Jasons Blog

Simulated Client Project - Ideas

2009-10-26T19:05:00.000-07:00

Idea 1

A child in bed and their father or mother sitting by their bed side telling them a bed time story something along the lines of

"The pirates moved at high speeds pillageing loot from every corner of the internets. For years they took whatever they wanted with no regard for the law. But alas one day, their pirate plans were foiled by the local authorities. They tracked them down with new technogloy and made the pirates pay them vast ammounts of money THE END''

The parent walks out and shuts the door the kid looks scared
Theres a shadow of a pirate on the wall.
Or the child Knocks an action figure of a pirate into a draw and closes it then turns off the lamp.

Idea 2

A guy is in his room. The items in the room, such as guitars on the wall and amps laying around, Suggest the guy is very into music. He is on the phone to his friend telling him about a record deal his band just got and that his album should be out in a few weeks. He finishs on the phone hears a noise and leaves the room for a few seconds then returns. When he comes back into the room there are three pirates sitting at his pc shouting and swiging grog. The camera will zoom in on the screen and it will say something like "98%... 99%.... 100%.. Downloading and burning complete" one of the pirates will steal a cd out of the cd tray and then they'll run to the balcony and disapear into the night before the man can stop them.

I had another idea but it had to many problems so i scraped it. Let me know what you think and which idea i should work on. Im leaning towards the 2nd idea at the moment.

Simulated Client Project - Research

2009-10-23T14:36:00.000-07:00

I Don't want the advert to contain to much writen information, but at the
same time i need to give the audience a good understanding. The best way that I've found to do this is through visuals. Here is an example of what i think is an advert that successfully uses a lot of visuals to get the message across.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=plrcDeDa7LQ&feature=related

I really love this advert. I think it works very well making the audience look at a not very obvious reason why software piracy could be a bad thing. Its also humorous and this appears to be a key factor when trying to get an audience to remember something. It uses a video game medium that a lot of people can relate to of all ages. Theres not an overload of information (just some straight to the point text at the end) and its not boring so it doesn't make you want to zone out like a lot of the other piracy adverts do. Because of all of these factors In my mind this is highly successful.

If written information has to be given an effective way to do this is bullet points short and snappy. This way the audience will hopefully remember the information that i want them to. My thoughts on software piracy is that it is possible to slow it down but impossible to completely get rid of it. The two main ways that i have found work for stopping people illegally downloading are the moral approach and the shock approach. The Moral approach trys to connect with people and make them realize that they are doing something that is wrong. There is lots of different techniques using this approach, that can be used. These play on different emotions such as guilt. An example of an effective moral approach to similar advert is:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wf4pnY1wFiU

This works quite well as it uses real actors to get the point across. Another similar approach that i like has the actor musician Jack Black talking about
piracy

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-LkWKvMCzqA

However him not to sure that the moral approach is the best way forward i think it can work but then again at the same time i think a lot of people especially online aren't really bothered if the actors and musicians are losing out or not. I think most of the messages in these adverts are obvious to the audience already and a lot of them still continue to download illegally regardless.

The Shock approach instead of playing on the morals looks at the consequences of the users actions such as fines. They often make the audience think that they cant get away with piracy as they WILL be caught even though it is not normally the case. These type of adverts use emotions such as fear to scare the audience. A good example of this is the TV licensing adverts such as:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5a_QX3DECRE

A video i was watching on software piracy discusses that there is often freeware on the Internet that can be found but people often choose to ignore this and illegal download software that they have heard of. An example of this is Photoshop. After a quick look on Pirate bay i can see that Photoshop CS3 is the 6th most popular software application, with a huge 2684 seeders and 219 lechers at this current point in time. In my opinion there is no need to download programs such as Photoshop as their are nearly always free alternative such as GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program) which does nearly exactly the same thing. In some cases these free alternatives can be better than the software that people are illegally downloading. So one approach to trying to get users to stop software piracy could be to advertise the freeware. Not only is there free software available on the net that many people don't know about or choose not to use but now with sites such as BBC i player and channel 4 catch up there is less reason for people download films. As with Spotify people can listen to music for free legally but the majority still choose to download albums illegally. I think the method of making people aware of the free alternatives to illegal software piracy, would have the highest success rate in an advert.

