Extract Practice: Game of Thrones

The director of, “Game of Thrones,” uses a variety of film techniques to establish an atmosphere of intrigue. When looking at the extract as a whole and examining the techniques the meaning becomes clear. The meaning of the extract is the shifting struggle for power and the tension this conflict creates. The power shifts between the three main characters in the given clip.

The extract begins with an aerial shot of a ship with red sails. The aerial shot of the ship develops the idea that the people on the ship have less power because it looks like they are being looked down on. In addition, the sails are red, and that color can represent power and passion. The symbolic color of the sails develops the theme of power because the audience can interpret that the people on the boat are passionate about gaining power. After the aerial shot, there is a two-shot of Stannis and Davos. The two of them aren’t standing directly next to each other; Stannis is standing in front of Davos. The position of the characters in the two-shot shows that Stannis has more power over Davos because usually leaders stand in the front. In the two-shot, the audience can also see that Stannis' outfit is tinted blue. The color blue can represent loyalty and intelligence. The color of the costume helps to reinforce that Stannis is more powerful than Davos because it shows that people are loyal to Stannis and that he is intelligent enough to have control over people. The colors in the scene are very muted, so Stannis wearing blue directs the focus of the audience to him. Towards the end of the scene, there is a zoom-out to reveal the Iron Bank and a statue. The effect of the zoom-out makes the people on the ship appear to be getting smaller, which makes it look like the power they do have isn’t as significant in the place they are entering. Furthermore, the statue is extremely large compared to the ship, which further develops the idea that the people on the ship do not have a lot of power and how the importance of their power is decreasing. During this scene, there is incidental music in the background, which helps to create a feeling of tension in the audience. The music is at its loudest when the ship is about to enter the Iron Bank which establishes the idea that an important event is about to take place.

               The second scene starts with Stannis and Davos having a conversation as they wait for the bankers. During the dialogue, Stannis states that they have been waiting since “mid-day.” In other words, they have been waiting for a long time. The dialogue shows that the bankers are more powerful than Stannis and Davos because the bankers don’t see their visitors as important and make them wait a long period of time before speaking with them. After the bankers enter, the camera shots keep changing from medium-shots, wide shots, and close-ups. The different camera positions help the audience see what is happening in the scene. For example, the different shots show that the bankers are sitting on higher and bigger chairs, than Stannis and Davos. The height of the chair helps to develop the meaning because it makes it look like the bankers are more powerful because they can look down at Stannis and Davos. The power later shifts to Davos when he stands up to talk highly about Stannis and the camera is at a slight low angle. The low angle creates the idea that Davos is looking down at the bankers. Throughout this scene, there are shot-reverse-shots and this editing makes the characters seem equal in power because it shows that the characters all have reason to been seen and they are all given chances to speak. Another type of editing in the scene is an action match where Davos is pointing at Stannis. In the first shot, Davos is starting to lift his arm to point and in the second shot, his arm is outstretched pointing at Stannis. The action helps to develop the theme of power because Davos shifts the power to Stannis by making him the focus. There is very little lighting in this scene; the only source of light comes from the windows. The windows shed light of Stannis, illuminating him in the dark room. The light looks like it is creating a spotlight on Stannis, showcasing him as Iron Bank’s only hope because he is the last “reliable leader”; therefore, the power shifts to him.

When the director was creating the extract, he had a vision. He wanted to showcase the theme of the shifting struggle for power and the tension it creates. He does this by having the power shift between the characters and in order to this he uses a variety of film techniques. The struggle for power is a complex situation because the person who holds power is constantly changing.

CCR Interview: Final Task

In this blog, I have attached my Creative Critical Reflection (CCR) for my Final Task. The video is supposed to be between 12 and 15 minutes long. In this video, I answer and reflect on four questions in the style of an interview. I will be discussing my video and the overall process of making my film opening. The video will also include scenes from my final task and pictures showing the process of creating the Final Task.

Creating the CCR Interview was very stressful. The stress was mainly caused by COVID-19 because the virus caused my school to move to online teaching, which means I had no classroom resources to work with when creating the interview.

