My Website

I finally finished my website! After what seemed like forever trying to figure out Photoshop and Dreamweaver, I eventually worked it out and was able to finish my website. Admittedly its not the best that it could be, but for a first time attempt I am very proud of what I created and I'm sure if this website continues through with me in the next 2 years I'll be able to improve it as my skills improve. I tried to create an vintage feel to the site as I love that kind of effect, whether it worked though is a question as I don't think I've quite achieved that yet, once more content is added as I create more to add it will probably look better than it does but for now here is my finished website, enjoy..


http://www.student.ljmu.ac.uk/LSSGBLAN/Website/Homepage.html

Museum Presentation

This is one the assignments this year that I have been really proud of. I think our tour bus idea was a success, it was something unique and interesting and we had the idea fine tuned to the last detail, making sure it made sense and would work. The prezi was sorted for the presentation with all the necessary information without overloading on text, mainly pictures for a visual content and it was time for the presentation. I'm not very good at presenting, I don't like to talk in front of people as I get nervous and I have a bad habit of talking extremely fast but I think our presentation actually went really well. We knew what we had to say and who had to say it. We were worried we wouldn't have enough to say for 15 minutes but we in fact nearly went over until the lecturer stopped us. I hope I get a good mark for this, we worked really hard to make the idea a success and everything worked out well, I've even got better at presenting which is a bonus!


Here's the prezi from our presentation:
http://prezi.com/vmqxkspsoadd/band-tourbus-museum-crash/

Presenting Our Characters

Finally it was time to present our characters, in the process I had established Chelsea Mai Riley on 5 social media platforms. By the end of the assignment she had 67 friends on Facebook, 24 followers on Twitter and 4 followers on Tumblr. In a short time this is quite an achievement, particularly the Twitter followers as the majority were genuine strangers, compared to Facebook in which the friends were class members and their own fake characters. In our presentation my group explained that we each actually had a character as we had create a sort of sitcom in which these group of strangers have been thrown together in uni halls and it follows there lives, they each have stories to tell and secrets to share. For instance Chelsea-Mai is in love with fellow room mate Chad, However Chad is actually gay and Chelsea-Mai being such a bimbo does not realise this. Our presentation went well, we had lots to show as there was lots of content for the characters. 
There are things I wish i could change about my character looking back though. I think it would have been an excellent idea if that while on Facebook and Twitter, she did just seem superficial in a private blog I'd explored the real Chelsea-Mai who does in fact have more depth to her than people imagine, she just hides it. I also like the idea that instead of using myself for the pictures (while that was fun) I'd have used someone else and then added my own friends on her profile, to see if I could fool any of them into believing that Chelsea was a real person, that would have been a true test as to whether I succeeded in created a real online identity. 




http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100003597313536
https://twitter.com/#!/ChelseaMaiJLS
http://chelseamaijls.tumblr.com/

Factual Short Rough Cut

Today was our rough edit deadline for the factual short, and it could have gone better. There was no one in from my group other than me and I'm not the best with editing but I did my best to get the rough cut finished. Unfortunately we did not have enough useful footage to complete the edit and so when it was time to show the lecturers they were slightly concerned. They told me our group needed to find a creative angle with the piece otherwise it will end up more like a news report, and they were right. So our next task was the find a way to make a story about doors creative..

Chelsea-Mai

This is probably my favourite assignment this year, getting to create someone from scratch, how they act, dress, see the world, it's role play but you have to make others believe that it is real. Instead of creating an avatar, you create a person and in my case I reinvent myself into a whole new person. I'm not saying if I had the chance to change myself I would become an orange bimbo, but it's such a brilliant role to play. I have numerous people on my own Facebook that are just like 'Chelsea-Mai' and so inspiration was endless. My main idea was to create someone with no substance... superficial. The kind of person that would not be seen dead a shade darker than orange and who doesn't understand classic films and would rather watch clueless. This kind of character was easy to create because in theory she has no depth, her biggest dilemma is that she's ran out of eyelash glue. If you look on her profile you can see all the stuff she's interested in, you can get a sense of the character I created
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100003597313536
But Facebook was just the start, I made my character viral. She also has a Twitter, Tumblr, Hotmail and eBay account. 


