Video Blog - REPORT!!!

Q1 - The challenges and tribulations of being a group assignment.

The challenges and tribulations of this assignment were mainly brought about by our lack of previous video editing experience, specifically in regards to figuring out how to cut out certain parts of the video, and saving it in a format readable by each group member’s computer. Nevertheless, we managed to overcome these adversities fairly quickly through unification of ideas and trial and error using Windows Live Movie Maker.

Another tribulation we had some difficulty with was time management and being able to get together to film and edit the video. Since we wanted everyone to be included in the filming of the video, we decided the best time to film would be during a practical class, and edit in our own time after that. Fortunately however, we were able to come to an agreement as to when most group members would be able to do specific parts of the assignment, which helped the entire process run as smoothly as possible.

Q2 - The movie making process

Firstly we had to come up with an idea. We had a team meeting and decided that Avatar was a good review to do in video format. We brought a camera to class and filmed a few seconds of ourselves mentioning facts about the movie. We edited and published the video in about 2hrs when all of us were together one afternoon. Logistically it was quite a challenge to get everyone together.

When it came to cutting the video it was constant trial and error. We found it difficult to get some effects to work and to have the program respond in the way we wanted it to. We used Windows Movie Magic .

We had a meeting and decided on what things we wanted to achieve in the video and how it was to look. The biggest obstacle was the program. It was unable to do some things because the program was too unsophisticated. But we managed to get something we were happy with in the end considering the resources we had.

In particular, text editing was a pain. It was a constant struggle to have the text centred and in line and happening at a particular time and then changing at another time. There was no automated way to have the text re-align and change, it had to be done manually.

Music wasn’t so much of a struggle. It seemed a little easier to insert and edit. In the beginning we wanted to have a beginning song and an end song. However due to some technical problems, we had to change the song altogether. And at the last moment decided that we would have it play in the background as it was easier than fumbling with the program to get it to fade in and out.

Cutting the video together was extremely limited by the software also. There are two moments in the published version that we couldn’t fix. The video pauses on a single frame but the audio continues. It was caused by ‘trimming’ the section to get a smaller clip. For whatever reason, the program outputted the final result of paused frames that we just couldn’t remove.

We are now more comfortable with the software, but were annoyed at its limitations. Next time we will use different software.

3. How does the video relate to your blog?

Our video is a review by us (bloggers about movies) talking about facts about the movie Avatar which we all agree upon being a top movie. We chose Avatar as it is a movie we all agree upon being great, unlike some other movies which we may have trouble seeing eye to eye on. So a video on some important facts about a movie we all enjoyed makes it much more enjoyable to make and watch.

As Avatar is one of the highest grossing and popular movies of all time and we had not done a written review of the movie. We decided reserving a video review of the movie facts as a special ‘tribute’ to this amazing movie.

Our blog is about reviews and information on movies recently released and old great movies, so the video does the blog justice. Us movie lovers telling the readers of our blog certain interesting facts and information they might not know of the movie. For example the amount of money that this movie grossed or the camera lenses used to film this epic.

Also since our target audience of this blog are movie-goers, lovers and movie fanatics. We thought making a video based upon our blogs topic would keep and increase our fanbase.

Thanks :)

Video Blog - AVATAR!!!

The Fast and Furious 2001

This movie makes an outstanding use of special effects. From the beginning - high speed racing and high tech truck robbery, the film never drops below red line. Dom (Vin Diesel)and his crew meets on the streets of Los Angeles each night to show off their high speed power racers. When Brian (Paul Walker)add the fuel to fire. He don't have enough money for the race. Dom, Brian, and Edwin (Ja Rule) went onto a high-gear race with Brian nearly beating the champion Dom. But in the final moments, he loses the race and his car. Brian's debt is cleared. The gang never suspects that Brian is not who he seems: he is actually an undercover cop, and though he wishes otherwise, he's there to bust Dom for committing the armed truck robbery witnessed in the opening scenes.

