Creating a Weavr

Before going onto our next brief, we were asked to look at identity and what it is, we see identity as 'what you are perceived as', however do you ever know someone's real identity? Many only allow you to see what they want you see, to be seen as socially acceptable. While take Facebook for instance, is that your real identity, yes mine shows pictures of me and so many would think I'm just a girl that likes to go out, but there's much more to me than that, really my Twitter and even my Tumblr shows much more about me and my identity, but because they're much more personal, I don't advertise them as feely as i do Facebook. Whilst others use tools such as Facebook to almost enhance their identity, to show themselves as what they wish to be, not what they are and so its not a true representation of their identity, instead its almost like role play.
And so from this we looked at Weavrs, a website that communicates through Twitter and Facebook, you simply create a persona, how you want your Weavr to be seen, what they like/dislike, where they live etc and then you give them free reign to your Twitter/Facebook and they post. We created our own and they even managed to post a bit before they were suspended. Here's mine:

It was interesting to see that a 'bot' could act somewhat like a human being, but its also quite disturbing in my opinion

Comedy Night

One of my course mates this week had her first comedy gig, and she was amazing, so i thought i'd dedicate a post to her (she best appreciate this). She was the best out of the 6 acts that were on, the only one to have the whole audience in fits of laughter and i was too proud of her. hopefully she'll do another one soon!

Factual Short Treatment

We were asked to write a treatment on an idea we'd thought of for what our factual short could be, each group was to come back with an idea and then we'd choose from them one idea to research and create. My idea was to film in Lime Pictures Studios, based in Childwall, i've been a number of times and I thought it would be a good idea to look at a behind the scenes style documentary as to where they get there influence for the hard hitting story lines. I thought that as Hollyoaks, which is filmed there is such a popular soap amongst teenagers, particularly students, it would be something they would be interested in, too see what goes into making the show, as the set is a really interesting place, at least I found it interesting when i went there.

Shane Meadows

For film language we looked at the work of Shane Meadows and his way of following the tradition of British social realist film making.
But what is realism, our lecturer described it as 'a tangible representation of lived experience' and after discussing Meadows work we watched the film 'Dead Man's Shoes'

Often in film screenings i get really bored and zone out as many of the films aren't to my taste but i found myself loving every minute of Dead Man's Shoes, it was such an interesting story and told in such an interesting way with the use of sound and flashbacks, it really engaged me and i was so shocked at the ending, i genuinely didn't see it coming. After watching this, i definitely want to watch more of Meadows work.

Google Map Location Narrative Feedback

My Google Map feedback was quite positive, the idea of retelling Christopher Columbus's journey was creative and engaging however the comments suggest more historical research into this, for instance linking the modern day journey with his past journeys would have been more interesting. The feedback mainly focuses on ways to improve the idea to make it more engaging for a user.

'The industry wants clever people who can make sense of chaos..'

For Creativity this week, they explained to us why exactly we do that class and if i'm honest, it made me slightly worried. They showed us an application form for a BBC job and looking at the questions, i would struggle to answer them! They're all about being creative and coming up with idea's, hence we have a creativity class, they're preparing us for the world of work where we need to be creative. As the person who can come up with even just once new idea, is better to hire than the person who may have the qualifications but can't think of something new. 
It even says on the application 
'ideas and more ideas, plus the ability to think laterally matter, experience doesn't'


This is what scared me, because from our degree we'll get the experience, but am I a lateral thinking who can come up with ideas? I'm actually not sure but hopefully this class will bring that out in me

It's Liverpool Feedback

We got a good mark for our 'It's Liverpool' film, the lecturers were pleased with our creative idea of using captions in the piece and they liked the time lapse. However our main issue with this film was our camera work, we didn't use a tripod as often as we should have, mainly because it was difficult using it on Bold Street due to it being so busy, moving it around the street was also an issue. Because of this, our camera work did suffer and the shots were not that steady, but this is something we can learn from in the future, to make sure to find a way to use the tripod no matter how difficult as it makes the shots visually better. There are also comments about are use of sound, which wasn't the best, this was due to use not actually knowing how to edit the sound in effectively, and this is something we will have to learn if we want our films to be a success. 

