Magazine, MEGAzine?

TV and Magazines! I definitely can't live without them! As long as I'm free, if I'm not 'fighting' with my dad for TV, then I must be locking myself inside the room, either facing my laptop or reading magazines, most probably. OR even reading the magazines WHILE watching TV! Have you try that before? Multi-tasking FTW! 

I think the habit of reading magazines came from my mum's saloon. The seats in a saloon always need to be filled up with magazines so that the customers can read them while dressing their hair. My mum's saloon has all sorts of magazines, Mandarin, Malay, English, Japanese, Korean, Thailand and etc. Me, I always go to my mum's saloon and work as a part time cashier (of course, no salary lah, she's my mum what!) and honestly, its pretty boring at times but luckily I have bunch of magazines to read, they're definitely my saviour! I don't even need to worry about what to do if I ever finish reading those magazines because IT WILL NEVER EVER HAPPEN. My mum's saloon can be treated as a magazines store because all the magazines are always up-to-date. Thanks to the sponsorship of her customers for providing second-hand magazines.

Even though I have so many FREE magazines to choose to read from, but then I still can't control myself from buying the magazines that I really love (the ones that my mum's saloon doesn't have :( ). Yes, the pictures I've shown above, Japanese magazine with the brand 'ViVi' is one of my favourite magazines. The one who is reading this right now, if you do not like Japanese magazines, then I'm really sorry but I really love them, so I'm gonna talk about them! 

I started to spend my pocket money on buying this magazine since I was in the age of 15. I believe you know why right? Most of the teen girls in that age range will start to love dressing up themselves, putting make-up and so on to make themselves look gorgeous. I believe guys do the same too? Especially styling their hair! 

ViVi magazine really taught me a lot of things, even now, I'm still learning (well, of course not academic stuffs). Every single page of the magazine shows attractive tops, pants, skirts, dresses and so on. Those can guide me on how to choose right clothes for myself. I remember that I started to put on make-up since I bought myself the first ViVi magazine. It teaches how to make-up STEP BY STEP, and recommends the right cosmetics.

I remember at first when I bought it, it was available in Japanese version only. Meaning to say, I could only see the features or pictures of the magazines. But then, that was already enough to attract me because I really love FASHION. This year, the ViVi company finally made the magazine available in English. :)

Hell yeah! 'Seventeen' even though I'm not 17 anymore! This is also one of my favourite, no, its every teen girls' favourite. By reading these both very different magazines, it really show me a great contrast between those 2 magazines. Japanese magazine shows me more things related to fashion and make-up. 'Seventeen' shows me more on famous models and celebrities. Mostly teaches me how to dress like a celebrity by following their sense and trend. 

WARNING: CRITICISING ALERT!

There are some other magazines which I had read before but I'll never buy them unless its free (from my mum's saloon :D). I think its a waste of money if I buy them. Why say so? Its because some of the magazines, almost all of their pages are full of advertisement. I really hate that a lot, I mean I don't mind if the magazine contains some advertisement for its revenue, but then if majority of the magazines' pages are about advertisement, that's not even call a magazine. Well, I'm not gonna mention the names of those magazines, come on, this is a blog man :O

Movie in Minutes

Ya, it's just what the title said. I was given a video assignment in which I need to shoot a video with the duration around 10 minutes, containing a crossed genre of Sitcom and Drama. Before this, in our lecture, Mr. Hardip had shown us a few videos that his students had done in the previous semesters.

Watching those videos, I'd been inspired by watching some of the works done by the students in the previous semesters. They started to lead me to some ideas for my video shooting. But.. At the same time, my group mates (Lucas, Elida, Tiffany and Isaac) and I would want to produce something really different and stand out from the others' productions (Well, we hope so.)

In order to produce something really worth-watching, skills like good camera angles and shots are really needed. Half way thinking of the more detailed storyboard, there are some camera angles which we wish to include in our video.

The Extreme Wide Shot:

This shot usually only appear a few times in a movie or film. We planned to shoot some parts of our video in Kuala Lumpur instead of just get stuck in Selangor. In this case, it's necessary to have Extreme Wide Shot as it can portray the location where the shooting take part in. 

The Shoulder Shot:

Seems familiar? Yeap, that's a snapshot from the movie "Titanic". This is considered as a 'must-have' shot in our video. I think it's really important to include this shot because we will have many 'face to face' talking between 2 people in our video. This shot is mainly for those talking scenes where it can help focus on their face expressions and speeches. The camera will be focused on one person/character only. Moreover, you can see that the other person (normally, the one who is not doing the talking) will only be shot from the angle of his/her back shoulder and its gonna be blur, because its meant to be  emphasised on the other character.

The Medium Shot:

Mainstream but crucial. This shot usually appear for the most times in a movie or film as it is the shot that can include the character together with the background, showing where the scene is. For example, scene showing a guy rushing in a hospital. This shot is useful because it can portray the object, his or her action and the background of the place.

As you know, we're required to do a cross-genre video which contains Drama and Sitcom. We are mainly gonna focus on the genre 'Drama'. Of course we're gonna save some spaces where the sitcom comes in. How are we gonna do that? Well, basically just like some dramatic movies, there are always some comedic parts appear, but not majority. Same thing goes to us, in between, we will insert some funny actions or talking into the video.

I'm a person who really like to watch videos online, on YouTube, because its FOC :D But don't get me wrong, what I mean by watching videos on YouTube are the short films which contain storylines (e.g.: Unfold by JinnyBoyTV), just like watching movies but in minutes. You get what I mean? By watching those videos, I think they can really inspire me and give me some ideas on how to shoot a good quality video with great angles.

The few YouTube channels that I'd subscribed are Wong Fu Production, JinnyBoyTV and The Grim Film. Their short films are really getting more awesome day by day. Below are some of my favourite short films produced by them:

Sincerely, The End by The Grim Film.

Too Fast by Wong Fu Production

Unfold by JinnyBoyTv (check out their part 2 too, gonna be up soon)

Anyway, I couldn't mention all the skills and shots that I'm gonna use in our upcoming video but what I'd mentioned are the significant ones.