We were looking for information on female perspective versus the male perspective in writing. Instead, we came across an interesting program called “Gender Genie”. It was not exactly what we were looking for, but it occurred to us that this program could be used to test our story’s male/female point of views. We’re sure this program was probably not built to serve this purpose, but who’s to say it can’t be used this way?

    So, going off to find the sections we wanted to test out, we copied and pasted the text written in a male perspective; and did the same with the female perspective. The male point of view was predicted to be male and the female point of view, female. Although this program may be just for fun, it did somewhat settle us, giving us a sort of confirmation that the perspectives didn’t sound too “girly” when it was supposed to be male or too much like a guy when it was supposed to be female.

    Now, curious to see if this program could really accurately determine the gender of the author of a piece of writing, we decided to input a few pages of our formal writing into the text box—as it works best with 500+ words. It seems all our formal writing is significantly male so it failed that test (but then we have sneaking suspicion that analytical pieces would come out male for the objective, informative nature of formal writing—excuse the stereotyping). Then we tested out our blog entries. Out of eight entries, two came out female. It failed that test too.

    Anyway, it might be interesting to see if your writing comes out the way you expect it to come out. At the bottom, we provided the link to this algorithm. Simply input the text into the text box there, select one of the radio buttons (fiction, non fiction, or blog entry) and press the ‘submit’ button. We’ve been trying to find some formal writing—essays for example—written by females to see if most of them would come out male and prove our theory right, but have found little—actually next to nothing—published online.

We’d be interested to hear what you get if any of you have the time to post. Well, have fun!

RESOURCES:

Gender Genie
An algorithm developed to predict the gender of the author of a piece of writing.

Looking through some of our works in music videos we have come to realise that our music videos are rather simple and basic-looking: the final render has very little special effects, using only the basic editing tools such as trim and adding a few fades here and there to create the music video. But a music video that looks simple does not mean that it is any easier to make or that any less effort is required to make it. Even when making a simple music video with little special effects it requires quite a bit of thought and effort; it is not as simple as just a few edits of scenes and piecing it to music.

    So, for this entry, we thought we’d write about creating a music video and what we believe are some (but not all) of the important things to pay attention to when creating it.

Camera shots and position:

    When selecting scenes for our music video, we should take into account the camera shots and position of the selected scene. Because different camera shots and positions give us different information (for example, time, location, who or what our focus is, a character’s disposition, or even a character’s status in society), we need to study them and take some time to think about whether or not the selected shot or sequence of shots can be used effectively to tell the story of our music video.

    On many occasions, we’ve seen completely unedited scenes taken from an episode and simply “dumped” into the music video. It would seem that these music videos were attempting to use the meaning created in the episode and transferring it over to the music video to help create its meaning. Although the meaning/the author’s intentions of the unedited scene may be loud and clear for some (i.e. to those who have seen the episode the scene was taken from), for others, it may be just a sequence of shots that has no connection to the music used whatsoever. The result is one that reaches some and not others, or even worse, make no impact on the viewers and is dismissed as a poorly made music video.

Tempo and Mood:

    The tempo and mood of the piece are probably dependent on the piece of music we choose and the genre of the music video. So, for an action piece, we’d imagine we’d choose a piece of music that is faster, with lots of beats—whereas, for a romantic piece, we’d choose a slower song. For a faster piece, one would expect a lot more shots than a slower piece in order to capture the intensity of, one, the music, and two, the action genre. This would mean a greater amount of editing (as we’d expect more shots to be used) where the duration of the shots are typically shorter. So here is another example to why we cannot simply keep long sequences taken from an episode without editing it ourselves: the scene has been edited for the episode it came from, and not for the music we have chosen to piece it to.

Flow:

    As there are many genres of music videos out there, how the the scene flow from one to the next depends on the type of video we are trying to make. The point we want to make here is just that we should make sure our eye doesn’t jump or pop in and out unnaturally or dart everywhere as we try to watch the music video. To ensure that we don’t cause such an effect on our audience, we should watch our music video several times, even a dozen times during the editing process to see if it flows as the music video should.

    As a couple of tips, there are a few ways we connect our scenes. One is fade. Fades are probably one of the most used techniques to connect scenes, whereby we leave one scene by fading out and in to the next. Another way is to pay attention to the actions of characters and objects in the scene. We can use the flow of their motion—whether it be a glance of the eyes, a turn of the head, or a throw of a vase (for example)—to head into the next shot. Yet another way is to use the flowing motion of the camera and carrying on this flow of motion onto the next shot, making sure that this next shot carries on the motion and from a similar position it left off.

Facial expression and body language of characters:

    We’re not sure if people pay attention to such things, but we find that facial expressions and body language of the characters to be an important note to take when choosing our shots for our music video. Why?—because a smile (let’s say) does not only come in one form, but it comes in many: there’s the kind smile, the smug smile, the devious smile, the sad smile—well, we’re sure we all get the picture; and sometimes choosing the right shot with the right smile can greatly add to the music video and the story we’re trying to tell.