Edit log

2009-01-30T12:13:00.000-08:00

Busker Interview Transcript

2009-01-30T12:02:00.000-08:00

We conducted the interview twice with Sam. The first interview was taken on the streets after we had finished filming Sam play. However there was a problem with the recording. There was to much background ambiance on the recording and in some parts it drowned out what Sam was talking about. So we decided to re do the recording in a sound proof both in university. We could add ambiance in the background of people walking past and street noises on a separate layer this way we would be able to control the volume of both channels of sound. We felt this was the right decision to make as not only did we fix our previous problems but Sam also gave more details and relaxed answers this time. Here is a copy of the Transcript of the interview with the busker.

Ollie: Right okay, alright so can you just err introduce yourself err like things a bit about yourself erm what you’re into that kind of thing erm and obviously, why you’re here.

Sam: [Laugh] Well erm, my name is Sam, Sam Lindo and erm I’m into music the blues erm, sort of erm a regular sort of street entertainer i-in in the city of Nottingham [inhale] sometimes I’d rather say entertainer than busking but errr [laugh] if you wanna put it that way (2) err, erm, my main instrument is a guita-guitar but I play the keyboard, bass and [mumble] I do recording as well. I also do err music lessons err (1) anything sort of [mumble] keep me going.

Ollie: (3) Right erm err so you live in Nottingham…

Sam: Yeah.

Ollie: Errr, how long have you lived in Nottingham and whats your opinions on the city?

Sam: Errrrr, I lived in N-Nottingham a ermmm quite a time ‘cause as I say I grew up in the city of Nottingham but I went to live in Lon-London for sometime and came back here in about ninety (1) ninety-six ninety-seven that’s when I came back and obviously there was a lot of change in the city when I came back but erm, took a little while to sort of settle back down but erm, seem to be getting the hang of it now and erm, I do like the city of Nottingham it’s quite a friendly (1) city I thought it to be and erm (1) my sort of opinion it’s not big not to small, ya know? A lot seems to be going on nowadays in Nottingham yeah…

Ollie: H-How do you think Nottingham compares say to London?

Sam: Errrm… Well, what can I say? (1) London erm it seems where it’s all happening but yet it can be a bit sort of ummm selfish but I found Nottin-Nottingham to be more friendly than, than London itself ya know? There is more interaction with the people, surprisingly, despite London might be bigger than Nottingham but err seems to have more reaction, ya know but erm, or interaction rather [slight laugh] it’s whats happening in Nottingham.

Ollie: (3) I’m just seeing what else you’ve not already talked about on here [laugh].

Sam: Yeah.

Ollie: Ermm… [tut] (4) Is errr do you have a favourite aspect about the city other than the friendliness of the people…

Sam: Ermm…

Ollie: [mumble] or is it just…

Sam: Well, eh (1) th-the music I do seems to go down very well in Nottingham [mumble] a lot of sort of support and a lot, a lot of erm encouragement from Nottingham and erm, since the start sort of erm playing as such erm (2) I find I-I-I find that people are very, very owgasiv wh-whats the word (1) eh got better and better [laugh] yeah [inhale] I-I-I think ermm you can sort of get better if you get good encouragement good support and err therefore you get appreciation of what you’re doing, it’s err kind of really encouraging yeah.

Ollie: Right, erm so why is it that you choose to busk and entertain on the street?

Sam: Ermm, I-I also g-gr-grew up around music (1) and errr sometimes I said I do a lot of sort of a studio things in the studio now [hitting mic stand with foot] I found I was sort of just doing what I like and ya know and I thought to myself well well music’s not so much for you its for people its for people so so the things I was doing I thought to myself let lets give it a try on the street to see how people react to it because [incoherent mumbles] you know sort of erm bookings, wedding, different venues or whatever ya know until that time comes ya know you don’t sort of know how people react to what you’re doing but err I thought I’d give it a try ya know see ya know how people react to what I’m doing ‘cause I really wanna know, find what diection (1) in music I was going ya know ‘cause errr when I start I wasn’t quite sure because of sort of um sort of err asedava church gigs like I sort of grew up in the church and do a lot of ya know gospel music and all that but, but err I find that I was doing a different kind of music than gospel itself altho the lyrics that I do use was gospel but then I find that erm but I didn’t realise it was the blues [laugh] that err, that I was playing so when I started playing on the street people says ‘oh err I like your blues’ ya no and erm, then I started to listen a bit more keener to what I’m doing to what I feel inside I realise it was the blues [laugh] so I er just continue doing that ya know and erm sort of erm get better and better at it ya know and all that.

