The major task - the 5 minutes documentary

This is the final draft of my documentary. Compared with the first draft, I have changed a lot of the part and also I have corrected all my grammar mistakes.

The minor task - the poster

This is the finale look of the poster:

The minor task - the website

Here is the link to my website:
https://2781275809.wixsite.com/studyabroad

Creative critical question 4

For this question, I made a magazine article. The question is that "How did you integrate technologies- software, hardware, and online - in this project?"

Here is the article:

Creative critical question 3

Question 3 is "How do your products engage with the audience and how would they be distributed as real media products?"

For this question, I made two Powtoons since I could not finish in one Powtoon. Here are the Powtoons:
Part 1

Part 2

Creative critical question 2

For the creative critical question 2, I have made a Prezi. The question is: "How do the elements of your production work together to create a sense of 'branding'?

Here is the link to my prezi:
https://prezi.com/view/gR9LPJuzqjWBpihFmpVt/

Creative critical question 1

The question is "How do your products use or challenge conventions and how do they represent social groups or issues?". For this question, I used a voicethread to talk about my products.

Here is the link to the voicethread:

https://voicethread.com/share/12344741/

The draft of the documentary and feedback

This is the first draft of our documentary. We got some feedbacks of the documentary and there are lots of things that we need to change.

Firstly, since our target audiences are both Chinese and other countries people, we need to add captions in order to make all our target audience understand what we are talking about. For the Chinese captions are fine as I know what I need to write, however, I made lots of mistakes on English captions, such as some grammar mistakes and some spelling mistakes. As a result, I need to change it.

Secondly, in the facts scenes and the question scenes, we just put both Chinese and English captions in it, which make the scene look really crowded, and also it may be hard to read as there are too many words. As a result, we may need to add voiceover.

Thirdly, in the documentary, we only put the music in one scene where the other scenes have no music. The reason of this is because we did not know where we could put the music and what music we could put. And this makes the documentary seems to be quite boring.

And Finally, most of the scenes in the documentary are the interviews of our main character, Cynthia, we may consider to remove the last part, which is about the misunderstanding, and replace it with some scenes of Chinese students stay together. This could make the documentary be more interesting.

The second draft of the poster

As in our first poster, we only put on the Chinese title, but our audience also contain the international audience which may not understand Chinese. As a result, I need to put on the English title as well. However, as I want to use the same font style in all our production, I need to use the photoshop again to remove the background colour, which looks like this:

This is the English title that I have already removed the background. And I put it just below the Chinese title:

Now the problem of title is sorted, however, I still not put the credit yet. Also, another problem is that the tagline in the poster may be too slight and therefore the audience may find it is hard to read. As a result, I also need to sort it out. Moreover, I think I might need to change the size of the poster as it looks a little bit narrow, if I put in the credit, it may looks too many words in it.

Website making - the Forum page

The Forum page used to be the discussion page, however, when I installed the Forum, I found that the page is formed, and therefore, I change the name of the page.

These are the pictures of the Forum page:

As our documentary is about studying abroad and also about the misunderstanding of studying abroad, I have created two topics which could make the audience to chat about: one is the study abroad forum which the audience could give their experience of studying abroad here; another one is misunderstanding which the audience could give their experience if they have been misunderstood by the others while they are studying abroad. I think I may not change so much as this is already what I wanted.

Website making - the information page

By today, I have finished my information page of my website, which looks like this:

I made three parts in this page, which I have used same background colour as I have used in the home page in the information part. As there is meaning in the colour, for instance, the red colour represents China while the blue colour represents the UK. Also, to make the background links to my topic, I used the picture of my main character and two pictures of the school in these two countries. The page seems to be really simple, but I think this makes the page look clearer and the colour and the pictures could represent different countries, which was what I want. As a result, I think I may not have many changes on this page.

The first scene recording

For the start of our documentary, we decided to be an online scene of people's commentaries. It is found on ZhiHu where people put on the questions and their opinions and other people could leave the comments and their opinions as well. As our documentary is about students study abroad, and there are still some misunderstanding of this groups of people in China, we think it will be a good start if we put the misunderstanding at the beginning.

As my computer is Dell, unlike Macbook, Dell does not have the ability to record the screen, it could only make screenshot. To get the online scene, I used an app which is called "ApowerREC". It is an app that is particularly used in recording the screen, and it could make me to get the online scene.

