Archive for October 2014

Friday 31 October 2014

Here's a quick overlook of the anchors package that was editedand also the rough cut.





In order to save time, i rendered out the compositions from After effects instead of doing a dynamic link, that way i could import in what i needed as a video file and render it out again in premier pro, which will render a lot faster

Where i already keyed most of the green backdrop on my laptop, i used the pen tool to clean up the rest of the background, occasionally using the red background to see how much spill from the green screen was left.

Editing all done in After effects








Here's the intro for the teaser package

Screen sharing with the group
to receive feedback about colour scheme for package




Once i had finished rendering, i then imported all the files into the premiere pro project and rendered them.


Thursday 30 October 2014




To gather the resources to compile the teaser package together, i had to scout the internet to source the necessary footage and images that i needed.


Snap chat leaked teaser

In order to get footage off the internet being used for the snap chat teaser, i had to screen record myself; using quick time video's screen record feature, inputing the words into the search engine and clicking on the websites, here is an example footage below.




In the actual footage, because our story features inappropriate pictures; i blurred out some of the footage.


U2 leaked album teaser

For this teaser, i used a reaction shot off of the VOX POPS that we recorded while we were out in Canterbury



Heart broken Boyfriend auctions Holiday teaser


This story was hard to source images for at first, but after a while of scouting the internet, i discovered the guys FB account, and also the original image for the Ebay listing

 

 







Internet troll Story

Because this story is kind of like a think piece, i had to find or create footage that related to the story. Luckily enough i found a picture from an article that had inspired me to do something similar.  

Picture i found from article on trolling
Source: http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/internet-trolls-face-two-years-4463058


The mise en scene plus mise en shot for this picture is the perfect example of what i'm aiming at for our news story about the Troll laws.
So i grabbed my camera and quickly filmed some footage to try and recreate a similar scene to this picture.
I blurred out some of the footage to add the effect of anonymity to it, to kind of insinuate that the person behind the trolling would hide behind their keyboard.




I edited this teaser package in Adobe premier pro CC

Here is the edited timeline




Here is the rough cut of the teaser package with no music over it.

Tuesday 28 October 2014



So that i could get a better understanding of anthem for doomed youth, i decided to do further research into an analysis breakdown to the poem, to see what i could appropriate from the research available, to build up my own understanding of the poem, and to see how i can take an Auteur approach at adapting this poem.



To help me with adapting this poem, and give me an idea as to what analysis i might need to pay particular attention too in appropriating certain elements from this poem, i referred to some techniques that i learnt recently from a book i read called Vincent Murphy, 2013. Page to Stage: The Craft of Adaptation. Edition. University of Michigan Press.






short phrase example summary of essential components


summary of key elements










Here's the research:










http://www.warpoetry.co.uk/owen2.html



This website is really helpful, it literally has a thorough analysis of the poem with additional useful information.


In A Nutshell

War is Hell.
Sure, that's a cliché courtesy of William Tecumseh Sherman, but it's also a reality that a lot of soldiers throughout history have lived through. And it's a reality that a lot of the general public is sheltered from. Back home, there's usually a whole bunch of pomp and circumstance in wartime. There are funerals and prayers, parades and flag waving. There's a lot of talk about patriotism and glory. But, it's often completely detached from what's actually going on where the fighting is. And where the fighting is, things are a lot less glamorous.


http://www.shmoop.com/anthem-for-doomed-youth/


This breakdown is just a literal analysis from the poem, and not my auteur adapted analysis.





Theme:
  • Vulnerability of the meek: weak minded as they’re being sent out to fight for a cause they’re not 100% sure about
  • Loneliness
  • Hierarchy in nature
  • Aimless acts of violence, slaughtering
  • Sadness
  • Out of site, out of mind.
  • Killed off like Cattle
  • War and sorrow





Language:
(http://analysisofcontrastingwarpoems.weebly.com/poetic-techniques-used-in-anthem-of-the-doomed-youth.html)
(http://knowledge4africa.com/english/poetry/anthem-for-doomed-youth-b.jsp)


Simile and rhetorical question

The poet Wilfred Owen uses a simile “What passing-bells for these who die as cattle” as a rhetorical question intended to create a image in the readers mind. This technique makes an image of soldiers running out of the trenches and being slaughtered by the enemy guns in the muddy battlefields of war just like when cattle go to the abattoir to be slaughtered for food. Including it as a rhetorical question makes the readers think about whether or not the soldiers got a funeral and what happened to them when they died. This is used to out line the point that the solders that had died did not get a funeral but instead laid there not at peace but with other soldier dyeing around them, guns firing over them and war and destruction continuing. These techniques are used to emphasis that war was just like a huge funeral where thousands of people died unrested on the battlefield. The poet tries to make the point that there was so much death that it over rides the point of the courageous and heroic acts that where committed during the war times.
Personification

