Multimedia Mise-en-Scene Character Project: Avery Norris

This past week, my group and I worked on a Multimedia Mise-en-Scene project where we had to take a one sentence character prompt and turn it into a full representation of that character. 

The character we created is named Avery Norris. She is a reserved college student who keeps to herself. To build her character, we used Pinterest as a resource to find with pictures that match her personality and interests while building a mood board. We also put together a playlist with music that we felt Avery would listen to, music that would her vibe.

When we set up our character station, we kept everything very simple to represent Avery. We included pictures of books, her setting, and the different interests that she has. Using these elements together helped us show her personality clearly and made it easy for people to understand what kind of person she is.

Looking back, I think our group did a good job of creating a clear picture of Avery. We worked well together and made sure every choice connected back to her character. One thing that could have improved our project would be adding some tangible items that could create a stronger first impression or first idea of the character. Overall, I am happy with our final result and how everything came together.

Playlist: https://1drv.ms/v/c/18962bea2175614e/EWjmcjh49MVMiXsNmLRme1kB91AxlCZR3l3BaRimvS8FQA?e=ZH7Obz

Mood Board: https://www.canva.com/design/DAG2DAaM4WQ/bAA8lKp6byCTKjGF-4ctVg/view?utm_content=DAG2DAaM4WQ&utm_campaign=designshare&utm_medium=link2&utm_source=uniquelinks&utlId=h5a9e986cc6

Action in Films

     Action is a genre in cinema that focuses on fast paced scenes, stunts, and conflicts. It keeps viewers engaged through movement, danger, and suspense. Some subgenres of action include superhero and spy movies. 

  Action movies appeal to a huge range of viewers, which comes from the adrenaline and suspense that the films carry. The biggest fans are those who enjoy thrill, competition, or stories about survival and courage.

The main characters tend to be brave heroes or skilled fighters, and the plot focuses around topics like saving someone, stopping a villain, or completing a mission. These movies have quick pacing, and sometimes have a few slow scenes. Some qualities are things like fights, chases, rescues, and also explosions. Themes that are common in action movies are justice, survival, and personal redemption, and the tone is usually intense.

As for production techniques, handheld and drone shots are used, while quick cuts are used to add to the intensity. Loud and layered sound effects are used, like gunfire and impacts. In things like trailers, the focus is placed on dramatic visuals and stunts, while posters show the hero facing the villain. 

A film that can be used as an example of this is Mission: Impossible - Fallout. It has big stunts, fast pacing, and a lot of suspense. In the movie, Tom Cruise performs his own stunts, adding a real sense of danger. The movie also has intense chases, fights, and combat to show that the stakes are high. 

Another example is John Wick. In the movie, it mixes martial arts with gunfights. There are long takes which make the action relatively easy to follow, and has intensity and suspense throughout the movie.

Some other examples include Die Hard, The Raid: Redemption, Mission: Impossible - the Final Reckoning, Skyfall, The Dark Knight, F1: The Movie, and Heads of State.

Sound Projects

 For the past few weeks, I've been learning about and experimenting with sound in media. I learned about how sounds are added as additional layers and how soundscapes are carefully put together. I also learned about the process of creating foley sounds. 

I then created 2 sound projects: for one, I had to create a soundscape without any additional video, and the sounds themselves had to tell a story. For another, I had to use the video that my partner and I created earlier (the One Word Film), and add a soundscape to that video. 

For the first project, my partner and I first had to brainstorm what the idea for our story would be. We had many, but none appealed to us as much as the idea of creating a battle scene did. We created an outline, where we outlined the different scenes that would take place within our story, and used that as a basis of what our project would encompass. The outline overall helped us stay on track and served as a checklist for us. We used Microsoft ClipChamp to create this soundscape, a resource we found very easy to use. 

In our project, we did a good job of getting the message across. The scene represented the story well. I think we could have improved the output by including a little bit of dialogue or words that added to the story.

This is the project: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1h69z9a7ZngBRqtMhNSG560u4EQTZwZj-/view?usp=sharing