This is the app that I used

And this is the basic form that what it looks like (it is in Chinese)

At the start, I just randomly scrolled it down by my fingers:

As you could see that scrolling down the screen by fingers is quite unstable. Even though the speed seems to be fine and I could change it while editing, however, it is too unstable that some parts of the scrolling are too fast, some parts are too slow, this will increase the hardness of editing. 

Therefore, instead of using my fingers, I click the 'pagedown'  on my keyboard and make it down:

It might not have too many changes, but I think it actually look better than the first one. Although the speed may be faster than the first one, it is much stable. And the speed problem I could solve during editing.

Also, as this is a Chinese website, the comments are all Chinese. For our secondary target audience, which is the foreign people who are interested in, we will add subtitle down below. And we will make the subtitles to stay longer which could ensure the audience could see it properly. However, we might still speed it up for purpose (as we want to make the speed be faster and faster and suddenly turns into black).

Website making - a small change in information page

While I was making the information page, at the start, I was thinking about to use an interactive and the audience could just simply click the arrows on the side and change it to different topics. For the background, I used to think about using this:

It is a collabration of a Chinese school and a British school, and I made this by using Photoshop. The reason that I tried this is because we used to think about combining two schools from different countries together, when the audience click it, it could change. However, I could only make them combined together like the picture has shown. And when I put it into the page, I found that it is too bright and too complex that the audience may be hard to read the text on it, and this may make the audience feel uncomfortable as it may be too complex.

As a result, I changed my mind and I used strips instead. And I separated the school pictures as well.

The picture of the Chinese school

The picture of the British boarding school

Production diary 7 - the additional footage

We took some extra footage because when we started editing, we found that there are still some footages we need to take. Also, we think we need to refilm the interview scene of Cynthia since the quality of the original one was quite poor. As a result, we refilmed the interview and also filmed some extra footages that we need.

 These are the shots of the interview that we have refilmed. In the original interview scene, we only filmed in one angle. And this time, we use two cameras to get two different angles. But Melissa has made a mistake that she forgot to turn on the microphone and therefore we could only use the sound filmed by another camera that has not use the microphone.

Theses are the walking scenes. The reason that we filmed these scenes is because that we want to put the facts during these scenes, and we could also link the title scene and the start scene (the website scene) since it shows that the character is walking to the location of the title scene.

These are all for the title scene, and our main character has shown during this scene. One of the reason that we show the upper body and then the whole image of our main character here is because we want to make the audience realise the connection between our three productions: the poster, the website and the documentary. In the other two productions, we show our main character in this location, and so we also decided to show our main character with the same location in our title scene.

The typography of title

As our first target audience is Chinese people, we need a Chinese title. And to make it becomes more Chinese style, we use the font style 'black board newspaper's typography' in Fotor (which is a website that is used to make poster). Since this typography could only be acceptable in Fotor, and I could not find it in Premiere Pro and Wix, but we still need this typography for our title, I got an idea: to make it as a picture with no background, and it could also place in those two apps freely.  However, a problem is that if I make the picture on Fotor, it will have background colour. To solve this problem, I use Photoshop to remove the background. And here is the steps that how I did it.

First, I opened the Photoshop and it showed like this. Since the language of my computer is Chinese, this affect the Photoshop's language which is also Chinese, therefore, I will explain it clearly.

Then I copied the coverage, and here there are two coverage. After that, I used the quick selection tool which I circled it out by red pen in the picture. And I select the main part, which is the title. 

 Next I clicked the reverse selection buttom, and the title showed like the picture below.

After that, I just remove the background colour, and I closed one of the coverage. Finally, I got the picture down below.

As it still has the background colour, I repeated the process before, And finally, it became like this:

 Most of the background colour is removed, and now I could put it into my other two products freely.

The poster

As Melissa and I are working as a group for this portfolio, when I was working on website, Melissa made the poster for our documentary.

And here is the poster.

For the background, we choose the statue in our school and also with the building which is the domitory. The reason that we choose to take the picture at the front of the statue is because the statue is a sign of our school. Also, to show the narrative, we let our character wear uniform for the costum. And we let her bring her bag and hold the books and folder, all of this showing that she is a student. Moreover, as she is a Chinese student, let her stand in a Western school again show our narrative of our documentary that it is about Chinese students studying in a foreign school. 

For the typography, we use a blackboard poster font for the title, which is more likely to be a Chinese font style. And the reason of using white is because in China, we often use white chalk for teaching, this could link to that. 