Before I could make the interview, I first had to plan my responses to the questions. Over the span of a few days, I wrote out my responses to the questions. I rewrote my answers a few times until I felt like I answered the questions. After I answered the questions, I created an intro and an outro script. I established lines for myself and my interviewer, who was my group-mate during the Final Task. I had Leila come to my house one day to film the intro, outro, and the questions. Before she came over, I set up our location and the camera. My next step was to film myself answering the questions. I recited my answers twice before I decided to dump the footage onto my laptop. After I imported everything, I started to trim and add footage to the tracks. I also took notes on anything I needed to re-shoot. When I couldn't edit anything else until I filmed again, I set up the camera and did a re-shoot of some of my answers. After the re-shoot, I went back to editing. Over the next few days, I continued to edit until I finished the CCR Interview. On one of my re-shoot days, I started to lose my voice, so I apologize if it is hard to understand what I'm saying during some parts of the video. The background music that plays when the questions are on screen is the same music in the beginning of my final task.

I think that creating this interview has really helped me reflect on everything I have learned this school year. When answering the four questions I was able to look back on the other projects I did and see how much I had improved. Overall, this interview caused me to have a lot of stress. In the end, I know that my interview has mistakes, but I'm happy with how it turned out under the circumstances. 

Final Task: Film Opening

In this blog, I have attached my third and final film of the school year. I had to make a 1 minute and 50 seconds to 2 minutes long film opening. I was excited to start this project because it was what I was preparing for all school year. I had already created two films, so I felt prepared for this one. For the Final Task, I worked with my music video group-mate again. We were very productive together during the music video, so we thought it would be a good idea to work with each other again. The film my group-mate and I decided to create is titled, "Dysfunctional Spies," and it is an action film. The film's pitch is a spy movie where two teenage spies are on a mission to track down and briefcase. During the process, their friend gets kidnapped.

There was a lot more planning involved with this task than the other two. I began the project in January and had until April to finish it. I was given a lot of time to research, storyboard, film, and edit this opening, so I made sure not to waste any time. During the process of this project, I had the roles of researcher, storyboard artist, camerawoman, director, actress, and editor. When I was researching, I would look up the conventions of an action movie and take notes on the ones I wanted to include in my opening. I also watched action movie openings and took notes on the titles. This was my first project that needed to have titles, so I wanted to make sure I knew how to add them to my film correctly. As the storyboard artist, I outlined the scene for my group-mate who would later add more details to the drawings. When I was filming I took many takes from different shots and angles. I would also let the actress know if they were in the frame. A new role I had for this project was to be an actress. I didn't act in the commercial or music video, so this was a new experience for me. I wasn't a part of a lot of scenes, but I believe that the experience was very valuable. As the editor, I dumped and imported the footage. Furthermore, I organized the footage to be in the correct order. 

During this assignment, I learned a lot about titles and sound. I was able to gain knowledge of the different placements, fonts, designs, and sizes of titles. I didn't have to work with a lot of dialogue in my other two projects, so during this task, I learned the importance of how lines are said. Also, I learned how to adjust the sound to make the dialogue louder, so it would be easier for the audience to hear.

The process of making the opening was honestly very stressful. I came across a lot of issues and had to re-do many things during the span of this project. When I was supposed to be doing the finals edits on my film my school closed because of COVID-19, which created many editing issues. However, I learned how to overcome all the issues I faced during this project and I learned that things don't always go according to plan. In the end, I really liked how my film opening came out and I think I have improved a lot since the beginning of the school year.

Music Video Project

In this blog, I have attached my second AICE Media Studies Project, a music video. I was assigned to create a music video that is about a minute long. For this project, I grouped up with one other person who was also in my group for the commercial project. I could choose to make a video to any song, within reason. I discussed with my group-mate a few songs and we decide on a song titled, "Honey," by Kehlani. We narrowed it down to this song because it has LGBT+ representation. The lack of LGBT+ representation is an important issue to us, so we felt that making a music video to this song would help increase the amount of representation the community gets.

This project was very different from the commercial. For starters, I had a lot more time to plan, film, and edit. The length of the video was longer and I got to film outside of school. Since I was able to film outside of school, I decided the best location for the video would be at a park because, in the video, two girls would be having a picnic together. To plan for this video, I watched a variety of music videos to get an understanding of what they look like and to figure out the conventions.