Ollie: [clears throat] How does erm religion influence your personality and also the music you play?
Sam: Err, erm to the full ext-extent really as I-I would say ‘cause I’m very much, very much erm, erm a Christian [chuckle] ya know. Sometimes I find it difficult to say religion because I-I feel knowing Jesus Christ and God its far more, m-more important than religion itself igotosay there religions all over the world and some-some ya know you can get weary of of and some… neh ser ah ih so but erm, but from that perspective erm I-I am definetly a spiritual man [chuckle] ya know and erm, and err, I like err and my really aspiration in playing is that whatever I’m playing its meaning something to people, ‘cause ya know I feel that music is a spiritual thing (1) th-th-er-I I feel its one of the gift of creation that err, and err, and everytime I play my my aspiration is to really reach the soul, reach the spirit ya know with music ya know [incoherent mumble] I tends to I tends to err (1) use very careful lyrics, lyrics that’s got s-some sense in it g-got some spirituality and that’s, erm, I try to avoid type of lyrics that is lude err such as swearing and I just like to err, I like to use lyrics that err that can build the spirit can encourage people that can give people awarenes of the supernatural, that can the awareness of God and Jesus Christ that’s my, that’s my main drive in all of this and I feel that’s where my strength come from I feel that’s where my inspiration come from, and err (1) and err (1) and that’s the way I’m going.

Ollie: Alright, erm [clears throat] have you got an opinion on, obviously erm blues and gospel are quite traditional types of music erm so do you have an opinion on sort of erm the youth of today and their type of music and how it effects their behaviour because obviously gospel and that kind of stuff ya say is spiritual it makes you feel good it makes people feel good, how do you yeah how do you think the music of today effects the youth of today?

Sam: Err, Erm, eh I-I don’t want to judge or scon but err, erm, I find myself being very concerned about the, the the kind of music that you hear today especially erm (1) music the lyrics that involve swearing and and blaspheming and all that its err, I feel it is such [mic stand being kicked] a shame really and err, I do feel its of a negative effect and err (1) and my, my aspiration and my hope is that, that erm, that music itself will find its true meaning [mic stand being kicked] ya know ‘cause I feel music is a beautiful thing ya know and err some of the, some of the thing that is being used to represent music I feel that is ya know its [chuckle] it doesn’t really do music justice at all and I feel, and I feel that erm, I think people erm get involved with the type of music that, that can, that can benefit, that can be beneficial to erm, to themselves ya know to yourself as a person as a citizens or as human as a member of society and the community erm, b-because at the end of the day music is a powerful thing and ya know and erm, it-it can control the emotion and it, if you get involved in the right kind of ideal the right kind of if I may say the right kind of, wrong kind of spirits ya know, that it can lead to powerful things really, because erm, with myself as in music really ya know ya know [laugh] erm by the time people says ya know ‘you wanna ciggarette you wanna drink’ its often that I say ‘I don’t drink I don’t smoke’ and they might, they might wonder you know this is the first blues guy that doesn’t drink or do-[laugh] or don’t smoke ya know but I-I find at the end of the day i-i-i-i-its better for you ya know music it tends to erm, associate it with erm excessing drinks and erm drugs and all that kind and er and I feel that, erm, your gonna have to stay away from all of that and err hope to produce the kind of music that that, that erm y- one can feel fulfilled and feel enjoy ya know without being erm destructive to yourself or to your soul or to your spirit yeah.

Ollie: (2) erm, just go a bit a back towards the busking then…

Sam: Yeah

Ollie: Errrrrrrrm (1) [tut] (5) [clears throat] have you… we’ll go b-yeah we’ll talk about a bit about the people you meet and stuff like that…

Sam: Yeah

Ollie: So, so you say you enjoy meeting new people…

Sam: Oh yeah, yeah…

Ollie: Erm, is there any particular that you’ve met say through busking that you wouldn’t have met otherwise or ya know m-maybe close friends you’ve made since you’ve been busking?