Alliteration

The poet Wilfred Owen uses alliteration of “rifles rapid rattle” to create a rhythm and flow to the poem, it emphasizes the sound of a rapidly fired gun. The alliteration is highlighted by the use of an onomatopoeia; ‘rattle’. This flow and rhythm helps create a sad and angry mood for the reader, it expands upon the reader’s feelings of sorrow. The poet has also used alliteration in the last line “And each slow dusk the drawing down of blinds”. This is a reference to the soldiers that survived and the family left behind; those people who knew what happened and those who experienced it should not forget but move on from these deaths.

Personification
Owen uses personification in the poem “only the monstrous anger of the guns” with the intention of giving the guns human characteristics, the guns have no feelings and are the causes of all the death and the horrors that are involved with war. The poet uses this to represent the guns as the people who caused the war and the major officers that make the decisions of war, like sending hundreds soldiers to die “who die as cattle”. The poet also means that the “officers” where firing the weapons to achieve their  orders at the risk of hundreds and thousands of young soldiers.


Onomatopeia
The words used in the poem such as:

  • Stuttering
  • Patter
  • Rapid rifles fire
These words represent the sound and feelings of the guns firing in quick succession, plus hitting the earth walls on the trenches, comparing it to the dull muttering of prayers.



Character
Relationship: There is no real character, this can apply to anyone whom partakes in the acceptability of an activity (Be it celebrating war ect). But rather, this is sort of observatory in the sense that the reader of the text is the character, as they're being introduced to the grim reality of what they think they know about but have no clue, and the text highlights this to the reader in an attempt to change their notion of what their preconceived belief was prior to the reading the this text.



Image: Dying people, Trenches, Muggy dirty dusty dull environment, fighting, corpses, 


Storyline:

There is no set structured narrative in this poem, however, the overall storyline in a nutshell is that people are going out to war as cattle in a slaughter house, in effectively marching to their deaths.



Action:

People gallantly going out to war upright posture brimming with confidence, then coming back traumatised, 'shell shocked' arched back with the look of fear death and shock in their faces.



Conclusion

Theme of the poem:



My overall take on this poem is the notion of the soldiers being sent to death as cattle at a slaughter house, and because the soldiers are out of site to society, they’re also out of mind. With society being left to conjure up images inside of their heads from the censored/filtered information they’re given from news sources, not getting/appreciating the whole truth about the grim reality of war, and the hard work put in by the soldiers that goes unoticed!

Hopefully for my adaptation, i want to try and adapt the notion of the theme behind Anthem for Doomed Youth. 
Sunday 26 October 2014



What is Avant Garde?


Taken from
www.visual-arts-cork.com/definitions/avant-garde-art.htm


The oxford dictionary defines Avant-garde as "new and experimental ideas and methods in art, music, or literature: he has been called a promoter of the avant-grade."

"a group of artist , musicians, or writers working with new and experimental ideas and methods: works by artist of theRussian avant-garde." (www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/avant-garde)

Avant Garde challenges our industrialised conceptions of art, showing us postmodern 'surrealistic' representations of what we're familiar with.



"most—but not all—can be identified according to the following:
1. an experimental style or form
2. a non-linear, achronological, or non-narrative story

18
1. What Is an Avant-Garde Film? 19
page28image1360
  1. an unusual manner of representation (of reality or otherwise)
  2. a particular voice/vision of the director
  3. poetic or lyrical flourishes
  4. the mixing of styles/genres
  5. ambiguity, in terms of characterization or narrative or thematic clo- sure
  6. a decidedly different kind of demand for contrary spectatorial expec- tations
  7. whenavailable/known,alternativeproduction/distribution/exhibition practices
10. an appearance that signifies an “other”
It goes without saying that not all of these indicators are stable, that not every avant-garde film has all or even as few as two of these characteristics. And cer- tainly other attributes may be added to this list. But on average, many avant- garde films adhere to at least one of these (mainstream films might also, but not always deliberately). " p.18/19
William E. B. Verrone, 2011. The Avant-Garde Feature Film: A Critical History. Edition. Mcfarland.


