This is the pre production and preliminary research for my music video
Wednesday, September 17, 2025
Weekly Progress + Plan
This is my weekly progress for my music video
-- Week 1 --
At first we got into groups temporarily to do research about our potential music video ideas, then we got a mini intro duction to media ecology on Tuesday to get us started after that. We did a proper introduction on Thursday what media ecology is and the 5 main points of media ecology we also started with our preliminary research.
- New technology competes with old (and replaces it).
- Every technological advancement = trade-off.
- Advantages/disadvantages never spread evenly.
- We shape tech → tech shapes us.
- Tech becomes mythic (irreplaceable)
We also got groups activities where we had to arrange prompts in the 5 main points of media ecology
and we also had a group activity about answering questions about one of the main points of media ecology and had to criticize other groups answers about the questions and highlight about what good or bad points was given in those answers
Problem: Research task is not done yet
Solution: Get it done when I need too preferably early enough to where it wont be a problem in the future
To do: I need to finish my research blog and finalize my group
-- Week 2 --
This week we had a deep dive into McLuhan's theory of media ecology with 5 types of media convergences
- Technological Convergence
- Textile Convergence
- Social Convergence
- Industry Convergence
- Regulatory Convergence
We also has internet problems when we wanted to watch a classmates chosen music with Youtube being down site wide.
We also learned about technological ages with the global village theory and how it applies to the internet as a whole, and how it affects everyone around us.
Problem: Youtube went down
Solution: we just waited
To do: finish the research blog
Tuesday, September 16, 2025
Final Documentary video and Thumbnail
This is the final video and thumbnail
Video
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1aU-i3o8TXUGLjQnmotvmHeNrg6tikqnH/view?usp=sharing
Thumbnail:
Creative Reflection
This is my Critical Reflection by Alex 12B
CR (Critical Reflection)
We had to make a crime documentary. We chose a school rivalry gone murderous, made for a predominantly teenage to young adult audience.
I made a sense of branding by making links with the documentary itself as we took heavy inspiration from the example crime documentaries Mr. gave us more specifically ‘What Jennifer Did’ the thumbnail was exactly what we wanted so we heavily based it off of the thumbnail as this also gave us peace of mind in not going out of our way to make a thumbnail from scratch. I also made a sense of branding by integrating the intense rivalry portrayed in the thumbnail (fig 3) and incorporating that in the video itself to correlate them together. This also coincides with the hermeneutic code of the antagonist which I portrayed as Rain and the antagonist which I portrayed as Hazel. This smoothly integrates with the desensitization theory as the repeated portrayal of “nerds” being pushed to do acts of violence for recognition has been repeated over and over again and will probably lead to the viewer to not sympathies with the victim.
Previously we used heavy inspiration from ‘What Jennifer Did’ for our thumbnail design (fig 3). We also conformed with the documentary practice of having interviews because it's a great way of giving exposition and context to the viewer while also being in line with what a crime documentary is. I used intense music to amplify the feeling and the intensity of the situation which is a convention we abide by because it was easy and adds a lot of character while being light on effort. We deviated from the conventional practice within crime documentaries of showing crime scene photos. This is because of Livingstone and Lunt’s theory of Media regulation where media regulators need to balance protecting viewers and giving the viewer a choice for what they want to see. We subverted this because my team didn’t get any crime scene photos at all. We had ‘What Jennifer Did’ as our biggest inspiration for the thumbnail and video as we pulled a lot from that crime documentary with its interviews and editing style and the use of intense music to hook the viewer in.
Our thumbnail engages viewers by integrating the Netflix logo, (fig 3) signaling professionalism and high-quality media to attract interest in our crime documentary. The contrast between Rain (rich) and Hazel (nerd) is shown through their backgrounds Rain’s trophy-filled shelves emphasize recognition and talent, while Hazel’s empty space highlights his lack of acknowledgment. Rain’s slight smirk and Hazel’s flat affect hint at their rivalry, reinforced by Hazel’s red, shadowed showing animosity and bottled-up hatred. Both wear typical school clothing, subtly indicating the documentary’s setting. The chosen typeface conveys the prestige and pressure of the school environment. Overall, the thumbnail applies Reception Theory, requiring viewers to decode the imagery to determine the perpetrator and the victim.
The social groups I included were Indonesian students who are predominantly teenagers or young adults because our actors are nothing but and it would be difficult to find another age demographic who will act the majority of the time. So in that sense we’re forced into an inevitable unchangeable demographic. We also chose rich kids, nerds and teachers. We depicted the rich kid as popular and also smart (fig 1). This correlates with the representation theory with stereotypes. Which is a subversion of typical depictions of rich kids at school in other forms of media at school which would be inept. We also depict teachers as attentive towards their students as I depicted her having concerns for the nerd and the rich kid who would ultimately be the victim. I presented issues of over competitiveness and where that can lead people to as revealed in the documentary murder, this teaches the viewer that in life this whole situation of being valedictorian in the grand scheme of things wouldn’t matter as they are teenagers to young adults, and the nerd ruined his life over it The technical elements include hand held shots of Rain’s friends playing with him showing that he’s popular, while in contrast with Hazel long extreme long shots of the CCTV of him alone in a classroom working on his notes (fig 2) showing that he doesn’t work well with friends or that he has very little friends.
(fig 1)
(fig 1)
Monday, September 15, 2025
Behind the scenes
This is the behind the scenes blog made by Kimora
Documentary opening behind-the-scenesThumbnail
This is the thumbnail for our crime documentary, it is made by Bams 12A
The software that I used would be paint.net as it includes simple features such as removing the background easily from images, being able to have a wide variety of fonts that can be used for our thumbnail and etc.
