Mise-en-scene project

 In this project, I was put in a group with three other people to make a character station based off a prompt given to us. Our prompt was “Quiet and enigmatic, this character keeps their past hidden and observes from the sidelines. As the story unfolds, their secrets come to light”.

My team's activities consists of: making a mood board, make an interactive slideshow, getting decorations, making a diary, and making a story for our character. 

For the character, my team decided to go with a Hannah Montana type character, a girl who hides her identity as a pop singer. We named the girl Violet Smith, and her pop persona Scarlet. Violet Smith decided to leave the stage of Alabama in order to keep her identity a secret. Now living in Florida, Violet keeps her head down although the risk of someone spying on her is still at risk. 

For the mood board, we did two sides. One side is organized and normal, characterized by purple and blue colors, and a symbol of the moon. The other side is the opposite, being messy and characterized by the color pink with pictures of concerts and crowds. Other decorations were also used, like Harry Potter books and a microphone, both objects showing Violet’s hidden and pop star lives. 

Me and my team organized all these elements by laying out a table cloth, before adding the Harry Potter books and mood board. We made sure that the laptops are open with the slideshow on.

When brainstorming for the prompt, we began looking at well-known films and tv shows that show a mysterious character protagonist like Silence of the Lambs and Hannah Montana. We decide to go with the Hannah Montana type character. When starting our construction, we wanted to first narrow our characters story down, first giving her a name. With the name violet, we built from her story that she is a pop star who goes by the name Scarlet, who selectively keeps her identity hidden with a mask. This would be a boring story without any drama, so certain events would cause Violet to move away because of fear that her identity might be leaked. 

I personally find that our group did a great job at fleshing out our character, especially the story and background of Violet. Maybe we should of been creative, since one of the other groups made a tinder for their character which was very creative. But overall me and my team did a great job. 

Multimedia Mise-en-scene Project

Sound projects 1 and 2

Throughout the lessons and videos on sound design, I got a basic grasp on how sound design works. I learned that sound design can surprisingly be pretty difficult, and that audio tech requires a lot of creativity and ingenious thinking. 

For sound-project 1, two students have to work together to make just a sound stage. Just sound, no visual film. And must also include at least four foley sounds the students made themselves. For sound-project 2, the people from the previous OWF project must now edit sounds into their silent film, with both students editing their own soundstage. 

When approaching sound-project 1, me and my partner used basic methods to narrow the project down. We first begin to brainstorm on what event we should make a sound stage for? And we decided on an event where someone falls on their head and an ambulance comes. Once we decided on the narrative, me and my partner created a list of sounds, which also included splitting the scene into sections to make it easier to simplify the project down. Once we got the list down, we began working on the sounds themselves, first starting off with using stock sounds before moving onto foley sounds we make ourselves. 

When brainstorming for sound-project 1, I wanted to get the narrative down first. I wanted an event where it has lots of sounds, very active. But I also did not want repetitive sounds either, like a mall or subway station. When brainstorming for sound-project 2, there was not a lot of brainstorming except making and gathering a list of sounds to use. 

Making an outline helped with my projects since I had something to fall back on when I was finding what sounds to use. Without an outline, it would have been more difficult to gather the sound effects needed since I would have been constantly wondering what sound I needed next. 

For both projects, Clipchamp was used since it was recommended as a good video editor for sound design. 

Looking back at what I could improve for both of my projects, the first flaw I noticed was for sound-project 2, since all that me and my partner did in that video is just walk and smile, which is pretty boring to edit. And for sound project 1 there is not a very clear sound of the guy slipping, with the him falling and hitting the ground not sounding clear enough. So next time I will create a better and more fun film, and make the sound effects sound more clearer. 

Project Link 

One Word Film Project

My class did a one word film project, where me and a partner had to make a silent film just using the description of one word. It cannot be less than a minute, but cannot be more than two minutes. Also cannot be a montage of clips. 

Me and my partner's word was "loving". Brainstorming for this was hard since loving is such a personal and affectionate action, which would obviously have been very awkward and weird to do with a classmate you never talked to before. Storyboarding at least helped a bit since me and my partner were at least able have a template for our film, and how we want to shoot it. 

Me and my partner used Imovie, which was a bad choice since the final product came out very low quality. So I will definitely use Clipchamp or Adobe next time. I would say that I should come up with a better narrative for my film other than just walking, but then again I have no idea what to do with a word like loving. The ideas I did have would have been weird and uncomfortable to do with another person, so me and my partner were pretty restricted on making a proper story. I do think me and my partner could have taken more creative liberties with the editing than just cutting back and forth between shots. 

Project Link