Week 6 - Finishing Off

  After getting back I started working on the film and arranged the audio and music to fit so the music would be slightly quieter when the interviewees talk. I also fixed some of the clips which were out of place or just not put in right. So I guess that kind of shows that our film is done. I did all of the editing this week and then I had to get on with my folder, so I can say the film is edited and ready to be shown!
  I did some folder work after that, so for next week I'm going to finish off my folder and this unit should be as good as done!

Week 7 - Final Week

  This week I didn't do any major editing and was literally finishing up the film. I had to deal with some issues at the beginning with the song that we had used since it wouldn't play. I had to put the song on the desktop so that it would be able to find it easily. After that I had to resize the pegi logos and arrange them in about the same size and same positioning so the transitions would look smooth.
  After finishing with that the film was ready to be exported. For the rest of the day I had done folder work since this is the last lesson of CRaM for this year and my portfolio had to be finished.

  This and 3 others had to be resized.

Mr D's comment

This is going well, Sam. Make sure that you are reflecting on specific decisions, and why you/the group made them. Also make sure that you are really evidencing YOUR OWN CONTRIBUTIONS as much as possible. I like you use of images!

Week 5-More Editing

  This week I did less editing due to the fact Maxime wanted to do more since I had done the majority of the editing last time. So this week there isn't much to explain other than we managed to fit in all the questions and vox pops and then I shortened bits since all together it would've been about 3:45 minutes. We managed to put in all the titles and clips of video games we had and make them present the question we had asked that particular moment in the vox pop. That didn't take long and for one bit we had to add pictures due to the fact that we didn't make a clip for it, so that took a bit of work to finally make it work.
  Next lesson we will have to adjust the music volume at parts that can not be heard as easily so that the music doesn't drown the voice out. I'm hoping to due most of that since I know how to work with volume quite well.
  Since I didn't have much to write about in this blog I have some pictures in process of our film.

   This is one of the other 3 pegi pictures we used in our last question which was "Do you think people should respect the age restriction", so it fits quite nicely.

 This is one of the video clips we managed to make as the question pops up when Luigi hits the question box.

  This is yet another video clip that we managed to make and this is about when the title springs up. The use of Sonic in this particular question is quite ironic since Sonic is quite speedy and this question is related to time.

  This is our intro. Personally I would think this is better than any ordinary voice pieces to camera.

  This is the music we made that would play throughout the film. We created on Garage Band.

  This is one of the two employees of a shop that were kind enough to let us vox pop them.

Week 4 - Editing

  After having filmed we started editing. After looking back at the footage I noticed that Maxime had somehow not captured 1 of the interviewees on film and another we had only filmed half of that interview. Another problem we had came across was that I had not asked the same exact questions each time. I seemed to have missed a few out on certain people (discluding the people that said "no" to our first question). So it looked like we only had 6 1/2 people in our film. Even though we did have a few mistakes in our footage we carried on with the editing and managed to share the work of editing between the 2 of  us so that it would be fair. We decided to let gaps inbetween each different question that we asked for a caption that we would enter later on.
  After finishing most of the editing we got on to making some background music that we could put throughout the film, so that no awkward silence could be heard. We got on garage band and came up with quite a good rhythm that would suit the film. We started getting it to fit with the film and then took one of the people we had interviewed and made him our intro since he did do something quite amusing and entertaining and tried fitting in a caption with the intro. We also decided to later in our own time to do some intros to our questions that the interviewees would answer, since we didn't have the software necessary at school.
  Overall I think I contributed a lot to the editing of our vox pops and think I should have planned a bit more before we went and did the vox popping so we wouldn't end up with the problems we had.

Our intro:

The questions we asked :

Week 3 - Finally The Vox-Popping Begins

  After 3 weeks of working on my research report Maxime and I started our vox popping. My job was to hold the mic and wear the headphones and obviously ask the questions while Maxime used the camera and also asked the people on the street if they wanted to answer the questions. The main questions we asked were:

• Do you play video games? (if yes)
• What type of video games do you play?
• How long do you play on weekdays and weekends?
• Do you think that amount is alright?
• (If younger than 18) Do you respect the age restriction on video games?
• (If older than 18) Do you think people should respect the age restrictions?

