Creating process: The final result

This is the final version of my project. It took me a long time to create it. I am satisfied with it, but there are many things that could be done better. During creation, I learned many things and gained experience that I hope will pay off in the future. I hope that my next project will be much better.

The Professor

Creating process: Editing

Because describing the process that accompanied me while creating this short video would be very difficult, I decided to record it.

Almost the entire creation process is recorded on these recordings. Unfortunately, I couldn't upload these files to the blog because they were too large, so I had to create an account on YouTube and upload them there so that I could later post links to the blog.

For the reason that I have no experience working with Adobe Premiere Pro, I decided to use Clipchamp for editing, which is much easier to use.

I omitted a few things such as writing the script that I put into the speech generator and only included the creation process because otherwise these videos would take several hours. The process visible in these recordings probably takes almost two hours.  

Creating process: Collecting materials

Today I will describe where I got the materials to create my project.

First, I'll start with music. I downloaded it from https://www.free-stock-music.com. This is a site with free music that can be used for free even in commercial productions.

After entering the website, you can adjust the genre you are looking for in the search engine. I was looking for hip-hop and rap for my project.

After finding the right song, I clicked the free download button and was redirected to another page.

It looks the same on the page you are redirected to. you need to click the free download button and choose where on your computer you want to save the file.

I downloaded the video using the FreeTube application.

First, I had to find the video I wanted to download on YouTube. I found all the materials on the channel Professor Live.

Then I had to copy the link and paste it into the FreeTube app's search engine.

After finding the video in the application, press the download button (down arrow).

Then you save the file to a location of your choice on your computer.

Creating website: Portfolio

The next step towards improving my website is to create a portfolio tab. To do this, I had to select Pages and Menu in the tab on the left. Then I entered the Portfolio subpage.

First, I deleted everything that was on this subpage.

Then I changed the background to black and added the title of the subpage "Portfolio", which was located at the top center of the page. Later I added my photo.

After the change, I added a subpage where I will place my project, called "The Professor".

Then I added thamed buttons on both pages redirecting to each other.

After checking if the links worked, I posted a random video from the Internet on my project's page. When I create my project, I will post it instead of this video.

Finally, I checked whether all the links worked and what the page preview looked like.

Later, I also checked the mobile preview, where I had to change the page layout a bit.

For now, I am not changing the appearance of the project page. I will do this after uploading the project so that I can customize the background.

Ideal User Persona "The Professor Film"

I created this post to introduce my ideal customer for the film "The Professor". Since it is difficult to create accurate research on the ideal customer of my work, I decided to create the ideal recipient of my film. Below I have added a link to the Venngage site where I created his profile and you can watch it . 

Ideal Customer Andrew Anderson 

Further Research: "He got game" by Spike Lee

In today's post, I would like to take a closer look at one of the most famous basketball movies. Namely "He got game" by Spike Lee.

Shelton Jackson Lee known as a "Spike Lee" is an American director and writer born 20 March 1957 in Atlanta. He graduate New York University Film School. "He Got Game" was one of his subsequential movies created in 1998 (The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica 2023).

According to Collins(2018) "He Got Game" is a film about a young, talented basketball player at the beginning of his career who has to make important decisions that his entire environment wants to influence in order to benefit from it.

The film featured many cinema and sports stars. In the main roles we can see Denzel Washington, Rosario Dawson, Milla Jovovich and the then rising NBA star Ray Allen.

In this post I would like to focus on analysis of few shots connected with my project.

The first video shows a duel between the main character and his father. Unfortunately, I managed to find the film in good quality only with Hungarian dubbing. However, this is not too important because my main goal is to focus on game shots. 

This fragment of the film shows a lot of close-ups of actors playing against each other on the court. There are also several shots from above and covering a wider perspective. The editing is quite dynamic. Thanks to the involvement in the main role of professional basketball, all movements and plays look professional. All this is intended to show the most realistic duel possible.

He Got Game-Denzel Washington VS Ray Allen Scene

The second video is higlights from the game.It shows the most interesting actions and plays of the main character and his teammates. "On the technical side, Lee’s enthusiasm for the game and its professional athleticism clearly shows. His style of camerawork and editing is to keep the players in shot when they are making their dunks, slams, or shoots, rather than trick it with quick editing(Brown 2019)." At the end of this video you can see the performance of the high school team. It looks identical to similar materials from real teams, which gives the whole thing a very realistic look.

