Contextual Studies: Movie is up and ready to be watched on Youtube.

So everyone uploaded the film on Youtube so everyone, I mean EVERYONE can watch it. People all around the world can watch it too haha.

So here's ours.

Here is the behind the scene of our movie. Warning: It's really funny haha

Enjoy!

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[17/12/2013] 2 Dimensional Design: Outdoor Music Painting.

This was the most fun I had out of all the things we have done this semester because it involves painting and colours! Miss Lisa asked us to prepare 2 canvases where one is a 50cmx60cm and 60cmx90cm big, bring our own paint (acrylic, poster colour, water colour, etc.) and prepare a music playlist to listen to.

Maegan was in charge to choose the songs. So she chose from indie to mainstream to k-pop and the guys were in charge for the audio/speakers. We planned to do it outdoors but it sort of rained that day so we decided to do it indoors which was at the studio and the corridor.

We started at 3:30pm and spent about 3 and a half hours painting for the 60cmx90cm canvas.
I, myself did a painting of the famous Jackson Pollock's drip paintings.

Some of example of his works I admire.

I've always wanted to try doing drip painting and I finally got to do it.

I started by painting the background with a dark paint which I used the "JO SONJA'S ARTIST'S GOUACHE - VELVET MATT FINISH ACRYLIC GOUACHE" type of paint colour olive green. Then I started dripping several bright paint colour onto it. I really like how it turns out. 

The second one was on a 50cmx60cm canvas which we took 1 hour to paint on it. For this one, Miss Lisa played her choice of classical music and we paint according to the beat of the music.

Mine turned out like this.

I sort of called it "Bunch of Mess" painting because I wasn't so sure what to paint so I just paint bunch of shape onto it, but of course according to the rhythm of the song. I think I should have used more colour on it since it look sort of dull.

After we completed everything, we had the chance to bring it home and hung it on the wall. I showed it to my parents and my sister and they loved the first one more! My sister even took it and straight away hung it on her wall in her room hehe.

Here are some of my classmates' works they did on that they as well. (sorry if the picture is a bit blur, I used my phone to take the pictures)

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[16/12/2013] Contextual Studies: Individual Report.

My group finally completed the whole film, the only thing left is combining ALL the scenes into one and exporting it out so the audience can view it tomorrow at the film screening. Now I have to write an individual report on my video.

After watching the completed video, I feel like we succeeded in making the whole narrative work throughout the whole film. How everything goes smoothly with each other, the message we're trying to put out gave everyone the suspense at the end. No one expected that Elle (Eka) was the one that murdered Adauza (Fauza) and Zara (Farah) this whole time. We even asked the audience during the film screening that if they knew who killed the 2 of them before we showed the real killer and they all thought it was either me or Eka. So we pretty much received a lot of positive reviews from them. My members were really worried that they were gonna get bored of it since the first few minutes of our films are just basically us talking with the suspense being at the end. One thing I was proud was how the editing skills. We were bunch of students who doesn't know how to edit a video and became bunch of students that's able to call video editing our own personal skills.

So first of all here's our poster.

Through this poster people can tell that it's about cannibal because of the message being sent trough the choice of image. 

You can see that someone (because of the human fingers) eating another human hand. Hence, the meaning behind cannibal itself-- Human eating human flesh.

The quote "They're after you; They're after us all" relates to the cult we put in the film. "The Butcher" is the cult in our film. So this cult is basically trying to take over the human society.

and why we chose "SILENT MURDERS" as our movie title is because how the murder is so silent that no one suspect that their own group of people that's been killing people.

Taken from my group mate, Annabel. I'm gonna talk about the few components we used for this film.

