Dominant Reading

Here's our blog of my team's dominant reading for our film opening scene project

This is just a quick catch up session that we did as a group. We thought it would be a good idea to check what our intended dominant readings are for the different things being represented in our film opening. We have recently learned about Stuart Hall’s Reception Theory with Dominant, Oppositional, and Negotiated readings. For our media text to be successful, we want to make sure the message is clear and able to reach the correct audience. Below we will discuss our intended readings, and compare them to the intended readings we made in our Statement of Intent earlier on in the project. It will be interesting to see if our ideas have evolved.

 

	List	Our intended  Dominant Reading	How we will achieve this with technical elements
Individuals	Greg, Kenneth, Max	Kenneth = a paranoid  teenager  Greg = Kenneth's good friend, mindful of his surroundings  Max = careless, ignorant teenager	Kenneth  Mise en scene: The actor constantly looks at his surroundings and whatever's around him.  Camera: There is a close up of his concerned expression. There are also medium shots of his concerned body language. The camera pans from Kenneth to what he is looking at.  Editing: Multiple cuts of different camera angles. There is also an eyeline match of kenneth looking to his surroundings  Sound: Diegetic sounds of rustling leaves and footsteps of the stalker.  Greg  Mise en scene: The actor performance contained looking for his friend (kenneth) when he disappeared  Camera: There is a tracking shot of him trying to follow Kenneth's tracks. Medium shots of his body language turning around to find Kenneth.  Editing: Multiple cuts of different camera angles. There is also a reaction shot  of his worried face and Kenneth's “blood”.  Sound: Diegetic sounds of the actor’s dialogue contained words that worried about Kenneth after he disappeared.  Max Mise en scene: The actress carries headphones and has her emotionless expression when the camera focuses on her.  Camera: There are close up shots of her expressions that show that she doesn’t really care.
Social group	Teenagers	Teenagers should not be left alone without adult supervision.	There are multiple camera angles / close up shots of the paranoia of the teenagers. There is a tracking shot scene where Kenneth gets killed. The body language of both Greg and Kenneth are shaky and scared.
Places	Forest	Forests are a bad place to hangout.	There will be low key lighting that’s used to present the place. Many bushes and leaves will be used that hides hidden cameras that makes the scene unsafe for the characters and the audience.  Discordant non diegetic sounds will be used.
Events	Murder	Murder is bad / traumatic.	There is a medium shot of Greg worried for kenneth. A close up shot where he is shocked at the blood splatter. There is blood in some scenes and the color red on blood is a semantic code for death, anger, etc.
Overall Message	Teenagers shouldn’t be left alone in the forest because tragedies may happen as a result of murder.

How similar is it to the statement of intent ?

I think this is almost 90% similar to our statement of intent. Some of the similarities are,

• The name of the characters. Each character is either named greg, max or kenneth just like what our group discussed in the statement of intent.

• We represented places using low key lighting and a monochrome color palette which is what we said in our statement of intent which appeals to our horror audiences as well. 

•   In both the dominant reading and the statement of intent we have murder as one of the main action and a message that it is traumatic and bad. 

However, 

• We changed the storyline from a bunch of detective to a bunch of reckless teenagers who are left alone in the forest hanging out which changes the overall message / the dominant reading to the social group.

• The dominant reading or main message has also changed from "Always go home early, never go out at night alone. " to " Teenagers shouldn’t be left alone in the forest because tragedies may happen as a result of murder."

Self Reflection: 

I think this dominant reading make us reflect on the main meaning of our movie and what we want our audience to feel and think about when they watch our movie introduction. We also realize we changed some things from our statement of intent which is normal since we change the characters and some of the storyline of our original draft. Overall, hopefully our audience would get the same messages. 

Classwork: Editing practice

This blog post contains the work I did in my lesson on how to successfully edit. My teacher filmed the footage but I edited it together. My teacher also provided the template for the blog post.

Why is continuity editing important?

Continuity editing includes making sure that items like props or costumes stay consistent from scene to scene. But the more important work lies in editing shots together in a way that leaves viewers thoroughly grounded in both time and space that leaves the audience with an immersive and realistic experience. 


Different types of continuity edit

• Straight cut (cut)
• Eyeline match
• Shot /reverse shot
• Cutaway / Insert

*Match cut

Footage

Here is the footage that my teacher shot which utilises a variety of camera angles and movements. The scene is very simple, it involves a student standing up and leaving the classroom. A single shot here might be quite boring for the audience, by editing and combining the shots together we can make the scene feel more dynamic and exciting. 

