Interview Critique

In our media lesson today we reviewed 2 interviews that we watched in class. The first interview we watched was mine and Cheyenne's:

I think that we did a good job on the interview and we had a lot of good camera angles such as Establishing Shots. I think that we also made good use of cutaways and put them in appropriate places in the interview. We cut out every time that the interviewee hesitated and replaced the jerky shots with cutaways. Another good point would be that the camerawork was very steady. There weren't any sudden movements. I think the things that we needed to improve on were that we didn't include any music in the introduction and it was a bit bland and boring to watch so I think music would have been a good idea there. Another point of improvement would be to consider sound interference when choosing a place to film the interviews. The problem was that we filmed both interviews in the cafeteria so there was a lot of background noise and it was a bit hard to hear what the interviewee had to say.

The second interview we did was Yasemin and Kitty's
I think that a good point about theirs was that they had a good variety of angles such as establishing shots and over-the-shoulder shots. It made the interview interesting to watch. Another good thing was that it had a lot of good sound quality although there were a few scenes that could have had better sound quality. That would be a point to improve on, make sure that all of the places had good sound quality. I think that they should have edited out poor quality of sound and video. The final point of improvement would be to use cutaways intermittently so that they weren't all bunched together. They should have been spread out a bit more.

Visit 2 - The BBC

We went for a second trip to the BBC before Christmas for another try with camera techniques and interviews.

I was supposed to be the camera person but because half of my group didn't turn up, I joined a group with Cheyenne, Emine and Corey as the sound person.

It was an alright job but it got a bit boring because all I did was stand there holding the microphone which wasn't very fun but I dealt with it. I would like to be the camera person i the future though.

We interviewed two people and me and Cheyenne also filmed some clips to use as cutaways in our final piece.

After we had finished interviewing people, we went back to the editing suite and started editing our videos. Me and Cheyenne worked on ours and it started off really good. We learnt a lot about the new movie editor, Final Cut Pro and it was a change from using Ulead. It had a wider range of tools to use such as the splitter screen video and the voice recorder. We didn't finish editing the video but we got quite far to be reasonable and our first interviewee said a lot of "Ums and "Ahs" so we spent a lot of time cutting those out.

Tate Britain Francis Bacon Exhibition

On the 18th of November, our Creative and Media class went on a trip to see the Frances Bacon exhibition at the Tate Britain!

We left school at the normal time and took two trains to get there. The first thing we did when we were there was sign in and put our bags into the lockers. After that, we went to have a look at some work from the four artists who were running for the Turner Prize 08. The four artists were Runa Islam, Mark Leckey, Goshka Macuga and Cathy Wilkes.

The first artist's work we saw was Goshka Macuga's. She was a sculptor and also made pieces of collage-like pictures where she would take a photograph and stick pictures over it. I thought she was alright but lacked creativity in her work. Most of it was just pictures with random images stuck over them which I didn't find very interesting. Her first sculptor was quite good though because it looked very interesting and was made out of glass so you could see through it.

The second artist we saw was Cathy Wilkes. She was a sculptor too and made a scene with mannequins with items over their heads and empty food containers on shopping conveyor belts. Cathy Wilkes was my least favourite artist because I didn't like how she had set out her work. The sight of all the empty food containers with excess food left in the bottom was quite revolting. I drew a picture of a heart sculptor she had on the floor.

The third artist we saw was Runa Islam. She was a visual artist and made videos as her form of art. We saw two of her videos. The first one I didn't like much because it was a bit loud and was just zooming and panning on what looked like a garage. The second video of her's we saw was much better. It was some Indian men sitting in carts in a local park. She had close ups on the men and lots of slow pans of the scene. I thought this was a very interesting video.

The last artist we saw was Mark Leckey. He had done a variety of sculptors, paintings and videos. I sketched out one of his pictures of the Tate Modern he had done. He was my favourite out of the four artists and my favourite piece from him was a video of a rabbit sculpture which looked like it was a room when it was zoomed into the eyes. The good part about this was that you couldn't see the camera even though it was a reflection on the rabbit's metallic coat.

