I have blogged 106 times (including this one) in Creative Media this year! Woooo!
If I only got a dollar for every time I blogged!
Overall
Overall, I thought that this assignment was alright. It wasn’t as fun compared to the Photoshop assignment or film assignment but it was still fun! I think that I could have used my time more wisely. I think that I spent too much time on the trailer. Some other people have way more pages than me, but it is alright because the minimum is 5. Although I summited it in time and at what I think is a high standard, it would have been good to be given some extra time to add a few more pages. I could have added some information abouut my characters and my about me (the director and writter) and I was thinking at the end that my film could have been a sequel which means that could have done alot more on my website. But too late for that!
What frustrated me the most was when I borrowed out a laptop and the charger didn’t work. If I were to do this assignment again, I would first make my film longer and more complicated so that I had more to talk about in my website. But I think that my research was good and that it helped me in making my own website which is showed in some of the little small extra things that are in the website. But overall, I am happy with what I handed in and at least it wasnt as boring as English or History!
Synopsis
Like I said, The synopsis was pretty hard, but this is what the final product!
A Fat Hungry Fish, a story film about a man out fishing by him becomes a film no one has ever seen before. It is a tale that explains why you should stay away from unknown deserted pounds out in the middle of no where! You never know what could be lurking behind a fish or if an old mythical creature will jump out of the water as soon as it senses danger. Or how about an extinct species or something that no one else has ever seen before! A Fat Hungry Fish – The adventure of a lone fisherman.
When I was writing this, It reminded me of that Simpsons fish with heaps of eyes! Just thought i'd let you know!;)
Oh, you want to look at my website again did you say?! Well here you go:
file:///E:/Term%204/Website/alisha/alisha/Home.html
Home
I opened up my website at home and it still worked! Im pretty proud of myself, except for the fact that the font on the bottom of each page is the wrong font that I used! Oh No! I hope it doenst look that way for Mr P! Maybe it is just because that font was on the macs and I am on a PC - But all the other fonts work! Gah! oh well, Too late now!
Handing in Lesson
It was pretty scary when I finally handed in my assignment! Mr P said that we could hand it in on Monday if we really wanted to, but because he had already stressed me out that it was due on Thursday, I had it done on Thursday. Previously on Monday, I thought I had a whole week to work on it and finish it and I was going to do it on the weekend but then he sprung that on us and I had to finish it before Thursday! But then on the date it is due he says we actually have until Monday :| That was annoying! But I handed it in anyway. Mr P just showed us how to hand it in and we compressed it into an actual website! Which was pretty cool! I went to my website and opened it up and made sure all the buttons worked and it was really exciting and surprising that I actually made it and that it worked!
Reviews
Oh, also I was going to do a reviews page and I actually started to make the page but then I realized that a movie that no one has seen wouldn’t have any reviews! I was pretty devastated at that because I wanted to write something good about my website!
Pictures
Here are some pictures that I was going to use for my hyperlinks. I didnt end up using them because like I said before, not all of my links could be pictures and it would look weird if all of them had pictures except one!
Wednesday before the assignment is due (on Thursday)
I borrowed out a laptop again just to make sure everything is alright to hand in tomorrow. I checked out the charger in my form room to make sure it works and it did thank goodness! Anyway, I re checked and re checked and re checked by website and then I realized that I could change my trailer because I have enough time! I got the green screening time from a real movie trailer and then just pasted it into the front of my trailer. I then saved this and swapped it with the one on my website.
I also went onto the Inception website (http://inceptionmovie.warnerbros.com/) and had a look at everything that they had on their website. I ended up adding a Facebook button, home page picture, countdown and red carpet video. For the Facebook button, I copied and pasted the picture from the Inception website. This was easy because the Inception website was also black (which got me thinking, what program do they make their websites on and I wonder if they are similar!) 2 796 101 people like ‘A Fat Hungry Fish’! (Or, 2 796 101 people on Facebook like Inception!) I also just put a little sentence on the home page saying that were going to be a red carpet experience!