RESEARCH THUMBNAIL
Overall overview of most crime documentary within Netflix
Here are two examples of the thumbnails that interests us:
This is our start to our thumbnail...
More information is that when I started to use paint.net again and due to because that paint.net didn't have enough of the effects I had so the downside was that each time I had an idea to make the actors have more meaning towards them I had to switch back and forth to my editing software (Vegas Pro 18) to edit the photo and input back into paint.net. So this was technically the rough buildup of making the thumbnail.
Step 1
I masked out the paper overlay to match hazel's picture
Step 2
I delete the left part of hazel to fit rain into the other side of the picture to let it look like it is connected and it would fit our thumbnail like "Making a Murderer"
Step 3
I resized rain's image to fit into the thumbnail as previously it was too large and it wouldn't fit the thumbnail and make the thumbnail look stretched and compressed, which is not wanted in a thumbnail.
Step 4
Step 4
I added vignette to the image to show that there is some sort of dark side on Hazel and give it that eerie feeling towards Hazel.
Step 5
I added the black and white filter on Hazel and gives off a gloomy mood towards him.
Step 6
I added the left side of Hazel again to be able to mask Rain onto the thumbnail and this is the result I got from doing so...
Result
Result
I asked feedback from my team members and the teacher and due to the bad "ripped paper" overlay, I had to change the paper aswell as conform to other thumbnails such as the "What Jennifer Did" thumbnail from Netflix. The feedback that was given was that :
- The paper layer was too thick
- It doesn't show the emotions of the two characters easily
- The images were disproportionate
- The mouth and the clothing should match with each other so it looks like its connected
I took the feedback for the thumbnail and this is the final result...
THUMBNAIL :
The “ripped paper” effect down the middle suggests the different sides of people that could relate to the documentary as the audience would expect that the crime was caused by those two people. It also connotates that the left side which is Rain, the rich kid shows trophies and awards which is academic achievement, he is also seen using a light brown jacket this gives off that elegant vibe to him and the gold trophies behind implies that rich friend more. The right side which shows Hazel is in a deep red and shadowy filter this connotates violence, anger or possibly even obsession as Hazel was considered in the documentary to be fairly obsessed with getting valedictorian and studying. This contrasts heavily with the left side showing that it was bright and celebratory to imply that there was a cost or dark truth behind the success of becoming a valedictorian. We also decided to put the “N” (Netflix) logo to suggest this is a presented like a documentary so the audience would expect a serious and intense, story rather than something lighthearted. Thus, the viewers that would see the thumbnail would be led to feel curiosity, tension. Which hints that behind that polished image of a high achiever has a side of him that is evil.
TYPOGRAPHY :
For the typography, I used “British Green” font for the word VALEDICTORIAN on the thumbnail as it is often associated with formality and prestige which for the looks of Rain shows he comes from a wealthy family. This choice for the typeface reinforces the connotations for academic exellence and seriousness which fits the title of valedictorian. The title is also written in all caps, giving it that bold, commanding and powerful tone to the audience which could lead them to thinking like “ why is valedictorian that important to them both?”, “what conflicts did it cause? “.
The typography is also large which immediately draws the audience’s eye to the title before the details of the image, also the placement being a bit to the bottom left visually reinforces the conflict between the two people shown.
This is our crime documentary's thumbnail but inputted into the Netflix library to see how it would match with the other documentaries.
Monday, September 8, 2025
Filming Schedule
This is the filming schedule for our documentary opening. This was made by Kim and Eileen.
=> The scheduled filming for the interviews on the 20th and 22nd were cancelled because most of the cast weren't able to film and is rescheduled to monday 25th august.
=> The person that was supposed to play the role of the ‘rich student’ wasn't able to attend the filming for monday. So instead we just filmed the vlog with his friends only. We are planning to reschedule the shoot somewhere this week.
=> on monday 25th august, we were supposedly only filming the vlog, but we tried to film one of the interviews which surprisingly was a good result so we would consider using that as one of the used scenes.
=> on Wednesday 27th of August, we filmed Cavin outside at the school parking lot. We didn't have a microphone, so the audio quality turned out really bad since it was very windy that day.
So on the 11th of September we filmed it again with Bams, because Cavin didn’t want to re-film. We placed his phone in his pocket while it was voice recording, then we put the voice recording to the video so the audio is clear.
=> on the 27th of August we also took photos for the thumbnail. Both the characters we taking picture behind a blue background while using the same uniform, we then got feedback from Mr. Nick and he suggested having a different background and outfit for Rain.
So on the 15th of September, we reshot the photo of Rain. We did it in the school lobby in front of the trophies. Since this was a day before the deadline and it was a Monday, Rain was wearing the checkered uniform which was the same as the previous picture, to fix this we borrowed someone's jacket to cover his uniform.
=> on the 28th of August, we shot Ms.Nina’s interview in the counselor's office, however it was very loud because it was during dismissal time and we also forgot to shoot a video of Ms.Nina sitting down. So on the 8th of September, we reshooted her again inside a classroom in the teachers table. It was shot in the preschool building after dismissal time so there was less crowds.
This is the actor filming schedule made by Eileen
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)
-
This will be the place where all the editing documentation happens In the beginning the editing job was Arnolds duty where it took him a w...
-
This is Pre Production: Genre Research for my music video This is the Canva 6 genre researches https://www.canva.com/design/DAG1EyaSOp0/o...
-
This is my Weekly Progress and Plan for Comp 1 What Production Company are we picking?: I was suggesting to pick A24 to be the product...
