AS Level Media Studies

After learning about what a mise-en-scène is, our teacher gave us an assignment to set up a corner of our room/house to make it look like a scene from a movie with a specific genre, then rearrange the mise-en-scène to make the corner look like another genre. I immediately thought of a rom-com and a horror/thriller as they are opposing genres. For the horror genre, I already had a clear idea: a detective who got murdered while investigating a murder case. I knew I had to add (fake) blood splashes, a knife with bloodstains, notes about the murder case, and a ‘top secret’ file. For the lighting, I didn’t want…

There were some photos that visually looked better with colour. These photos have more vibrant colours, making them more visually appealing and gives them life, so making it monochrome seemed like taking the life away, but also like I said in the previous post, the black-and-whiteness represents the stillness, like it is stopped in time, which I believed was admirable. There were also photos that looked similar with colours, and without. I noticed that the photos that look similar with colours and monochrome are with low-key lighting. They are both taken in the darkness (during night time), and therefore the background is dark, and even black. Something I am proud…

Final snapshots: Academically, the main thing taking monochrome snapshots helped me learn is the fact that I find the combination of monochrome + snapshots extremely appealing because they allowed me to focus on things like camera angle, type of shots, and composition, rather than thinking of where to place props, waiting for the perfect moment, or just worrying about aesthetics. Monochrome photos are something I will definitely use in future exercises and my final work. I am aware that to some people, these photos may seem depressing and lifeless, but I believe that the absence of colour in photos or any media forms allows the audience to focus on the…

My teacher told us that these projects should help us achieve our final product, and said we can do mini photoshoots for images that could go in a magazine. This gave me an idea for this preliminary project. For my preliminary project, I want to capture simple and even typical moments in my life and use the skills we learned in class to make them ‘magazine-worthy’. I immediately started looking for inspiration photos and I came across these pictures on Pinterest. To research this topic, of capturing my life, I looked at LIFE’s articles, photo essays, and digital archive from its magazines. They capture the daily life of people from…

In this post, I took some photos using the different angles, camera shots, and composition we learned during class. High angles are typically used when the subject/object needs to be perceived as small, vulnerable, or even powerless. However, in some cases, high angles can show a broader view of the setting or just the distance between the subjects/objects. In some cases, such as in videos, the switch between high angle to low angle, and vice versa, are used to show the power dynamic between two character (who holds more power). 2. Rule of third In both of these pictures, the tree is the subject as it is placed at the…