Youtube?!

Youtube has stopped playing music videos...



I mentioned in one of my earlier blogs that I often spend a long time wandering around Youtube, and often end up on someone different to what I started on.
Although this was a bad habit, I enjoyed it, and enjoyed the amount I was able to access that was linked to the topic of interest.
Now, I do not have the chance to carry on with this bad habit! A lot of the things I search on Youtube are music videos that I have not yet downloaded from iTunes.

This may be a disappointment for me, it is good for the rest of the media world. Artists could be losing money because of their work being displayed for free across the internet. It may also be reducing the amount of innapropriate images and language being displayed for all of society. The amount of young children now accessing the internet is increasing rapidly, and the idea of reducing the amount of innapropriate factors within the music industry is a clever idea. This could overall change ideas about the music industry and different artists through generations.

The positive of what has happened with Youtube outweighs the negative, but I still won't be able to wander as much!

Last Weeks Filming - Session Two...

We had another filming session on Friday. There was no problem this time with getting the hang of the camera etc.

We focused more this time on Jes (babysitter/actress) walking upstairs to go and check on the child, and inside the room. We also filmed the reaction of the babysitter as well.

Here we were looking over what we had already filmed. We made sure not to "cross the line"!

Again, we slightly altered our ideas and decided to film from outside, looking inside the room as if watching the babysitter look around the room - point of view camera angle. As we were upstairs, we needed to somehow get outside, Vickie has a cool window, she sat on the window ledge and clung onto the window frame in the middle! Filmed from there, it worked really well.

We spent quite a lot of time trying out different ways of the babysitter walking up the stairs, and where to put the camera. By filming the shot in many ways we had a good choice on what way to use, we could get advice from other people in the class and teachers also :)

Anyway, we still have another session to do, where once again I will update on pictures and news on our latest filming antics!

Last Weeks Filming..!

Last Week..we started the filming. I think we had all forgotten how long it takes to film a short clip of film! Despite this, we had a lot of fun, as well as working hard ;)

It's not unusual to come across slight blips/flaws in the plan, we didn't thoroughly think through how we would drag the camera and pan around into the living room...so we brainstormed...

Yes, we decided to put the camera and tripod on a rug and ask Leah, a fellow group member to drag the carpet along the wooden floor. It worked well, although we had some troubles getting the camera, tripod and rug over the threshold of the door! But it worked in the end.

Adjusting the tripod! The legs were wonky...

We needed to set the camera and tripod up at the exact point where the camera would merge through the door. This is us attempting it!

Last week was the week we did most of the filming downstairs, the zooming onto the babysitters face..the view from outside the house, looking into the window and seeing Jess (actress).

It took us a while to get set up and to get into the swing of things again, but after a few takes we were on a roll! We filmed the shots a few different ways so we had a choice when it came to digitalising and editing our film.

I will update with more pictures and news from the next filming session :)

Further Importance of the Internet...

SNOW DAY TODAY...

Its all very exciting... but how did we all know there was a snow day?

Sometimes the schools ring your home and tell you, but by speaking to a lot of people today, while sledging, I realised that most of them found out from the school website.

It is so easy to access, and it can be updated easily, hence how we all found out so early in the morning that instead of doing work, we could be making snow angels in the snow :)

More and more people are using the internet everyday, and to what extent will it go to in the future?

Got addicted to Youtube again the other day, was watching a song on youtube, and on the related videos, it came up with all these things, and through link, after link, after link, I found myself on something completely irrelevent to what I had originally typed into the search bar.

Also, I have been watching a lot of trailers for TV series, for example, Skins, Gossip Girl and Hustle. They are my favourites at the moment. But I was watching trailers for them, oncemore, I got carried away and ended up on the "bloopers" or "outtakes" of the shows. Just shows how the internet can steal two hours of your life without you even noticing, and correct me if im wrong, but I don't think thats a good thing!

Skins Trailer:


ALL WHILST ON FACEBOOK!

Update on mini-movie...

Okay, so in a previous post I spoke about basing our mini-movie on the film, "When a Stranger Calls." We have carried on with this idea and building our ideas day by day.

In class the other day, we drew out the storyboard, so that should be up here soon, so for now I will explain as much as I can.

- We decided to film at Vickie's house. (a fellow group member) She has a gravel drive, so we will walk up the gravel drive with the camera, towards the house. The camera will then focus on the girl sitting in the sitting room, through the window.
- There will be an underpinning of sound, a phone ringing, while focusing on the girl.
- There is a scene in Desperate Housewives I once saw, where the camera moved towards the front door of a house, and then the picture of the front door faded into white, then a picture of the inside of the house appeared from the white, I thought maybe we could incorporate this into our piece to add effect. I have just explored youtube for 30 minutes and couldnt find an example of it, sorry!
- The phone, meanwhile, is still ringing, and the camera is still at the door, but inside the house, the girl crosses the camera and walks into another room to pick up the phone.
- She then passes the camera again, but the phone is silent, so she hangs up.
- The camera then follows her upstairs, where she checks the children.
- The phone then rings again, and this time there is a heavy breathing coming from the other end of the line. At this point, there will be "music" played over the top of the phone conversation. The group looked on Myspace to find scary sounds and noises, and this is what we found:
(LINK TO MYSPACE)
- There is another example of good cinematography that suddenly sprang to mind at this part in our film, earlier in the term, with Mrs Francis, we watched the christmas Dr Who trailer, quite near the beginning, there is a 360 degree establishing shot, but from a low angle then turning into a high angle shot. It is, therefore, a close up shot of the character, an establishing shot, as you get a sense of place as the camera turns, and at one point in the turn a point of view shot from the character. This is the video from youtube:



- We will use this camera shot on our main character to enforce the fear.
- We are not quite sure about the ending just yet, but as I said, the storyboard will be up here shortly!

My last post was about my preliminary storyboard..
Well this is the actual thing! Posted on YouTube...
Overall, I am quite pleased with the outcome of my 30 second video.
The editing of the video was definitely the hardest part, as it was a whole new programme, on a whole new computer, (I don't have an Apple Mac), however, the software was easy to adapt to.
So here it is!...




Hope you enjoyed :)

My Storyboard...

So for our preliminary task we had to shoot a 30 second clip of someone walking into a room, having a short conversation and walking out again.
Before we could start this we needed to do a storyboard, to show the camera angles and the story itself.
We had to sketch the "freeze-frame", meaning the camera angle of the next shot, and then describe what is happening in that particular shot.




This is my storyboard:


And the back...

I enjoyed doing this preliminary task as I got to grips with how to use the camera and edit the videos once loaded onto the computers.
My group did have a few troubles, as we filmed our videos on a HD camera, which did not transfer onto the computers, so we had to film it again, but it did not take very long and we were able to catch up with the rest of the group.
However, I did learn a lot from the experience :)
I have to say though, once learning how to edit a video, watching films and programmes on TV is much harder in a way, as I always notice small mistakes that I wouln't have noticed before. I guess that's a good sign!