Personal Profile

After submitting our 'It's Liverpool' film it was straight onto the next one, a personal profile of between 3-5 minutes showing an area of a persons life in an interesting way but here's the catch - no talking heads. One of our group members came up with 3 ideas based on people she knew:
Her dad's friend who is a fireman, her friend a jewellery maker or an actor seen in shameless. The majority of the group wanted to try and get the fireman and our tutor was also interested in the idea and so we started to set it up and hope to get some amazing shots, hopefully the fire truck would leave for a call out while we there!

Comedy?

This week in Film Language we looked at comedy and established that 

'If it bends, it's funny. If it breaks, it isn't.'

Rough cut for 'It's Liverpool' and more filming..

Unfortunately due to bad weather we were unable to get any other footage for our film before the rough cut edit and because of this we missed out on valuable feedback which could have helped out film, however that week we went out filming a lot and managed to get it all done and edited, here is the final piece, hope you enjoy:


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iLBOhWE3cmU&feature=share

Creating a Website

For Digital Media I am in the process of designing a website. To help us with this, the lecturers have given us tutorials on HTML codes and how to create them as well as how to use Photoshop and create a webpage through layers and positioning in Dreamweaver. If I'm honest I'm a literal amateur when it comes to this stuff, I've never used Photoshop until uni or created HTML's and although I was taught to use Dreamweaver at A Level I can only remember the very basics and so I'm sure I'm going to struggle creating my website but never the less I'm excited to learn and create something I hope I can be proud of and will promote me and my work well.

Google Map Presentation

We had to present our Location Based Narratives to the class and unfortunately my group were off, so it was just me having to do it all alone, which was really scary as i hate having to speak in front of people, it makes me nervous. But anyway I did it and I was quite proud of myself, though i know i need to learn to speak slower. We changed our narrative quite a bit since we started, instead of having a made up story about an alcoholic, we decided to tell 'The untold story of Christopher Columbus' as he sailed around the world. The concept of the story was that whilst at the Pump House Pub admiring the Albert Dock he wondered about other famous water front landmarks and so sailed off to discover them. We decided to change our story to this as it seemed a more solid story, a lot more interesting and we thought famous water front landmarks was a much more interesting idea than just places involving water. It's more interesting and adventurous rather than that simple idea, and so here is our finished Google Map:






View The Unknown Voyage of Christopher Columbus in a larger map

6 Thinking Hats

For our Creativity class we looked at Edward De Bono's thinking tool called the 'Six Thinking Hats'. The idea is that for whatever you're doing such as an idea, you look at it from all angles, you wear the hat to remind you to think in a certain way. Each hat represents a different way of thinking and each member of the group should 'put on' a certain hat and only think from that perspective. 
If you're wearing the white hat, you look at the idea from a factual angle and only focus on the information about the idea such as if you need to make £1000 pound, you make sure this is taken into consideration and made possible.
The red hat is your gut feeling of the idea, do you feel its a good/bad idea. does the idea make you excited or do you not think it will work. what is your hunch on the idea.
The black hat is the negative hat, you criticise the idea and everything that's wrong about it/wouldn't work.
The yellow hat is the positives, you are optimistic about the idea, and look for all the things that are good about it and could work successfully. 
The green hat is the creative hat, and when thinking in this way, you think of how you can improve the idea, make it grow and make it better. finding improvements to create the best possible idea
And finally the blue hat is like the organiser, the person acting as this hat oversees, they keep the idea on task and make sure everyone acts as their hat.

During the session i actually liked using the thinking hats, thinking in a certain way and only looking at the idea from that angle is a really good way at moving the idea forward and looking at it as a whole, being able to constantly improve it. By using the hats it also opens the idea up for critics without fear of sounding negative and criticising of the person who came up the idea, as often people do not say what is wrong with something for fear of causing upset. However saying this, when we all got a try of being each hat, everyone seemed to like the black hat best, we all seemed to gravitate towards being negative, which probably says a lot about us as people!

Filming 'It's Liverpool' Time Lapse

As part of the 'It's Liverpool' short film we were asked to add in a time lapse and as our film is centred around Bold Street, we thought the time lapse should be set here, as its quite a busy street, so it would look well and on Tuesday afternoon after uni we set off with all the equipment and set up the tripod at one end of Bold Street and filmed for half an hour. We then went to the other end of Bold Street and set that up for half an hour, giving us an hours worth of footage, though obviously it will be shorter as a time lapse speeds the frames up. 
Overall I was quite pleased with the footage we got for it, we set up in nice locations and got good framing, the only problem was standing around in the freezing cold, hopefully it will be worth it.