Sam: Ah-I-I think it gives a, it gives a great opportunity to meet people of ya know, different walks of life [mumble] ya know, its, its difficult to soft of measure[?] ya know but I know that people that erm, that erm I wouldn’t of met otherwise ya know I mean, I mean even meeting you guys ya know [laugh] doing your err doing your project ya know say from a university sta- errr standard ya know some people say ‘busking – playing in the street’ yet I feel I feel its err its, its quite an interesting thing that ya know busking on the street enter-en-entertaining on the street and you guys can come along and and what im doing can be such a great part of what you doing ya know and I-I feel that’s something encouraging [laugh] ya know I would’t meet you otherwise ya know, I had a stu- a student ya know a medical student that comes praps doing the same thing your doing, it seems to of sort of ermm take interest in what im doing and and what im doing can help be a part of your project and I feel that’s erm, quite a good thing [trails off].

Ollie: Erm, do you appreciate err people coming up to you then, well obviously you do, you like meeting new people but but I mean there must be times when you get a bit of trouble from people as well?

Sam: Yeah, yeah you do get that sometime but erm, in the early days when I started busking now, ya know when people didn’t sort of realise ermm who I was and what I was capable of but the more I do it and then, and then errr, and then erm they get to realise ‘oh you know this guy’s for real and the music he does seems to be really good music you know’ and then, so erm respect develops [laugh] and as errr, as I get better and better at playing ya know s-so I get better and better respect [incoherent mumbling] so in Nottingham like everyone sort of know who I am and erm, seems that they have a great respect and appreication on what I’m doing ya know, so erm, so err I seem to get more respect now th-than the trouble ya know one or two trouble-makers come along but sometimes they do, yeah (1) sometimes err maybe I can be a bit of a nuisance myself if I get too loud for the office [chuckle] sometimes people complain that its too loud, sometime we get the errr, the warden comes ya know, ya know and err asks you to turn it down or move along or whatever but err, but now you’ve got liscense now so therefore ya know once they know who you are ya know and and try to sort of co-operate with err with whats happening, ‘cause at the end of the day if that’s what your used to, if its making a living from it you gotta sort of treat it with respect yourself so, so we try not to make it too difficult for ourselves so we, try to co-operate yeah.

Ollie: Erm, just to sort of continue on to that do you have any specific examples of of when any sort of younger people ya know not just like people like wardens and stuff but I mean actual like younger people have come up to and done something to disrupt your playing… [trails off]

Sam: Erm (1) Erm… yeah ab-a-about a couple or three times people sort of grab some of the money up and run off [laugh] and one day I chase a couple of guy down the road [laugh] [mumble] [mic stand being hit] and someone stop them on the errr… and then they err and then the police came and ya know and investigate what has happened ‘cause ya know its an offense really if you err, for someone to sort of err (1) dip their hand in your what in your takings, so err, so anything like that the police ya know, the police are quite co-operative with err street entertainers (1) err (1) ermm…

Ollie: Errr, I suppose really the only thing we havent touched on is that err, that some people can sort of stereotype buskers as like maybe homeless people or just people that are just looking for their next fix, does this bother you and what do you, w-what do you say to those people?

Sam: Erm (2) w-what do I say to those pe- erm i-i-is i-i-is that to are look at it, people is people to me, and erm, if I was, if I was doing a concert live performace say i-in the erm, in say the concert hall or in the theatre oh pft, it’s the same people that I’m seeing on the street that I’d want to come to, come to buy a ticket or, ya know so [stuttering] so to me it’s people, peoples my interest its people, its people I wanna entertain, its people I wanna bring my music to, so err, so I don’t see a difference of the people that come to the theatre or comes to the concert hall to hear my music than ones that hear it on the street because I mean its, you might see you might see err, the vagrants[?] on the street, you might see th-th-th-the drug pushers or th-those that are taking drug, but, they don’t own the street, I see it as a spectacle of people who come to do their shopping who comes to ya know whatever ya know, I see myself just as ya know you have any of the major store like you might have you might have Marks & Spencer you might have WH Smith’s you might have the phone[?] ya know we all we all in there, in the, in the healing for the people so therfore I don’t look at it that way, I look at the people I’m entertaining, I’m looking at the people that ya know appreciate and respect my music, I’m looking at the people might not you might, come unnanounced[?] ya know sad and disappointed and and my music cheers them up ya know ya know so that’s the way I look at it, I’m there entertaining as I would if I was in the theatre, as I would if I was in the concert hall, as I would if I was in the pub or in the club because it’s the same people that are there in the street that would of come along so err so that’s why I would, ya know that’s how I look at it ya know, altho-although erm, ya know, in the early days of Nottingham when I started that there was there seemed to be a lot of ya know vagrants[?] err err the beggars or those who ya know, playing for their next fix or whatever, b-but all that is clean up now in Nottingham because eh erm not a lot is going now, and [mumble] the proper street entertainer who has got our liscense to do that so there is a lot of respect for that know, so err…