Our tagline is "travel is never a matter of money, but of courage. - Paolo Coelho."  Even though here is travel,  for the Chinese students, studying in a foreign country is quite similar as travel that courage is more important than money.  And therefore we choose this for the tagline.

Production diary 6 - interview of Mrs Allen

Today, we interviewed the EAL teacher Mrs Allen, who is often associated with international students, espacially Chinese students, and we think we could interview her about view of Chinese students and their daily life.

Since we worked as a group, we could filmed in two different angles by each person holding a camera. Therefore, we have two angles of the interview shot:

 The is the side shot that Melissa filmed the left side of Mrs Allen.

And this is the shot that the camera is face to Mrs Allen's face. As I need to ask questions, we decided to use the tripod to hold the camera. However, after we filmed the whole interview, we found that the camera may put a bit lower than we want. But I think it may still be fine.

For the location of the interview, we decided to film in Mrs Allen's classroom, as this is a place that could simply tell the audience that she is a teacher. In the both angle shots, the background could show this is the classroom.

The second draft of website

After getting more footage of our production, I made some change of my website and it is nearly done that it is really close to the finale website view.

This is the new front page of my website. We still made a video for it, however, it is not like the previous one that just put in the pictures, this is more like a trailer that we edited some footage together and mainly focus on our main character - Cynthia. Also, we added the Chinese title as our primary target audience is Chinese people, and we used a really 'Chinese' style typography. Still we put the English title but slightly smaller as the Chinese title is more important. Moreover, we put the tagline on the top right, that is "Travel is never a matter of money, but of courage - Paolo Coelho." This may give the audience a sense of our documentary that what we are talking about in the documentary, what story that we are shown here. And I put the release date at the bottom and it is quite small, as I don't think it is really important and I don't want to cover the video behind.

Here is the information part and I didn't change so much, I just change the colour of the container of "UK's Educaton mode', as I want to make it fit the colour palette that we chose for all our production. 

Under the repeater, I put this picture which is similar to what we put in the poster. Not only because it could let the audience make a link to our poster, but also as in this picture, the location is in school and our character is wearing uniform carrying books, which just show our narrative. I think this is a good picture and therefore I put it inside.

There is not many change here, but I am now thinking about the app that I used for discussion. I used to think about using Forum for this part, and I think I will still use it, however, I'm now thinking about to add the link to a social website which is called 'zhihu' (in Chinese is 知乎). This is a Chinese social website (and app) that people asking questions on it and people could make comments and having discussion on it. The reason that I think about it is because our target audience involve Chinese people, and Chinese people may not know how to use Forum, zhihu for them is more familier. As a result, I think I might add the link to the questions that I create for the topic.

By getting more footage, now I could put the pictures into the Gallery part. As we might still film some more footage, we might add or change some pictures in this part. And the final part, contact, I didn't change it because I don't think that I need to change anything here.

Overall, my website is nearly done, but still I need to finish the pages of discussion and information. When those pages are finished, I think my website may be done. 

Editing plan

As we have nearly done our all filming, we start thinking about our editing. And I used Vizzlo to make a long process diagram about the editing plan.

Here is the plan:

Although I made a plan (or it could be seen as an overview) for editing and filming, it may still be different to the final production as we may change during editing and filming. But it is good to make a plan first as we could know what we are going to do and make.

Production diary 5 - previous footage

In this production diary, it is not the pictures or footages that we took today, but the footages that we have taken from previous day till now. I have already put most of them, but some of them that filmed by Melissa I still have not put on to the blog.
These footages are mainly the scenes in dining hall:

As during that time, it was Chinese Luna New Year, in dining hall, there was a banner with "Happy New Year" in Chinese. We filmed it because we thought it

This is a shot when Cythia was waiting in a queue, which is the things that we will do in dining hall, queueing for lunch or dinner.

Normally, Chinese students would like to stay together in the dining hall, which just same as the picures shown. To make the audience know clearly that who is the main character, we filmed some close up focusing on Cynthia.

These are the shots which Cynthia and other Chinese students playing together. Although these are really good footages that we could use, we might not use it in our product. This is because that we filmed it in a vertical way, and the shots look narrower than other footages. If we put it into the documentary, it may look weird.

I think these are the all footages that I didn't put on the blog. Even though now we have more footages than we used to, we may still have too few footages that we could put into our documentary. Therefore, we might still need to film more footage or we may focus more on the interviews.