My main roles for this video were the same roles I had doing the commercial. I was a researcher, camerawoman, director, and editor. Furthermore, I gained a role as a storyboard artist. I was in charge of drawing all the pictures for the storyboard. As a researcher, I simply just watched videos and took notes. As a storyboard artist, I learned what details needed to be included in the drawings. Storyboarding was an interesting experience, especially because it was my first time drawing one and I love to draw. When I was drawing, I made sure I drew the actresses where I wanted them to be in a scene and what props I wanted in the shot. As the camerawoman, I filmed each scene using a variety of angles and shots, so I would have a lot to work with when I edited. I would also inform the actresses if they were out of frame. As one of the directors, I directed the actresses on how they should act in the scene. For example, I would tell them to smile and act happy. As the editor, I was in charge of dumping the footage from the SD card and importing it onto Pinnacle Studio, an editing software. When all the footage was imported, I arranged the footage in the correct order and cut them to my desired length. I also changed some of the lighting in the video to add to the story. When I finished editing, I exported the music video.

After I was finished with the music video, I realized that I learned a lot from creating this video. Overall, I was able to better my production skills. This was only the second film I had ever created and I was extremely happy with it. I believe that I had improved a lot since the commercial project.

Commercial Project

In this blog, I have attached my first AICE Media Studies project I have done this school year. My first assignment was to create a commercial about 30 seconds long. I had never filmed and edited anything before, so I was excited about the project. I was given a list of things I could advertise in my commercial and I chose to make one on Gatorade. I worked in a group for this project that consisted of myself and three other people. I only had a few days to plan, film, and edit. My main roles during this project were researcher, camerawoman, direct, and editor.

Before I started storyboarding the commercial I went online and researched Gatorade commercial. I did this research, so I could see what the conventions were for this type of commercial. After watching a few videos, I quickly learned that most Gatorade commercials are also sports commercials. After I learned this information I decided with my group that we should film on the school's track film. For this project, it had to be filmed at school. During the filming process, I was mainly the camerawoman. As the camerawoman, I got to learn about all the different angles and shots I could film at. This was my first time filming and I thought it was a very interesting experience. As one of the directors, I learned how to properly give instructions to other people. In the beginning, I did struggle to explain to the actress what I think they should do in a scene, but by the end, I was better at giving instructions. When I was editing, I learned how to dump footage onto a laptop and how to import it onto Pinnacle Studio. I also learned how to trim and add footage. I was also able to make a split-screen. During the end of the editing process, I exported the commercial.

After I had finished this project, I was happy with it. It was my first time creating a video. I thought this commercial was a great first attempt. When I look back at it now, I can pinpoint all my mistakes because I have gained a better understanding of film by doing other projects. Even though this may not be a perfect video, it is still the first video I had ever created so it is special to me. It special to me because I was able to learn so much by doing it.

Re-Edit Blog

There were some difficulties I faced when re-editing my film opening. The first issue was caused by COVID-19. Due to this pandemic, I wasn't able to re-edit the week I planned too because Spring Break was extended to a week earlier. Since I didn't have access to the school or the laptops that already had my editing software, Pinnacle Studio, I had to figure out a way to edit. My first idea was to use the default editing program that came with my laptop; however, it wouldn't allow me to open my film on it because the film was created using a different program. Due to this issue, I was left with two options: re-edit my video from scratch or buy Pinnacle Studio. I discussed with Leila the pros and cons of both ideas and we concluded that purchasing Pinnacle Studio would be the best option. Before my parents very kindly and generously bought me the program, I tried to see if I could finish the film just using the free-trial version. I could finish my film using the free trial; however, there would be a watermark. I didn't want there to be a watermark on my film, so I bought the program.

Since I never had Pinnacle Studio on my laptop, I had to download it. The downloading process took about an hour, so my re-editing time was delayed. The time was furthered delayed because after the program downloaded, I had to import all the footage I had collected over the process of this project. Hundreds of footage needed to be imported, so more time was wasted. Once everything I imported I could finally start editing. I knew that there was a lot of editing changes, so I started as soon as I could.

Before I started editing, I watched the film to remind myself of what I had already finished editing and what needed to be fixed. One of the main things that needed to be fixed was the ending. The ending was extremely choppy, it didn't flow at all. It was also very hard to understand what was happening during some parts. To fix the choppiness, I added transitions and made some of the scenes longer. In order for my audience to have a better understanding of what was happening, I reordered some of the scenes. I was added in more footage that helped to develop the story. While I was editing the ending, I cut out one of the shots of Cori saying her dialogue and replaced it with one of the takes I filmed on the re-shoot day.

