Hey Everyone! So a few days ago on Saturday, we had our very first STN practice of this school year! We are practicing to prepare for the real competition of the Student Television Network Convention in April, which is near! The practice started at 8 am sharp, so punctuality is important! I am in the PSA, or Public Service Announcement, team along with Angeline and Nicole. My role is the photographer and editor with Nicole, where as Angeline and Nicole are acting. Mr. M gave us the prompt, "Electronics-Put Them Away" and we had a to create a 30 second PSA that got the message across in a total of 6 hours, 3 hours to film and 3 hours to edit. For this week's constructed response, I will be telling you about my experience on Saturday, how well our team cooperated, the outcome, and how we can improve, so keep reading!
First off, I think the PSA team worked well together. Everyone had their own role, their own job, and no one was left out. But even if everyone had their separate roles, we all worked together as a team. Everyone on the team got involved and contributed. When we were first given the prompt, we spent about 45 minutes planning. Working together as a group, we created a final idea by instead of choosing one specific idea, we compromised and put all of our thoughts together into one everyone liked. Reaching consensus with our group wasn't an issue. Our final idea was that a person (who was played by Nicole) spends an awfully extensive amount of time on her electronic. Then, an anonymous call (who was from Angeline) tells Nicole all these negative things about using your electronics too long. Nicole then listens to the Anonymous person and puts it away. There was no arguments or fighting; our team worked well. However, there were times we had to compromise, especially while editing. Despite that, both Nicole and I had the teams best interest in mind, and we both listened to each others thoughts. The PSA team worked well together.
I think our team did okay for our first practice. Our PSA ended up being exactly 30 seconds, not anytime over or under which was good. Mr. M said he liked the variety of shot compositions and angles so we should continue with all the other practices. I think our PSA got the message across to the audience. However, what would it have looked like if we made the caller I.D. from the Mom instead of anonymous? I think it would have been more realistic and convincing if the call was from her Mom, instead of anonymous. But the question is, how can we improve? This brings me on to the next paragraph...
Improvement. There is always room for improvement. Constructive Criticism and feedback is always good because it shows us how we can be better the next time around. The hardest part for our team was just thinking of an idea. It took us a whole 45 minutes, almost an hour, to plan! Well we first took about 30 minutes thinking of the idea, and we spent about 15 minutes creating a shot list. Even though it took 15 minutes to create a shot list, we found it very useful while filming. However, will there be enough time to create a shot list in the real STN competition? Maybe, maybe not. Perhaps instead, for future practices, we should just sketch like a 3 minute storyboard just to have an outline of what the PSA will look altogether and also as a reference while filming. It also took us a long time to just come up with an idea. I know that we have to be able to come up with a unique, reliable idea, except those take a long time to form. I don't know how to improve on trying to create an idea faster, so if you have any tips, please! We had a technical error while filming, and the reason why it happened is still unknown. Our group used Sennheiser microphones 7, DXA-SLR Mini Box 3, Canon 60D #5 camera, and Rode Mic 3. Whilst filming the scenes, we used the Sennheiser Mics (and the Mini box) to pick up the Nat sound from Nicole. There was a bunch of hiss/static in most of the shots! Some of the shots audio were fine, but others weren't. This happened while recording voice-overs (for the message and the phone call) too. We tried it with the sennheisers and the box, and when the problem still occurred we tried it with no box, yet it still happened. So, we tried using the rode mic but there was still static/hiss in it! Since every single solution we had tried failed, we decided to see what it would sound like without any mic, just the camera built-in microphone. Ironically, that was the best voice-over recording, it had little hiss but had noticeable echo in it. Our group can try to figure out what went wrong so that we can improve our audio in the next practices. These are some things that our group can improve on.
In conclusion, our first STN practice went well. The team I was on, or the PSA team, collaborated well. I'm working with great people who are easy to get along with, which is essential because this whole thing is a group-team effort. The outcome was okay, but like I said, there will always be room for improvement. Our group can improve in planning and audio. If you'd like to watch the videos from the first practice, click here, but I'll have the PSA video below. Well, that's it for my blog! Thanks for reading! Bye!
First off, I think the PSA team worked well together. Everyone had their own role, their own job, and no one was left out. But even if everyone had their separate roles, we all worked together as a team. Everyone on the team got involved and contributed. When we were first given the prompt, we spent about 45 minutes planning. Working together as a group, we created a final idea by instead of choosing one specific idea, we compromised and put all of our thoughts together into one everyone liked. Reaching consensus with our group wasn't an issue. Our final idea was that a person (who was played by Nicole) spends an awfully extensive amount of time on her electronic. Then, an anonymous call (who was from Angeline) tells Nicole all these negative things about using your electronics too long. Nicole then listens to the Anonymous person and puts it away. There was no arguments or fighting; our team worked well. However, there were times we had to compromise, especially while editing. Despite that, both Nicole and I had the teams best interest in mind, and we both listened to each others thoughts. The PSA team worked well together.
I think our team did okay for our first practice. Our PSA ended up being exactly 30 seconds, not anytime over or under which was good. Mr. M said he liked the variety of shot compositions and angles so we should continue with all the other practices. I think our PSA got the message across to the audience. However, what would it have looked like if we made the caller I.D. from the Mom instead of anonymous? I think it would have been more realistic and convincing if the call was from her Mom, instead of anonymous. But the question is, how can we improve? This brings me on to the next paragraph...
Improvement. There is always room for improvement. Constructive Criticism and feedback is always good because it shows us how we can be better the next time around. The hardest part for our team was just thinking of an idea. It took us a whole 45 minutes, almost an hour, to plan! Well we first took about 30 minutes thinking of the idea, and we spent about 15 minutes creating a shot list. Even though it took 15 minutes to create a shot list, we found it very useful while filming. However, will there be enough time to create a shot list in the real STN competition? Maybe, maybe not. Perhaps instead, for future practices, we should just sketch like a 3 minute storyboard just to have an outline of what the PSA will look altogether and also as a reference while filming. It also took us a long time to just come up with an idea. I know that we have to be able to come up with a unique, reliable idea, except those take a long time to form. I don't know how to improve on trying to create an idea faster, so if you have any tips, please! We had a technical error while filming, and the reason why it happened is still unknown. Our group used Sennheiser microphones 7, DXA-SLR Mini Box 3, Canon 60D #5 camera, and Rode Mic 3. Whilst filming the scenes, we used the Sennheiser Mics (and the Mini box) to pick up the Nat sound from Nicole. There was a bunch of hiss/static in most of the shots! Some of the shots audio were fine, but others weren't. This happened while recording voice-overs (for the message and the phone call) too. We tried it with the sennheisers and the box, and when the problem still occurred we tried it with no box, yet it still happened. So, we tried using the rode mic but there was still static/hiss in it! Since every single solution we had tried failed, we decided to see what it would sound like without any mic, just the camera built-in microphone. Ironically, that was the best voice-over recording, it had little hiss but had noticeable echo in it. Our group can try to figure out what went wrong so that we can improve our audio in the next practices. These are some things that our group can improve on.
In conclusion, our first STN practice went well. The team I was on, or the PSA team, collaborated well. I'm working with great people who are easy to get along with, which is essential because this whole thing is a group-team effort. The outcome was okay, but like I said, there will always be room for improvement. Our group can improve in planning and audio. If you'd like to watch the videos from the first practice, click here, but I'll have the PSA video below. Well, that's it for my blog! Thanks for reading! Bye!
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