Ollie: [clears throat] Well we’ve pretty much you’ve answered all the questions on here so err, any of you guys have anything to ask?

Jason: [clears throat] Did you err perform anywhere other than the streets?

Sam: Oh-y-y-yeah (1) errm (1) I do sometimes erm restaurants erm in the pub when sometimes the job comes up or (1) erm so [incoherence] birthday celebration [incoherent mumbles]…

Jason: Ok, thank you (1) Tom, can you think of any questions?

Tom: I think you’ve pretty much said them all

Jason: We’ve got like…

Ollie: Twenty mintues nearly [chuckle]

Jason: That’s great.

Reece Photos and Production Stills

2009-01-30T11:33:00.000-08:00

Recce Information

PRODUCTION TITLE: Soul City

PRODUCER: Jason Bickers

DATE OF RECCE: 20/11/08

TIME OF RECCE: 3:00 pm

LOCATION: City Center, Broadmarsh shopping center district

HOW TO GET THERE (bus/car/train/plane) Walking

PERSON IN CHARGE OF LOCATION
CONTACT NAME, Council

POSITION, Council

TELEPHONE

ACCESS & PARKING/ HOURS AVAILABLE
Not relevant
POWER AVAILABLE

SOUND / AMBIENT NOISE / PROBLEMS
Pedestrians passing, road sweepers and other general city ambiance

OTHER INFORMATION (TOILETS, CATERING, FUNNY CARETAKER)
Public facilities

GENERAL DESCRIPTION OF LOCATION
Out door busy city shopping district. Near The Broadmarsh centre lots of pedestrians, very built up area.

DESCRIPTION OF ACTION
Pedestrians walking past, busker playing live music, fountains, general traffic

HEALTH AND SAFETY NOTES
AREAS OF HAZARD √
ACCESS/EXIT √
AUDIENCE/PUBLIC √
HAZARDOUS SUBSTANCES √
DANGEROUS STRUCTURES √
EXPLOSIVES OR PYROTECHNICS √
ELECTRICITY √
GAS √
ROADS √

INEXPERIENCED CREW/PERFORMERS

LIFTING & LOADING N/A
NIGHT/DAY SHOOT N/A
STUNTS N/A
SPECIAL REQUIREMENTS N/A

OTHER INFORMATION

Production Stills

The Interview

2009-01-30T11:23:00.000-08:00

Next we had to write a series of interview questions for Sam. These questions were an important part of the documentary as we are relying on the busker to be an interesting narrator. The group all came up with questions and we put a big list of them together. Next Ollie arranged them into four main groups that we wanted to find out about the busker. Personal questions, Nottingham questions, Busking-musical questions and questions about society. These were four main topics that we want to explore in the documentary. We also tried to write as many double barreled questions as possible to help produce long and interesting answers.

Interview Questions

Personal Questions

What is your full name?

Where do you live now and how long have you lived there?

Have you always lived in Nottingham and where did you lived before?

Do you have family or friends in the local area?

What else do you do in your free time?

Do you have another job and how long have you done it?

On an average busking session how much money do you earn?

What do you spend it on? Anything specific?

Nottingham Questions

What do you think of Nottingham as a city?

Are there any aspects of it you like/don't like?

How has the city changed in the time you have lived here? For better or worse?

Where is your favourite part of the city? Why?

Busking/Musical Questions

How long have you been busking and how did you get into it?

How long have you been busking and how did you get into it?

Where did you learn to play guitar and how long have you been playing?

Do you play guitar and/or sing anywhere else other than busking? If so, where?

Why do you busk?

Why do you choose to busk in this area all the time?

What music do you listen to in your free time?

