Mac 5's First Group Vlog!

Here's my media group's first vlog together talking about media so far, filming our prelim and working together as a group.

The 180 Degree Rule

The 180 degree rule is a rule put in place to avoid confusion for the audience of a TV show or film. The rule says that once a scene starts the camera can film anywhere along the 180 degree line however the camera must not cross this 180 degree line. Doing so would cause the characters to appear on the opposite sides which would be a mistake.

This diagram shows the effects of the 180 degree rule. The green side is where the camera is allowed, it shows the guy in the orange on the left and the guy in the blue on the right. In this example the red side is where the camera is not allowed. Having the camera here would have the guy in orange on the right and the guy in blue on the left.

AS Media Studies Course Booklet

This Booklet explains exam criteria and marking in relation to the AS and A2 Media courses.

ECS as and A2 Media Studies Course Booklet

My First Vlog

Here's my first vlog, sorry about how bad it is!

Storyboarding

Tuesday's lesson this week was an introduction to storyboards. These are very important as they are the backbone for and story and are necessary for any successful film or video. They map out every separate shot and say what type of shot it is (e.g. close up, mid-shot), if the shot is at an angle (low angle, above shot), if the camera moves during the shot or pans/ tilts, if there is any zoom, what happens in the shot, if there are any sounds needed and how long the shot lasts. This means you save a lot of time out on location filming.

Storyboards also let you pre-plan the story and allow you to easily write down any ideas you have. Storyboards are done before filming but for practice in the lesson we looked at a short clip and storyboarded that.

Luther, S03 E01

My storyboards:

My favourite movie

Choosing a favourite movie was hard as I always change it depending on what mood I am in. Thinking about it my favourite movies have to be the Harry Potter series and The Hunger Games. If I absolutely had to chose between these I would have to chose The Hunger Games as it stars my favourite female actor, Jennifer Lawrence.

What I love about this film is not just the storyline but also the way it has been filmed, and how great the actors are in it. The best thing about the filming is how unsteady it is. The director has done this to make it all seem more real like you're actually running alongside Katniss. This unclean filming style also reflects what the movie is about and engages the audience in the action. However, sitting through an hour and a half of this filming can get a bit tedious.

The movie also includes a lot of CGI which  find fascinating and I would love to learn more about how the CGI is created and put into a movie.

I also admire the camera man's work in this movie. Many shots, like in many moves, just blow you away and everything about this movie just leaves you in awe.

My Favourite Female Actor

My favourite female actor is the stunning Jennifer Lawrence.

The first role I saw Miss Lawrence portray was Katniss Everdeen in the movie The Hunger Games. Although, unlike Johnny Depp, Jennifer Lawrence is not an actor I have known for a long time after seeing her in this role you could see how great she is at portraying different emotions. She has also stared in The Silver Linings Playbook. This role is very different from the role of Katniss Everdeen as Katniss is a very serious character struggling to survive whereas Tiffany Maxwell seems to be a fun loving girl despite her troubled past.
What I really look forward to is the Hunger Games sequel: Catching Fire as it will be great to see Jennifer Lawrence back in that role.

My Favourite Male Actor

My favourite has to be the one and only Johnny Depp.

Depp has stared in many movies from Edward Scissor Hands to Pirates of the Caribbean to Charlie and the Chocolate and he has even voiced characters in animated movies like Corpse Bride.

His latest movie is The Lone Ranger which I went to see in the cinema, it was a fantastic film that showed what a great actor he is as he played the role of Tonto. He is a very versatile actor which makes him so great.

However, my favourite role of his has to be either Jack Sparrow in the The Pirates of the Caribbean or the Mad Hatter in Alice in Wonderland. The first which is a funny character and show off his comedy skills and the latter which is more solemn.

First time using a mac

Today I have used a mac for the first time and it's very different from a windows PC. Not only is the keyboard set out different but there is also some extra buttons like the command button. Also, you can screen shot parts of the screen on the mac, not the whole screen, by using cmd+shift+4

For Example

I think this feature is very good and I will probably be using this a lot to help get my point across in future posts.

Another thing I am struggling to understand is all the different features on the mac's desktop, and what button on the internet means minimize and which one means close as I kept making that mistake. I'm looking forward to learning more about macs and how to use them although I am nervous about using imovie as I'm not sure how complicated it is but I'm sure once I know how to use it everything will be fine an I will enjoy it a lot.