This is our table of dominant readings in our texts and how we plan to achieve this. This blog post was made by me
This is just a quick catch up session that we did as a group. We thought it would be a good idea to check what our intended dominant readings are for the different things being represented in our film opening. We have recently learned about Stuart Hall’s Reception Theory with Dominant, Oppositional, and Negotiated readings. For our media text to be successful, we want to make sure the message is clear and able to reach the correct audience. Below we will discuss our intended readings, and compare them to the intended readings we made in our Statement of Intent earlier on in the project. It will be interesting to see if our ideas have evolved.
List
Our intended
Dominant Reading
How we will achieve this with technical elements
Individuals
Boss
Mark Choi
Powerful in terms of strength and influence
Dedicated smart strong
Reckless rash underprepared naive
Mise en scene: Suit, Luxurious Chair, Menacing smile Camera:Low Angle
Social group
Criminals
We wish to represent criminals and be evil and unjust.
This will be primarily shown with the bosses fighting style being dirty and unfair.
Places
Boss office
We want to show the bosses main “office” to be a place fit for a king and extravagant a reflection of a his
power and influence
As we can see here this is done with dark moody lighting. The dark wooden floor gives a rustic and luxurious feel. The boss also sits in a central position showing power within the room. The room is also a bit dirty and industrial with exposed piping this shows that he may be a careless person.
Events
Fighting
The fighting in this opening will be intense and over the top which we hope will add to the comedic
~ Abusing multiple cuts (make sure it has enough time frame for the audience to understand) ~ Close up shots
Overall Message
We wanted to show that evil or bad may be good in the short time but good will prevail in the long run.
How are these similar or different from your Statement of Intent?
The bosses character traits are similar
We want to reduce the vitality and amount of guards but we will still use them as comedic value.
Reflection:
The dominant readings were really helpful during the creation of CCR1 as it states our
dominant readings and how we represented certain groups. Aswell this made us really think
about the message we wanted to present to our audience and how were intending to do it
Motorbike, jacket, black suit full set, red food colouring for blood, Knife, newspaper.
Drone camera, Phone camera, Clapper
After what happened on Monday last week, the opening scene we recorded was not what we expected. Due to that, on this day we decided to reshoot the whole thing with a new unofficial member added to our production crew named Greg (one of our friends). We are more prepared on this day as everyone in the group can arrive on the scene.
All Scenes
Friday 07/03/2025
Maha's House
Maha (Actor), Candra (Actor), Gusde (Drone Operator), Kenzo (Cameraman),
Motorbike, jacket, black suit full set, red food colouring for blood,
Drone camera, Phone camera,
On this day we decided to reshoot some scenes, especially the fight scene as it was badly choreographed. We also removed one actor in our film which is Greg because the scene that he was in was unnecessary. We had a few visitors during our shooting who wanted to see the process of how we film and gives us feedback on what to improve.
This blog post contains the work I did in my lesson on how to successfully edit. My teacher filmed the footage but I worked with Maha to edited it together. My teacher also provided the template for the blog post.
Why is continuity editing important?
Continuity editing includes making sure that items like props or costumes stay consistent from scene to scene. But the more important work lies in editing shots together in a way that leaves viewers thoroughly grounded in both time and space.
Different types of continuity edit
Straight cut (cut)
Eyeline match
Shot /reverse shot
Cutaway / Insert
*Match cut
Footage
Here is the footage that my teacher shot which utilises a variety of camera angles and movements. The scene is very simple, it involves a student standing up and leaving the classroom. A single shot here might be quite boring for the audience, by editing and combining the shots together we can make the scene feel more dynamic.
My editing process
First we looked over the clips that our teacher had recorded for us then we decided the order of clips from when the actor was leaving the seat to leaving the room then uploading set clips to Cap Cut. We decided to use Cap Cut as it is free easy to use and has a bunch of templates for effects and transitions which really helped fulfil our creative visions.
For the first edit we decided to use simplier cuts without any effects we used this as a rough guideline or a plan of how we are going to sync up orientate and time the cuts.
For our next edit we started to play around and experiment with different effects with digital zooms and camera movements and transitions.
