe Kann, and her co- workers.

As the main host of the show she is feared by most in her work place, people are afraid to “stuff-up” in case she will come in a rage and they will receive an earful.
People are fed up with her attitude in that she can not remember names of those she works with
The Floor Manager has to lie in order to keep the peace when in actual he can not stand the woman. One scene has the Floor manager getting his revenge by doing close ups of wrinkles while she is on air.

This made me question are women that are in positions of authority within the workplace, old, feared and have no clue as to what’s really going on in their work environment. If there was a man that played the Kippie Kann role, would his representation been different in the movie?

The other relationship that I would like to comment on is that with Stacy and Barb:

I have been exploring the relationship of Women to women in the workplace for my documentary, through my personal experience in the workforce, women to women relationship within the workforce are slightly different.

Barb’s Intention’s are unbeknown to Stacy. Stacy believes Barb is helping her discover what she doesn’t know about her boyfriend, when in actual fact it is to make a great episode of Kippie Kann, The climax of the movie is when Barb is finally given a chance to produce a whole show of Kippie Kann. Everyone in the studio believe that she is doing something on a love affair, however the day of shooting for Kippie Kann, Barb encourages Stacy to stay and be there for her during this first time experience as a producer. The shooting then starts, Barb’s forces Stacy onto the stage to discover the show is about, Stacy and her investigation into her boyfriend’s personal life. The other members of the crew are mortified to discover that Barb has stolen the concept of the “little black book” of a co-worker, and exploited Stacy’s trust and friendship to create an high rated Kippie Kann show.

While you could say that this movie is about a woman finding out she doesn’t have true love, for me this movie portrays women in a negative tone. The movie stereotypes women to be cheating, deceiving, and unapproachable in the workplace.

It makes me question, are women that are at the top of the chain she really unbearable? Will women exploit friendships just to get ahead in the workplace?
Will women lie to get to get to the top?

I hope my research into my documentary proves otherwise.