Weekly Progress

 This is the weekly progress for the music video project.

Week 1:

In the first week were grouped by Mr. Nick for the project, and my group mates are Panji and Bamz. Then we started researching for the song that we want to choose. Our first choice was R&B, then we found 5 R&B songs for us to examine.

Problem: The roles and skills in our group are almost the same.

Solution: Learn how to do other things like storyboarding, cameramen, and be better at acting.

To do: Make 6 or more research projects.

Week 2:This week, we focused on learning about media ecology and the five types of convergence. We also continued working on our music research. 

Week 3: This week we still continue the research and I done it at night just on time and submit it.It was tough as theres lot of homework too and football training.

Week 4: We started the project with the statement of intent, we managed to make it done on time, as we all participate and did a nice job. And talk alot about how we will shoot our video.

Week 5: We started learning about persona which is how the actor look differently in the video and real life, it was pretty interesting. Then also we make a persona classwork that will be put in our blog.

Week 6 : This week me mostly work in project and also we have our UA. I like project lesson where we talk about our scenes in the future.

Reflection: We did nice this term and I hope I can improve and do better.

Semester 2 Term 3:

Week 1: In this week we just came back to school after the holiday, and we learn about theory of stardom where there is 5 stages which is success, ordinariness, compsumtion, love life, and downfall.We also make a classwork where we need to find 1 artist and connect it to this theory of stardom.

Problem: I haven't done the classwork

Solution: Don't delay it and do it 

To do: Get the work done

Week 2: This week we learned about post colonialism and colonial gaze. Where post colonialism show at how media is still shows non western people through old colonial ideas, and colonial gaze is from the western pov that think othe races is less powerful.

Problem: Doesnt really understand, since Im excuse and cant come to the class

Solution: Ask friend and teacher about it

To do: Read more about it and understand it

Week 3: This week we learned about power and the media and new theory which is fandom theory and death of audience theory. On fandom theory there are 3 types of fans level which is semiotic, enunciative, and textual. And for death of audience theory is about how audience expectations have changes about the media.

Problem: Choose a Kpop fandom and then answer question

Solution: Do it right away

To do: Submit it as a classwork

Week 4: This week most of our lesson is doing our project like completing all of the blogs and finish editing, while also asking for feedback from our teacher for improvements.Although Im excused because of football matches, I still communicate on the group chat and help with the blogs.

Problem: Excused because of football matches and miss some lesson

Solution: Be more active in group chat to ask what am I missing and help them with the blogs.

To do: Finish the work that I need to to

Reflection: I always delaying on making the weekly progress making me sometimes forget about what were doing in that week and make me stress.Next time I need to fill the weekly progress faster and not delaying it.

 

My Team

 This is my team for the music video project

Brief

 This is my brief for the music video

Pre Production : Preliminary Research

Final Documentary & Thumbnail

 This is my final video for the documentary

Video:

Thumbnail:

Creative Reflection

 This is my creative reflection for the documentary

CR 1 - How do your products represent social groups or issues?

CR 2 - How do the elements of your production work together to create a sense of ‘branding’?

CR 3 - How do your products engage with the audience?

CR 4 - How did your research inform your products and the way they use or challenge conventions?

Classwork

 This is a mind map of things I've learnt throughout media studies, primarily technical elements. Made By Gusde

Editing

This is our editing process and improvement

To edit this documentary, Im using capcut and I bought the pro version. To help me editing in more advanced way and access all effect and tools.

1)

This is our first version of editing, using all of the footage we got.

The feedback I got from the teacher is to add more effect like the glitch, and resolution on the body cam to make it a little bit blur and low resolution to add the realism. Also adding few sound effect that could help to add suspense into the scene, also by removing things that are not important, like too long question from the interviewer, and also the time when the interviewee think and waste a few second. And by adding more footage while the interviewee are still talking, so its not boring for the audience to watch.

I got inspired by seeing some documentaries which about crime, thriller, they're showing lot of sound effect to add suspense and other stuff that conform to a crime, thriller documentary, and one of them is 

Far War Cry opening scene, which also about a cult.

 

This in a new version with more improvements, as I got the feedback already. It is better because I try to put more of the footage and photos showing the cult to make it more interesting, rather than showing lots of the interview scene. Also I gave the effect on the body cam scene which is lowering the resolution and giving static glitch effect, as we want the audience to understand and know that its in the jungle, and its hard to get signals. I also removed the scene where the interviewee were asked a long question and just go straight into the point, because if I leave it like that, audience might get bored of just hearing that long question. Also I put Zoom in some photos and videos, to add suspense and make the audience focus only on that photo.