After we had viewed the Turner Prize 08, we went to look at Francis Bacon's exhibition. There were a number of different rooms, each with a theme. The themes were:
1: Animal
2: Zone
3: Apprehension
4: Crucifixion
5: Crisis
6: Achieve
7: Portrait
8: Memorial
9: Epic
10: Late
I sketched out his picture of Study for Portrait II (after the Life Mask of William Blake) which was in the Portrait section and also two pictures from the Crisis section. My favourite one I drew was the Figures in a Landscape 1956 picture from the Crisis section.

I think that his work was scary and quite depressing since he used a lot of dark colours, pain and scary expressions. I don't think his work really appealed to me that much because of this.

After we had seen his work, we had lunch and then looked around at some of the other work various artists which was probably my favourite part of the gallery because I saw a lot of really pretty paintings here with lots of detail and colours.

We headed back to school after we were all back by the entrance. I think that this was a good day and a nice experience but I think I would have preferred it if I had seen some less scary art.

I would like to see an Anime gallery or the Dr Seuss one next time!

Mindmap 3

Here's mine and Cheyenne's mindmap again but a bigger version of it...

Disappearing Numbers

On the 23rd of October we went on a trip to see a theatre production called "Dissappearing Numbers" at the Barbican.

We left from school at 5PM and it took about half an hour to get there. Once we were there, Cheyenne, Beth, Farah, Anne-Marie, Aoife and I walked around the Barbican for about half an hour until the play started so we ate some food and then talked.

When we got into the theatre, we were really high up and we got a bit scared but we got used to it after a while. The play started and we found out it was about a mathmatician who was from India. The play was 2 hours long in total which was a bit long for me but it didn't feel that long.

I didn't really like the play that much because it was a bit too long and not very interesting to me but it was ok. We also didn't get brilliant seats because we could see everything that was going on in the backstage which kind og ruined it for us. It was also tiring since it was so late and I almost fell asleep in part of it.

Well, those were my thoughts on the play, okie-takka?

Bye!

M&C Saatchi

On Tuesday 21st of October, the famous advertising company, Saatchi came in and we did a workshop on road safety.

I learnt a lot about advertising and how to make an impact on adverts. We looked at adverts for the TV and poster adverts. My favourite one was the Gorilla Cadbury' advert.

I learnt a lot of useful things like how to put my work into a detailed slideshow and poster idea. I think our group worked well together and we got the job done.

I think that it was a successful course because our group worked well and also we made a nice slideshow with lots of information about our poster.

The most challenging thing was choosing an idea out of all of our brilliant ones and making it work.

I would like to build on the workshop by actually making the advert instead of a poster and seeing it on TV.

I would like to learn more about the industry and more of the jobs that Saatchi does.

Interview Techniques

Today in our media lesson, we were learning about how to use different camera angles and what type of criteria we need for a good interview.

First off we discussed as a class what some qualities that we needed for a good interview. Miss Flavell wrote them down into a PowerPoint slide show.

After that, we got into partners and asked each other questions. I was with Farah and I was interviewing her about her opinion on facilities for young people living in Hackney.

Here's a list of the qualities we came up with as a class:

•Eye contact
•Being friendly and encouraging while still making your point
•Using open ended questions
•Projection and confidence
•Prepare your questions beforehand
•Before the interview, chat and put your interviewee at ease
•Give out the questions in advance so answers can prepared
•Responding to the answers you get

After that, we decided to do an interview with Simon so some people volunteered to set up the camera. Yasmin was holding the camera, Rianna was holding the microphone, Emine was sitting in the eat where Simon was going to sit and Kitty was being the interviewer. We chose as a class how the camera angles should look and then we called Simon in. Kitty interviewed him twice and then we put the camera away.

That was what we did in today's media lesson.

Mind map 2

In today's lesson, we edited and finished our mind maps by adding the skills and software to use in each different job.

This is what our edited mind map looks like...

Mindmap

In media today, we had to finish our mindmaps on jobs in the media industry. Were using Freemind to create them. Me and Cheyenne got onto a computer and opened our work up. It took a while to open it properly because the first time we tried, it just opened up a blank document! Miss Falvell came round and showed us how to open it properly.

We had already wrote down some jobs so we added a "New Child Node" to the previous child nodes and wrote what the jobs are about and what you do in them.