Mouth Movements:

    This is the last point we want to make and it is the one concerning mouth movements during sections of the song where there are no lyrics. Ideally, during sections where only instrumental music is playing, characters should not be speaking at all. Those who are strict on having no movement of the mouth during such intermissions will not tolerate it. But for those who are less strict, they may tolerate a very tiny movement of the lips. Either way, do your best to keep characters’ lips still during instrumental parts of the music.

Last Words:

    Before making a music video, it is probably a good idea to listen to the song a dozen times before beginning so that you understand its intending meaning. Once you get that, either use its intended meaning to create your music video or alter its meaning to tell your story. We also think that it’d be helpful to understand at least a little of how the different camera angles, positions, and other filming techniques are used to create meaning. Understanding “the grammar of television and film”—as a site so nicely phrased—it’ll allow you to use the shots to your advantage and create something that connects to the audience more. We want the people who watch it to go “Wow, that’s deep…”—well, not exactly like that, but we don’t want them lost because the shots we’ve chosen just don’t suit the music.

Further reading:

Camera Shots, angles, and movement, lighting…

A good place to read about the different camera shots and angles, camera movements, and lighting.

Cinema — Directing

A site that briefly goes into the different types of camera shots with examples of how it might be used to create meaning.

The Grammar of TV and Film

A nice site discussing the different camera shots, camera techniques, editing techniques, lighting, sound, and more. It also discusses how they are used and what effect/meaning they are trying to achieve.

In the past, most of our writing have been in third person point of view. But then one day, we decided we’d give first person point of view a try. As we switched to try the latter perspective, we found how different this was to the former. Not only was it different, but we found ourselves a little baffled as how to begin. So we decided we’d go off and do a little research on writing first person point of view before beginning. In this search for information, we came across some helpful things; and now we hope that this information we’re about to mention will help fellow beginners to begin your story in first person point of view.

  Some of us may think writing first person point of view is as simple as switching a few of those he-said-she-saids in third person point of view to I-saids in first person point of view, and everything else pretty much stays the same. But it’s not quite that simple.

  There are quite a few limitations when writing in first person perspective. One, where we were able to hop in and out of characters’ heads in third person perspective, in first person perspective, we can only focus on the thoughts and feelings of the character telling the story—who we’ll just call Joe. Unless Joe is an empath and is telepathic, all other thoughts and feelings can be mentioned only as speculation based on Joe’s reading of their body language, and cannot be written as fact.

  Second, we can only write what Joe sees. For example, if someone behind Joe is walking towards him, we must remember not to write these actions as if we can see this person approach Joe. We could maybe write that he senses someone’s approach if that is what he senses, but not state it as if he can see the person do it. It is also the same with hearing dialogue. If Joe is not within hearing range, has fallen asleep, or is unconscious then it should not be written.

  The above points seem very obvious, but we mention them because they are very common mistakes when switching from third person to first person point of view.

  There is one other mistake that a site pointed out that was not so obvious however. The mistake they mentioned concerns the phrase: “I blushed”. Can we say “I blushed”? This had to be thought about for a bit we’ll admit. But we soon realised that it cannot be written; because the fact is, we cannot actually see ourselves go red in the face. We can only see this blushing if we are staring at our own reflection in the mirror. So, instead, we should be writing something like: “I felt heat rise to my face”.

  To reiterate, if our character can’t physically be there to witness something happen or hear it then it cannot be written in first person point of view. Anything that is mentioned about other characters can only be mentioned as speculation and should not be written as fact.

  But, if it turns out that the story requires the disclosure of thoughts and feelings of other characters, or the story needs to move to many different locales without our character Joe being there, maybe it’d be best to consider writing the story in third person point of view.

  Having said that, there appears to be one way around it. With appropriate indication, it would seem that it is okay to switch to a different character’s perspective under different chapters, just not during a scene.

  One last thing we will mention is the excessive use of the pronoun, “I”. Excessive use can be very repetitive and boring so we should pay attention to our use of “I” and try to vary sentence structures to minimise this excessive use.

  We are sure that there are plenty more points we should also know, but for now, it is probably enough—it has been enough—to go on to start writing a decent story in the first person perspective without breaking too many rules. So we end it here; and hope that this has been helpful for fellow beginners—even if only slightly.

Happy writing!

Further Reading:

Fiction Factor – Me, Myself and I – Writing First Person Point of View

A good place to go to see examples of how to eliminate excessive use of the pronoun “I”. The site also shows an example of the common mistake people make when writing in first person point of view, and a couple of passages with similar content, written in both 1st person point of view and 3rd person point of view to illustrate their differences.

FictionAddiction.NET – Point of View: First Person

Defines the difference between the 1st person and 3rd person point of views.

BellaOnline: Point of View – Fiction Writing

Another useful site that go into the differences of 1st, 2nd, and 3rd person point of view. It also talks about a few pros and cons of writing in the different perspectives.

Write a Novel: 8. Narrative Voice

In the PDF that the page is linked to, it goes into writing 1st, 2nd, and 3rd person point of view. It also talks about verbal tense too.