Winol Week 8 and 9- perfecting our packages

Like promised, I managed to improve my £20 food budget feature. It took quite a lot of time but I can openly say that I am very proud of it. Spending up to 13 hours a day at the university was definitely worth it. Editing was a lot more enjoyable this time as I could see it getting better and better. The main change I have done was shortening it extremely from 7 minutes to 3 minutes, making it less chaotic and more interesting. I got rid of boring pieces to the camera and I recorded a voice over- therefore I had a chance of telling the story properly. It made the piece look more professional. The piece was supposed to be based on the Channel 4 documentaries, I feel like I have reached the target. I think the feature had a clear point and it was explained well throughout the film. In the voiceover I talked about Poland to clarify where my accent was from. I also thought that the audience would be interested to hear some fact about different culture. II also decided to get an advice from Julie Rowles who works in the university canteen. She was very nice and wanted to help. She gave me a basic idea of what I could eat and how much it would cost me. I can honestly say that I could never afford to eat there for a week on £20. My favourite bit is the montage of a shopping basket being filled up with food. In the other piece I had a very long, boring piece of a self check out.

The structure of the piece was well planned. It started with an introduction to the camera, then the story was being told in the voiceover, I tried to stick to the point I made at the beginning. Then the piece ended with a conclusion to the camera. It was definitely the first feature I planned so well.

Things I have learned from improving my feature:
1. Always make a detailed plan before you go out filming AND before you start editing your piece.
2. Don’t try to use every single bit of your footage you have on the tape. Even if you spend 3 hours filming one thing, 2 seconds of it will be enough to make your piece interesting. Everyone will know that you have put a lot of effort and time into it.
3. Don’t complicate your life by trying to be more professional than you are. Simple things look professional and great if you use a little bit of your imagination.
4. Voiceovers are much better and more interesting than pieces to the camera. So try to use them as much as you can! 
5. Living on £20 a week probably be possible if you manage not to get tempted by takeaways!

Hope you enjoy it!

Students' Protest in London against increasing tuition fees

So I am in bed with horrible developing tonsillitis, while my friends are trying to fight their way through the big tuition fees increase protest in London. I have been following the BBC website and it just looks so terrific to me. When I heard about this event weeks ago, I thought it would just be an innocent and sophisticated protest, which would show how devastated we all are about this horrendous decision about University’s tuition fees being raised up to £9,000 per year, up from current level of £3,290. But it turned into a riot, or I would even call it a jungle. Anyone would get angry and upset, but not to this level.

The protesters are made up of university students and lecturers, as well as sixth form students. These sixth formers are the ones who are most likely to face the climb in tuition fees if it ends up happening.

Students found their way to Millbank Tower, where the Conservative Party is headquartered and smashed the windows on the main floor, and hundreds filled the entrance hall of the building. Police tried to beat back the students, but they seemed to be stronger. The ones that stayed outside set a fire outside the building. Protesters were throwing bottles and other items on fire at the police line. According to Sky News, 5 policemen and 6 students were injured and taken to 2 hospitals.

Now, is it actually a protest against dramatically increasing tuition fees or just an excuse to throw heavy things at the police, because in this situation it seems like they can? This surely isn’t the way to change the Government’s decision. And the injury of 11 people was certainly not worth it.

More importantly, did today’s devastation in London bring anything good into students’ life? I very much doubt they achieved what they wanted to achieve.

James Joyce- Ulysses. Chapter 15, Circe

Metaphors, Themes and Analysis.

Chapter Circe of Ulysses is written in a form of a script. It is quite a confessional piece of reading. The themes introduced to the reader are themes of love, power, masochism, and consciousness. They are presented in a way to help the audience feel the battle between mind and body.

Chemical imbalance is another theme that supports the literary elegance of Circe. Specifically, Circe be might be seen as a metaphor for Schizophrenia. The chapter grows in the same way the disease does. The beginning of the chapter remains similar to the beginning of it, for example there is a strong anxiety and the reader is introduced to the elements of paranoia. There are lots of fantasies and actions throughout the chapter, they all slow and then the reader can feel a general paralysis. The chapter then follows to the part when the characters have systematic delusions.. This progress goes in the exact way as the disease of Schizophrenia.

The parent- child relationship highlights the theme of unique love, which is definitely worth looking at in this chapter. The characters experience it in different ways, mainly because the relationships were overcome with guilt. Stephen grieves at the memories of how he used to treat his mother. Whereas Molly thinks of her dead son Rudy and the sweater she knit for him. Bloom tries to visualise what Rudy might have been like as a young man. Love remains very strong in all these cases. The fact is that the characters try to learn the skill of forgetting the pain. While Molly and Bloom try to get over the death of Rudy, Stephen is trying to forget the pain of how he treated his mother.