Facebook and Twitter are obvious, they are the main social platforms, but I decided a Tumblr as Tumblr is often where you get to see what a person really thinks and from hers... you can see she doesn't. It will basically be full of her obsession with JLS while her eBay is a way to show the kind of interests she has.. mainly clothes. 

More to a Door?

Its been over a week and unfortunately, no one has emailed us back about the original locations of the doors and so after a talk with out lecturer, we've decided to change the idea for our factual short slightly and focus on the fact that 'there's always something behind a door'. And so, we're still going to start with the doors exhibit but lead onto the fact that Roger, the poet, was trying to show that doors are much than just objects, but doorways into much more. 
So we've decided to research famous locations in Liverpool, such as the cavern club and town hall. We have a list of places and hopefully we can find interesting events that these doors hide.

Creating 'Chelsea-Mai Riley'

For the identity brief we had to create our identities on social networking platforms and so on Sunday night I dressed up as 'Chelsea-Mai' and got pictures, ready for my profiles, and I've never had so much fun. To create my chavy bimbo character I needed a lot of fake tan, bronzer, pink blusher and giant fake eyelashes, the result a very orange bed and a very different me:

After taking a few pictures I created her Facebook:
http://en-gb.facebook.com/people/Chelsea-Mai-Riley/100003597313536 



Adding information to the page helped to give her character more depth and so I gave her a secondary school, added her to a hairdressing course in the Community College and then started added in her favourite music, TV shows and movies. 'Chelsea' is obsessed with JLS (she will be found on a lot of JLS blogs) but she's also a fan of a lot of pop music such as Britney, Katy Perry, Lady Gaga and very girl 'chick flicks' such as Mean Girls, Twilight and Dirty Dancing. However I think her most telling information is her inspiration people: Paris Hilton, Jodie Marsh, Jordan, Perez Hilton, Beyonce... This famous people give you an idea of what kind of person she is. While TV shows are a lot of reality shows, 'Trash TV' as it can be called. and once i'd added the pictures and all this information i added all my friends and began to post statuses.


I also created a twitter, with the name '@ChelseaMaiJLS' and followed many of the people she likes (that you can see on facebook). Within 2 hours i already had 17 followers, with only tweeting 3 times. So i'm quite excited to see what kind of people follow me!
https://twitter.com/#!/ChelseaMaiJLS 



I still need to create a Tumblr and an ebay account, as well as start to write on JLS blogs, it's going to be quite fun :)

Doors Exhibit Research

On our day off, my production group took a trip to the museum, to find out more about the Doors exhibit, where they came from and if they have an interesting background. We found that the majority of the doors came from:

• Strawberry Fields Childrens Home
• Anfield and Goodison
• Old Art College (Myrtle Street)
• Everyman Theatre

We're going to research into these places and hopefully find an interesting story from where they came from and take that angle with our film, but failing that we were thinking of going with the angle of the students working within art. but for now we'll focus on the doors history.


Here are some pictures from the exhibit:

Reflection and ScreenR Feedback

In the first semester for Creativity and Concept we submitted a personal reflection on the techniques we had learnt and ScreenR presentation. I was extremely pleased with my mark for the ScreenR as I didn't feel I had actually done that well with the presentation. Firstly I'm not a great speaker and so I thought that would hinder my mark, that the audio would be difficult to understand however this wasn't mentioned, so maybe I have a better voice than thought. The comments note that I had good research and a good presentation, but that I needed to avoid reading exactly what was on the screen, which I did do. I should have made the information more note based and had my own notes off screen of what to say to develop the screen notes further. However other than this I had positive feedback and I am pleased with my ScreenR presentation.
My personal reflection feedback wasn't as positive as the ScreenR. It mainly says that I need to expand my ideas and give much more detail in the information I give

Website Design

Before creating my website i first created a mock up to experiment with how i wanted it to look and to check it fitted in with the 'rules' of a website such an not too much white space etc. I found creating my mock up quite easy considered I don't really know how to use Photoshop. Once i'd created it i asked my lecturer for feedback, he was quite happy with it but suggested having a more colourful background or even an image, just to make it less plain. I havent actually done that yet, I need to find a background that I like.. but here is my mock up anyway..