Does this influence your busking style or even your mood and personality?

What do your family/friends think of your busking?

What is your opinion on modern pop music?

Are there any particular modern artists you like/dislike?

What do you think about most modern music being electronically produced on computer?

Would you encourage more people to busk? Why?

Would you encourage young people to learn a musical instrument? Why?

Does it not bother you sitting out in the cold for hours and how do you deal with it?

Society Questions

Do you enjoy meeting new people and are there any regulars that you see when you're busking?

What do the regulars say to you?

Have you made friends with anyone you didn't know before busking?

Do you get any trouble from any of the public? If yes, who? What did they do?

Who are your favourite types of members of the public? e.g. businessmen, couples, teenagers, the elderly etc. Why?

Do you care what people think of you while your busking?

What do you think they are thinking?

Some people stereotype buskers as homeless people playing for money, does this bother you? What would you say to those people?

AV Documentry Project : Storyboards

2009-01-06T21:52:00.000-08:00

Here is a Copy of the initial story boards that i drew up for the project. I based the majority of the pictures in story board on a number of photos that were taken in the location which we would be shooting and around the city. These photographs were taken to give us ideas for some of the shots that we would need to get on the day of shooting. There is also notes including with the pictures describing things like key elements of the shot and ideas for camera directions.

Proposal Presentation

2008-12-06T17:29:00.000-08:00

After some reaching and meeting with our client Sam we managed to gather some ideas for a spin to the documentry. From talking with the busker the group decided that a good approach for the documentry would be to take his views on society hearing his opinions about the city and the different people that he meets. We decided that to make it an interesting piece that we could make a narrative story. In the begining we could set out to make Nottingham look like a poor place to be with trouble from youths and lots of crime. This is slightly negative stereotyping. This impression that the audience has to begin with will slowly be proved wrong with the introduction and narration of our busker sam. His positivity will give a good message about the city and society in general.

Below is the groups proposal that was presented in our latest seminar. The feedback in a number of presentations we've done in previous weeks from tutors and peers has proved to be very useful and gave us some ideas on how we could improve the documentry ideas to this stage. One of the main changes we made to our original plan is that we now aim to have the busker narrating over the documentry simular to short 4 doc film ''3 cherrys''. I felt that this change in style from the formal interview we had planed to do previously is what would make our documentry and lot more entertaining and interesting.

Busking Proposal

Publish at Scribd or explore others:

2008-12-06T16:07:00.000-08:00

AV Documentary Project: The Research

I have been looking through as many short films and documentaries as possible to try and gain some ideas and techniques that we can imply into the project.

The first significant documentary short we looked at was a short from the website four docs. The title of this documentary is ''three cherries''. It is a piece about gambling particularly on slot machines and revolves around different people andthere gambling experiences. I think that the visual shots in this short are very eye catching and creative and work very well with the audio. However The audio is the most important part of this piece. The voice over mixed with ambiance sounds of the casino and the backing track is what really make the short film interesting. On top of this another thing i noticed is that certain words that are spoken in the voice over appear in text on screen to give them enthusiast. This technique works really well. I like the visual approach in three Cherry's its good to see that there no formal interviews its much more creative than that. i defiantly found this useful and think its a good approach to take our for our documentary on busking.

The second significant documentary short that we looked at is another documentary from four docs. This short is called ''Susan and Susan'' It focuses on one person, a lady that has an obsession with snails. She talks about her past and how shes always felt connected with them. there is a voice over of her telling her story. While this is going on there are a lot of creative and artistic shots of snails. This is similar to the approach that is used in three cherries. Again the audio is one of the most important factors in this documentary in keeping the audience engaged and interested with the piece

AV Documentary Project : The Idea

2008-12-05T18:42:00.000-08:00

The brief states that in groups of 4 or 5 we must plan and produce a 4 minute non fictional ''character study'' it has to be entertaining and informative to the audience of one interesting character. Presentations of the idea and progress will take place throughout the project. The brief also states we are expect to do the following 5 things:

1: Journal posts of the character study on chosen subject, including research carried out for the film project.
2: a Production file containing production research and paperwork treatment, photographs, locations, script, storyboard, call sheets, schedules, Voice overs, paper edit, book references etc.
3: Cd copy of 4 Minute long DV documentary with title and credits [720x576 DVAVI 25fps]
4: make journal entries and post that document and also reflect upon the work and progress during the module.
5: Complete a group peer assessment form

Our group now only consists of just three people this is unfortunate but beyond our control and in this stage impossible to find more members. This means that each member of our group will have to take on more works roles and responsibility. I don't necessarily see this as a bad thing because i think that there is advantages with working in a small team of people. The other members of my group have produced good quality work in the past and the we communicate well so working with a smaller amount of people shouldn't be a problem.