Examples of Avant Garde:


Filmin/animation/cinema




Avant Garde adaptation of the star wars film into a more contemporary environment, the intertextual link in this adaptation is through the iconic use of the 'Light Sabre'.







Fashion




Art

This picture is avant garde, in the sense that it challenges our structuralist expectation of this image.

This picture below on the right is an avant-garde appropriation from the collage of images to the left of it, however, its intertextual relationship might seem quite obscure.






Music












In order to get a broader understanding of the word adaptation and to have a reference point to check back on in the future, i thought this post would be necessary to give a clearer understanding of the word adaptation; plus other words surrounding it.




"adaptation can be described as the following:
An acknowledged transposition of a recognizable other work or
works
  • A creative and an interpretive act o f appropriation/salvaging
  • A n extended intertextual engagement with the adapted work " (8:2006) Linda Hutcheon (2006) A theory of adapation, New York: Routledge.


Adaptation definition




Taken from
http://www.thesaurus.com/browse/adaptation




Literary adaptation

Taken from
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literary_adaptation


Film adaptation


To adapt means to transpose from one medium to another. It is the ability to make fit or suitable by changing, or adjusting. Modifying something to create a change in structure, function, and form, which produces a better adjustment.
Adapting a novel, book, play, or article into a screenplay is the same as writing an original screenplay. 
It only starts from the source material: the novel, book, play, article or song.
The screenplay must provide visualisation of the action that can be captured on film.
When the screenwriters adapts from another medium it must be a visual experience. 
That is the primary job of the screenwriters who must remain true only to the integrity of the source material.
Adapting another form of writing to the screen means finding cinematic equivalents in the original piece. 
The screenwriters only has 120 pages to tell the story and has to choose story events carefully so they highlight and illustrate the screenplay with good visual and dramatic components (http://www.writingstudio.co.za/page62.html)



A list of words associated with adaptation
Taken from
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literary_adaptation


Another list of words 

The vocabulary of adaptation is highly labile: Adrian Poole has offered an extensive list of terms to represent the Victorian era’s interest in reworking the artistic past: ‘(in no particular order)…borrowing, stealing, appropriating, inheriting, assimilating…being influenced, inspired, dependent, indebted, haunted, possessed…homage, mimicry, travesty, echo, allusion, and intertextuality’ (2004:2). We could continue the linguistic riff, adding into the mix: variation, version, interpretation, imitation, proximation, supplement, increment, improvisation, prequel, sequel, continuation, addition, paratext, hypertext, palimpsest, graft, rewriting, reworking, refashioning, re-vision, re-evaluation.(2005:3)

Julie Sanders (2005) Adaptation and Appropriation, : Taylor & Francis



My own understanding/definition of adaptation


Adaptation is a derivation of an original piece of work. The new piece of work created from an original source however; could be an appropriation from the original in which certain aspects of the original work would be dissected out to create something new, while maintaining its intertextual relationship to it's canonical source.

The integrity and fideltiy of the adaptation however is dependant upon the re-creater of the text, because they may not want to recreate the whole original text, but to appropriate say for example: the theme of the text, the environment, personality of a character, fashion from the text, technology and so forth. Which in doing this, is transforming the text into something new and different, but may be also infringing the integrity of the original text.






Friday 24 October 2014




Having received feedback from Helen about the rough cut, she told us that we could use the 2 minutes to focus fully on our live story, and that the anchors part of the story does not count towards our 2 minutes (hooray!!!) This means that the extra footage we have to use, we can use...

Also, having talked with Roxanne, she suggested that we remove one of our Vox pops, mainly the Ladies one and replace it with another of our, as all three of our Vox pops are repeating the same answer.





Thursday 23 October 2014




After reading through all the poems, I'm going to choose the Anthem For Doomed Youth by Wilfred Owen.

The reason for this is that i bonded with this poem the moment that i read it, and the other poems i felt dragged on a bit; were too text heavy, and if adapted for the screen might not give enough chance for the focus to be on the moving image and sound taking place within the production; to help bring the poem to life.

The reason that i have left it this late to decide upon what poem i want to adapt, is because i've been doing a lot of research about adaptation theory and the other theories that surround it. I feel this research may have helped my approach at looking at how to appropriate a piece of text, transforming it into something new; giving my appropriated version of the text an extended intertextual engagement for anyone body whom is to watch it.

In reading the anthem for the doomed youth, i felt that i'd be able to achieve this.