Refection:
This helped me get a better understanding of video editing as I have rarely done it in the past. Overall it was a fun process and brought back memories of when I was a kid and we used to splice together random videos. I think this will help us be able to better edit our videos. As for challenges it was probably the connection as more than 20 people were all simultaneously downloading clips from a google drive which was stressful on the bandwidth. I think next time I wanna try using different software and experimenting more and hopefully create an appealing but unique style.
This post contains a mini project that helped us learn how to shoot a cinematic scene. we did this as a group
Lesson Description: My teacher told us to find a scene from a movie in our genre. Our chosen task was to recreate this scene from John Wick where he and the film's main antagonist conversed with each other engaging in a deal.
Original scene:
Story board:
Recreated Scene:
Problems, How to solve them and What to do next time:
1) We do not have the proper camera equipment, so sometimes the camera movements are a bit unstable, making it look unprofessional. We could not solve this problem besides the least we could do was to get someone from our group to have stable hands when holding the camera. Next time we would be required to buy new equipment that would stabilize the camera when moving to create a better quality film for the audience and avoid shaking the camera.
2) The backlight when we were filming ruins the recreated scene as the original scene was in a dark gloomy weather. There was nothing we could do as we could not control the weather and we did not have enough time to find a new place to film. Next time we would need to take our time to decide which location would be suitable for the environment to match with the original film. Though the silhouetting of actors did make them seam a bit more menacing and mysterious
3) There were background noises from the area where we filmed which caused a disturbance in the audio every time the character was speaking even though we had a phone microphone near the voice of our actor. We solved this problem by muffling the audio from the video however this makes the character's voice low and unclear. Next time we would need to buy a proper microphone attached to our actors so their voices can be heard loud and clear. We also would need to clear out the area of our filming set to avoid unnecessary audio or disturbance from entering our film.
4) We had a problem with our cameraman due to his unprofessional conduct where he accidentally recorded the scenes in slow motion. Luckily we had a solution where the videos would be sped up to cover the mistake of our cameraman from the audience. However, this solution would not fully solve the problem as some of the scenes are still in slow motion to match the pace of the original audio. Next time we would probably have to switch our cameraman to someone else as this can prove to be a really dangerous conduct towards our final film.
REFLECTION:
Overall I found this task really amusing and fun as we recreated our favorite movies scenes without million dollar budgets but the tools and items around us. We constantly had to improvise props such as the cards out of paper and think on our feet. I think this also gives valuable experience on how to shoot our final video and acts as a nice warm up on the day to day of media studies.
Overall I'm excited to shoot in Candra's house as it provides a nice mix of open spaces and tradtional balinese house design and architechure though it is a bit far so getting there may be an issue. Next time we may try to find closer alternatives.
In this post I will give examples of the technical elements we have been learning in class. These will be very helpful when I am trying to add meaning to my film opening. Made By Candra
Camera angle :
Long shot
Extreme long shot
Medium shot
Cowboy shot
Close up
Extreme close up
POV
Over the shoulder
High angle
Low angle
Dutch angle
Establishing shot
Camera movements :
Fixed
Camera remains static
Calm, peace, normal
Push in
Camera moves slowly toward subject
Brings the audience closer, more involved, getting more serious.
Pull out
Camera moves slowly away from subject
Takes audience away from the action, leaving a character. Detaching from subject
Pan
Side to side, camera fixed
Reveal information, mirrors natural head movement of the audience.
Tilt
Up and down, camera fixed
Same as pan, just a different direction
Dolly
Camera moves around freely
More immersive, we are moving inside the subjects world, we feel part of the action
Tracking
Camera moves around on tracks
Similar to dolly, but smoother.
Crane
Reveals the epic size of the setting, landscape.
Handheld
Camera is shakey
Very natural, immersive. High energy
Zoom
Zoom
Brings audience closer to budget. Draws our attention to something.
crane
Sound
Description
Effect
Diegetic sound
Sound that can be heard by the characters within the media text.
Add a sense of realism. Reveal information to characters (and then audience)
Non diegetic sound
Sound that can only be heard by the audience.
Enhance meaning, create an emotional response in the audience
Trans diegetic sound
Sound that transitions from one to the other.
Creates a link between the audience and the world. More immersive