Twlight: New Moon

Twlight is a popular drama series in America. It's the romance between mortal and vampire to Bella (Kristen Stewart) deals into deeper mysteries of supernatural world. Edward (Robert Pattinson) and his family try to protect her from dangers in their world. As Bella sleepwalks during her senior of high school. She hears Edward's voice in her head time to time.Edward dissapeared himself after an incident at Bella's 18th birthday party. Edward tells Bella that she cannot be part of this world and may be able to see her again. In months later Bella learn to do exciting things such as riding motorcycles. With her friend Jacob (Taylor Lautner) helps, he protect Bella from the vampires Laurent (Edi Gathegi). Bella later discover Jacob is a werewolf. Bella discover the near-death experience can make her feel alive again. Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart carry great performance from Twlight. New Moon won't disappoint the movie fans. But it is a let down for many Twlight fans who felt that Catherine Hardwicke who had directed the first flick had improved upon Tephenie Meyer's novel. It's worth money to spend watching this movie.

Report

Explain why you chose the blog topic.

We decided to choose movie reviews as our blog topic as we believed it to be a topic that is both entertaining and can provide insight into movies from a student perspective. Many blogs exist that review movies so it isn’t as if we invented a new genre, however our perspective is what makes our blog unique compared to other blogs. Also, most of the movies we decided to review are relatively new so it is more likely that people would be interested in what we have to say about them.

What were the largest challenges with a team assignment?

With a team assignment, there are many advantages and disadvantages.

Advantages:
- more information and knowledge is focused on the issue

- A greater diversity of different ideas can be developed- better understanding and acceptance of the final decision

- members develop knowledge and skills for future use- shared responsibility of the task

- willing to take more risks

Disadvantages:

- time consuming

- disagreements may delay decisions and cause hard feelings

- one or two group members may dominate discussion

- many ideas may be forgotten if no note taking.

We can see the advantages of team work being less workload, more share responsibility – and a greater resource to pool knowledge from. The Disadvantages are not being able to see eye to eye, ideas being forgotten and of course people not getting along. I found with our group though, we had good chemistry and cohesion, we could flow our ideas and shared a similar movie taste. Group works leads to you not knowing your strength, as you'll have to work in a team. But group work allows you to find what your good at, with your group meaning you will find a better quality idea to work with.

Overall, a team assignment allowed us to share the heavy workload of creating a good blog and allowed for differing opinions making a more interesting blog.

How did you come up with the design?

We had a look at the requirements for the assignment and from there did a rough storyboard of the page. All four of us thought that it would be more natural if we could have the menu, gadgets and following on the left side, as it would be on any other web page in the known universe, but per requirements, we had to have it on the right.

With everything, we were going for a look that targeted everybody. We didn’t want to limit the audience in any way with colours or pictures that defined us in any specific way.

Header: We wanted a fairly large picture that was a collage of movie scenes and different characters but we didn’t want to steal someone else’s work, and none of us were Photoshop masters. We chose the roll of film because it summed up our random movie selection and sometimes simple is best when it comes to brand identification. We also wanted to stay away from branding our blog with characters that may minimise our audience.

Colour Scheme: We wanted fairly light colours. We didn’t want blacks or reds or any colours that made the page seem dark and brooding. We wanted a ‘happy’ colour scheme. The blue, purple and grey scheme is very neutral. A few of the other sites we are following have very black schemes which framed their intent for and highlighted the movies they blogged about.

Gadget: We went with the Youtube gadget because of our link to video. If someone know nothing about a film, they can search it in our gadget and have more of a taste.

Blog comparison:

Our blog is spread across as much of the page as possible, saving the reader from scrolling too far as this is one thing I found annoying about so many blogs. We used a divider to separate our blog content from the information on the right hand side. Also due to the two tone grey colour scheme, it is easy to dis-confuse the two sections. We used a method of posting a single picture or video link at the bottom of each blog to signify the end.

Full Moon Reviews, seemed to be mixing it content with its information. The text is centred down the page and for no real reason, it is an incredibly long page with oodles of unused space on each side of its column. The pictures are placed around the text to good effect, however due to the amount and random placement of them, it’s hard to tell where one post ends and another begins.