2)

This video shows where the subtitles are not consistent ,where it all have different size, our feedback to is to change the size and make it all the same, additionally change how the text popped out, where first one we use the typing effect, but Mr. Nick suggest to just put all the sentence without giving the effect of typing, to make audience easier to read and not making the audience in hurry to watch it.

I was inspired by looking at the Netflix documentary where the subtitles are clear and don't use any excessive effect, and just keep it simple for the audience to easily read it.

This how it looks, all of the text are already in same size, I also use a simple type face similar to Netflix, and eras the typing effect which now its much easier to ready and doesn't need to be hurry when reading it. This will help the audience to understand the meaning of the documentary better and doesn't miss information because its hard to read the subtitles.

3)

So this is the scene where the drone scene suddenly be shown out of nowhere after Zalfas Interview which is not match to Zalfas Interview or the plot of the documentary, Mr. Nick also said that it doesn't make sense and the context about the drone.In the drone shot, it shows that the drone suddenly crash because it hit the tree,but audience wouldn't know why did the drone hit the tree what is the problem actually until the drone was hit by a tree ans then fell down and stay still on the ground.

I was inspired by the other interviewee from Ambamovic and Fred,where every time they speak there is their own footage that is the eveidence of what they are saying and talking about,for example Ambamovic talking about the cult and the insider,then we showed the insider camera footage.

This is after we add 1 more interviewee which is the Hacker/Drone operator that worked together to investigate the cult with Ambamovic.In this interview the hacker explain in detailed about why do they flew a drone into the cult head quarters,and why do they crash into a tree is clearly explain in the interview,which now audience could understand about the drone scene.We also add hermeneutic code,which is from how we show the hacker with effected sound and we doesnt show the face, and only dark.In this new interview too,we add several camera angles which is from the side and infront of the interviewee,to make more variation and show to show important information when we shoot it straight infront of the drone operator.

Thumbnail (Research & Development)

This is our  research & development for our thumbnail crime documentary. This post is primarily written by Kenzo, although I (Lamiya) made a last minute change towards the whole thumbnail. 

 RESEARCH

This is how the overall crime documentary cult genre thumbnail looks:

Even though the thumbnails below are not from a crime documentary, these designs most likely fit with our documentary theme:

The purpose of a thumbnail is to capture the audience's attention at first glance and convey what the media text is about. It's some kind of a guide that helps the audience decide whether they want to click/watch, especially in big, crowded platforms like Netflix or YouTube. Matching the genre convention of the thumbnail makes the content look more legitimate and professional. Having a colourful, playful thumbnail for a crime documentary would defeat the purpose of having a crime documentary, as it misleads the audience from the intended content. In conclusion, a thumbnail is a visual hook that contains information regarding the media text, and the design must match the genre to avoid audience confusion.

Here are the three chosen thumbnails that will most likely going to be a combination in our final thumbnail:

Here are the two documentary thumbnails that caught our eyes at first glance. The Blair Witch documentary follows a horror convention of dark colour scheme, which emphasises fear through the use of colour red (symbolising blood and danger) and black, representing death or mystery, creating a powerful combination that evokes dread and anticipation in the audience who views the thumbnail. The font used in the Blair Witch is slightly worn out and has an uneven serif typeface, which gives a sense of seriousness. The genre convention this thumbnail gives unsettles the audience, suggesting something hidden happens behind the picture. I think the colour scheme and the font could be applied to our final thumbnail perfectly.  

                                                        

For the "In the Name of God: A Holy Betrayal" documentary, the thumbnail uses a typewriter-style font, which makes it journalistic and instantly gives an impression of a real-life investigation. The title highlighted the word "God" in red, which shows the danger and corruption. The colour red might also connotate blood, which may imply there might be murder or a bloodbath in the documentary. The pinned photograph connected by a red string on a detective investigation board is a common way for most crime documentaries to make the audience feel that they are piecing the evidence together as they view the thumbnail. Unlike Blair's Witch silhouette, in this thumbnail, we see the real faces of the cult leaders, which suggests that this event actually occurred in reality. We are probably going to add this to give our thumbnail a sense of realism.

