Evaluation of Newspaper

We first started off by doing some research into newspapers, we looked at a variety of different newspapers most of which were free and local. Because these newspapers were free and local they had more advertisements on the front. Once we had a brief over view of what we would need to have on the front. We then decided to go out and take pictures of stories that we wanted to portray.  

These picture had to be our own, therefore we had to go out and take the photographs. We decided to have a UFO sighting as out main story. To do this we needed a picture of a sky. Other pictures we took were of a movie star, who was part of 'The Package', and the student that had spotted the UFO. To make it easier to pick pictures we took 87 photos. By having so many photos it made it easier to get the story we were trying to get across, each photo gave a different style to the story (e.g. smiles means a happy story). After we had taken all of the necessary images we uploaded them to the iMac. Once we had done this we then needed to change them in specific ways to portray to the audience what the story was about. For example we had a photograph of the sky in which we edited to show a UFO to go along with our story.  

To create the UFO I (Harry) used Adobe Photoshop, by using this program and its detailed tools I managed to create a similar looking object to a UFO in the sky. The image was then dragged to indesign and we made it look smaller so that it would look more realistic. 

Indesign was the software we used to complete the task of creating a local front cover with the story of our choice. Indesign allows you to create different boxes and guidelines so that you can comply a page that has the same style of a newspaper. Using this software was a learning experience for the both of us as this was the first time we had used it. Overall we thought that this software was pretty easy to use as it was similar to other programs such as Microsoft Publisher which we were more common to. However Indesign was more complex and this was an advantage in completing the task  as it had more tools and options to allow us to have our page looking the way we wanted to.

All together we manage to complete the task and get the result we wanted. We got the paper to look the the way we wanted by using a variety of programs and techniques that helped us to develop our skills for the part of the course next year.

Newspaper Task

Film and Evaluation

Comment on the best bits: Some very clean shots and very good hand held work. The camera positions are excellent. An excellent edit. Good use of sound. Nice use of light in the establishing shot, and down the passageway.

Things you can improve: Hand held work has to be better still: that's a challenge rather than a criticism

Marks are out of 3 for this:

0 means you haven't done it.

1 is lowest - it means that there is a lot that needs to be done, but that you have the material to sort it out and make it work.

2 means that you've done the job competently and it is OK.

3 means that you've done some parts of it really very well, and should work to exploit this.

CAMERA

Medium Shot MS 3

Long Shot LS 3

Close Up CU 3

XLS - extreme long shot 2

XCU - extreme close up 2

Pan 3

Tilt 3

Zoom 3

Cross focus 1

Deep focus 2

Tracking shot (dolly, hand held, shoulder shot) 3

Point of View - POV 2

Use of tripod 2

EDIT

Shot - reverse shot 2

Establishing shot 3

Cut 2

Dissolve 2

Total out of 55 = 41 = 76% = B

Evaluation is very good, so 9/10, = A

The Package Evaluation

We first started off with a list of camera shots that we had to include in the film titled 'The Package'. With all of them in mind we sat down together to discuss and draw up our ideas, and finally put them together so that we could film our ideas. 

After this we chose who our actors were. We need to select people who fitted the character's attributes. Our actors were David Finch (Suspicious guy) and Tom Hayward (Mystery man) and Stuart Sharples who was a random character. 

We now had to find a location to shoot our first scene. We chose a quiet class room which was adjacent to a long corridor. This was helpful as our second scene was to be in a corridor.

We made several changes to our script whilst filming but none were major. 

All of our clips we over ran so that we had sufficient film footage to edit later on.

Now the filming was complete we now had to extract the footage onto the computers and edit it via Final Cut Express, which is a software which allows you to use several tools and techniques to put together your film.

We found the software easy to learn as Harry was already equipped to the software due to previous experience's therefore Harry was able to show me how to use Final Cut Express. The tools available such as adding transitions and cuts made it easy to merge together the clips we had and make changing scenes more attractive on the viewers eye.

It  took us long period of time to find specific music that would fit our film and one that we liked as well.We both looked through Harry's Ipod which had a variety of music that we liked but ended choosing Linkin Park - In the end. We thought of merging this song with another half way through the film but instead chose to fade the music into the background by making the music quieter and then pick up its sound again and finish at the same level it started off at.

One problem we had with editing was that it was hard to get the right heart beat and make it sound real because one bar was only 2 heartbeats and we wanted more so we had to join them to make it sound real. Another problem was that it was frustrating to film as we had to film during school time we had a lot of noise in the background and interruptions from people passing by interested in what we were doing.

All together we both found this task interesting to do and enjoyable to put together and we learned a lot to do with editing and how to use a camera to show different representations and how to capture the same thing but from a different position.

The Package

By Stuart Sharples and Harry Aquilina

That's better

Thanks Stuart. Evaluation now.

HM