After that, we all stopped and Miss Flavell showed us four blogs that we needed to follow. We all added them and then we a

dded our f

riends. I added Cheyenne, Beth and Farah. We all commented each other's blogs and then I saved the mindmap from a .mm file to a .jpg file.

Here's what mine and Cheyenne's mindmap looked like...

Our Drama Presentation

Today in the drama section of my Creative and Media Diploma, we were put into groups and we have to create a presentation about theatres and dance spaces in North London.

I'm in a group with Farah, Rianna and Kitty and we are looking up Hackney Empire, Sadler's Wells, The Little Angel Theatre, and The Arcola theatre.

I'm looking up The Little Angel Theatre so I went to the official website and copied some information onto a PowerPoint Presentation. Farah's researching Sadler's Wells, Rianna's researching Hackney Empire and Kitty's searching the Arcola Theatre.

Next lesson, were all going to put the information we found out into our own words and then put them into one big slideshow to present to the class.

This afternoon I went to the library and I printed out a lot of information from The Little Angel Theatre's website that we can use tomorrow in our presentation.

I'm looking quite forward to making this presentation and I really hope it goes well and we get a really good grade for it! I'm only worried that we might not get enough information on the presentation and not achieve a grade that I had hoped for. I hope we will do well because our group is a pretty sensible and hard-working one that generally get's the job done.

I think that our presentation will look really nice with plenty of information on it and we will be proud to present it!

Gina, signing out! xxx

Trip To The BBC

On the 11th of September, our Creative and Media class went on a trip to the BBC to film some videos and learn new skills. We took a bus and two trains to get to the BBC and when we finally got there, we were amazed! Especially me and Cheyenne who got a bit too amazed and started thinking that celebrities had sat on all the chairs.

After we had waited to get out tags that told everyone at BBC that we were students doing a filming course, we went up to a room and sat on some chairs while three people who worked at the BBC. After about 5 minutes, one of the men that were standing by a computer, put on an episode of Eastenders and we had to say "cut" every time there was a different camera angle. Once we had watched for a bit, our trainer gave us all cameras and equipment and we set them up. We had to get into groups and in my group were Cheyenne, Beth, Farah and Kai. Then we got some sheets for planning but whilst we were planning, he came up to use and said that our group wasn't creative! We all got very mad but carried on with our work anyway even though we were put down.

After we had planned, we took our camera down to the cafe garden and set it up. We decided to choose the title, "The Woman Who Fell To Earth". We casted parts, Kai was the woman who fell to Earth, Beth was a news reporter, me and Cheyenne were being interviewed by Beth and Farah did a lot of filming and holding the microphone. The first scene was Beth talking about how the woman had fallen and we had a clip of Kai jumping off a bench but our brilliant angle made it look like she was falling from the sky. After that, Beth did an interview, with me and Cheyenne and then finally, Beth did an ending where she closed the news report.

We then went back to the room where we had obtained our cameras, and started to transfer our clips, to a computer. When they had finished, we went downstairs and ate our lunch finally since we were all extremely hungry. After lunch, we went upstairs and started to edit our films. our trainer, split our group up so I edited with Beth whilst Cheyenne, Farah and Kai edited on a separate computer.

After about ten minutes, our trainer called us to a computer so he could show us how to edit on the computer. He used a clip of a man and when he paused it, the man's face was in a weird position and everyone started laughing, especially Alex who had to be taken out of the room to calm down. Me and Cheyenne didn't really need to know how to edit on the movie maker called Ulead Videostudio 11 because we both have Ulead at home but our trainer made us watch it anyway.

After we had watched him editing, we went back to edit our own movies. It took a while but we finally finished! We showed our trainer and he said that our camera angles weren't very good! He put us down again but we still continued. Then we watched a few movies but not all of them and then we said our farewells to everyone and got back on the train to go home.

It was rather good experience and we had a semi-good day. The filming was fun but I didn't like the way we were put down twice in the same day! Other than that, it was a cool experience and I would like to go back to the BBC again soon!

Gina, signing out! xxx

Hello

Hello, my name is Gina and I have just started doing the Creative and Media diploma for GCSE.

I hope I will enjoy this diploma because I love working on computers and doing art and drama.