He Got Game (1998) - We are the Lincoln Railsplitters

The last video shows interviews with professional basketball players and other people related to this sport, such as coaches and journalists. They are mixed with what is happening on the pitch and in the locker room. In the meantime, the reactions of the main character and his father to these statements are shown.A similar solution is used in many documentaries about athletes, such as "The Last Dance". All the techniques used add realism to the entire film. Thanks to this, the viewer has the impression that he or she is watching a documentary and not fiction.

He Got Game (1998) 'Coney Island's Jesus' | Ray Allen | Denzel | Movie Clip

Analyzing the above videos will help me create my own. I'm going to use some shots and editing techniques.I will also use some conventions typical of documentaries included in this film.

References

Brown, D.M. (2019). A Spike Lee Joint: He Got Game [1998]. [online] High On Films. Available at: https://www.highonfilms.com/a-spike-lee-joint-he-got-game-1998/ [Accessed 13 Nov. 2023].

Collins, K.A. (2018). 20 Years After Its Release, Spike Lee’s Basketball Epic He Got Game Remains Searing and Essential. [online] Vanity Fair. Available at: https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2018/05/he-got-game-20th-anniversary [Accessed 13 Nov. 2023].

The Editors of Encyclopedia Britannica (2019). Spike Lee | Biography, Movies, & Facts. In: Encyclopædia Britannica. [online] Available at: https://www.britannica.com/biography/Spike-Lee [Accessed 13 Nov. 2023].

Website Research: Christopher Rogers and screenrant

As a part of my assessment I need to made my own website so I made some research. This website research will assist me in understanding how to create my own website so I will consider the overall design, colours, and typography, navigation, usability/user-friendliness, links and mobile view. I chose two sites to reviev: Christopher Rogers and screenrant. 

I will start with the Christopher Rogers website. This site isn't very extencive.

The navigation bar is easy to navigate, but is also realy poor. There is only five subpages (including hompage): christopher rogers, selected work, narrative, photo and about.

Homepage is almost whole black and it is hard to see enything. In some way it look interesting, but there is no content.

Sub-page "selected work" exhibit us works picked by artist. Good quality of videos cowers the flows of site in general. 

In sub-page narrative there are only two videos. Probably favorite works of this artist, which show his style of filmmaking.

Sub-page Photo is showing some of his photos. Despite interesting works, it deserves a negative rating due to the website layout being difficult to navigate.

Page About Me presents a photo of the artist, a short description, email address and links to social media which work perfectly.

Finally, I checked mobile view. Although it looks similar, unfortunately the inscriptions in the navigation panel sometimes blend in with the background or text on the page, which makes it very difficult to use.

My overall rating for this website is rather negative. Despite interesting works, the website has many shortcomings and is underdeveloped.

The second website I am going to describe is screenrant. This is an entertainment website presenting information and news from the world of films, series and games.

You can immediately see the very careful workmanship of the website. The most interesting articles of the day are visible in the foreground.

At the top of the page, just below the name, there are links to subpages with the themes most interesting to users.

Below is a very long list of articles, starting with the most recent. 

In the upper left corner there is a navigation bar icon which, when clicked, will open. There are links to sub-pages such as: MOVIES,TV REALITY, TV GAMING, COMICS, ANIME and MORE. 

They all look very similar in terms of graphics and page setup to the home page, so I see no point in describing each one separately. The only significant difference is the focus on a different genre.

Below are self-advertisements and social media connections that work without any issues.

Mobile view is very similar. Everything works without any glitches, and the website itself is very transparent.

Comparing these two sites, screenrant outclasses its opponent. The website is very well designed in every aspect and there is absolutely nothing to fault. This is not a surprise to me, because a whole team of people are working on screenrant, assigned to specific tasks, and Christopher Rogers' website is a low-budget project managed by one person. Neverless, the screenrant website is of a completely different quality and using it is pure pleasure.

Software Practice: Clipchamp

I created a short video in Clipchamp, for which I used several copyright free videos and music found on the Internet. All the videos showed fires or their effects.

