Nominated Best Two For ICP

Nominated Best Two entries

- 27/08/2007: ICP Preparation meeting
- 30/08/2007: Meeting with On Track@ Peter Mac was great.

ICP Mid-Semester Reflection

1. My role in the project and project group

My role in the Project group
At this stage, I'm helping out in getting sponsors for the venue and catering for our event as everyone else in the group, doing mostly PR stuff to prepare for our upcoming event. I actually got a few friends who are willing to help me to pass our ideas to the people they know in cafe/bar industry. But because we were waiting for Peter Mac's reply before, so the proposal has not been sent until now, I've called my friends last night again to confirm that we are now officially corporate with On Track @ Peter Mac, he seems very happy for us as well, I'll send out the proposals in the weekend. And also start to make some phone calls in the weekdays.

I'm actually pretty happy to do everything I can, since Prof-Comm this course provide us lots of opportunities to explore in the different disciplinary (journalis/pr/media). I would like to apply what I have learned in the class on this project, so basically I'm pretty much working on anything I can do at the moment.


My role in the project
On the event that night, I will be focusing on the filming for the night, and also be doing post-editing after the event finished.


2. Progress I've made to date

I have to admit that our project wasn't go too far until now, we have just got the confirmation and support from On Track@ Peter Mac yesterday. But positive thinking, despite that we have been wasting for a lot of time on waiting, we now have more confidence (because of the confirmation of the support of Peter Mac) and motivation (because of the tight time frame) on producing this project.

Everyone of us are more cautious about each process, and each step we are making, as well as more concentrate on the project than before, which is good i think. Because from now on, we will be supervising for each other, and help with each other. I think we will be able to make a good project as what we expected, just that we will need to spend much more time than others from now, but i'm sure everyone would be happy with that.


3. Collaborative & other problems that have appeared and the solutions you have applied to them.

So far we haven't have much problems in group collaboration. My group members are all happy to help out each other, and all contribute equally in the project. Everyone also stick to their own role, applying different specialties on the project. Two boys are now designing the template for flier and poster. We girls are working on proposals and getting sponsors for venue and extra gift will be given in lucky draw in the event.


4. The interdisciplinary nature of the project and course

The most important thing to working in a interdisciplinary environment, I think it's to get to know each other's personality and character, and work on the line of group agreement. I personally quite conscious of a group's harmony and unity, I'd like to work in a group that everyone are interested and motivated, rather than just doing their own work individually. Everyone's have their own way to do things and their style of talking, to understand each other's character would help a lot in group process and reduce misunderstandings.

The group commitment contract and project management (the schedule of the project progress, like what should be done at this stage..etc) are therefore crucial to ensure a group progressing timely at each stage. Yes, project management, this would be the one my group should improve i think. We didn't list down a schedule of our group progress, therefore we are swing around here and there, and hence wasted lots of time.


I'm glad I take this course, which does provide me a different working environment than before. It's really nice to work with new people, although it could be risky to work with someone does not have the same enthusiasm as yours, working with people from different disciplinary can really brainstorm much more fresh ideas, and different solutions for the problems.

Overall, I expect that I can improve and gain a lot in my communication skills, collaborative skills and social networking after finish this project.

And I believe I will :)

Meeting with On Track@ Peter Mac was great!

Although we couldn't manage to meet the director of PR in Peter Mac, neither the medical director, but apparently Kate (the social worker we are contacting through the week) is responsible for the social networking program at On Track@ Peter Mac. So basically she's the one we are looking for!!

We had a nice chat with her this afternoon. It's just like what Justine told us, they are very happy that we can arrange this kind of event for the young adult patients. Because On Track@ Peter Mac is a new subsidiary of Peter Mac, which just founded a few years ago, they don't have enough people to arrange these events regularly, so they are very looking forward to our project.


Because of the limited numbers of the social workers in the On Track at the moment, we may not be able to get them involved to assist our project, but Kate will be our contact to the cancer patients, because in regarding to the privacy issue, we won't be able to get the contact details of the cancer patient in Peter Mac cancer centre, but she will be able to help us send out all the invitation by post
and by email, which is great!

