Thursday 23 December 2010
Production- Final Magazine Review Page
Below is a bigger copy of my magazine review page, as seen in my Prezi presentation;
Wednesday 22 December 2010
Monday 20 December 2010
Production- Final Film Poster
Below is a bigger copy of my final film poster, as seen in my Prezi presentation; 
Sunday 19 December 2010
Thursday 16 December 2010
Production: Recording my narration
After going over the content of my narration with my parents, to check that they thought it gave an accurate representation of our daily lives, I started to think about how I would record it.
My class mates had suggested that I record myself talking tot he camera in a 'video diary' style and then intersperse clips of me with the footage of Matthew. However, my film is already almost 4 minutes long and with the maximum length being five minutes, I was concerned that this would leave me with even more editing to do! I also decided that recording just a voice narration would be quicker, so with my deadline approaching fast, it seemed like the best option.
I still used my camera to record the narration, but I didn't intend to use the footage of me talking, just the sound. I set it up on a tripod in order to film myself and managed to do it in one take! There were a few mistakes, but these could be edited out in iMovie later.
When I started to put my narration over the top of my film, I realised I needed to cut it down slightly, as there were some clips of Matthew where I wanted to keep the diegetic sound. Thankfully I only had to cut out the odd sentence here and there to make it fit.
My class mates had suggested that I record myself talking tot he camera in a 'video diary' style and then intersperse clips of me with the footage of Matthew. However, my film is already almost 4 minutes long and with the maximum length being five minutes, I was concerned that this would leave me with even more editing to do! I also decided that recording just a voice narration would be quicker, so with my deadline approaching fast, it seemed like the best option.
I still used my camera to record the narration, but I didn't intend to use the footage of me talking, just the sound. I set it up on a tripod in order to film myself and managed to do it in one take! There were a few mistakes, but these could be edited out in iMovie later.
When I started to put my narration over the top of my film, I realised I needed to cut it down slightly, as there were some clips of Matthew where I wanted to keep the diegetic sound. Thankfully I only had to cut out the odd sentence here and there to make it fit.
Monday 13 December 2010
Production: Beginning the Final Cut
I noticed that a lot of my clips were still quite short and snappy, which was frustrating as I wanted the main action over which I would have my narration to be longer and to flow easily. Then I got the idea of having a few quick clips of Matthew, with the sound of his 'Leap Pad' over the top. A leap pad is a noisy toy that Matthew has on himnearly 24/7 so as a family we live with the constant noise of it. Due to his ADHD, he never lets it play one sound for very long so it often just omits short bursts of sound. These quick bursts of sounds paired well with the snappy clips of Matthew. In order to do this I had to extract the audio from some of the clips of Matthew playing with his Leap Pad in the car
Initially I started the film of a clip with Matthew being given his medicine. I thought that this would grab people's attention. However, Ms Casson suggested that I didn't use this clip frist, as it made him look ill. I then tried to pick clips that introduced Matthew's special needs gradually.
The video below shows the finished introduction to my short film
This video is much higher quality than my videos of my edited footage. This is because instead of choosing the option 'share for web streaming' I chose, 'full quality.' This has greatly improved the picture and sound quality of my footage.
I aim to get my final cut completely finished by the end of the week.
Wednesday 1 December 2010
Planning: Second draft of narration
Following the feedback I receieved from my classmates about my footage and what they would like to know about Matthew, I decided to do a second draft of my narration. I think it needs to have more information about how it effects our daily lives... somethings that I would consider quite mundane seemed to interest them!
It's hard to explain to people what Matthew's like and how severe his special needs really are. Basically his autism means he can't communicate or more accurately doesn't see the necessity... It's strange really, because there's so many times throughout the day where Matthew's trying to tell us something, but he's just pointing, making noises and we don't know what he means... so he gets angry which makes us frustrated... sometimes I feel like shouting at him 'this would be so much easier if you could just talk! Can't you see you need to?!' But I guess his brain just doesn't work that way... His learning difficulties mean he'll probably never learn to communicate like other people his age. Right now, aged 14, Matthew can only say single words. This doesn't mean he's quiet though, he's always making noise, but not anything that resembles a sentence. It's hard to put a sort of 'mental age' on him because, admittedly he can't read or write or count to ten, but he's clever in other ways... I think he's got more intelligence than we give him credit for. His ADHD is the simplest one to describe, it just means he's hyperactive; can't stay focused on one task for more than 5 minutes... if that.