Here is the youtube link to all the raw clips: 

My editing process

This is my first attempt at editing these clips.  I used an editing software called capcut so I can edit the clips smoothly. The clips given had some continuity errors such as the first clip they didn't consistently  put their hands inside their pockets so I had to cut the scenes where he doesn't put his hands in his pocket and another thing is the weird camera angles in the 4th and 5th clip but eventually I manage to sort it out by making a cut on the 4th and 5th clip. 

Some of the minor errors I made was audio. I didn't really have time to think about the audio and for the first clip I muted the whole clip which is not a good decision as it made the first scene boring. I also didn't consider the fact that cut are used to film the next action or make the film more dramatic but I think my cuts were kind of like that but next time I will keep that in mind while editing to make each action more immersive for the audience. 

This is the youtube video for my edited clip. 

Self Reflection:

I think I did an overall good job at this editing thing maybe next time I'll just figure out the audio for the next time I edit but luckily I'm not the editor in this comp 1 project which is a relieve. For the 4th and 5th clip transition I don't think I figured out as well as I thought but with the limited time I was given I thought it kind of make sense. I think this tutorial / trail will really help all of us especially our editor Kenneth so he can edit the shots for our movie opening smoothly. 

Shooting practice; horror scene recreation

 This post contains a mini project that helped us learn how to shoot a cinematic scene. We did this as a group. (Maxine, Bamz, Kenneth and me )

My teacher told us to find a scene from a movie and in our groups case a horror movie. Our groups task is to recreate it. We choose a scene from Jennifer's Body 2009. 

This is our story board ⬆️ (this was done by me)

This is our finished video ⬆️ edited by Kenneth & Max

Camera

Problem : The camera was sometimes shaky in the middle of recording due to constant imperfections within the camera angle or movement which can make some scenes with no sense and context ( character wasn't in the camera angle thus, talking to nobody or the camera movement was too far from the characters to be seen clearly )

Solution : We could possibly use a stabilizer or a tripod for the recording part to prevent
shake or weird angles within the recording session.

Next time : Most likely practice for the camera stillness because, purchasing a stabilizer or a tripod can be too far out of our current budget and we might need another cameraman that has a stable arm just incase for the camera movement.

Editing

Problem: Lip-syncing to the original audio was a bit abnormal due to the characters while recording can be either nervous, embarrassed or not good at acting for the sound to be synced to the audio.
 

Solution: Retake many shots to see if we can perfect it the original audio or get actors that are good at acting like doing a Screen Test with various actors we picked out that could be good within the context of our video to prevent weird lip-syncing to the audio.

Next time: Remember to take as many shots as possible to have a higher possibility that the lip-syncing wouldn't be as abnormal or off-synced.  

This part in green was written by Bamz 

Mise en scene 

Problem: We couldn't control the lighting as we were filming outside the classroom. The lighting for a horror movie especially for this one requires mostly low key lighting and since it was sunny today we didn't have access to that. 

Solution: Our teammates Max and Kenneth decided to adjust the video's lighting using the video editing apps to get the same feel as the clip from the movie. 

Next time: We will find a place with artificial lighting so we can easily control the lighting without much help from the video editing app to give it a more natural look instead of artificially increasing something. However, if this is not possible we will use the solution mentioned previously. 

Problem: In the first scene an actress looked at the camera. It's a subtle detail but our goal is so it would match perfectly to the scene we are trying to recreate. 

Solution: Our team tried to edit the video. However they couldn't fully fix that scene so we didn't find the right solution at that time. 

Next time:  we will rehearse and practice many times before we actually film the scenes. If not we can do multiple takes at the time and carefully look at the footage before deciding on another take. However, if all these repercussions fail then we can figure out how to edit it out. 

Sound 

Problem: We didn't have any problems with the sound as we use audio from the original clip which is very clear. 

Next time: I think we will continue doing this and for our upcoming project we will pre record the audio for the dialogue so we can get a clear sound. I also learned it's best not to record audio while we are recording a scene 

 This was done by me ⬆️

Self reflection:

This is my first time doing a shooting practice and I think it is quite fun to do. The hardest part is the fact that our group had to find a scene from a horror movie which is quite complicated due to our limitations. However, through our practice I learned that we need more practice and better team synergy (as we forgot to do the behind the scenes).  Overall, I think this shooting practice help me and my group learned many valuable lessons.