1. The character portrayed by the actresses.
- All 5 members in this group has their own character to act out.

1. Eka -- She's known as Elle in the film. She's a physiologist. She get's along with everyone and with her charming personality everybody wants to be friends with her. Her friendly and social status with everyone totally blindsides the fact that deep down Elle has a different alter ego that may be the biggest plot twist in the story.
2. Fauza -- She's known as Adauza in the film. She's a neurologist. She was brought to the team by her cousin. Alex. She's the nicest and sweetest of the group and also noble and kind. Adauza's shocking and gruesome tragedy really hit everyone hard as she was the least expected person for the tragedy to occur.
3. Farah -- She's known as Zara in the film. She's a pathologist. She was the one who has always dreamt all her life to bring the dead back to life. Her interests and passion bought the team together and the tragedy that occurred to her will remain an unsolved mystery within her colleagues.
4. Ching Hsin -- She's known as Serena in the film. She is Alex's secretary. She's the only person that has gained Alex's trust as they have worked together for a long time. Her naive and bubbly personality brings a sense of comedy to the film as she is oblivious to what is actually happening.
5. Annabel -- She's known as Alex in the film. She's an Electrical Engineer. She's the main character in the film. Alex may look mysterious with a quiet and dark personality but deep down she just wants to make sure all her colleagues are safe and will try to solve the murders one clue at a time

Everyone did a great job at acting out their characters. To be frank, even in real life, some of us has those type of personality. Maybe that's why it was easier for us to act it out hehe.

2. Audio/Soundtracks.
- For audio/soundtracks, we don't just simply choose any audio to put in the film but we actually search for it to make sure it fits with the genre of our film.

- Audio/soundtracks are as important as cinematography. As I quote "Matching songs to a film shouldn‘t merely be a matter of plundering the latest indie pop tracks, says David Jenkins. Successful soundtracks are eclectic and avoid clichés" I realize how it is important, too. It gives you the vibe of the film itself. It tells you how the scene is going to turn out like. It gives you the atmosphere of the scene.

- Here are some that were amazing and suitable for our film.

Brian Eno - An Ending (Ascent)



We used a few from the band "The Weeknd" because the song they produce somehow fit in our film.

The Weeknd - Wicked Games (Instrumental)



The Weeknd - High For This (Instrumental)



The Weeknd - The Morning (Instrumental)



3. Lighting and Environment. (Cinematography)
- The common thread of film noir lighting is low key lighting – a style called Chiaroscuro in the art world.  emphasized shadows and harsh lighting to create a sense of depth and volume/ trying to overcome the bland flatness that bright black and white film could have if there’s not much contrast. 

- Therefore, we focused a lot in lighting to create a contrast. Can be seen through a few scenes like this. Where we only 1 or 2 source of light.









4. Composition

- Composition are definitely important for filming.
- We focused a lot on composition throughout the whole film. Finding the perfect angles to film and such.
- One of my favourite angle were this.



- We got the reference from this



- This was a talking scene. I noticed how most dramas (Koreans) filmed their talking scene. They were mostly like this, like how they focused on the face of the person talking while the one listening were blurred out or sometimes they focused on the face of the person listening to film their expression while the one talking is blurred out and they'll do it over and over again but smoothly.

Overall, I think we definitely achieved our goal. We had a hard time throughout the semester trying to finish this film nicely. Our hardwork has payed off by the positive reviews from the audience and the "critic" himself. We are definitely not a professional film makers but we definitely did a good job in making one! Our goal was to make the audience have a suspense feeling while watching our film, and they really did! So we definitely achieved our goal.

I had a great time creating this film with my group mates and thank you Mr. Charles for everything!

References:

1. David Jenkins, 2013. How important is a film's soundtrack?. [online] Available at: <http://www.timeout.com/london/film/how-important-is-a-films-soundtrack>
2. filmmakeriq, 2013. THE BASICS OF LIGHTING FOR FILM NOIR. [online] Available at: <http://filmmakeriq.com/lessons/the-basics-of-lighting-for-film-noir/>

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[19/11/2013] Contextual Studies: Production 02: Report 04.

For report 04. We basically finished shooting every scene that was needed from our film...

So the only thing we needed to do was to edit the film and combine everything together and get it ready for this coming Thursday.

The editor Farah is working hard to combine everything together and she always show it to us to see if everything was okay. I'm glad that we have someone in our team that is good at editing, of course it's her first time doing this editing but she's got the skill to do it and the movie is turning out great!