Example

First, I imported the materials I intended to use to create my video into Clipchamp. Then I had to think about the composition of the film and submit the videos in the right order to the editor. After adjusting the length of the videos, I added opening and closing credits, presenting the title, creator and people who created the music and clips of the videos. I also added transitions between videos  Finally, I added music and adjusted it to the subtitles and the length of the video.

After finishing the film, I exported it in HD quality and added it to the blog.

Research: Thelma Schoonmaker

Thelma Schoonmaker

Thelma Schoonmaker is an American film editor. She was born on January 3, 1940, in Algiers which at that time was part of French Algeria. During World War II, her family had to evacuate to Aruba. She also spent part of her childhood in Portugal.
In 1957, she began studying political science and Russian at Cornell University.
She began working in film editing during her postgraduate studies at Columbia University. At first, she edited European films to bring their timing in line with television length standards in the United States. She later enrolled in a 6-week filmmaker's course at New York University, where she met Martin Scorsese. She is best known for her collaboration with this director. This is what she said about working with him: "He is a great editor and taught me everything. He felt he could work with me; that it would be a collaboration, it wouldn't become an ego battle. If we have a significant difference, we screen it his way and then my way with friends. We ask them what they think and make a decision. But that happens rarely.(Giardina 2017).

Their first film together was "What's a Nice Girl Like You Doing in a Place Like This?".Her career was difficult at the beginning because the Motion Picture Editors Guild did not want to accept her without five years as an apprentice and three as an assistant, and without it she could not work on feature films. In the 1980s, thanks to Scorsese's help, it was finally accepted into the Union.

She was awarded an Oscar three times: in 1980 for "Ragging Bull", in 2004 for "The Aviator" and in 2006 for "The Departed". Three of her films were included in the list of the best edited films of all time published by the Motion Picture Editors Guild.

Her editing approach is sometimes referred to as "postmodern," because she combines classical continuity editing with more independent forms such as music-video editing, varied montages, jump cuts, temporal ellipses, and so on. All of these odd tactics were successfully incorporated into a narrative film. Schoonmaker's technique is often regarded as very original, intricate, and ever-changing.
“ People intuitively understand what directors, actors and cinematographers do, but not so much the job of an editor,”(Barborová, 2012).

References

 

Giardina, C. (2017). Marty’s Major Right-Hand: Film editor Thelma Schoonmaker’s epic collaboration. Hollywood Reporter, 423(4), 85.

Uncredited. (2018, May 18). The 75 best edited films. CineMontage. https://cinemontage.org/75-best-edited-films/

Barborová, J. (2012). Female film editing in Hollywood cinematography. https://theses.cz/id/mecnpc/00171518-497465137.pdf

Creating a Website: About Me Page

 Hello. My name is Filip and I come from Poland where I grew up. I moved to England over three years ago. I am currently a student of Media Production at De Montfort University. I decided on this field of study because I would like to travel around the world in the future and create content, as I love to produce drone shots. The beauty of drone shots is being able to show and share the beauty of the landscape from above and to create wonderful establishing shots for film, TV and documentary. The person who really inspire me is Chris Rogers. He creates amazing videos in which he shows a very creative way of editing and each video have amazing colors that hypnotizes the viewer. My goal is to make content equal quality, that can move people in the same way.

coloristsociety

After writing my description, I posted it on my website in the ABOUT tab. I copied and pasted it, adding a free photo found on the Internet on the left. I'll probably change it to my photo later. 

I also checked the mobile view. At some points the background may be too bright, but I won't change it for now.

After some time, I decided to personalize the About Me page. For this purpose, I replaced a photo I found on the Internet with my own. I also changed the page composition by moving the text to the right and the photo to the left.

I also checked mobile veiw. It looks good enough so I left it as is.

Creating a Website: Contact Page & Social Links

 Today i will add social links and contact page on my site.

I delete everythink I didn't need on my webpage. Then I changed font to Linotype Didot of subtitles and customised my contact form. I also changed background and set the notifications to my email. 

After that I added a social links icons. I left only the one I needed and added one new. 

I also checked the mobile view but decided that there was no need to change anything.

Finally, I save it and checked if the links worked.