And importantly, The spending cost of the event may be able to covered by charge each participant for entry fee or charge them for beverage and food. According to Kate, the cancer patient in this aged group is really looking forward to have a day out as normal people does, and they are happy to pay for join this kind of event, as long as the price is reasonable.

Besides, we got a funding from On Track@ Peter Mac around $ 150! It's not a big amount of the money, but at least we have something in our hands now. :)


After today's face to face meeting with Kate, I'm so glad to hear her support, which is really a big motivation for me. I started to see our project is more tangible and visible, and feel motivated.


A few things now everyone of us will be doing this weekend is:

-Send out the proposal to the possible sponsors for catering.
-And approach to the venue and celebrity MC/Comedians.



It's really the time for us to move on, Guys!!! Can't wast any more time!!

TV wk 7 tutorial

I was hoping to practice more on lighting set up today in the tute, but we spent quite a lot of time on watching the in-class exercise we did last week, so didn't do much on the practical lighting practice, which makes me a bit nervous now.

Because our group is going to shoot it this Saturday, and we really need lighting to set up interior, and as Christine expected us to set up a beautiful lighting and film it artistically...


I'm glad that Christine like our story, but which also makes me a bit nervous now. She's very looking forward to our story, and expected that i can manage to shoot some ARTISTIC shots.

Guess I will really have to quickly watch some more short doco before Sat, in order to get the best shots i can.

Consultation with Christine this morning

I'm so happy to hear that Christine likes our story, and the style we planning to shoot. She gave us some suggestions in the meeting.

She suggests that we can set up a high contrast lighting on the first mirror sequence, where Stacey will be examine her the aged wrinkles on her face. To create a half clear and bright and half in the dark. We all liked this idea, it give a delicate sense a person's profile.


Chrisitne gave me some advices one framing because most of the visuals will be filming her doing her daily routine, houseworks, and even just making a cup of tea or coffee. It would be great and nice to frame and film them artistically, such framing with other subject(s).

For example: to film Stacey making a cup of tea can be filmed in a low angle back at the dinning table, with the steam comes out from the kettle in the background.


I like the idea she said, and now i'm also watching a few documentary online/and from the digi doss, trying to get some inspirations to frame the tattos on her body, on her hands and her back.


I think our story will be great if we can join the disjointed (but actually abstractly jointed) audio and visuals together.


I'm planning to connect the visual footage of her present life with the audio of she telling her past struggling experiences. For example, for the part when she talks about she threw everything away during the time she's quitting because she didn't want to see her old stuff and past memories. I'd like to get a visual footage of just her doing daily houseworks, clean up the flat and tight up the rubbish bags, as to symbolize and reflect on her past experience of throwing away everything.

And I'm also hoping to get those sound of vacuuming and throwing the garbage to put in between her narration of past and present, so that the audio won't be only having her narration about her past but sometimes overlapping with the jointed audio of her present life (doing daily house works..etc), and sometimes fading as background sound.


It's a bit hard to explain here, i will try my best to do it in the editing and so that people can really understand what I'm talking about. lol

ICP preparation meeting

We finally heard from Kate (the social worker at on track@ Peter Mac), she told us that she already had a meeting with the director of PR in Peter Mac, they are also happy with our project. She's now arrange a meeting for us to have a face to face talk with them, which is exciteddd!!

I know we have been wasting a lot of time on waiting here and there, we really need to get things moving simultaneously, rather than sequentially. It may because we didn't have a concrete schedule for our project, there's no a 'deadline' for each stage, we don't have a time frame to push us keep things moving on. (although there IS!! the due date for ICP project is before wk 13)


We decided that we will set up a promotional online space on My space, as one of the advertising tools to promote for our event. And we will also set up a social networking blog/my space after the event for the participated patients, as well as to those who want to join the future events. This space would be used to keep participants in touch with each other, and as a space for them to networking with each other.

During the event, we decided that we will be filming the whole event, and interview some patients, to produce a promotional dvd for ontrack@ Peter Mac and as a little present for the participated cancer patients and their family/friends of the night.


