Media Studies - COMP 3 Technical Skills Development

This blog post (written by me, Maxi) explains the technical skills that I have developed, both online and offline, and how I developed them, in the process of producing our component 3 Music Promotion Package.

Online Skills: 

Online skill that I have developed throughout this project include learning how to embed PDF's and Presentations into blogspot, which I have used in a few of my blogposts, primarily in the Statement of Intent blogpost, and in the Project Brief blogpost. I learnt these skills through YouTube, from these videos:

Embedding PDF's: 

Embedding Presentations: 

And this is how it ended up looking on said blogposts: 

Statement of Intent: 

Project Brief: 

Reflection: 

Initially, when our teacher explained how to embed these elements into blogger, I had found it quite intimidating as I had never done/used the feature before. The process appeared to require some coding skills, which I was not familiar with. However, after finding these videos on YouTube, the process was actually quite simple, and I was able to follow along and ended up getting satisfying results which looked great on my blog posts. After acquiring these newfound skills, I further applied them to other blogposts, (specifically for my Screenplay), and in the future, I hope to be able to continue applying these coding skills in more blogposts, to make them look increasingly elegant and professional.

Offline Skills: 

The offline skills I developed throughout this project include my improved skills in screenwriting, especially for music videos, skills in planning and management, as well as skills in directing. 

Directing Skills: 

My skills in directing actors I believe has improved greatly from when I first assisted Timo in the process of creating our Component 1 Film Opening over a year ago. In the creation of our music video, I took a larger role in ensuring our actors had the right facial expressions, body movements, and general emotions, all throughout the shooting of our video. My work doing so can be seen in the blog post detailing the production process of our music video. Additionally, here is a video taken from our 2nd day of filming, on February the 8th, shooting the pillow fight scenes. The video can also be seen at this link, in case it does not show on blogspot.

In the video, I can be seen standing in white, giving out directions to the actors as the pillow fight scene is being filmed. You can hear me directing them to keep their energy up, go crazy, and fight each other with passion. This was important because we wanted to capture the eccentric and chaotic energy of the pillow fight, to connote how much fun the girls are currently having in this portion of the video. I did this not only on this day, but throughout all days of shooting, ensuring the emotions that the actors displayed followed the vision that I had when writing the screenplay for the video.

Planning and Management: 

I believe my team and I's skills in planning and management of a project have increased greatly through working on this project together. This was shown through all the preparation that we made prior to the start of the filming of our music video, where I, with consultation from the rest of the team, created a detailed plan and run down of the days of filming, including the timeline/schedule of each day, along with all the props and equipment we and our cast members would need to bring on each day. Details of this plan can be seen in my Scheduling and Preparation blog post. Comparing this to what we did in our component 1 project, we were far more organized during this project, since we didn't have a schedule, or list of equipment or props that we needed to bring during that project. Thus by doing so in this component 3 project, I believe our planning and management skills have improved greatly, which will be useful for us in any future projects we embark on.

Screenwriting Skills: 

As the screenwriter for my group, I came up with a screenplay for our music video that explained the details of each scene, what shots would go over which part of the song, etc, which can be seen in my screenplay and storyboard development post. I had previously written the screenplay for our previous projects, such as for our mockumentary project, and component 1 project as well. I thus had built up my screenplay skills quite a bit from those projects, but had yet to ever write a screenplay for a music video. Thus, I conducted research into how to write screenplays that focus around musical elements, and thus found screenplays of musicals like Damien Chazelle's "La La Land",  Lin Manuel Miranda's "Tick Tick... Boom!" and Taylor Swifts "All Too Well (10 Minute Version)" Short film. From this, I was able to learn about the formatting of such screenplays, and was able to create an effective and understandable screenplay that we used all throughout the production process of our music video. I did all of this by using the screenplay writing website writer duet. Seen below is a screenshot from the website, which features the first page of Feather's screenplay.

Reflection: 

After finishing this project, I feel like I have developed valuable skills that I will be able to use in the future, especially in the field of directing, which I hope I will be able to use further in other projects I find myself taking part in. Initially, I was a bit worried and overwhelmed about the troubles and problems that I'd come across in this music video project, since it was something completely new that none of us had experience with. However, after everything has concluded, I believe I was able to adapt and overcome these problems with my team, and come out of this project with confidence in the ability to not only create music videos, but also other projects in which our newfound skills may apply to.