Sound Workshop

For our next project we are able to use sound, and to be able to use this to our full advantage, we were given a sound workshop from Head of the Department Trevor. It's quite simple to use the sound, just a few basic rules such as keep the mic or boom pole pointed at the person talking and don't get it in the way of the camera. He also noted that it was important to take a minutes worth of 'Atmos' (atmosphere) as every room has a certain hum about it, no room is completely silent and so by having atmos put under the track it flows more smoothly.
But after the workshop I was excited to get back out using the equipment and try out using sound for the first time and hopefully make are films look professional. 

Westerns - Winchester '73

This week in Film Language we looked at westerns and watched 'Winchester '73' directed by Anthony Mann. I was quite hesitant as i'd never seen a classic western before and didn't think i would like it. however I was quite surprised to find that I really enjoyed watching it. It was a really good piece of cinematography and I wouldn't be so hesitant to watch a western again in the future.

Location Based Narrative

For our third brief in Contemporary Media Issues we have to create a narrative using Google Maps. Normally narrative is linear and in the form of a book or an article, a very simple yet boring way to tell a story. Using Google Maps allows us to use a diverse number of tools to tell the story such as street view of the area, pictures, videos from YouTube, sound clips. Its allows a story to have more depth and engages the audience more.


The brief was to either create your own or retell a well know story and using the story link to at least 5 locations anywhere on the map. We were asked to work in groups and each group was given a starting location, Mine was the Albert Dock Pump House.



However the locations you chose had to link in some way to your starting location and so the first thing we did was research our location. There wasn't actually much information on the Pump House other than it is now a pub, but back when it was first built it was the first  hydraulic pump system added to a dock, meaning that the amount of water in the docks could be better controlled making it easier to unload and load ships. But knowing this didn't give us much to go on and so we starting thinking of other idea's and we thought of water based locations, due to the function of the docks and we came up with The London Eye, Niagara Falls, The Nile and the Amazon. After we'd thought of these places the came with the story of 'Fred the Alcoholic' 

Team Player

Before we started our Museum Commission, we first looked at teamwork, and what makes a good team, as having a good team is important for getting the best possible outcome in a task, especially as a lot of assignments for our course involve teamwork. There are many things that make an effective team such as :

• A range of individuals who can contribute in different ways
• a coordinator who acts like the leader/facilitator
• comfort with disagreement 

Whilst other attributes make for an ineffective team, such as:

• members that are silent and don't contribute ideas
• arguments between people
• lack of clear goals and trust

And so knowing this, we discussed that a successful team was one that had a mix of strengths in the seven generic roles identified, these roles are:

• Evaluator
• Ideas person
• Leader
• Compromiser
• Summariser
• Recorder
• Encourager 

To find out what kind of role we brought to a team, we were asked to fill out an online questionaire (http://www.kent.ac.uk/careers/sk/teamwork.htm) and i got the highest score for summariser, which is quite true, I like to overview everything and understand what's going on as a whole but I also like to keep everything organised and on track, i'm a very organised person when it comes to a team member, and although I already knew what kind of worker I was from experience in was a good task to explore it as a class and try to sort out groups based on what would make us a good team and I hope it will make my team more effective. 

Creativity and Concept Museum Commission

For our next assignment in Creativity we were asked to get into groups and create an idea for a media exhibit that would appeal to a specific target group and get them to attend the new Liverpool Museum. My group where given the target audience of a 'Band' and so we began to think about what interests a band. But before we could begin to start on this brief we needed to first visit the museum and look around. And so the same week I went with my friend to visit the museum and what I found was that it actually didn't appeal much to a younger age, there was nothing there that really engaged us, that was until we got to the top level, the music level, and found a karaoke booth complete with fancy dress, and so we dressed up and began to mess around. The visit really helped me to find out more about the museum and what it lacks in terms of getting people to go.. interaction. And so I was ready to go to feedback to my group with the concept of an interactive idea.


While at the museum I did find a few interact tasks, here are a few:

This was a time capsule task in which you picked from a few depicted objects what you would put into a time capsule and from your choices, it tells you the kind of person you are.. from my choices i appear to be old fashioned at heart!

This is the Karaoke Booth i was talking about, such fun.

There was also a weight machine to tell you what kind of boxer you would be.. I would be in the 'fly weight' category, clearly i'd make a good boxer aha

'Its Liverpool' film

On our first day back we were set the brief of 'It's Liverpool'. A competition already running to create a factual short of 3-5 minutes that reflects some part of Liverpool, however our lecturers told us that our film must be based in one location. We weren't given long to complete this and once we had we had another project to start straight away so it's a bit of a rush. I also started working in a new production group and i'm excited to see how this goes.
We started to throw around a few ideas and decided to base our piece around bold street as its a very diverse street. The idea was to show a side of Liverpool that people don't normally see, something besides the stereotypical description and i'm excited to create this.