Filming Blog

Today in AICE Media we filmed. Our commercial was about converse. We filmed our commercial in building 17. The first scene featured our actor Maddy. The first scene was on the second floor of building 17.  Brenna was our person that filmed the shots with the camera. Our first scene was Maddy walking down the hallway and out of the door. We did about 4 takes of this before we moved on to the second scene. The second scene of our commercial was Maddy walking down the stairs of the second floor. The next scene featured me walking out of the first floor of 17’s hallway.

As Maddy is walking down the stairs I was supposed to open the door and walk out. When I open the door Maddy says “Hey wait up” and I was supposed to stop and turn around. This took 7 or so tries with me walking slow the first time or walking too fast. The next scene after this was me and Maddy talking about music and walking to class. Then Maddy says “Hey wanna listen” and hands me a headphone. (Like I am going to take the headphone and listen to the song). Then I’m supposed to say “Yeah, Sure”. This took a few takes with me talking too quietly or not actually taking the headphone. Then Brenna was supposed to pan down and zoom in on her shoes.  saying the voiceover “Converse, Made by you”.

After finishing filming we reshot all the scenes with the Tripod to see if it was better. We then returned to our classroom and found a computer to dump. We selected computer number 12 to dump. The dumping process was easy and we put everything in a folder called converseCom. The SD card would not at first work so we fixed that. After that the folder wouldn’t be created so we just restarted the computer. Then we put all the files on the new folder but at first they were someone else’s work so we had to delete the rest from the folder. Then we turned the computer off and we signed out of it. We watched all of the footage on the camera before class ended. The footage was all good and we gave everything back to Ms Cats.

Storyboard

Today in class we were supposed to create our storyboard, but, our group had already finished the storyboard in previous classes. The storyboard we worked on is for Building 17, but if we need to, we can film in lots of separate locations. 

The first shot is of actor M walking down a hallway(maybe a tracking shot?), eventually leaving the building through the double doors at the end. We have planned to have music in the background, where it is actually what actor M is listening to, so actor M will need to wear headphones. The next shot will be actor M beginning to walk down the stairs after leaving the hallway(maybe a wide shot, showing the surroundings?). In the third shot(probably wide) actor M reaches the bottom of the steps as actor J walks across the screen. Actor M gets actor J's attention with a "Hey, wait up." Then the fourth shot shows actor M catching up to actor J, and the fifth is of their shoes(specifically actor M's Converse), actor M asking "Want to listen?" to actor J. Continuing the fifth shot, the camera is still as the two actors walk out of the shot, with text appearing and a voice-over reading the words, "Converse, keep it simple."

 We have been struggling a little with the sound, though we are still working to find a song. Also, we think that each shot will vary in length, each one might not be exactly 5 seconds. Here is a picture of the storyboard:

Planning Blog for converse commercial

Today we are planning our commercial. Figuring out the props, costumes, schedule, locations and our backup plan for if anything goes wrong. We want our commercial to be simple. Just following a normal student, and eventually revealing they’re wearing converse. The slogan we are going for is “keep it simple,” and “made by you.”

Props: definitely a backpack(not branded or too distracting). Maybe a binder/folder/notebook or book, to show more context of the actor being a student, but it’s not completely necessary. We want the actors to look natural.

Costumes: keeping with the “natural” and “simple” theme, we want the actors to wear their own non-branded clothing, enough to give them personality but not enough for them to distract. In the event we cannot use the clothing worn, a jacket will be used to cover it up.

Schedule: today we are planning and we might draft the storyboard. Next class we will complete the storyboard with definite shots. Then the next we will film. Having planned so thoroughly, filming shouldn’t be a problem and won’t take more than 30 minutes to accomplish. We don’t quite know what editing program we are using so we aren’t sure if it will be difficult, but we will make sure to have plenty of shots to choose from.

Location list: for what we have in mind, all we need is a hallway, stairs and a somewhat open place. It could be the balcony hallway of building 5, the media center stairs and the patio in front of it; It could by the second floor of building 21, the stairs and the walkway next to it; Or it could even be the second floor hallway of building 17, the stairs and the stone path by it. Any of these locations can be used, and there are plenty of others we have planned for if some don’t work out.

We have talked about each backup plan within each subject, and can’t wait to execute our plan!

Research Conventions

My group started to work on our commercial project today. We will be creating a commercial about converse. We had to choose from a list of topics, including Starbucks/Dunkin Donuts, Wendy’s/McDonalds, and Nike/Converse. We decided against doing a chain restaurant because we couldn’t think of any strong ideas on the spot. Once we thought more about converse, we saw that it would work the best.

We started to research more about converse. Like their past slogans like “made by you” and the like. We saw that most of their recent commercials were all about the diversity in daily life. This is great since our school is very diverse and we can only shoot on campus. All in all, Converse is looking to be a great choice for us to choose for this commercial project.

In class we started working on ideas for various shots that are commonly used in their commercials. We noticed that they used a lot of closeups on their actual shoes, and generally revealed their brand towards the end. We plan to storyboard our shots like theirs. Unfortunately, we didn’t have enough class time to discuss this all in class, so we decided to plan via group chat!

introduction

Hello my name is Joshua, and I’m taking AICE Media studies for the Cambridge Credit this year. Things that I like to do are reading, playing video games, and playing with my cat. My cats name is Jax and he is 1 years old, his birthday is September 15th. I like cats a lot and my cat is very funny and likes to play fetch like a dog. My favorite book series to read is Percy Jackson. When I read this book series I learned a lot about mythology and now that’s cool and I read a lot of other fantasy books like Harry Potter after that. I like to play video game salir and my favorite video games are Destiny 2 and this phone game called Epic Seven. Epic seven is about the Heir of the covenant and he has to save the world from this bad guy called the Archdemon. You can collect characters for your team and my favorite characters are Diene and Judge Kise. It is a turn based game kinda exactly like Pokémon based with types and disadvantages. 

I am taking 7 classes this year.  A days: French II, Algebra II, Chemistry, Theatre II, then on B days I have : Aice Media studies, Aice English Language and Aice European History. I think French is fun. My favorite classes on A days are Theatre and French II. I absolutely despise Mr Saurel my chemistry teacher. He constantly talks and is just rude  to his students. My B days my favorite class is Aice European history and Aice English. Ms Petersen I think Is a really cool teacher. Ms Cherry is my Aice Euro teacher and she is a new teacher this year. My Aice Media and Theatre classes I both have the same teachers Mr Katz and Ms. Cats.

So my expectations for this blog is that it’ll be ok. This first blog was really hard for me because I am not good at writing about myself and I am not used to it. Because I have to make blogs this entire year I expect I’ll get better at this eventually. I want to be able to film in this class but I know my group members will probably want to do it instead of me because I’ll mess it up somehow. I assume the same thing will happen with editing but I’ll convince them somehow.