There is also a theme of masochism present in the chapter which presents a fall of power in characters’ life. A new character comes in the middle of the chapter, it’s a girl called Zoe who’s affecting Bloom’s fantasy. The speech that Bloom is giving Zoe on her smoking problem takes Bloom into his unconsciousness. The reality fades away and Blooms becomes a famous speaker/ politician in his dream. In the end, his power fails and he is sacrificed. It makes him feel very low of himself; his ego and self esteem go straight down. This has an effect on his failure even in his own fantasies. This shows that we don’t have any control over our unconscious mind but they way we feel about ourselves influences our unconscious mind- and that’s what we can control.

The variety of relationship such as between mind and body or reality and fantasy interact with each other in the way that the end of previous and the beginning of new fantasy fade away. It has a relation with the conscious and unconscious mind.

The relationships between fantasy and reality as well as mind and body reflect on the conscious and unconscious part of Circe. The metaphor for consciousness in the chapter is shown through the characters’ thoughts of resurrecting the dead. Stephen thinks of his dead mother, while Molly and Bloom’s think of their dead son, Rudy.

In conclusion, the chapter is quite confusing to understand but it is definitely significant to understand Joyce’s theory unconscious and conscious mind as well as Freud’s views on psychoanalysis which declares that even if you hide something in your conscious mind, your unconscious mind will always bring it back to you.

Winol Week 4- Halloween Trends 2010

Our feature made it to the Winol's bulletin this week! That's rather exciting. This week's feature was about Halloween's Trends 2010. Halloween is just round the corner, it is the time to party, wear costumes, and revert back to your childhood. The feature is supposed to help those who struggle to find their perfect costume this year.

Producing the video was rather fun, finding male and a female model was surprisingly easy. We were going to rent some costumes from the costume shop in Winchester but unfortunately that couldn't happen because the closest costume lending shop is in Southampton. Therefore we asked people who were willing to lend us their treasured costumes and we found lots of scary/ sexy/ sweet costumes for our models to wear on the day of filming.

We decided that the theme and the format of the feature will be different backgrounds for the same outfit, which was different to the last fashion show made in the studio. For example, we had a witch sweeping the floor outside a house and in the next shot we had a witch flying by the moon. I thought it was quite a good way to express the idea of each costume.

The costumes we had:

For the girl we had a cat suit, a devil, a witch Alice in Wonderland and Pocahontas. Whereas the boy wore a batman outfit, a vampire, a pirate and a devil costume. We also had lots of masks that we took close ups of.

Thanks to Google images we found many interesting backgrounds that went well with the costumes, such as a dark forest, a ship for the pirate, etc.

While editing, we mixed all the different backgrounds and costumes together adding music that puts into a Halloween mood.
I definitely enjoyed doing this week’s project. It was quick, interesting, easy to edit. There was only one setting, no audio. We didn’t have as many problems with putting it all into one good piece like we did last week. Last week’s feature was much more complicated and it involved many different scenes, setting and lots of talking. It was nice to do something simple but very effective this week.

Here is the feature, Enjoy!

HCJ week5- Sigmund Freud

Sigmund Freud was a well known as a founder of psychoanalysis, who believed that self-conscious emotions and childhood experiences- mostly those sexual in nature- have an effect on what we become.
Freud thought that our self love as a race was a barrier to science in three ways:
1. It stopped us accepting that the Earth wasn’t the centre of the universe.
2. Darwin’s theory of revolution
3. The conscious brain was not in charge.
The key point in Freud’s theory is unconsciousness.

Freud wasn’t the inventor of the conscious/ unconscious idea but he was the one who made it well known and popular. The conscious mind is when a person is aware of what’s happening in the particular moment, their thoughts, fantasies, etc. There was a theory that Freud called preconscious, which is also known as ‘available memory’. Freud found this theory by working closely with the conscious mind. His patients were aware that anything could be made conscious.

Unconscious is the biggest part. This is when people are not aware of what’s happening in the particular situation. It also includes things such as drives and instincts because they are not available to awareness.

Freud’s theory of human nature presents a division of mind into 3 parts:
Id- it’s got animal instincts, people grow up with the aim to fit in the society.
Ego- it’s responsible for adjusting our internal urges to the demands and limits of the environment.
Superego- tells us what’s right and what’s wrong- The Police In Your Head.
Ego and Superego help us survive adopt to the social environment.


The battle between the Superego, Ego and id can result in Repression. It includes:
Sublimation, which means turning sexual energy into something else, like art or sport.
Displacement, which involves shameful thoughts that turn you into something/ someone else.
Projection, which sends feelings onto someone else.
Rationalisation- more socially acceptable explanation.
Regression- returning to earlier stage of development.

