One Word Film Project

Hi there, welcome back!

For our One Word Film project, we had to work in pairs to create a short film of at least 1 to 1/2 minutes to represent a specific word. The word my partner and I were assigned was “appreciative”. The story could not be a montage, no sound was allowed within the production, and everything needed to be filmed in the school setting, so we had to find a creative way to illustrate our assigned word within the 60-90 seconds time frame. This project allowed us to illustrate our creativity, ability to use different camera shots, angles, movement, and editing techniques to create a specific emotional reaction within our film and to convey the meaning of the word accurately to the audience. To include and edit all of these techniques together, we used “Adobe Express” as our editing source. 

When brainstorming our project, we thought about a story in which it would be easy to represent a symbol of appreciation within a school setting and among teenagers. We chose the story of a girl showing appreciation to her friend during her birthday and the birthday girl showing mutual appreciation to her friend for always being there for her. We thought this scenario would work well because friendships are a very important part of teenager's life and we usually care a lot for our friends and our social life, so we concluded that symbolizing appreciation within a friendship would be a beautiful way of representing our word. During brainstorming, we also thought of editing techniques that would help us achieve our desired tone of positivity. We included cuts to change character's perspectives, POV cuts to make the audience feel like they are a part of the story, and inserts to provide details of specific scenes that we wanted the audience to pay attention to. Here is a picture of our brainstorming sheet: 

We also had to draw a visual storyboarding of exactly 15 frames to help us visualize our story and project. The storyboard helped us to get a better idea of ​​the story's sequence of events and plan which camera shots and angles to use in advance to represent the word without dialogue. It also saved us time during filming because we already had a “map” to follow, making it easier to pre-visualize the emotions we wanted the audience to feel in each shot. Here are the pictures of our storyboard: storyboard:

When analyzing our project, I think we did a good job of capturing and symbolizing the essence of what being appreciative means. I think that my partner and I used specific shots, specifically POV shots, in a way that could bring the audience closer to what each character was feeling during the film. If we were to improve,  I would focus on developing more  movement techniques  to make the film more dynamic. While our story worked well, a greater variety of movement could have added energy and made the film more engaging. 

Here is the link to our One Word Film project: 

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1wPK0itqGpBJY6ArOS7yDfmXHPdeov7sx/view?usp=share_link

Camera Shots/Angles Quiz

Hi there! 

For our first quiz of the AICE media studies course, we were encouraged to create a story using specific shot, composition and angle techniques to convey our idea to the audience and develop tone. Also, we had to work with a partner, so it was a good way of exchanging ideas and putting them together. 

For the quiz, we had to choose one or two inanimate objects from our backpacks and develop a full story about the chosen objects using exactly 15 shots. We had to use shots we had learned in previous classes, such as establishing, long, medium, close-up, extreme close-up and point of view shot. We also had to include shots using different types of angles, such as high and low angles. All of these elements were crucial for the audience's understanding about the story we wanted to tell. 

My partner and I decided to tell the heroic and hopeful story of a stuffed little star who decided to go for a walk to relax her mind after a long afternoon of studying. The star arrived at her favorite spot, a relaxing tree, but unfortunately when she was climbing the tree, she fell dramatically. We decided to use the extreme close-up shot to illustrate in extreme detail the facial expression of the star during the fall to convey the audience that the star was extremely afraid of dying. We wanted the audience to deeply feel the fear inside her eyes, bringing the people closer to our character's emotion during the climax. During the tense moment of the fall, the audience was introduced to a character who would be crucial to the turning point of the story: A heroic hair tie. The hair tie acted like a superhero in our story, using its power of stretching and flexibility to save our protagonist. After the star was saved, we used a two-shot to show the audience the establishment of a grateful relationship between the hair tie and the star after her life was saved. When approaching this assignment, we wanted to spread a message of encouragement to the people, demonstrating that no matter what happens in their life, they have to keep going because everything turns right in the end and downfalls are a natural part of life. Our story sets a hopeful tone using specific shots and angles. 

I think I did well when using specific shots for specific scenes at different moments of the story. However, I could have improved in the way that the shots were taken, to make them neater and more aesthetically pleasant in the framing. 

https://www.canva.com/design/DAGxHdXZ27U/Si652c8kjUgdFul3Pca5mA/edit

Blog Creation

Hello there! 

My name is Giovanna and I'm creating this blog to document my process and progress for the Cambridge portfolio project of AICE Media Studies.