Olly Murs

This isn't really anything to do with the course but i thought i would share anyway as it is somewhat media related, so this Sunday i went to see Olly Murs in the Echo Arena and it was a really great concert. He's really good live and even better at performing and entertaining the crowd with his dance moves! He even got the crowd involved by taking a picture of us all to put on his Facebook page for us all to tag ourselves in as well as weeks before asking for fans to send pictures of them doing a heart shape with their hands via Facebook and Twitter for him to use during one of his songs. overall i really enjoyed myself and wouldn't mind going to see him again, but here's a video for you to enjoy also..

Woman in Black..

A lot of people will probably disagree with me, but at the weekend i went to see A Woman in Black and i really didn't like it. It got such good reviews for its play/novel, with everyone saying it was terrifying and many said the film was just as good and the trailer certainly didn't disappoint. And so me and my friend went to see it, expecting to be curled on the floor in fear (we're not good with scary films), but instead i found myself spending the majority of the film waiting for it to be over or sitting on my phone. I think my first problem with it is the plot, in theory its a good plot, potentially to be really interesting but the film just dragged it out and it was so dull. For at least 3/4 of the film nothing interesting happened it was just back story and character development, but i didn't even feel connected with the characters, i wasn't wanting him to live, in honestly i wanted something bad to happen to the main character just to entertain me. 
Towards the end i will admit it did get interesting, especially as 1 or 2 bits were actually scary and i did find myself hiding behind my hands but i wasn't on the edge of my seats and the ending was so anticlimactic, my friend and i literally turned to each other and said 'is that it'. All in all, i really don't see the fuss with the film but clearly if a lot of people enjoy the film, its worth going to see and judging for yourself, but personally, I wouldn't waste your money on it.

Personal Profile Editing.

Also during reading week my group took the time to edit our personal profile film, i find editing such a long and boring process and it really stresses me out however we pushed through and got it all done and here is the finished film for you to enjoy:


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

Chronicle..

During reading week I went to see Chronicle in the pictures with a few others from the course, since seeing the trailer i'd really wanted to see this film as it looked good and it didn't disappoint. it was amazing shot and edited together and the acting from the main character Dane DeHaan was brilliant, watching his character change and develop into the villain was great, he portrayed it really well. The ending was an amazing piece of cinematography however during the middle of the film it dragged quite a bit in getting to the end and i started to get quite bored with it, however i would recommend anyone to see this film, it's worth a watch!

Firestation!

So this weekend we went and filmed at the fire station for our personal profile and it was such a fun weekend, i really wish i could be a fire woman, if only i wasn't so small! It was just me and Stevie that went and we got some really great footage, proud of us. It went really well and the people there were so friendly and helpful. they even took the fire engine out for us so we could film it and just as we were leaving they had a call out, so we got to film them leaving for real also. One of my favourite shots was that of the call out sheet, we got them to send a test call through for us to film and it was a nice shot to accompany the call out noise. funnily enough, the fireman didn't have time to tell the others it was a test over the tannoy before it rang out and so they all came running in ... to a false alarm. was a really funny moment. I'm excited to get editing and finish this film, I think it went much better than our 'Its Liverpool' film.


Also, here's a nice picture of me in a fireman's helmet: 

Academy Essay Writing..

5 months into the course, we were given a workshop on university writing and how to write academically. Already I've written an essay but none the less it was still a valuable exercise and I learnt some valuable information to use for the number of essays I have coming up.


We were told to avoid websites like 'Wikipedia' and 'IMDB' as well as random blogs as the information from this site is not from a credited source. We also learnt the importance of referencing and how to do it correctly, which was good as I'm at a loss when it comes to referencing! We were also advised to read a lot of academic books and journals to make our work stand out and get us a higher grade as they wanted a critical analyse not opinions and summaries. 


Hopefully I can remember all the do's and don't for when it comes to my next essay.

Social Networking Wiki Brief

In groups for our next Contemporary Media Issues brief we were asked to create another wiki in relation to Social Networking. We were given a certain topic, my groups was 'Censorship' and asked to explore this topic in relation to Social Networking. These subjects work quite well together as there are a lot of censorship issues when it comes to social networks, such as who decides what should be censored as what some see as offensive, others do not. Because of this I was quite confident about this wiki, even if I don't particularly like wiki's, creating them on wetpaint is quite a complicated, boring experience. especially as it does not work properly on my browser which is annoying.
As well as looking at censorship we each had to write a paragraph on a certain aspect of social networking, mine was 'Social Networking and Democracy', which was a good aspect to talk about as a lot of politics has been getting involved with social networking recently.