Fictional Online Identity Brief

Our final brief for Contemporary Media Issues is to create a fake online profile and interact via social networks to create the persona of a real person. Originally we were meant to work in groups of 3 with one character between you however my friends and I have formed a group of 6 as we have a more elaberate design. Basically we have almost recreated skins/a reality show, we each have a character and all 6 characters live together in a flat as a group of students.
To create this group of people we first create a brainstorm of what kind of characters would be interesting such as a nerd, a bimbo, a chav, an indie, a goth, a jock, forgeigners etc, we ended up with around 10-12 characters and from this we then created 6 profiles for instance the 'chavy bimbo', by doing this we gave our characters more depth and after this we gave each other a character and got to work creating a persona.

I am 'Chelsea-Mai Riley' a 20 year old hairdresser who is essentially a chavy bimbo who's obsessed with JLS. And i'm far to excited to create her on all social platforms so look out for her on Facebook/Twitter/Tumblr/Ebay/Blogs.

Preparing for Pitch

In about 3 weeks we have our 15 minute pitch about our idea for a museum exhibit and so knowing this we got our idea finalised and sorted, ready to prepare. This was actually one of my most productive sessions and we managed to get the idea sorted and how we're going to prepare this. The feedback we got back from the previous session in which we gave a 5 minute pitch, really helped us define the idea and make it a simple yet creative idea as our original had too much going on and most of it was already available in the museum. And so this is our final idea, an exhibit to attract a band:


A double decker tour bus has crashing into the side of the museum.

the first level is the 'facts level' and will be like a simulation of a tour bus, the windows will be interactive and go through famous landmarks such as penny lane, strawberry fields. it's going to be set out like a real tour bus, so people can experience it with real probs like those you would see on a tour bus (items in cupboards/sounds/smells) all showing the not so glamorous side of touring. There will be a voice over, possibly a famous one to make it interesting telling facts as the 'tour' happens but the fact will tell interesting stories and will tell of the music history of Liverpool, fun knowledge facts will also be written around the bus. This 'tour' will run around every 15 minutes, like the simulation length and at the end it crashes...

Then the second level is the 'stage level' where you get to act like a band/pretend to be famous. there will be a bit where you can dress up if you wish, famous costumes of like michael jackson and others will be available but also just normal jackets and wigs. instruments will be there also to mess around with on the 'stage' and staff shall be dressed as paparazzi, taking pictures to make it more of the famous band experience with the sound of an audience cheering played in the background. The experience can be filmed and then upload to the website for people to see and have a copy off (also a way of introducing new bands in liverpool). there will be a screen of songs to pick, both classic and modern so all genres are covered to appeal to everyone, but also the option to sing your own song (kind of promoting yourself). people will be able to go up to the stage level but if you want to perform, to save a queue of people, we'll give out admission tickets, with set times to come and perform, and the tickets would look like concert tickets.

Then the presentation. We want to have a main prezi to showcase the idea, with pictures of the museum and of inside a tour bus, to show what it would be like. also create a photoshop image of a bus crashed into the museum. we were thinking of having pictures of people dressed up pretending to be a band as well but that might be difficult to do, you can't take pictures in a fancy dress shop. Also a poster to show the advertising of the exhibit (focusing on the crash element) and a mock up of the admission ticket for the stage. finally we want to make a viral video, a way of promotion. the video would be the simulation you'd see in level one, going through penny lane etc but at the end of the video it goes black and you hear a crash. and then its like you have to go to the museum to find out what happened. we though a viral video would be a good way to attract a younger audience, especially as bands are quite media based. 

And so there you have it. Our idea for an exhibit, we plan on making everything such as the prezi and video next week and start organising everything.

Filming the Doors Exhibit

For our Factual Short one of our group members got really lucky and was able to run with her idea of filming the museum, however we found something interesting to look at, rather than just the museum as a whole. But a new exhibit by famous poet Roger McGough called Doors. Basically him and another friend Mark Cockram have obtained doors from locations around Liverpool such as the Everyman Playhouse, Anfield, Goodison and with the help of LJMU art students, turned the doors into art, featuring sections of McGough's poetry. Me and a group member went along to film the opening of the exhibit and it was an amazing experience, we were the only ones there with access to film and we even got interviews with Roger, the Curator and a student who worked on the exhibit. It was a really great evening, to be part of that and it just made me want to work in the media industry even more. I'm really eager to get more for our film and finish it, I hope its going to be our best film so far.