I know to produce a DVD will take us a lot of time to prepare and to edit, but guess that would be a nice present for the cancer patients and their family/friends to keep their happy memory together. Hopefully we can get a few of friends to help out for the event at the scene.



In today's meeting, we also listed the question and the information we need to ask Peter Mac in the Thursday meeting, in order to find a suitable venue, and suitable content for the entertainment night.

- How many patients in this aged group? And the previous event records, in order to get a idea of how many people turns up exactly, so that the size of the event will be more accurate and concise.

- Any special need or constraint? Any medical concern we should be aware of, in order to prepare for food and beverage(alcohol or non-alcohol provided)

-Any time frame for the patients? Would it be too long for the cancer patients to stay out for 3 hours??

- Any transportation need to be provided?

- Any preference on the venue?

- Any volunteer/social workers/PR people would be involved in the event on the night?

- Any funds would be available for us to use? (we know this is a bit hard, but we will give it a try, or else funding would be a big problem for us.)



Hopefully Thursday's meeting goes well....

Cinemaphotography lecture

Today's lecture was very inspired and helpful for me, especially the lighting set up demonstration in the end, although it's simple setting but it does differentiated the difference and the functions of each lights. Although it's just a basic three point lighting, but it would be a good starting point for me to think of lighting set up for out story.


Three-point lighting

* Key light
creates the subject's main illumination and defines the dominant angle of the lighting.

*
Fill light softens and extends the illumination provided by the key light and makes more of the subject visible. The fill light can simulate the effect of reflected light or of secondary light sources in the scene.

* Back light (rim light?)
creates a defining edge to visually separate the subject from the background.



For my group's story, we will shoot indoor and outdoor during the day time. I'm actually more worry about the interior scene than exterior because Stacey's place is quite dark, she hanged the long curtain at the windows. We did try to fix it last time, but it's hard to pull the curtain up. Besides, Stacey's flat is also quite small, the space is quite limited.


I'd like to bring in dedo light to her flat, but i only have a few experience of using it, and was usually set up by others, hope we can practice it in the tute this week.

Doco filming

I'm exciting about our doco filming on next saturday, but a little bit nervous as well. I have to say it again and again, because this is my first time be DOP. Usually, I'm being the producer's job, supervise the production processing, and making sure if everything's on the right track. But this time, i hope someone can supervise me, in case i forgot to do something necessary, like the verrryyyy basic checking - White balanceeeeee!!!

Remember to do white balance everytime the location changed !!!!
Remember to do white balance everytime the location changed !!!!
Remember to do white balance everytime the location changed !!!!
Remember to do white balance everytime the location changed !!!!
Remember to do white balance everytime the location changed !!!!

Guess i will need to catch the time in the tutorial to worksharp my camera operating skills and at least practice one more time on friday when i get the camera, to get more familiar with it.

ICP Project back up plan -Plan B-

I'm actually quite worried about our ICP Project, because we still haven't heard from Kate (the social worker at Peter Mac) yet. Next Monday would really be our very very final deadline to decide and to get the project moving on. In today's tutorial, we came up with a back up plan for the Peter Mac project.

Our Plan B:

We will change to film a promotional DVD and make advertisement for the social event program under 'On track @ Peter Mac'. On track @ Peter Mac has this social networking program which hold regularly for the young adult cancer patient, sich as a gold class movie night or dinner at a nice restaurant. By promoting this social networking program, we believe can also achieve our original goal (to benefit and do something good for the young adult cancer patient)

We finally make a group meeting time which everyone be able to attend, we will meet up on Monday 530pm after everyone finish class and work. Gotta move on, guys!


note: Pheew,.. I'm glad that everyone is worried, which mean they do care. :)

Lecture: Ethic and Doco

Today's lecture brought up something useful and interesting!

*From the subject's point of view; why does anyone wat to take part in the film?

People want to take part in the film may because they believe film is a medium to spread out their own story, a medium to get their story across to others.

As Steph said, "When it comes to making a documentary, or writing an article, if you want to present a truth, then you have to make the decision before you start making the story what’s more important.

