Blog post for Media Production MED 1001

Video module

In the very start of our school year, we were introduced to film making. We were shown how to use the basics of Adobe premier pro, which made the complicated software so much easier!

In theory class, we learnt all about the documentation and efforts required before shooting the video, ie. Pre production.We got to know about the script, story board and the short list- basically making the film in your head and transferring it in precise details in documents.

I was in a team with Anushka, Niharika and Arwa and we brain-stormed until we settled upon the idea to film a story about the growing up of a little child through her love of reading. Together, we crafted tid-bits of the script, drew rough pictures of the story board and discussed how we would like the end result to be.

Then we divided the work between us and hurried home to get to it all. Arwa and Niharika both chose to work on the script, Anushka took up the story board while I opted to do the short-list.

We were pleasantly surprised by how smooth the tasks went and as we kept forward our task at hand was much clearer.

For Production, in class we were taught all about camera angles, lighting, sound, how to work the camera from inside as outside and many other things. It seemed that we could know all we could about making the film, but the aspect of actually filming still seemed daunting and quizzing to me.

Then we got to filming day. And it turned out to be quite okay.

The first day we framed in our protagonist under a tree under the evening sky and got plenty of stunning shots that worked very well. The lighting worked to our advantage and the presence of nature added quite a serene effect. We used mostly wide angle shots and some close ups and some panning too.

The respective days we shot our protagonist in other places, always with a book in hand. We got to work with extras, who were quite happy as we only needed them to sit on their devices or play video games on the xbox.

On one of the last days of shooting, we were at location early morning at a book café and due to some very unfortunate circumstances with our actor, she was unable to come. Helpless, we were stumped.

But, we quickly jumped to our own rescue and got one of our own team members to act. Niharika was now our new actor.

On the location, we had much fun filming, experimenting with angles, taking moving shots, focusing on the crispness of the pages of the books. I have to admit, it was a dream filming about books.

Despite all our previous shots gone to waste due to the actor change, we breezed through, shooting all those shots again and were successfully done with the Production phase.

The phase that followed through, post-production was a breeze as well. Having followed all our camera instructions and taken enough shots, we didn’t bump into many issues. We chose a music track for our video, Anushka did the editing, we made the changes to our pre-production and we were done before we knew it.

It was a lot of fun to make our film, called For the love of reading. The most intriguing aspect for me was seeing the snippets of our idea, the images in our mind and the story we wanted to convey actually transfer well onto screen. It was sure memorable and I’d love to do it again.

Poster module

The poster module brought with it the promise of a new and unexplored territory for me- Photoshop and InDesign. And they were daunting, to say the least.

The prospect of designing a poster itself was very daunting. Due to the immense array of options we had (which was, anything and everything itself), I got utterly lost in choosing what I wanted to do the poster on and how good of a poster could that turn out to be. With my eccentric choice, most of my wishes didn’t really strike doable and I was left wafting.

In the end, I chose to do an anti-smoking campaign poster due to a passive aggressive line I had seen on the internet. To me, it sounded like a line that would bring a smirk on my face and stay in my brain forever. And so it began.

During the theory classes for the poster, we were reminded time and time again about the importance of typography. We were also taught about placement, padding, grids, margins and the like. Making a poster doesn’t sound all that hard on paper, but getting it right proved to be a tricky path.

When I got to doing my poster in InDesign, I failed miserably. My image didn’t match with my content or background, my background didn’t do much for my content and my typography was a fail. I needed much work on my technical skills, as my lack of experience showed through quite loudly.

With much help from my professor, I changed my ideas quite a bit. I tweaked my background color, I threw my disastrous image out and I definitely changed my font. In the end, I chose not to put an image in my poster.

Alternatively, I made an image of a cigarette using coloured words.
Looking back, I now realize that every project requires a clear focus, which I lacked terribly during the poster making. And it also requires working hard on shifting the design to use content to it’s greatest potential.

My poster, while not all that great, was a starting piece. A little murky and confused, I tried my best to piece my little knowledge and experience to form a poster that gets the message across. Due to my lack of hands on practice, I didn’t enjoy much freedom on how my poster looked, but I tried to use the simplest tools to get an artistic result.

Doing the poster was a slightly scary yet eye-opening project. I’m quite proud to say I’ve worked with Photoshop and InDesign. For whatever it’s worth, if I ever needed to make a poster ever again, InDesign is how I’ll be doing it.

Website module

When I learnt we would be designing a website by code for our third project, I was quite hyped. Having made webpages using HTML for fun and holding quite the candle for web-designing, I assumed it would be fun revisit of forgotten knowledge. Alas, I had never met CSS!

In the beginning, HTML was a breeze. Except for some issues with the <div> tag, I understood everything quite well and it was all smooth sailing. Then we were made to make a wire-frame for our website In Photoshop. Here I stumbled a little. I wasn’t quite sure of my design and I couldn’t decide on one, so I was slacking behind.

I decided to do my website about whales, because of my love for them and because of the internet being a weird and inclusive community for every kind of person with weird quirks. Also, whales are amazing.

After getting through the designing stage, we moved on to the coding bit.
Again, the HTML coding was done very quickly and without many hitches.
But CSS, being utterly and completely new, with many different rules to follow and things to categorize, got me lost a bit. At that time it felt that despite all my trials, all I would ever get was errors. I was discouraged.

Then I started anew. I restarted my website from scratch. I made many divisions and I categorized my code accordingly. And when it came to the CSS, I dipped my feet in its cold waters with ambition.

And I discovered it wasn’t so hard. Following some internet advice as well as the knowledge learnt in class, I experimented with basic CSS and even progressed to some of the harder bits and managed to succeed. Despite some murky bits, I still found myself getting results.

In the end, I had managed to put in a header image and shift my font exactly where I wanted to with CSS. Then I got my menu bar exactly where it wanted and placed my right in the middle underneath with my desired margin. After all that, I even succeeded with changing my font!

Finally, I added some finishing touches, a header, a video link, other links and I was satisfied with my end result.
I think the website module has now made me fearless about coding. I find coding quite fun and love playing around with it. Overall, coding a website wasn’t that hard but just required a very sharp goal in mind and a very clear and organized structure.

–Media production was a terribly fun class and like no other. I had tons of fun and I look forward to getting better and doing much more creative stuff.

Thank you
Sabah.

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