Week 2 - Reflective Journal
Tuesday
On Tuesday morning we had a video workshop with Bee. She began by bringing in a TV screen with a video camera attached, with the camera streaming onto the TV. The lesson was a video workshop, where we took turns using the camera to look at and try out various basic camera angles/shots as well as movements such as panning and zooming.
We then had a more detailed look at different camera angles/shots and how they've been used in various films. Something I learned from this is that there is only a small selection of camera angles and movements that can be used, however they all have their own purposes and when used correctly, can really immerse a viewer into the film.
I'll link my camera angles report here when it's uploaded.
We also looked at some rarely used techniques such as the extremely long crane shot in the opening of the film Touch of Evil, as well as the so-called dollhouse shot (a dissection of from The Life Aquatic..
After that lesson, we had a session with Gary which I missed because I was unwell.
Thursday
On Thursday morning we had Nick. This lesson was about researching into acoustics.
We watched a video of a guy trying out two different mics for basic indoor vocal purposes: the Rode NTG-2 shotgun microphone vs the Audio Technica AT-4053B Condenser Mic.
As expected, the problem with the Rode shotgun mic is that it picked up too much indoor echo and low end rumble from the background. I say as expected because the microphone is very directional and it is good for picking up a voice outdoors, however indoors it will pick up a lot more than that through the sides of the microphone.
The Audio Technica condenser mix obviously worked a lot better indoors, purely because although it has a much wider polar pattern, it picks up much less background noise, which was hardly noticeable in the video whatsoever. The man's voice had so much more depth and clarity to it with this microphone.
The reason why one worked better than the other indoors is because low end frequencies build up in the corners and floors of rooms, and in a large room with hard surfaces, echo and slapback is going to be a lot more prominent, and unfortunately the shotgun mic is going to collect all of that on top of the voice because it's polar pattern reaches so far.
In that lesson I learned quite a lot about indoor echo and early/late sound such as slapback and buildup. I will use this new knowledge to my advantage when making my 30 Second Narrative.
Friday
On Friday Morning, we had John, and we were starting to put together our websites.
Firstly, I designed a "wireframe" for each page which visually describes the basic layout of how I wanted my website to look. Once I'd completed the wireframes, I started to build the site.
You are now looking at that website. It was quite easy to build; I just picked a template that looked as close to what I wanted as possible and then made alterations and additions from there. I added in a slideshow of photos of me, the about me page with information about myself, contact options, pages for future projects, and the page for this blog.
During that lesson I learned a little bit about web design and also about why wireframes and organisation is important.
On Friday afternoon we had Sonia. In that lesson we spent the majority of the time discussing our 30 Second Narrative ideas and working with eachother to develop our own ideas further.
We then spent some time designing our logo and working on our proposals.