The relationship you have with your characters

Or

The story.

Guess for my group, we already decided to go with the relationship with our character . And maybe because we are not aiming to focus on her drug addiction past, so we didn't really have any ethical difficulty between the story and the relationship with the character.

Now i finally understand why it is always harder to make a documentary than drama, because the documentary is recording people's life and how it present would affect one or the other's life. How to make a documentary along with the ethical line and not cross people's limitation is what I really need to learn through this project i think.

The following just something i took down from the lecture, think that would be useful for our filming.

Interview techniques:

1. ask the subject to answer the questions in a particular structuring way.
i.e. repeat the questions before answer it, give a pause before answer the question..etc.

2. give them a script to read out as voice over.

3. Encourage them to ask the filming staff questions.

4. ask them to relate to the camera in a certain way
i.e. don't look at the camera..etc

5.To act out a senario: i. Typical ii. invested

6.act Natural

7.ask the subject to demonstrate particular skills and postures

about saturday audio recording

The Saturday filming was great, Stacey exactly talked about what we want, and in a very natural way. I think we pretty much got what we want, although during the recording, the heater is a bit disturbing. Anyway, We will be listen to it on Wednesday before the tutorial, see if there's anything we need to pick up next week.

For the developed treatment, i'm a little bit not sure what to write about. I got a rough idea in my mind already for the filming, but don't really have any fancy techniques need to be address specifically though.

aaahh...

Possible venues for ICP Project

We have brainstormed on the location in the tute again, we are thinking to get somewhere with comfortable couches and bean bags, to create a relaxing and enjoyable atmosphere. Oh, and a place have a outdoor balcony or outdoor grass would be great as well, since we are will be embracing spring/summer sunshine sooon! :D


possible venues:

- Tuffin Town (upper stairs of Cookie bar on Swanston st.)
- The Mint (on La Trobe st and Williams St.)
- The fad gallery at the little lane tuck off the little Bourke st.(the owner usually sponsors those individual artists to display and sell their pianting and photographies)
- Long Room (A nice and elegant bar on collins st.)-> it's a expensive spending one, will just give it a try....

We are aiming to get the venue for free, if not, we will have to charge the people who participate in the event for a small amount of money. :(

Doco audio recording tmr 930am @ Stacey's place

We are going to Stacey's place tommorrow morning for our audio recording and do a bit of test shooting.

Since we already have a draft/sketch of our filming angle and filming approach of the story, we are aiming to get most of the story in audio tommorrow, so that we can listen to it next week and get to know what else we can add in the story and if there's anything interesting coming up we can include.

And then we will have our first filming on 1st of Sep, which is two weeks later, to get our visual footage and the audio if there's any we didn't get.

Time fliesss seriously this semester,... too many things to do, but just too little timeeeeeee.

-Documentary filming need to be done by week8 (in our own schedule) and editing done by week 11 or 12
-ICP Project planning to hold on the first week of October (wk12?)
-PR strategic planning written assignment due in the end of this month, and follow by a individual presentation at the week before the mid semester break. ( AND i need to get a new apartment to move in by the end of this month as well....oh my!)

ICP Project's progressing, but SLOWLY...

Our ICP project is finally processing, but slowly, At this stage, we are still waiting for Kate's reply. Kate is a social worker at Peter Mac, she is excited with our project and willing to help us, now she's arranging a meeting with the PR manager at Peter Mac, trying to hook us up. Hopefully she will reply us in the near futureeeeee..

We don't know when they will reply and if they will happy with our project, It seems we are kind of stucked at this stage, so we decided to finalise the other form of proposal for our possible corporate partner/sponsor, like Peter Mac, bar/cafe (location sponsor), catering sponsor, as well as to the involved celebrity.

We still couldn't really narrow down our theme of the event untill we get the celebrity involved, but we are aiming to hold a entertainment night for the young adult cancer patient; it may be a comedy night or Jazz night. Hopefully to get some celebrities involved to make the event more attractive and influencial.

