Homework-Lesson log

Log process of media lesson on the 8th of December 2009

First of all we re-acquainted ourselves with our storyboard and went over what we were to do in that lesson. Two members of our group, Lauren and Ollie, went to the Learning Resource Centre to see if we were allowed to use this space for filming. After we were told we were allowed we regrouped and brought all of our props, toys and cameras to our filming location. Then we proceeded to shoot all of our shots from our story board. There were some shots which we slightly varied but not too much to affect the storyline. We finished shooting shots in our story line in roughly an hour using the tri-pod and video camera. This whole process was very successful as we planned to maybe take longer shooting our shots. Despite being very quick we did not compromise the quality of our shots. After filming we had roughly 20-25 minutes left to start the editing process. We spent this time cutting out the shots which went wrong or not as good as hoped. We deleted all sound as in our clip there will be no diagetic sound and only a soundtrack playing over the top. We also discussed what to do in future lessons; we thought as our sequence has no dialogue it may be slightly hard to follow for a child-based audience so to help this factor we could introduce speech bubbles or something along those lines to make it clear. Our filming process is not quite over as we still need to do one shot using iStop-Motion. Next lesson we plan to do that as well as continuing editing and possibly thinking about adding a soundtrack.

Opening scene Toy Story 2

We were told to research a children's film opening and discuss the setting, atmosphere, characters and colours. I decided to use the children's film Toy Story 2 because it used conventional techniques to convey a comical tone towards a child-based audience. It uses typically bright colours which engage a child-based audience as well as using skillful animation techniques.

The music as the character 'Buzz-Lightyear' is introduced to the scene is typically that of a super-hero and conveys him in a 'goodie' light. Also the fact that he is flying through the air represents toys coming to life, which that idea in itself could entertain a childs mind. The image of several toys being 'alive' in the second shot could entertain the viewer and create a fun and happy atmosphere. The use of darker yet smoooth colours go part in parcel with the setting of space and make the whole scene seem more believable to the audience.

The use of all 'toys' with humans voices and movements as characters plays with the viewers imagination and create a real to life feel about the whole scene. After the title scene is over. The first opening scene starts. There are bright colours which engage a child audience as well as warm and nice feeling non-diegetic music.

Tutorials

I searched youtube for tutorials on the use of iStop-Motion. They showed me how to make movements more fluid and how to take each individual shot. While looking at these videos we thought it may be slightly easier to use lego rather than clay as the characteristics of clay would be harder to use. I found this video most helpful.

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As we came to a conclusion on attempting to use iStop-Motion (and probably clay) as our main technique in our sequence we looked at these videos to look at how the use of Stop-Motion varies with different film makers. As a group we decided that we prefered the use of Stop-Motion in Pingu. This was despite Morph being more children based (related to our task) and Jan Schvankmars work being extremely skilled. We preferred it because the use of mise-en-scene related to the amusing theme and made the whole sequence very comical, which could directly relate to it being aimed at a child based audience.