Aiman's Blog

  We all agreed and decided on the DID narrative, and will work on it. The story revolves around a young man, named Ali. He suffers from split personality disorder and doesn't have much control over his actions or himself. One of his personalities is of an innocent, normal person who is rather friendly, whereas his other personality is a cold blooded murderer. His two personalities debate and clash with each other in terms of views, beliefs and actions and they have almost nothing in common, but the host body. The film opening sequence is supposed to show Ali's struggle, as the girl that he likes, who he is on good terms with via his good personality, is murdered by Ali's other (cold) personality.  I organized this information in a narrative style that both explains the story and plays out the events in order.  Who Am I? Ali, a patient of split personality disorder, is sitting on a park bench, under a tree, holding a diary in his hands. The page has “You have to kill he...

 This video activity helped us understand the camera movements, angles, and shot sizes more in depth, as it was the first practical implementation of the practices that we had only verbally discussed and seen examples of. This allowed us to get more familiar with handling of the camera, editing, other functions.  We can use this experience to further improve our future practices.

 Here is an attempt of a video practice by my group and I. 

  One of our group members, Rushaan was assigned the task of editing the video. He first edited it and showed us the draft. We were unsatisfied, and then discussed the shortcomings of the draft. He then worked on omitting the errors and edited another final product. We were all satisfied with it. He used Premiere Pro to edit the video.

 Preliminary Task; Pre Production First we all sat down and discussed the task assigned to us. We discussed the narrative and the camera angles, movements and shot sizes we required. Then we wandered and I found an actor, Jahanzeb Babar from A2, who was kind enough to agree to act in our video. Then we recorded the footage. Then the video was edited, through several stages of modification.

 Another narrative idea was discussed. It was regarding a psychological thriller. The main character suffers from a split personality disorder, or a Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID).  The narrative is yet to be developed and established fully. For now, the seeds are sown.

  We discussed the narrative I wrote with our teacher. He appreciated the idea, however, he warned us that practical implementation of this may not be as easy as we might've assumed it was. He told us that the production cost might be higher than what we expect, and showing the flashbacks would also be difficult. Moreover, 2 minutes might not be enough to present the entire aimed opening. The props, such as costumes are also difficult to arrange. A group member of mine, Zuha suggested certain modifications in the idea. She proposed that we could show a doctor, who is accused by a male psychopath for killing his wife instead of saving her life, although, the wife died on her own.  We have yet to develop our idea until we are completely satisfied.

 Representation in Film Openings. With the evolution and development in media, representation has become very significant, and changed from being limited to diverse. This diversity refers to showing people from different races, different genders, different ethnicities, different classes, different sexualities, different age groups and people who are disabled or differently abled. Films are also supposed to highlight a plethora of social issues that exist in the world.  By the diverse audience, film openings are expected to have a diversity in the social groups. Film openings may have a conventional or stereotypical approach, such as showing a weak woman who is a housewife and dependent on a man, or a black man who is involved in street crimes, or a Chinese teenager who is good at math and only cares about studies and is basically a nerd, or a gay man who acts feminine and hangs out with females mostly, or a disabled person who constantly relies on other people, and an old pers...

 Age Representation In Media: In class, we discussed how in media, different social groups are shown, and all have a degree of representation. The representation could be based on traditional, stereotypical views usually, but in certain cases, can even go against the stereotypes.  My group was assigned Age Representation in Media. Notes for the presentation:

 Genres and Their Openings One of the key purposes of the opening sequences is to establish a genre. How a film opens could tell the audience a lot about the film genre.  Genres usually have conventional openings, with similarities to other films of the same genre.  Horror movies usually open peacefully or calmly. This is also referred to as the "calm before the storm". The openings usually calmly foreshadow something, and then, gradually, there is a build up to the suspense and the horror events. Horror openings usually use establishing shot to set the time and place, and in the opening, introduce the main character(s) that have to experience the foredooming events. Sound also plays a vital role in the horror genre. The producers know how to play with the sound; the alteration between silence and blasts of sound. Conventionally, in openings, there is silence, quietness, and little to no sound. Then sound effects such as jump scares catch the audience off guard and s...

  We all decided to come up with our own ideas for the narrative at this stage. Here is my initial idea. A female police officer who had contributed to getting a very dangerous serial killer arrested, and locked up. We won't directly show it, but we can show her awards and accolades she received for this task. and we can show a short flashback scene of the serial killer being arrested. We can call the serial killer the man with the axe, because of the violent, gruesome nature of his murders.   She wakes up. She's preparing breakfast when she gets a call. It is a colleague who helped on this case. He says there's bad news. She asks what it is. He tells her to check the news. The news says "serial killer on the loose; the man with the axe escaped from prison, and left a note saying he's going to seek the ones responsible for getting him locked up." The woman panics and starts gathering her important files and important stuff, and the car keys to get somewhere sa...