  We first set off to the outside of the Grafton Centre. After a while I decided it would be best to come around this area during lunch hours since there were construction workers near the place we were filming and we would end up with horrible background noise.
  We then headed of to the Grand Arcade and asked a few outside there if they wanted to be interviewed. We managed to get 1 person throughout the time we had there so I decided we at least get 9 more people after we took a break.
  During the lunch hours we went back to the Grafton area and started asking people if they would like to answer our questions. We got 2 people and then a person from a shop asked what we were doing so Maxime and I explained about our project and then I asked the man if we could ask him the questions we had and he accepted. After interviewing he said we could ask anyone else that is part of there crew. We asked 1 more person from that shop and then set off to ask more people around that area. We then found tis man who came up to us and asked what exactly we were doing and then explained and he offered to help us. He knew a lot about the subject on vox popping and gave us some very entertaining footage to use.
  After that we headed to the marketplace, but didn't manage to find anyone to interview so we headed to a park nearby and managed to get 2 more people. So after that we decided that it would be enough footage to take back. Even though I set our target as at least 10 people we got close enough and even had more than the rest of the groups.
  So after today I developed a lot more skill in vox popping and it became slightly less awkward asking random people on the street to be interviewed. I say that it was an overall success and the editing will be the easy part of the project.

Week 2 - Planning

  Starting off this day we got shown some examples of vox pops from both the CRaM year 11 class and also others who had it as a project. It was both amusing and interesting to see the responses of the people about certain issues.  After watching I got in a pair with Maxime and starting discussing what the topic of our vox pop should be. We went with 3 main ideas : Video Games, Torrenting and Responsibility. After thinking of what questions we could ask and also which one would have a wider range of people to ask and of course which one we could easily ask and be a current issue. We decided to go with Video Games because it is a current topic to talk about and also is still growing. Now with the questions, we went with questions as before I had mentioned had to be for a good a number of age ranges. So we came up with a variety of questions that would fit with a lot of age groups like parents, teenagers and even people around their 20's and 30's. Questions like "how much would you let your child play video games?" or "how long do you play video games each day" and many more. After getting all the questions down on paper we decided which parts in town which would be best to as people about these things. We decided next to game shops and computer shops would be the ideal places. Then we started to do some research about video games to find out some shocking facts. We found out that in a forum at least 100 people play more than 4 hours a day!

We came up for a lot of other facts that were just as shocking. After all the planning we were ready to do some vox popping next week in town and see what people would answer.

Week 1 - Vox Pops?!?!?

Coming into this lesson I didn't know how hard vox popping was and also that it was named vox popping. So vox popping was basically asking people in outside about their opinions on stuff like the royal wedding. So after learning about vox popping we had a few demonstrations in class. Now as usual i'm one of the actors during the demonstration even though my acting is terrible, but turned out i didn't need to act that much at all.

  Then we had to head out in groups and go around to do some vox popping of our own. Our group decided to get to Cineworld to ask people around there about their thoughts on the royal wedding and also filming them at the same time(which is what you have to do in vox popping). At first I had to ask a few people that we thought would answer our questions, but soon found out how much people were scared of people with cameras in their hands and ready to film you. So after a while one person agreed to answer our questions and that vox pop went quite well and boosted our confidence to ask more people. So soon after that I asked a few people and as usual they walked past, but in that time we managed to find 2 more people that would answer our questions and both went alright. Then for the last person we switched tasks and I had to carry the wires around.
  After filming our last vox pop just before the deadline we got back and started to edit the pieces and then also film a technique that required us to face the camera and say related subjects about our vox pops or just give a introduction. We messed around a bit on that part and even added some bloopers of those moments to the end of our piece. After we finished with that we headed back to edit the rest and also add these parts in.
  After that lesson I thought I had to work a bit better at my microphone holding skills because even though it never ended up in shot it wasn't close enough to the person we were vox popping.