Welcome to my blog about film and cinema. I am a student at MAST Academy taking AS Media studies, and in this blog I am going to analyze and explore many different genre’s of film, from action movies to documentaries. In addition to exploring the multitude of parts that go into filming a movie, I am going to work with a group of 3 other students to produce my own short films. My final task will be to make a 2 minute film opening, followed by a creative critical reflection. I am very excited to continue my exploration of media and film, and I know I’m in for a great year in AS Media studies.

Before beginning AS Media studies, I knew almost nothing about film. After a few classes, I began to realize just how in depth directors go to capture even a single scene. I learned about the many types of shots, from long shots and close ups to panoramic shots, and I researched the importance of lighting and how it sets the mood for a scene. After 3 introductory classes, my peers and I were assigned a short movie to film, and my first adventure into the world of film began.

My group and I, after learning about the production of a short film, created a storyboard outlining the plot of our film as well as the type of shot we would use for each scene. Our movie was set in MAST Academy, and documented the story of a trouble-making student who gets disciplined by his teacher after falling asleep in class. It was a fun and educational experience to film my first movie, but our group did encounter a few issues:

• Our setting limited our options, as we were not able to leave the school campus, which led to our group choosing to film in our classroom.

• Background noise interfered greatly with the audio in our short film because we did not have a microphone to single out the actors’ voices, so the sounds of the rest of the students in the classroom constantly interrupted our story.

• Editing the movie was confusing at first, but my group and I soon figured out how to crop our movie’s scenes in iMovie, and even added some special effects, an intro and credits.