We also did a discussion to do the hard copy of our group report.
Where we had to include

Report Structure:

• Cover Page (poster) + CD Sleeve
• Title and module with code (center) 1 page
• Group names and members (center) 1 page
• Table of contents
• Introduction
• Objectives : point form
• Synopsis of story/the story
• Contextual Study:
• Describe Noir, Cult and Storytelling
• Expected outcomes pre- production
• Storyboard
• Project timeline
• Team organization
• Process - week 1 to week 17
• Completion
• Post presentation outcome
• Conclusion : analysis
• References

Eka and Farah also did a few editing for our BTS/Bloopers video.
It has a scene of us doing Annabel's eye make up, a few NGs here and there where everyone starts messing up their lines.

F.

[12/11/2013] Contextual Studies: Production 02: Report 03.

Our Foundation batch, ALL Foundation batch went to Pangkor Island on the 17th of October 2013 til 20th of October 2013 as a part of Mr. Charles' class and Mr. Stephen's class.

We decided to film a scene here because it's nice to mix and match rather than just everything in campus/at someone's house.

So here we did the scene where me, Adauza meet up with Alex at our "usual" restaurant which we used our chalet's front port where everyone eats there to shoot this scene and while we were talking, Elle from behind came and interrupt our conversation saying she wants to join our project.

This is the setting of the place



This is how the whole thing looks like when were talking

Elle sitting at another table acting as the person who is spying on our conversation from behind



This is after she came and interrupted our conversation saying she is interested in the project and both us (Adauza and Alex) saying yes to her.





Before doing this whole scene.

They excluding me were exploring the island (not far from our chalet of course) to find an interesting places that they could film and they found this cool brick wall.









The camerawoman also took a few shot of the ocean waves and a few nature surrounding to use it in our film. Which you guys will see it in the complete film this Thursday.

Overall the Pangkor trip was amazing!

This is us in Pangkor!

F.

[15/10/2013] Contextual Studies: Production 02: Report 02.

I'm sorry for the lack of updates for this subject, we were all busy with other assignments especially Mr. Ernesto's since the dateline for his assignments were super close during this time, with the trips to Pangkor Island and Beijing being in between the dateline so everyone was trying to compute with both things.

For this report, I'm going to talk about the scenes we did in Annabel's house for the surgery scene.

It's the scene where we (Alex, Zara, Adauza and Elle) did a sort of a brain surgery to put in the microchip to make the body move. With the help of Annabel's sister, she got to be the person who is going to get the brain surgery and bonus she'll be in the film as well!

I think we did a good job in covering the top of the head so it looks more surreal. 

A closer look on it.

On the first picture, the lighting is focused on the head because that's where the important scene will take part. The neurologist (me) will be "cutting" part of the head to put in the microchip.

After that we shot a scene where the "cannibal" eaitng a part of Adauza's body. Sadly, due to circumstances and spoilers issues. We decided to not put pictures here because we do not want to spoil the suspense.

Other than that we shot the scene where Alex finds Zara's body. 

The last scene we shot was for the ending of the film which was............................................ nope not gonna tell you guys what it is, looks like you guys have to find out yourself by watching it this Thursday at Lecture Hall 10 at 2:00pm - 5:00pm. Note that the theme is formal so dress nice!

F.

[4/12/2013] 2 Dimensional Design: Create Your Own Monogram/Batik.

On this day, we had to published both our monograms and batik.
We were given 30 minutes to set up our monograms. So I chose a spot by the window to set up mine.
After setting it up, I feel like my monograms are mostly on office supplies heh.

Honestly, I am happy with my work.

Lastly, the result of our batik.

We hung it up on the window so people can see it clearly.

This is us!

F.

[29/11/2013] 2 Dimensional Design: Batik Trip.

This is our last group assignment for the semester.
It is designing our own batik design.

My group consist of me, Farah, Eka and Hidayah.

Our theme were Alice in the Wonderland minimalist costumes.

and here's my idea. A Japanese improvise minimalist costume.

Therefore, on that day we went to this batik place with my semester 2 April batch juniors.

This the result for my group's work.

Eka's

Fauza's

Farah's

Hidayah's

Here's how our day went.

Before going home, we took a picture with Miss Lisa.

F.