We have decided to base our project on busking in Nottingham. There is a well known busker man called Sam who is a street entertainer. He plays blues guitar and sings for money on the streets and we'd like to base the documentary around him if he seems interesting enough. We are going to meet with the busker and chat to him to try and work out what kind of angle we can approach the documentary from.

Editing and implying subtext

2008-11-28T17:28:00.000-08:00

Choices in editing revolve around the idea of viewpoint. One of many takes in an edit is how to generate and imply subtext. This is the ability to suggest and imply different things. There are a number of different ways to create subtext in an edit. A popular choice is reaction time. By increasing or decreasing the reaction time that somebody on shot takes to respond to a question can give off different impressions about that person. Good use of subtext will cause the audience to ask a lot of questions themselves about the scene. This keeps the audience interacting and interested in whats on screen so subtext is a very useful tool to be able to manipulate. In the clip below from Charlie Brooker's screen wipe he shows some different techniques that can be used to create subtext in a show such as big brother. I like it because i think its an interesting and amusing clip that demonstrates just how many possibilities there are.

Shot design analysis

2008-11-13T05:33:00.000-08:00

The Character in this shot is in a dark and confined space this gives me the impression that he is perhaps trapped somewhere. He is looking out towards the light on the left hand side of the frame this could represent hope but also despair that he cant be free. He is looking down so this could mean a number of things but i think it is to emphasis his sorrow and mood from the eyes i can tell that the character is obviously in some kind of pain maybe hunger if he has been trapped for a long time. The camera is at the level so the shot is very personal in a way.
When i looked at the photo for the first time my eyes jump straight to the character in the right hand third of the frame then they follow the wire into the object perhaps a pipe on the left hand side. This makes me wonder why it is significant to the shot.

The first thing i notice when i look at the photo is that there is diagonal lines that all point roughly towards the character in the center of the picture. Although my eyes are drawn to this character towards the middle of the frame they quickly move up and left to the to security guards pinning another character against the wall. The shot gives the impression of power and authority to the police or guards giving them dark uniforms where the other men are very pale and positioned lower down in image.

AV Documentary Project : Initial photographs

2008-11-09T12:22:00.000-08:00

Thursday the 6th of November photos were taken in town of our groups client Sam ''Jazz Man'' A number of different photos were taken from different angles to try and get some ideas of good cameras angles to shoot from. The following photos show a few of the ideas for angles and the surrounding location in the allocated area that the documentary will be set. There is more to added soon.

Character Photo 1

Recce photo 1

Recce photo 2

More photos to be uploaded soon

Here is a short clip of our client the jazz man performing this was recorded on a camera phone to give us more ideas of which angles would look best when we record him sam playing.

The Essential point of networking is human contact. Business has killed networking by making it something for the career orientated person.

2008-10-26T17:48:00.000-07:00

The definition of networking is to make use of professional contacts. The essential point of making these contacts is to share information to further ones self or in business to benefit the company in question. The main difference between modern day networking and networking in the past is that technology is more frequently used. Networking with technology includes email and faxing where business men wont require to meet. This itself is a disadvantage over meeting in person and talking because person ability factor that all humans have is lost and then it isnt quite the same. Successful business men today still travel great distances just to meet face to face with clients and contacts to seal a deal involving money for example.
Networking can be beneficial in the sense of meeting people as business contacts, it cannot be relied upon to do business entirely.
Business in a way has killed networking by making it something for people who are focusing on their career and meeting people to further themselves in their own careers and not necessarily the company they are working for.

Band Progress

2008-09-24T11:35:00.000-07:00

Firstly we've changed our name from the escape artists to the Lol pandas! Myspace address listed below. The band has moved away from covers and has sat down to write a few solid songs as well as having many more tunes in the works. We anticipate to professionally record our Independent EP in the Christmas holidays but this may take longer due to a few members of the band having other commitments. Two of our finished songs are available on the band Myspace to listen to, these are live recordings and the quality isn't to good the levels aren't very good either but it will do for now.