Living with Matthew isn't easy. He's very challenging in lots of ways. His behaviour is quite unpredictable... it can make going out in public quite a difficult and embarassing experience as he just has no idea about what is and what isn't socially acceptable. Because he doesn't like change, his days have to be very structured... he has a clear routine and we can't just randomly decide to go out as chances are he'll just refuse to co operate. If he feels disturbed by something he tries to maintain a sense of order, so he'll start trying to boss me and my parents around.
He's become much more controlling... I think that's what I resent the most, how much control he has over everyone in the house... We either do it his way, or we don't do it at all! Most of the time it's just easier to let him have it his way than to suffer the consequences.
When Matthew gets anrgy, his tantrums are horrendous. He doesn't have them all the time, but he goes through phases where he'll have an outburst at least once a day. Those times are the hardest.. for everyone. We don't even always know what's brought it on because obviously, he can't tell us. I just feel so helpless. I normally just hide up in my room while my mum and dad deal with it. I wish I could help but they say they'd rather I didn't get involved because I'd just end up getting hurt. When he's in that sort of state he just sort of destroys everything in his path; he'll break furniture, lash out at me or my parents; he gets really violent. He's violent towards himself as well... it's almost like he realises that something's wrong with him and that's why he feels this way so he takes it out on himself. It's horrible to see Matthew like that.
He makes me really angry, sometimes. I know he can't help it, but I don't want to always excuse him as some of the things he does are just so out of order, but at the same time he's my brother... he's my only brother and I love him. Underneath all the anger and frustration that he directs at us is vulnerability, he needs us. I do feel very protective towards him because he can't fight his own battles, he needs people to fight for him. And that's me, that's my job. I'll always look after him, always be there for him. Always.
It's hard to explain to people what Matthew's like and how severe his special needs really are. Basically his autism means he can't communicate or more accurately doesn't see the necessity... It's strange really, because there's so many times throughout the day where Matthew's trying to tell us something, but he's just pointing, making noises and we don't know what he means... so he gets angry which makes us frustrated... sometimes I feel like shouting at him 'this would be so much easier if you could just talk! Can't you see you need to?!' But I guess his brain just doesn't work that way... His learning difficulties mean he'll probably never learn to communicate like other people his age. Right now, aged 14, Matthew can only say single words. This doesn't mean he's quiet though, he's always making noise, but not anything that resembles a sentence. It's hard to put a sort of 'mental age' on him because, admittedly he can't read or write or count to ten, but he's clever in other ways... I think he's got more intelligence than we give him credit for. His ADHD is the simplest one to describe, it just means he's hyperactive; can't stay focused on one task for more than 5 minutes... if that.
Living with Matthew isn't easy. He's very challenging in lots of ways. His behaviour is quite unpredictable... it can make going out in public quite a difficult and embarassing experience as he just has no idea about what is and what isn't socially acceptable. Because he doesn't like change, his days have to be very structured... he has a clear routine and we can't just randomly decide to go out as chances are he'll just refuse to co operate. If he feels disturbed by something he tries to maintain a sense of order, so he'll start trying to boss me and my parents around.
He's become much more controlling... I think that's what I resent the most, how much control he has over everyone in the house... We either do it his way, or we don't do it at all! Most of the time it's just easier to let him have it his way than to suffer the consequences.
When Matthew gets anrgy, his tantrums are horrendous. He doesn't have them all the time, but he goes through phases where he'll have an outburst at least once a day. Those times are the hardest.. for everyone. We don't even always know what's brought it on because obviously, he can't tell us. I just feel so helpless. I normally just hide up in my room while my mum and dad deal with it. I wish I could help but they say they'd rather I didn't get involved because I'd just end up getting hurt. When he's in that sort of state he just sort of destroys everything in his path; he'll break furniture, lash out at me or my parents; he gets really violent. He's violent towards himself as well... it's almost like he realises that something's wrong with him and that's why he feels this way so he takes it out on himself. It's horrible to see Matthew like that.
He makes me really angry, sometimes. I know he can't help it, but I don't want to always excuse him as some of the things he does are just so out of order, but at the same time he's my brother... he's my only brother and I love him. Underneath all the anger and frustration that he directs at us is vulnerability, he needs us. I do feel very protective towards him because he can't fight his own battles, he needs people to fight for him. And that's me, that's my job. I'll always look after him, always be there for him. Always.
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