Unit 12- Specialist Study

INTRODUCTION

In this report I’m going to be writing a report on the work I have produced in the past six weeks towards my chosen discipline. This will include the personality report, skateboard research, my discipline research, experimenting and the practitioner report. I will be writing my report based on three questions, answering each question with much detail. In the past three weeks I have done further research into cinematography and found out lots I did not know about my chosen discipline.

REPORT

WEEK 6

I will be focusing on cinematography and in particular Sven Nykvist and Emmanuel Lubezki from the work I did in my practitioners report for week six’s work.

Sven Nykvist is a cinematographer who was born in December 1922 and died in September 2006. He was Swedish and considered one of the best cinematographers of all time. I would say his most famous films were Cries and Whispers (1973) and Fanny and Alexander (1982). Nykvist won the Academy Award for Best Cinematography for two of his films: Cries and Whispers in 1973 and Fanny and Alexander in 1982, both of which were Bergman films. At the 9th Guldbagge Awards in 1973 he won the Special Achievement award for his work on Cries and Whispers. He was also nominated for a Cinematography Oscar for The Unbearable Lightness of Being in 1988 and in the category of Best Foreign Language Film for The Ox in 1991. He also won a special award for his film The Sacrifice in 1986 at the Cannes Film Festival. He also wrote three books in the 1990s.

My second cinematographer I chose was Emmanuel Lubezki. Emmanuel Lubezki is a Mexican born cinematographer who was born in June 1964. He is known for his brilliant use of natural lighting and continuous uninterrupted shots. He won in his category three years running. In 2013 he won a award doing Gravity. In 2014 he won an award with Birdman and in 2015 he won a award in The Revenant.

When researching into these two cinematographers I made sure I found out every little detail like what they produced as a cinematographer and there favourite things to do. I really enjoyed researching into my cinematographers and my chosen discipline.

WEEK 5

In week five we did a very interesting task experimenting with our chosen discipline. Based on cinematography I decided with my group to focus on experimenting with lighting and pacifically blue lighting to represent cold and red lighting to represent heat. We worked in groups of four. We didn’t have much of an idea of what we was going to do but the whole point of experimenting is to try new things as we go along. We started off by experimenting with the lighting using blue and red covers for the lighting. Straight away after experimenting with these colours I knew this was the path I wanted to go down when experimenting towards my discipline of cinematography. We also used a high visibility jacket to make the model stand out amongst the lighting. We decided on a whiteboard for the background as the blue lighting reflects well off a white background.

 

WEEK 4

For week four I looked at two films one more in depth that the other. For this week I did comedy as my discipline as a start to coming up with cinematography.

The first film I picked is a triogly of films and my favourite comedy films. Meet the parents, Meet the Fockers and Little Fockers. I will be focusing on the first film what in my opinion is the best film. Meet the parents was released in 2000. It was the first film of the three to be made. For me what makes the film is the way its been scripted. Another big comedy film is Love Actually. I’m always seeing it pop up on TV and I would say its one of the best known and most watched comedy films of the 21st century. It features many big stars such as Colin Firth, Hugh Grant and Liam Neeson.

I also did some research into Charlie Chaplin. He was one of the main figures in developing comedy and is a icon to many comedians of the modern day. Hes also big in the film industry and again was a main figure of his time in making films what they’re today. He was most famous for his screen persona “The Tramp”. Charlie Chaplin wrote, directed, produced, edited, starred in, and composed the music for most of his films.

The point of weeks four work was to research more into my chosen discipline and narrow down what I wanted to do for my weeks five and six work.

WEEK 3

For week three we was required to research into skateboarding. The reason for this is to get us as a class out of our comfort zones and research into something we normally would not normally research. I found this weeks work really hard and struggled to write or find much research. I like to stick to stuff I find interesting and research more into that. Stuff like comedy’s, dramas and documentaries I find interesting to research as there’s such a wide range of stuff you can research. Of the little research I did I found two pieces of research.  I was asked to Google skateboards then add a word of my choice on the end. The worked I picked was Kent. Below I’ve included my two screenshots from my week three work to show what I googled.

