Big toddler: slave to his emotions/ has no control.
Impulsive/erratic: emotions-taken over, kicks the door.
Vulnerable: because he is emotional (end)/ has remorse.
Passionate: love for dogs/wife.
Try-hard: thinks that he can make a difference.
Has hope.
Somerset
Calm/ rational: facial expressions/ the way he talks.
Avoids confrontation: Fails to control Mill's emotions (outside John Doe's flat).
Wise: wants to understand meaning of crimes.
Emotionally mature.
Hypocrite: Has given up because people don't care/ his job is to care.
Tired/ worn out: Seen too much.
John Doe
Has characteristics of both Mills and Somerset.
John Doe's character reflect (an extreme version) both of the detectives: the director conveys this from the seating arrangement on the car.
Somerset in the driver seat and Mills on the passenger seat while Doe sits at the back, between the other 2 characters. Mills often looks back directly while talking with Doe- which symbolises his directness and the fact that he is not self aware that he shares many traits with Doe. Somerset looks at Doe through the rear view mirror- showing that he is aware that his character reflects Doe's.
In this lesson, we learnt how to create an opening credits scene, we used the movie 'The Good, The Bad and The Ugly'. This is the original title sequence in the movie.
We were given picture and audio files to create a short title sequence using Premiere.
1. First, we chose a colour of our choice as the background.
2. We then used key frames to allow the images to move, e.g. the spinning wheel was an image flipped/rotated over and over to look like it was actually moving. I found this step the most challenging.
3. We added the title/text to write the credits, this step, I found is similar to using photoshop and inserting a text.
4. At the end of the lesson, we were free to add in whatever we wanted to and play around the the sequence, I found a picture of Clint Eastwood on the Internet and decided to zoom into his face at the end.
In this lesson we were asked to substitute the audio in the chasing scene in the movie 'Point Break', this means that we used seperate audio files from external sources (e.g. Youtube) for sounds that the characters in the movie experiences.
For example, using footsteps sounds while the characters are running, or explosion sounds when there is a bomb- we were to do this in a way that makes it seem as natural and realistic as possible.
1. The teacher first showed us his own version, we didn't even realise that the sounds were layered on later.
2. We went to the computer lab to try it out on our own.
3. We were given the Point Break chasing scene and multiple sound effects files.
4. We unliked the original audio that came with the movie, and substituted it with our own external audio files.
This is my take on editing sound.
This lesson was really enjoyable and made me realize the importance of sound effects in films. I learnt that most movies use this technique, but as it is so natural the audience doesn't notice most of the time.
What I found challenging was making the sound realistic, for example- if a character is running towards the camera, the footsteps would have to start out soft and increase as the character comes closer. Or in the bomb scene, where the explosion sound suddenly increases when the camera is directly filming the fire.
In this project, we were put into random groups of 3-4 people (I was grouped with Phoebe and Au), we then could choose what kind of film we want to create but it had to be under a minute.
It took us quite a long time to come up with what film we would like to re-create in one minute, but we finally settled with the classic choice, Mean Girls!
Lesson 1
Since we wasted some time before settling with Mean Girls, some other groups were already ahead of us in terms of filming and scripting. Mean Girls is set in a high school so we didn't need a lot of props. In terms of how to sequenced the plot and scenes, we took inspiration from a video on Youtube.
In this lesson, we planned each scene based on this video, we also searched up the popular Mean Girls quotes to pull out the iconic ones to use in our video,
This was how we planned it:
We also asked some of our classmates to help out as we did not have enough cast. We had time left from this so we decided to shoot the first scene.
THE FIRST SCENE:
We only needed Phoebe the cross the road so no additional cast members were needed. We headed outside of the sixth form building to the back of the school area behind the dining hall and filmed at the cross road. We wanted to go for that awkward 'far-away' shot of Phoebe crossing the road.
We also tried to create a parallel with the real movie by adding in the part where Lindsay Lohan's character was almost hit by a bus, there were no cars passing by so we used a gardener who was biking past.
This was my first time operatating the camera, it was easy enough to use but we struggled with how to get it to record at first. This scene was zoomed in a bit but it was a wide shot.
Lesson 2
We decided to film all the parts without the Plastics since those scenes required some people who were unavailable. The quickly got right to it so we actually got a lot of work done in this lesson. We also changed some of the casts around and Allen (who had free period at the time) helped play a small part, which was really helpful!
THE SECOND SCENE
We went out to the grass area in the sixth form building so it looked like the real scene in Mean Girls. We wanted to keep the dialogue short and snappy like in the video we took inispiration from.
I operated the camera again for the scenes we filmed in this lesson since I was the only one who wasn't in any of the scenes. It was quite a challenge because the lighting sometimes washed out the people in the scene and a lot of times it was out of focus. We alternated between full shots (of all three characters), close-ups of each character (when they were introduced) and also manually moving the camera when the characters are having a conversation.
Lesson 3
This lesson wasn't as productive but we did film a scene of Regina and the teacher. We also made a burn book by printing the cover and sticking it onto a notebook. We realised that we couldn't shoot as many scenes as we would like as it would go over the time limit. Au and Phoebe went to film the riot scene (which we didn't end up using) while I put some clips together (basic cutting and sequencing).
Lesson 4
This lesson was really rushed as at that point we only had half of the all the scenes and we have not started any editing at all. I bought in some props (pink clothes, hair accessories, lip gloss) and Phoebe bought in a wig (we also borrowed Saranya's purple wig). We filmed all the Plastics scenes here.
We managed to wrap everything up by the end of lesson 4...
Editing
Phoebe and I stayed up to sequence and cut all the clips after school, we also filmed some of the parts that we forgot to film during the lessons and put them in, all this took about 2 hours. Phoebe took the computer home to edit more and it turned out really good! :)
I especially like the opening scene where the text 'Mean Girls' kind of followed the guy riding the bike into the scene, I thought it went really well with the whole 'quirky' theme that we were going for. I also thought the hashtags were really creative and saved us a lot of time and dialogue.
The music choice were already part of the real movie so that fit in quite well already.
Camera
This project is the first time that I worked on a camera like the one we used. I found that it is really easy to use and the quality is really good as well. Some scenes (scene 2) was kind of frustrating because of how we needed to constantly change the tripod level. Also, when I first started I didn't know how to change the focus so some scenes were out of focus. :(
FINAL PRODUCT
Evaluation
-It was really funny.
-It was edited really well.
-It was shot relatively well :)
-We stayed pretty close to the video and also the real movie.
-TIME was our biggest issue. By the forth lesson, we were really rushed and even forgot to film some scenes or say some of the important dialogue. When Phoebe and I were editing afterschool, a lot didn't make sense and we had to go back alone to film some. Fortunately these were only the close-up scenes but it could have turned out really bad if other cast members were needed in those scenes. Next time I will try to organize my time more effectively and also make decisions faster(?)
- USE MICROPHONE! The audio turned out really horrible and in hindsight we should have used audio equipments.
-Confusing plot: in the peer evaluation post-it thing, a lot of people were complaining that the plot was difficult to understand. Since time limit was a problem, we couldn't put in a lot of scenes that explained some parts- this could make our video seem really confusing if you've never watched Mean Girls before. Again, we also didn't have a lot of time and rushed it so this could be the reason for the really confusing ending as well.
-Shaky and out of focus camera. These were mistakes made because we weren't familiar with the cameras yet.