Here's some brief research that i've conducted on the background of Wilfred Owen, just so that i could get an understanding as to the notion under which he wrote his poetry, so that when i adapt Anthem For Doomed Youth, hopefully, even tho it will be transformed into something new, the fidelity to the notion under which the poem was written; the integrity will be able to be shown, even tho the context may be different.


Taken from
www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/owen_wilfred.shtml


Taken from
www.wilfredowen.org.uk/home/

You will notice certain words highlighted on the pictures above, this is just to remind me about the influence and notion in which Wilfreds poems were written.



extra research:

more background on 'Owen the Poet'

www.wilfredowen.org.uk/owen-the-poet


Wednesday 22 October 2014



Before our news anchor came down, we ran some tests to make sure that the green screen room was properly lit, making it easy for us to key out the green during the edit.



we had two lights, lighting up the green screen, and the third light
bouncing off of the white ceiling to diffuse the light, as aiming it
directly at our 'actor' caused a harsh shadow on the green screen
which would make it hard to key out in the edit!



Because there was light bursting through the blinds,
We had to stand close to the side of the camera to avoid the glare
shining off the glass and reflecting through the lens



Because the room was a small, in order to create distance between the BG lights
and not cause any shadows,  we had to separate the 'actor' from the GS backdrop
However, in doing this we had to film 

This was the glare that was coming from the window behind the the production room.
This is the camera outside of the production room, in which we filmed through the window so that we had more space to work with. Doing this however meant that we would have to use a wireless mic to get audio.


Here is our test shot.





For potential ways in which to cover our troll story package, i've been looking at various videos to try and get inspiration and ideas on how we could produce our package.


The research/breakdown i done of the Facebook story (click for example1) covered by fox news was one of the examples that i liked.






What i like about this package is how it is presenter led, and how the presenter doesn't do a PTC. The package consists solely of VOSOT and the occasional VOX pop which will then lead into a small case study, which what i particularly like.

These specific parts that i've spoke about i'd like incorporate into our package, although, the way in which they've told the story we'd not use! As our piece is going be more serious because we're talking about a new sentencing legislation, and this piece is more of a comedic piece as you can tell by the ironic/sarcastic way in which the news anchors and the presenters talks and laughs, which with our piece, it's not really a laughing piece; it's a serious matter!










What i like about this story again, is the VOSOT the presenter uses throughout the package, aided by the graphics popping up on the scree to assist what the presenter is saying. Whilst the presenter is talking about the abusive comments via twitter, he shows a few on screen scrolling at a medium-slow pace via screen capture record so that the viewer can read the comments for themselves.
The tone in which the reporter presents the story too is good as it lets you as the viewer/listener know that it is a serious story, unlike the previous Troll story shown on Fox news.

The pictures used alongside the graphics to aid the story is also good, as they help to drive the story i.e. as the reporter is talking about the abusive messages the McCanns are receiving, he has footage of the McCanss with graphics overlaid over the footage, spontaneously popping up to help visually illustrate that they constantly receive a barrage of abuse.

Another thing that i like is the fact that the reporter then done a piece to camera momentarily, so that the audience could establish visually who it was that was reporting the story, but also to show the so called "dossier" to the audience so that the audience gets an idea of how many pages or rather how think the page's of abuse is that is being set to Scotland yard.


The things that i do not like about this package however is

  1. When the reporter is referring to Twitter posts, the package is showing Facebook posts!
  2. The reuse of the dossiers being on screen twice, first as an establishing pan shot, and a second time during a PTC by the reporter
The tone of voice in which this story is reported is way more serious which is good, as it illustrates the severity of the trolling instance's, especially since the package is kick started off with an aggressive doorstep interview, however, the tone of voice i think is a bit too serious for how i'd like our package to be presented, as i would like to find a happy medium between fox's sarcastic/ironic tone of voice and Sky's serious tone of voice





After many amendment of the script for the news anchor, here's our final script for the news anchor, adapted from the main production script.






Because we're still in the process of producing our Trolling legislation update story, and sourcing a reporter for the story, we could not include the reporters name in the anchors script for that because we've not found one just yet.

A discrepancy that we had with created this script, adapted from the original is that we accidentally missed out a part of the script in which our Anchor introduces mark and asks him a question. However, the way in which Mark introduces his live can continue without the question being asked, but ideally it would of been a lot nicer to include that into the script so that from a visual perspective it would help sell the fact that we're live even more.




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