                                            

For the final chosen one, we decided to take from a documentary called "Escaping Evil: My Life In A Cult" because this perfectly fits with our documentary theme. The font choice for "ESCAPING EVIL" uses a handwritten, brush-styled serif font that creates an emotional, first-person connection, unlike the other cold investigative documentaries. The font choice of "MY LIFE IN A CULT" uses a factual, clear and serious font beneath the "ESCAPING EVIL" storytelling type font. The genre convention of a group of women dressed in long robes walking to an isolated landscape connotes a secrecy with the fact that we couldn't see their faces, also showing the anonymity within the cult life. The thumbnail was taken in a wide-open, desolate environment tells the audience that it is difficult to break free from the cult. 

From these three chosen thumbnails, "Blair Witch" gives a greater sense of horror and less documentary from the use of the cult symbols and the disturbing colour scheme. "In the Name of God" gives off a more investigative crime evidence and documents. Highlighting the word "God" in red draws attention to the audience that there might be religion being twisted, which could probably be a good feature for our documentary thumbnail. "Escaping Evil" gives off a documentary of the survivor's story of personal trauma.

Here are the six ideas that I have sketched:

I decided to develop idea 4 because the corkboard instantly makes the audience feel that they are part of the crime investigation. The red strings connected to pictures of people show that there may be a hidden relationship or bigger scheme behind the scenes. The censored faces or the documents imply there is some hidden information within the investigation that the audience may want to solve.

Below is the research on our typefaces:

Typeface Research by Kenzo Susanto

Here is my first attempt at creating the thumbnail:

This will be the starting baseline of the thumbnail. Further improvements will be added. For now, I will use idea#4 as my reference for the thumbnail.

Here is the second attempt at creating the thumbnail:

I added more writing in red to give clearer information about what the board is about to the audience. However, some of the writings were off-placed and the colour grading was not enough, so I think I might fix that in the next attempt.

Here is the third attempt at creating the thumbnail:

I removed the off-placed writing and added some new elements into the thumbnail, such as sticky notes, black highlighter, red circled marker and a few dead plants covered in blood to give a more realistic vibe to the audience. I will plan to add darker lighting on my next attempt and do the final touches on my final attempt.

Here is the final attempt at creating the thumbnail:

This is Lamiya's attempt at the thumbnail: 

The final choice:
We decided to go with Lamiya's thumbnail as the majority of the group agrees. 

Below is the reason why we changed the thumbnail idea. This is taken from Lamiya's Post

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The first thumbnail, which was designed by my teammate Kenzo, used a detective board style with notes, photographs, red string and sketches. This is a clear reference to how investigations are often shown in crime media, and it does link to the crime genre. However, when I looked at it in the context of our documentary, I felt that the colours and busy layout made it come across in a lighter and almost playful way. The handwritten notes and doodle like sketches gave it a slightly casual look, which didn’t fully match the dark and disturbing subject matter of our documentary about a cult that does shady things and also kidnaps people. It also looked quite packed with different details, which can sometimes be harder for audiences to read quickly, especially when thumbnails need to be clear even at a smaller size.

first draft

Because of that, I decided to redesign the thumbnail myself. For the final version, I kept the design much darker and simpler, drawing inspiration from Netflix crime documentaries, which often use bold and minimal images that immediately grab attention. I placed the cult leader as the main figure in the centre of the thumbnail, with shadows covering her face. This makes her identity mysterious and creates suspense, as the audience is encouraged to ask “who is she?” and “what is she hiding?” I also added eerie hand drawn sketches that my teammate Kenzo drew layered faintly over the background. This detail connects to the idea of madness and obsession, but in a way that feels unsettling rather than playful. The darker tones and high contrast give the whole image a more professional and cinematic feel.

Final draft

When the two thumbnails are compared side by side, their differences show how the project developed. The first one communicates the theme of crime through investigation imagery, but it gives off a lighter tone. The new one focuses on mystery and fear, using simplicity and darkness to create suspense. Both designs have clear links to crime conventions, but the second matches more closely with the style and atmosphere of our documentary. This shows how our thumbnail design developed from being genre linked where it's just being creative with it to becoming genre accurate and emotionally effective towards the audience. 

Behind The Scenes

 This is our behind-the-scenes for our crime documentary. Kenzo made all the presentations however, there are some pictures taken by the other group members.

Media Studies BTS by Kenzo Susanto

Statement Of Intent

 This my statement of intent for the documentary