 

WEEK 1 AND 2

 

 

For this work we had two parts to complete. First off we had to complete a personality survey answering questions what best related to ourselves. The whole point of this was to find out more about ourselves we perhaps didn’t know and to help get a understanding of who we was as a person. The survey would give me as a person a clearer understanding of stuff I might be interested in researching for my chosen discipline.

The results I got from the 16 personality test is that I’m a Defender. It says I get socially exhausted from social activities. I’m sensitive to noise and lots of things. Its says I’m down to earth, have strong habits and focus on what is happening. I’m sensitive and emotionally expressive, less competitive and I like to think. I like to plan and structure. I’m sensitive to stress and I’m a perfectionistic.

With the results I got I was surprised at how accurate the results were. All the results are very much how I would think of myself being sensitive to stuff and have strong habits of not going out of my comfort zone and struggling in social situations.

For the second part of the weeks work we was required to conduct interviews to find out more about a member of our class and for them to find out more about you. These interviews could be conducted by either filming them using a camera or recording them using a microphone to just have the sound element. We had to come up with some questions to ask what could be about anything of our choice. I decided to do a mixed bunch of questions to ask my partner. These ranged from ‘Do you like your workplace?’ to ‘What was your favourite subject at school?’. I felt with including a wide range of questions it would give a more interesting interview and would give my partner they chance to give a wide variety of answers.

MY FINDINGS

As the weeks went on I found out different bits of information about my discipline that I would normally not of considered. Before I would of never thought of doing cinematography as my discipline however after I researched into it more I found that actually this is a good subject to do and takes me out of my comfort zone just that little but. I found out lots of useful information to help me write this report such as researching into my practioners Sven Nykvist and Emmaunel Lubezki. Without researching into them further I wouldn’t of been able to write this report with greater detail.

As I’ve already explained when explaining about my findings for the skateboard task in week three I struggled to find out much apart from a few skateboard companies in Kent. If I had researched further into skateboards and stuff to do with skateboards then I would of had more research evidence to show and write about on this report.

Week one and two was a helpful week for finding out about myself and was very useful in helping me with the rest of unit 12 with my chosen discipline.

REVIEW OF WORK

I feel like I have struggled with certain aspects of the work over the past six weeks. I enjoyed weeks one and twos work but week three with the skateboards I found really hard as I didn’t have an interest in it at all and I just couldn’t engage with it. Week four was again a bit of a struggle researching into fear and comedy. I struggled to write much on that. Week five was my favourite week. I really enjoyed experimenting and loved using the different types of lighting to create different effects. I defiantly found week five the most engaging and interesting as it was the only week we got to do a practical task. I also found it easier to wrote about week five as I enjoyed it and knew what I was doing. Week six I found ok as I just had to find two people in my discipline and conduct a research task on them finding out what films they have done and all there work. I enjoyed this researching task the most out of any I have done for unit 12. I found out lots of information about my two practitioners and felt it was one of my better pieces of work.

When I go back and look at my work I do feel like I could of done more research and put more effort in. Its not that I couldn’t be bothered with the work its that I generally struggled with the work and I find it a struggle to ask for help as often I just stay confused and still don’t understand. The biggest regret is not engaging more with the skateboard task. Although I hate skateboards and don’t have an interest in them sometimes in life you have to research into things you don’t like especially in the media industry and I should of just got on with it and tried my best and maybe I could of found some good information about skateboards.

Something I must improve on is my referencing. As my work currently stands I have included any images or links from my research as the referencing side of it puts me off. I find it extremely difficult to reference everything especially using cite em right and Harvard referencing can get confusing at times. Referencing is something I must engage more with as its something everyone has to do in the media industry. Whenever you use something that isn’t ours you must Harvard reference it properly in alphabetical order. If you don’t Harvard reference something it could be classed as copyright and this can become a criminal offence. Referencing is something I must improve on and do if I want to include research material that isn’t my own. This is something I will work on for my final major project.

So overall when I go back and review my work and look at what I’ve done I do feel I could of done more to improve my work and I have struggled with unit 12. I should of asked for help so its my own fault. I will make sure I try my hardest and ask for help if I get stuck when doing my final major project. I will also make sure I put in 110% in my final project to create something I am proud of and something I am proud to show the class come the end of the year.