The next part I wanted to re-edit was scene 3. Leila and I decided to completely re-do scene 3 with the footage we gathered from the re-shooting day. The new scene was a conversation between the spies about being ready to go on their mission. I cut out the old scene and placed the new dialogue in the order Leila and I discussed and decided on during the re-film day. When all the footage was placed in its correct placement, I decided to watch it to see how it looked. I quickly realized that it looked extremely choppy and that it was missing aspects that would make the dialogue make sense. After I made this realization I contacted the actresses and asked if we could meet up to re-film again; however, due to COVID-19, both of the actresses were able to meet to film. This meant that I had to work with what I had. The footage was originally placed in an order that created a shot-reverse-shot, which was something we needed in our film. I tried reorganizing these scenes in a way that it wouldn't ruin this type of shot, but nothing was working. In the end, Leila and I decided that for scene 3 to make sense we would have to get rid of the shot-reverse-shot and order the footage differently. I added a piece of dialogue from the Monitor in between the spies' conversation, which made the scene flow better.

A smaller change that was made was volume adjustments. Since new dialogue was added, I helped Leila go through and make some of them louder and others quieter. I also added fades to the music to make the opening flow better.

When I opened my film on the Pinnacle Studio program on my laptop it changed the titles, so I had to re-do them. After Leila and I finished adding in all the titles I tried adding in the title transitions. After multiple attempts, I realized that the program was not going to let me add in the transition after I created the title and that I had to make the transition before the title. I had to go through the film and delete all of the old titles and replace them with new ones that already had the transitions. After the blank titles with transitions were added, Leila and I wrote what we wanted them to say. After Leila went over all the titles to make sure they were all correct, I went through them all and placed them in their correct positions.

This is a picture of me and Leila editing our film at my house.

Re-Shoot Blog

During my re-shooting day, I was able to get a lot done. I had to re-shoot some of the scenes from George English Park and Leila's house, but before I started to film I wanted to create a plan. Before Leila and I decided to film we established a list of everything we needed to make sure we wouldn't forget anything.

This re-shooting day began at George English park. There was a lot of filming that needed to be done at this location. I just needed to re-film the actress, Cori, saying her dialogue. This was because she was extremely hard to hear in the film. I was in charge of being the camerawoman while she recited her lines. I had her say her lines multiple times, so I could get different angles. Besides from filming, I also helped to direct. I would direct her where to stand to make sure she was in the frame of the camera and also where to look. Furthermore, I would let her know if she was being loud enough. I wanted to make sure she had enough volume when saying her lines because that was the reason for re-shooting scenes at the park.

After I re-filmed everything at the park, I car-pooled with Leila and Cori to Leila's house. Before we could film any of the scenes at Leila's house I had to wait for Kat to arrive. I didn't have to re-shoot any of Kat scenes at the park, so I told her she didn't have to come until later. While waiting for Kat, Leila and I sat down and discussed new dialogue for scene 3. Since we decided to no longer have comedy as a sub-genre we decided to change the original dialogue of scene 3. I suggested dialogue ideas and write down any of the ideas we came up with. This way we can have an overview of all the dialogue and chose what best fits the scene.

Once Kat arrived, no time was wasted and I started filming. Like a George English Park, I was in charge of being the camerawoman. Before I started filming, I told the actress where they needed to stand and to not move until I tell them otherwise. I didn't want them to move there position a lot because it was going to be a still conversation scene. During their conversation scene, I filmed over-the-shoulder shots, so I moved around a lot to get the shot I needed. When Cori was saying her dialogue I would stand behind Kat, and when Kat was stating her lines I would stand behind Cori. While I was filming, I was also helping to direct. During some parts of the scene, one of the actresses would start to smile. Scene 3 is meant to be a serious scene, so I would inform this actress when she started smiling and she would go back to being serious. I would also notify the two actresses if they were being loud enough. After I finished re-filming everything at Leila's house, I put all the equipment way, which brought the re-shooting day to an end.

This is a picture of Leila and me discussing the new dialogue.