Nietzsche- Thus Spoken Zarathustra

Nietzsche is a German philosopher. He was most recognized for his criticism about religion and the role he played in society and mortality. What makes Fredrick controversial by even today’s principles is so many people see him as a mad man while others see him as a mad genius. One thing can be said about him- he was a man always seeking the truth. He was very anti- religious and rejected any kind of religion. In his book Thus Spoke Zarathustra he said ‘God is dead. And we killed him’, which means that the society stopped being influenced by God.

Thus Spoke Zarathustra touched problems that are most central to modern civilization such as the advancement of technology and its effects on human’s spirit. Nietzsche plays with biblical elements throughout the book; however, the ideas in the book oppose the ideas in The Bible. For example, Jesus spent 40 days in the wilderness being tempted by the evil. He felt pain and hunger, while Zarathustra spent 10 years on a mountaintop being happily isolated from the rest of the world.
The main theme of the book is Ubermensch, which is a person with great powers and abilities.
‘Could you create a God? Then do not speak to me of any gods. But you could create an overman’ It seems like he almost desires to have a dictator who would have the will to power- It’s life’s next step for mankind because God is outdated.

An Overman as described by Zarathustra, is the one who is willing to risk all for the sake of improvement of humanity. In contrary to the last man whose sole desire is his own comfort and is incapable of creating anything beyond oneself in any form. This should suggest that an overman is someone who can establish his own values as the world in which others live their lives. This means an overman can affect and influence the lives of others. In other words, an overman has his own values, independent of others, which affects and dominates others lives that may not have predetermined values but only herd instinct.

An overman should be able to affect history. He will keep reentering the world through other people’s minds and affect their thoughts and values. Napolean who is highly admired by Nietzsche may be seen as an example here since he changed and created orders in Europe. What he did effects greatly in how Europe is today. This idea agrees with another of his most significant idea, the idea of the will-to-power.

Studen Survival- My 2nd feature!

In one of my recent posts I mentioned making my second feature that was based on how to survive a week as a student on a £20 food budget. Well, after days of filming, hours of editing and stressing over the audio levels, it is finally up on youtube! Yay! It has been such a difficult project. Hana and I put so much effort and heart into it.

We were very excited to begin with. Our plan looked just amazing! I was very looking forward to an upcoming week. I was definitely ready to take the challenge, even if I knew it comprised having to eat cheap, unhealthy and tasteless food for the whole 7 days. No one in the Finance Department was able to tell us how much roughly students spend on food weekly. The only way to find out was to ask them! From vox pops we worked out that the usual number spent on food weekly is about £20. That’s how much I decided to limit myself to. We decided to start the week off with empting my cupboards. Now that they were clear, the next step was to go food shopping. We rang Tesco Express Winchester to ask for permission to film in there, which we happily got.

The shopping bit so much fun. Running around and about the store trying to find the cheapest food/ basic values was actually quite difficult. We found some really good deals though.
From that day on, I filmed myself every day having a breakfast in the morning and dinner in the afternoon. Breakfast looked the same every day- coffee, toast with butter. That’s why we put only one shot of that in the actual piece. I tended to have lunches in the canteen, which was pricey. I’d usually come home but never had the camera to film it which was a shame! I tried to fill the audience in with what happened on the day by making a few video diaries where I talked about what I did/ ate.

To be totally honest, I wasn’t very happy with the final result. I imagined it would look much better than it does. My ambitions and expectations were much higher. We had so many technical problems during editing. We spent 11 hours at the university trying to put all the pieces together. When everything looked quite tasteful, it was highly disappointing to see the audio levels being very low. We couldn’t hear anything. The reason for it? We are still very unprofessional (even though, I believe we are getting there :-) ), instead of using radio mics, we were using only a microphone on the camera. We got the audio levels up somehow but it was hard work. It was still better than having to redo they whole piece again which we were advised to do.

The things I have learned from doing this project are:

1. Never, ever say the brands names while filming in the shop just in case it’ll end up looking as if you were promoting/ advertising the certain product. It unfortunately happened in our work and we had to get rid of it. It’s better not to stand near the signs promoting some products, just because you will have to get rid of it too.

2. Always- I mean ALWAYS use a radio microphone while filming a feature that includes walking and talking, or even talking in a distance. They camera microphone or even a gun mic will not pick up the sound very well. You will end up having to redo the whole speaking bit.

3. Eating cheap ready meals is not the best way to go. Just to warn you- They are tasteless.

4. Spending the rest of my money on alcohol and then filming myself while quite tipsy was quite amusing but left me with no money for the rest of the challenge. If you end up going to the pub with your friends while being tight on budget, either spend your money if it makes you happy OR just stick to soda water- it’s much cheaper!

I have written an article for www.Winol.co.uk and I will post it very soon.

For now- here my and Hana’s SECOND feature!

Remember not to be too critical because we really are still learning and I promise that our next features will be OUTSTANDING.

Enjoy!