Since our target public is young adult patients, we are trying to get some celebrities are popular in this aged group. The celebrities we are looking for at this stage are:

1. Hamish and Andy (They participated in Peter Mac's previous events, soit would be easier for us to get them through Peter Mac, if Peter Mac are happy with our project and willing to coporate iwth us..., but we will still call up to their agency if we have to do the event without Peter Mac's sponsor)

2. David Hughs (Justine and I got friends knows him, but we really need to finalise our proposal, so that we can start calling and send him the proposal)

3. Rove (We know this one gonna be too hard and unrealistic, and we don't have any channel or contact, but well, optimistic thining, we will still give it a try.)

4. others: We are still keep our eyes on the entertainment agency's website, if we really couldn't get the celebrity to participate in teh event, we will get the amateur comedian as back up.


Our proposal to the target sponsors will include:

1. Concept
2. Proposed event for the night
3. Target Audience - the need of them and the benifit to them
4. People involved in -on track@ Peter MAc-
5. Basic info of -on track @ Peter Mac-


hopefully we can get Peter Mac's reply soooon, and get it start as soon as we can!!

Video proposal for ICP

In Wednesday's meeting, we decided to do a video proposal for our ICP Project, which will be going with our paper proposal. Me and kim are the two who will be responsible for that since we are most media-oriented people in our group. We think it may be interesting to enclose a video copy with the paper proposal for those we are trying to get them to be involved and sponsored.

We haven't think of any interesting approach yet, and it would have a certain degree of difficulty to do it because we are now still waiting for Peter Mac, our biggest coporate partner to reply. I was a bit worry about it yesterday, but just now there's some ideas come across my mind.

I'm thinking that since we are doing a documentary for TV2 this semester, guess we should apply the techniques and approach we learn from the class on this video proposal.

My idea is to interview a young adult cancer patient, about how she perceive the world and her feeling of doing a continuous medical treatment, as well as the difference and the effect on her life (daily life/school life/ social life/ relationship). By showing her feeling and way of living to emotionally influence and draw the attention of sponsors/celebrities. The video clip will also include our belief of how we belive we can help these patient and do something good for them, as well as the general information of the event in the end.

Hopefully by revealing a cancer patient's personal story, we can successfully pull the crowd and get the sponsorship.

Good progress, guys!

Had a our group meeting with Christine today, it was a good chat. She gave us a lot of advice and suggesstions in filming, and also what she will be interested in as a audience, which i think it's very useful for us.

We had a group meeting afterwards to narrow down the focus of the story and to structure the film. The meeting went pretty well, we listed down what we need to get for the audio as narration and also the visual footage we need. In the end, we just realise we actually done most of the developed proposal, which is due next friday. we now have the lists of what we want for visual and audio, as well as the location. Guess we are pretty much stepping ahead than other groups. :D

I'm excited about our story and looking forward to our first filming this Saturday, hopefully it will goes well! :D

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Today's tutorial is also useful for me, thanks that we had this little excercise today because i forgot to do white balanceeeee!! which makes our short interview looks very blueiishh....(I'm sorry, guys.. i will try my best to be a better DOP on Sat)

I'm glad we did this excercise and review the footage in the class, it is like a check-up and a small rehearse of our filmming, which is great i think. Besides, David plug and unplug the two mic cables to the television, which sort of help me to differenciate the difference of boom mic and radio mic, and give me a clearer idea of each function and use.

The great happiness space: Tale of a Osaka love theif (2006)

Kim recommnded me this niceee website that provide free online documentary , and there's a Japanese documentary about the Japanese 'Host club' culture, which is veryy interesting. (Thank you, kim)

I found it quite inspiring for me as in the way how to structure the film, how to portrait different characters, as well as the editing. Because for our documentary, we are still looking for the exact approach and angles to film Stacey (our main character), and also how to ask the question properly in order to lead out the answer we want.

This documentary honestly present how the customers of the host club feel and how those host feels, and especially the way it edit it actually teist the audience a bit in the end. The audience will finally find out the fact that the hosts are not the only one who lies, and the customers are not as loyal as it was portrayed at teh beginning.

