2010-11 Groups

Here's a list of this year's groups, with genres and working titles. Feel free to share ideas, props, expertise with other groups working in your genre!
You could agree with another production group to look at and comment their blogs every week or so...lots of scope here to collaborate!
Looking forward to seeing these!
As G321 GROUPS 2010-11 as Single Names

Your pitches: footage!

I've just about finished going through these and cutting separate clips for each pitch (iMovie file on Mac5 desktop). You should now upload these to your blog in a post titled "My Pitch"
To do this you need to ...

1. create a new iMovie project
2. name it "[YourName] Pitch"
3. find your clip from the iMovie project "AS Pitches 13Dec2010"
4. drag and drop this into your new project file
5. drag this in your new project onto the timeline and export (full quality) to create a QuickTime movie
6. copy the film file onto your memory stick
7. close your iMovie project
8. drag both your project file and the exported film file into the "AS Pitches" folder on the desktop
9. upload your pitch using your YouTube channel, and...
10. embed into your blog post, adding detail of how you think the pitch went, and perhaps reflecting a little on the experience of pitching!

Next step is to create another blog post ("Group and initial idea") where you include a photo of your group and give their names, then outline (bullet points are fine) your initial idea from your early discussions

Well done to all of you - its not an easy thing to do, and you all coped admirably! A couple of questions arose during the filming of these: what is a working title; can we use any music of our choice? The answers...

A working title is not just the name of your main British film case study but a possible title given to a film project at any stage up to the release of trailers and the actual release; so Halloween had the working title Babysitter Murders, and Scream had the working title of Scary Movie!

You cannot use any copyright music ... but will be shown how to use Garageband on the Macs to create your own, and can record your own version of an existing track if you know any musician types! You can also effectively commission a musician (there are some very talented musicians and composers who study music at this school!) to create your soundtrack; crucially you'd have to evidence how you direct this work and instruct the composer on what you're after. Watch past AS work - most of these created their own, despite never having done anything like this before!

While I was working on your pitches footage I got an email which illustrates how ingrained the notion of pitching is within the film business (indeed, across the media and creative industries) ... note the last line from this extract!

Screen Yorkshire is seeking applications for TRIANGLE, a unique development opportunity aimed at fostering creative collaboration between feature film writers, directors and producers in the North of England. The scheme, a partnership between Screen Yorkshire, Vision + Media and Northern Film & Media with support from the Skillset Film Skills Fund, is open to all filmmakers based in Yorkshire and Humber, the North West and North East of England.

TRIANGLE is an extensive six-month mentoring initiative intended to support the development of writer-producer-director teams and new collaborative feature film projects. There will be a selection process throughout the programme, and the surviving teams will pitch the best projects to an industry panel in June 2011 at the Edinburgh International Film Festival.

Loaning Media Equipment: Guidelines

Each of you will be issued with a copy of the document below to sign, show to (and discuss with) your parents, and return to me (once they're all in I'll photocopy and return them to you - please don't fold the sheet).
We have a lot of you seeking cameras at any one time, so need to make sure they're kept in constant circulation so everyone has fair and equal access and can plan shoots without having to worry about getting cameras.

As noted on the bottom of this, the 10 sets of earphones I bought just last year have all disappeared, so there will not be any to borrow - you really do need to bring your own set with you each day. You can buy basic earphones from £1.99 on Amazon.



Loaning Media Equipment - Guidelines (2)

Posters, DVD sleeve etc

Access guides at http://a2mediablogs.blogspot.com/2009/12/guide-to-posters-and-other-products.html

HurtwoodHouse students' productions

I've embedded below one example of coursework from this school; well worth looking at others - not least as each upload showcases the tools YouTube makes available to uploaders, tools which you should be using for your own coursework...

If you like any of these why not add a comment saying so? I'm sure you'll appreciate it when others do likewise for your upcoming masterpieces.
You can view their channel at http://www.youtube.com/user/hurtwoodhousemedia

Uploading your video work to date

Everything you've done on film so far should now be on your blog: microdrama, mise-en-scene task, swede (if done) and prelim. There should be a separate post for each ... with commentary and reflection on what you've learned from doing this. The idea of the blog is that it is a record of the learning that took place, reflecting how your knowledge and skill have developed over time; so try to ensure your blog posts are published in a logical order.

TIP: if you want to reorder posts open up two tabs; a 'New Post' in one and the edit window for an existing post; copy/paste across the post you want to be more recent, and delete the original post, if necessary, from within your list of posts.

There are many ways you can add video to your blog. Blogger itself has a video upload tool ... its rubbish; don't use it!!!
What you want to be doing is to upload your video to a hosting site such as YouTube and use the embed code that will be generated to include the video directly in your blog post. The principle is that anyone looking at your blog should be able to press play and watch the video - NOT have to go through to another website.
You can always look at my blogs, or past student blogs, to see what I mean here.

As you progress, you should be setting up your own individual YouTube channels - a very simple, quick process, but it looks slick! This will also enable you to easily seek audience feedback via Facebook and suchlike. For now, YouTube remains blocked in school - hopefully a situation which will change.
If you want to get all your current film files uploaded now, you can use the video upload site Vimeo - here's a link to an example: http://vimeo.com/13225587
You can see there is a button for embedding; you simply click on this, as with YouTube, copy the code and paste into your blog post; click publish and it will appear!

You should also be passing on a copy of your exported film files (this includes rough cuts when we get to that stage) so that they can be published on the IGSMediaStudies YouTube site, and screened in class for feedback (and entertainment!). Assuming we have all the files, you'll get a chance to watch back all the work done so far by yourselves and the other class on the last day (actually the Thursday for 12A!).