When searching the net for a picture for the home page I found the one that I was going to use. I started searching for other icons to put onto the website instead of the words. I found a film camera for the trailer and camera for the photos but then it looked weird because some of the links had pictures and the others didn’t. So I ended up just using one picture for the home page.
When I was just looking at iWeb, I saw that you could add widgets. And one of them was a countdown! Which I thought was pretty cool so I added a countdown for my film. I used the poster and cropped out the bottom bit of words and replaced it with the countdown. I added another picture so that the people would have two different pictures to choose from. I like this idea and thought it was pretty cool until I got to school and found out that someone else (I forgot who) had the same idea as me and they have a countdown too!
Photoshop
When I was using Photoshop, I learnt some more stuff to add to my knowledge! I learnt that you can actually make your whole picture bigger (I learnt this myself!!!) This way it is not as blurry when you enlarge it on the website as if you were to make it small on Photoshop and then big on the website.
Finished
So now I had my basic five pages but they looked a bit bland. To spice them up a bit I put another picture onto the Synopsis page and added ‘A Fat Hungry Fish’ title onto each page. Underneath the title I added what the page contained in a different colour. All the colours on my website and film (the writing) is either yellow or blue. I kept using these colours and the same font all throughout the website. I showed Mr P and he said that to make the pictures not so bolded – take it into Photoshop and smudge or do something to the edges of the photos to make them blend in with the background. Because my background website was black, I just used a brush to paint over the edges of the picture roughly. After I did this I really liked it because it made my website more soft looking. I used this technique in the ‘Photo Page’ as well. I think that this technique is very valuable and it didn’t take that long either!
Mr P also told me that I should put some pictures on the side of the website but I tried to do that and the website is kinda cut off at the edges. It is hard to explain, but I would have looked weird if I did what he said. Also I was running out of pictures and I didn’t know what other pictures to use because they would be the same pictures on the photo page!
Photo Page!
Unlike choosing the other photos, I found choosing the photos for this certain page easy. I chose a still capture from each of the scenes. This was easy because when I was making my film I saved all the pictures into a file just in case it didn’t save and if I needed to put them in order again. I added these photos and was finished in a flash!
Friday Night
I take that back. I will blog again. Because I borrowed out a laptop over the weekend and I was doing my assignment tonight and then I realized I had like 3% battery and it went really fast because I had like 100% and then it went down really fast! Anyway, I went to go and charge it but the silly charger didn’t work! So basically, I didn’t get anything done because I was just taking my time because I had the whole of Saturday to do it. But know I can’t do creative media again for the SECOND WEEKEND in a row because the charger won’t work! This is really making me angry! This is not a good start to my weekend!
Weekend
It’s Halloween on Sunday! Happy Halloween! (I probably won’t blog again!) This weekend I am borrowing a laptop so that I can hopefully finish my whole website. I actually have some spare time to do creative media! Yay!
Home Page
I then realized that I had to have a home page! Once again it was difficult to choose a picture that would be at the start of my website. I chose something welcoming – one of the first scenes of the man waving to the camera. The hand was a bit wonky so I put it into Photoshop and made it more straight and ‘waving hand’ looking. I put this on the home page of my website and then I added ‘ENTER SITE’ to the picture because from researching movies websites they always have ‘enter site’. Also Mr P said we should include those words. I had to ask Mr P if I could have a picture as a hyperlink (and of course I could!) he showed me how to do it and then I made my home page picture an enter site button as well as the words a hyperlink just in case!
Lesson after
After the lesson I made the website, I started on the synopsis which was hard. I didn’t know what to say! I added a little bit of commentary in there and then more about the story plot. It was so hard to write and not give anything away! I finally finished and this only took me one lesson to complete.
Website
After I had completed the poster and most of my trailer, I started to make my website. The fact that I hadn’t started my website scared me because I thought it was going to take a long time. But actually, because I had done the trailer and the poster it didn’t take that long to make a page for the poster and a page for the trailer and then add a few more pages.