I like the way it was edited, it dipicted the girl customers were loyal and sort-of innocent at the beginnng, and then intercut with Issei's (the owner of the host club) confession of his lie, how he lie to every customer, and fool them around in a relationship, as a techniques and skills to make money from them. But from the second half of the documentary, it starts to reveal the fact that actaully the girls customer are not purely been fooled by the hosts; they are aware of it! They are not as innocent they were portrayed, relatively, the hosts are the one that audience are aympathized with.

I hope our group can make a good one like this, if we can lead Stacey to speak up her experience and past in a natural way, that would be great.

Can't wait to hear Chrisitne's feedback on our documentary, and hopefully she can give us some adivce on the filming approach. :)

The great happiness space: Tale of a Osaka love theif (2006)

Documentary filming and editing techniques

This is my very first time making a documentary, as well as being a D.O.P, which i think i should to do more research on the filming techniques in the pre-production period, to avoid the careless maistakes during the real shooting. Especially for documentary this kind of film, which is best to catch the character's first expression/reaction and the event at the moment, i really hope i will not mess it up.

I Found this website about documentary filming and editing techniques online, it's actually just like a introductary of doco filming techniques, but i found it useful for me, as the doco beginner. Although It's a basic filming techniques lecture and with unusual robot-like narrorator voice (lol), but it kinda reminds me those little stuff that people usually forget to do during the shooting.


Something i better keep in mind during the real shooting!

1. establishing shot - to establish the story

2. the chase sequence - will easy to focus one a moving subject.

3.P.O.V. - Through the keyhole- is also another way to show a point of view

5.shot intelacting - enable the direction of the shot more interesting

6. Reverse Zoom - when zoom in without a tripot, it's not easy to ensure that the final zoom position will be focused centrally, so we can do zoom in during the shooting, and then reverse it during the post editing stage. (oh which is a good idea, i thought i'm the only silly one who couldnt do the zoom in shot well, lol)

7. Time Lapse

8. poor lighting - use the lighitng already existed in the location to construct the atmosphere of the location, eg. club
although the lighting wouldn't be bright enough to light up a person but it can still portray the profile of a person or a subject.

9. slow motion/freeze frame - to highlight a special moment of a event

10. Zoom detail - zoom to the little small detail stuff people normally won't notice

11. focal point switching

meeting with Stacey

We met Stacey (our main character) last night. It was a good chat with her, and we kinda getting know her more as a friend, which i think would be great for us later in the shooting.

Stacey is lovely and respectable person, she is willing to share her experience to help out/encourage people who is now suffering what she suffered. After about two hours chat with her. I feel more motivated and exciting about our documentary. It may because some of her belief is actually the same as mine, like we always want to see the good in people, rather to see and pick up their bad. Or it might because this story give me a feeling that we can actually do something good if we can make this film to communicate those who are suffering now, as a encouragement, and as a motivation for them to keep going.

I'm sure it will work well in the end. :) Looking forward to the actually filming.

I think next task for us is to plan our story more detailed, as in camera angle and the story focus and flow. As being the D.O.P. for our group this time, i will have do more research or watch as many documentaries as i can, to accumulate my knowledge in cinematography and also screen play for the editing later on.

ICP blog

We actually set up a blog for our ICP project, for everyone in the group to discuss freely on the blog, so that we can communicate and stay in touch with each other through blogging.

http://www.group-icp.blogspot.com/

wk 3 readings

Finally got time to read through week 3's reading. This week's reading is really useful and inspiring. It gives me a more concrete idea of documentary proposal we are going to hand in next week.

It inspire me a lot in developing ideas for documentary as well. By doing different researches in background and the story/character itself, which actually lead me think differently and come out with different approach for the story.

Just like Christine said in the lecture, the structure and the story we constructed and planned at the beginning may be changed after you really dig into the story.


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And the documentary proposal organiser is like a crucial checklist for me to make sure that my story is understandable and clear to everyone. After read through the whole points, i actually found that it makes me feel more clear about our story and i actually think more detailed in structuring the whole film, like how to present the conflict and the climax of the story.