Tutorial 3 & 4

 

Tutorial 4:

We were instructed to work in a group of 3 to plan and produce a short film based on a mystery letter of the alphabet that is approximately 30 seconds long. As a group we choose our mystery letter (refer video above)  and with confidence walked around Wintec (Avalon Campus) with a cute little camcorder borrowed from the OT office. 

It was only after we decided that we had enough shorts to create a short film that we realized that there was no space on the memory card in the camcorder. This meant that we had spent 15 minutes walking around campus aiming the camera at people and objects without actually recording anything. Confusion lead to hope that maybe our tutor might be able to retrieve what we as generation X couldn't. Unfortunately no such luck hence we were given a camera to redo the tedious task we were originally set out to do. As we walked out the building the little battery icon on the LCD screen of the camera indicated a flat battery. By now all three of us were tired, exhausted and annoyed. We did manage to complete the task with fresh set of batteries and two spare batteries just in case of another misfortune.

We returned to class thinking that creating the 30 second film would be a piece of cake. Boy, were we wrong. What I found difficult was that while cutting out scenes you still had to make sure the message would reach the audience (in our case the mystery letter). Keeping within the 30 second time frame was not as easy as I thought it would be. However, I enjoyed using Movie maker which is a very fun and interesting program to work.

I now have a better understanding of how much time and effort goes into producing a video. While viewing the video posted above please do take into consideration the time and effort that was invested. Not forgetting several hurdles encountered during production :). Please do leave a comment if you are able to guess what the mystery letter is :).

Storyboards are a series of illustrations or images displayed in a organized graphical sequence for motion picture or animation movies (Wikipedia). 

Scripting is created once the storyboard is completed which is similar to reading a book for example the images from the story board indicate what the character will say and what reaction they are experiencing (Wikipedia). 

Storyboarding and scripting aided my group's short film because we were able to use recordings of different images in our environment to create the ambiguity of identifying the mystery letter of the alphabet.

Tutorial 3:

Creating a blog and a Flickr account was a totally new experience for me. In the past  I have never successfully managed to keep up with diary entries and ended up discarding the idea in numerous occasions. As for photos well I just save them on my portable hard-drive or store hard copy in a scrapbook. This tutorial was definitely a new learning experience and I enjoyed creating the first three blog. I did have issues with font not showing against certain templates so the perfectionist in me will continue tweaking the problem until it's rectified.

I also enjoyed uploading photos onto the Flickr account which is kinda like a online scrapbook. I had fun playing with different designs and various options that are offered. I would definitely continue using this site and direct family/friends to my Flickr account to share my photos.

Below are the steps to follow if you are interested to create your own Blogger or Flickr account:

Blogger: (similar to a diary which contains personal thoughts and feelings to be shared to invited members around the world)

• go to blogger.com web page
• follow the steps to create Google account
• sign into Google account
• you are now able to create your own personal blog by utilizing easy to use options available.

Flickr: (similar to a scrapbook or photo album which contains personal photos that can be uploaded to be shared with invited members around the world)

• go to Flickr.com web page
• follow the steps to create flickr account
• sign into Flickr account
• you are now able to upload photos and personalized them using the different options available.

Hope you get to enjoy the experience as much as I did :)