Concerning colour, Full Moon Reviews uses white text on a black background creating an eerie looking blog. This works for them as their blog is focused on darker themed movies entailing the horror, sci-fi and action genres. Ours on the other hand, uses a far brighter colour scheme, blue text on light grey background, which creates a more general light-hearted feeling, with no generalisation on specific genres. Our blog’s text is the same for almost all parts, whereas Full Moon Reviews has a bright red section on the right, which is far too contrasting against the black and is harsh on the eyes.

Dario, Kurt & Lars

Ninja Assassin

Dario Dodig

Cliché plot. Cliché characters. Ridiculously over the top gore and violence. That would be my summary of Ninja Assassin. Nevertheless, if you are able to look past these aspects you will have a blast watching. I’ve grown up playing video games such as Mortal Kombat, Shinobi and Ninja Gaiden so the story of the lone ninja who enacts vengeance on those who raised him but are ultimately corrupted/evil is nothing new.

Starring Jung Ji-Hoon (AKA Rain) as Raizo, he is raised by the ‘Ozunu clan’ from an early age and trained to become one of the most lethal assassins in the world. When he is only a young teen, he watches as a fellow assassin in training attempts to leave, only to be brutally killed for betraying the clan. Raizo’s portrayal I believe was done well considering there wasn’t much dialogue for him and his role was mainly to be there killing people while doing spinning backflips and other amazing acrobatics.

Now onto the more gruesome scenes. Shuriken (ninja throwing stars) are used a LOT. And after watching this, you might begin to believe that with enough practice using them, they are faster, more accurate and outright better than machine guns or other advanced weaponry, due to their ability to decapitate and chop off entire limbs. Throw in fast paced sword fighting, acrobatics and these strange looking weapons called Kyoketsu Shoge which are basically sharp blades attached to a pole that are swung around, and you have pure hacking and slashing entertainment.

A Ninja Assassin review cannot be complete without a mention at the CGI blood. It seemed to be everwhere, simply due to the many MANY people that are hacked up throughout. This was a slight let down; obviously fake almost to the point that it would fit better into an anime than a real movie.

Overall, not too good, not too bad. If mass killings are your thing you will like it, if you need a great story to stay entertained you could give this a miss. 6/10 from me.

Ironman 2

Ironman 2

When I walked into see Ironman 2 with my friends, I was expecting a dud sequel to a great first movie. As all sequels to great movies have always been bad, lame or just plain terrible. However the movie started off confusing, but it really developed into something awesome.

With a father dying and passing all his secrets onto his son, sending him on a mission of espionage and revenge upon the Stark name. This movie develops into something funny and serious at the same time.

With Robert Downy Jr. providing amazingly funny acting and playing a Drunk from what seems great experience. Gwyneth Paltrow playing the caring yet trying to seem indifferent to Stark’s attitude secretary. And Scarlett Johansson making a cameo as a protector of sorts.

Ironman 2 outdid the original by far, exceeding my expectations tremendously. There is more action, more story, more jokes and more outrageous behavior then the first.
It starts with Downey Jr (stark) convincing a court that the Ironman suit should NOT be handed over to the government, as it is not a sword but rather a shield which protects society. And that no other country or weapons manufacturer can replicate the suit. After making a fool of the American justice system he is allowed to keep the suit. But the dark side to the suit is it is increasing his blood toxicity levels due to the nature of his ‘false heart’. As the element keeping him alive is faulty. What is keeping him alive, is also killing him.

This leads to a pattern of self-destructive behavior of Stark living everyday like it his last. Which leads him to participate in a F1 grand prix race in Monaco. Where the son of an ex-designer (who is highly disgruntled) for Starks father ambushes him with a half-built suit nearly killing him outright. But I wont give away too much! You’ll have to watch it first!

So without giving too much away, I can safely say that I thouroughly enjoyed Robert Downey Jrs. Performance and the on screen chemistry between the cast is very well done. Overall I would highly recommend this with an 9/10!

-lars