Poster
My finished poster. But first...
I don’t know what to do for my poster! What photo should I use?! What should I say on it!? Haha. I looked at some other posters and found that the pictures were simple, sometimes had a quote or a line that is intriguing about the story line. They also always have that bit of writing down the bottom which says who is in the movie, who produced it, what the movie is and all of that technical stuff. I remember talking about this in class ages ago and we were saying how the font is always really small because no one ever really reads it. I thought that this would be really cool if I had that bit of writing down the bottom of my poster! So I looked at a poster and wrote down everything that I wanted in my poster. I had to make up some of the production companies and such. For the company name, I thought that it would look weird if it was just my name so I wrote my name backwards. It looks pretty cool and could be a really company! (AHSILA) For the ‘In association with…’ I made up another name. I used my middle name ’Rochelle’ but mixed up the letters a bit so no one would actually know what it means (ELLECH). For the production company, I used a different name also. I was just going through some words in my head and randomly came up with LANUM. My favourite name is Ellech because it just looks pretty cool! When I was typing it out, the macs did not have the font that wanted to use (Agency FB) which looks very similar to what the poster use. They always seem to have the same font and it is always squishy and small. I couldn’t find that so I just used the Blair font that I used for the rest of my film. Also, in the posters the words are always in capitals so naturally, mine were in capitals too.
I said that the film was my ME! And the actors and actresses were Sarah, Meghna and Izzy. I also put my mum in there because she helped me along the way too. In my movie, the singing was actually done my Sarah so I put her name in for music. I said that it was edited, produced and written and directed by Alisha Seeto J!
For my picture, I chose a character that I thought was pretty cool and was more interesting than my other character. I thought that this picture is interesting compared to some of the other pictures that I could have used. Also, the film is called ‘A Fat Hungry Fish’ so I thought it was only natural that the poster picture was of a fat fish that is actually in the movie. The fish is not seen until halfway through the film which is also good because people will be wanted to see the fish, but they will have to wait and watch it until they can see it again! So the poster was pretty easy because all I had to do was crop the picture of the fish and then add the title ‘A Fat Hungry Fish’ up the top with the font that I used for the rest of the video and website and then added the bit of writing down the bottom. And then… DONE! I actually found the poster really fun because it looked really professional and cool when it was finished! Here are some of the posters that I looked at for advice -
Worried
So I have been spending a lot of time on m trailer and now I am worried that I will not have enough time to finish my assignment! I am going to borrow out a laptop over the weekend but I don’t know if I will use it because I have heaps of other subjects that I have to study for that are due next week and creative media isn’t due until like 3 weeks. 3 weeks is a long time but not long enough! I need more time! Haha. We haven’t been given a set date yet which means that it could be earlier or later than what I expected.
*UPDATE* I borrowed a laptop out for the weekend but I did not use it! *UPDATE*
Trailer
I showed my trailer to some of my friends and they told me what I needed to change and what they thought was good. I recorded my voice and Sarah’s voice in us saying the lines in the film. I ended up using my voice. I used garageband to change our voices so that we were deeper and more man like. I added this in and then my trailer sounded better. I wanted to have that green bit before all the trailers and movies have but I didn’t know where to find one. I was thinking about it and then I realized that I have some trailers at home which I could ‘steal’ their green starting screens! I just have to find the time to do this. If I don’t have time, I will just leave my trailer like it is now.
Starting Lesson
So basically like all the other terms, we are working individually on our websites and as long as we work quietly Mr P doesn’t bother us :)
I have started to make my trailer which is taking longer than expected. Because my video is only 30 seconds, it was hard to make a trailer without putting the whole short film in there. I ended up using some of the scenes from the video and then added in words for the other part. For research, I tried to remember other trailers I had watched and what they had in them and what they didn’t have in them. After I had my basic plan with the film clips and words, I went searching for a Jaws sound effect which was reasonably easy to find (because I saved the website that I had used for my sound effects for my film). I have the Jaws music playing almost the whole way through the trailer with different volume adjustments.