Here is the bands myspace feel free to add us!

http://www.myspace.com/lolpandaz

Here a myspace i set up to host a few songs composed my brother and i

www.myspace.com/alineinyourbook24

This coming year i would like to make an acoustic duet with someone with good singing ability and play pubs and bars in Nottingham so if this is you and your reading this by all means get in touch :)

London Work Experience

2008-09-24T11:30:00.000-07:00

I decided that I would spend some of the summer break getting some work experience in film production. I went about this by using the website ‘‘mandy.com’’. This site is great for searching for jobs in Film and Broadcasting. The vacancies are with various companies both established and amateur.

I went down the list of jobs that are posted up daily (a lot of which were in London) an hour’s journey on the train from where I live in Suffolk, which was ideal. Lots of the jobs I found seemed like they would give me the kind of experience I was hoping to get, un-paid but just what I was looking for. I ended up applying for at least fifty different jobs but only hearing back from one or two. These unfortunately just told me that students were not what they were looking for. Eventually though I did get some positive news. I was offered job being part of a production crew with the Young Person’s Theatre company who were shooting a video short around London. I was told that they needed help with general jobs around the set and that I’d also get to watch and take part with the filming as well as meet a lot of interesting people which seemed perfect to me.

The production had already started a few days prior to me receiving the phone call about the job so I had to start work right away. Commuting wasn’t going to be cheap and not easy either seeing as the crew had to arrive on set at 6:30 some days. So I made a hasty decision to stay in London for week. I found some accommodation on the Holloway road in North London which is close to Camden where the first few days of filming took place. During my weeks work experience we did move all over north and east London to various sets and locations. One of these locations was 3 mills studio’s near Bromley-by-Bow tube station, East London. This was an interesting experience as it’s a popular location in London for production companies to hire out for live broadcast or the recording of film. I also found out that some episodes of the television series Bad Girls was shot there.

Here is a description of the video short I worked on quoted from the YPTC website.

‘‘Shot over twelve days in August 2008, Invalid Debris tells the story of ten young people who, although they do not initially realize it, are permanently linked by their involvement in the death of a young girl. One year later they are brought together by the only person who knows the whole story of what happened on that fateful night. Locked into a deserted building together, they are forced to examine their lives and, finally, face up to the truth about themselves...

Invalid Debris is a thoughtful and moving examination of the way in which our actions impact on the world around us. Powerfully acted by the young cast, many of whom, at that time, had no previous film acting experience, Invalid Debris is set to become a classic of its type.’’

From my weeks work experience I feel I learnt a lot about how recording a film works and managed to answer a lot of my questions and queries. I also made some good friends and contacts students like myself and people who work in unpaid and paid video production jobs throughout the year. I feel it was a valuable experience and have gained some ideas from people I talked to for some work experience next summer.

Draft website

2008-05-07T02:32:00.001-07:00

This is a draft made in Adobe Photoshop of how my site in flash is going to look. I also plan to have a click here to enter screen and a loading screen before this page. The main animation here will be the buttons at the top of the page. Shaped like guitar plectrums they will light up white when hovered over and then change a black outline will appear after the used has clicked the mouse down. There will be a page for my CV a page for my year 1 work which is broken down into sections. Then another page for my work outside of university, a page for my sketches and art work and finally a contact us.

Logo Ideas

2008-05-04T00:29:00.000-07:00

Here are some of the logo's that i have been working on for my identities project. I plan on choosing one or two and using them on my project website. Ive used a range of different designs all revolving around my love for music.

These are three logos in the shape and style of a plectrum (guitar pick) the one in the middle i prefer out of the three. This would make a good logo its simple and easy to produce. Its also eye catching and a memorable image which is very important as i talked about before in my research. By the way MI stands for My Identity which i plan to use as the title for my site.

Here is another logo i put together this one is a little more complex and detailed but still works well i think. I pretty much used three pictures of amps and speakers here. I pasted the pictures into Photoshop and using the wand tall selected the white around the edges. Next i clicked on select inverse and the program gave me an out line around the shape. I then filled the outline black, after repeating this for all three i positioned them accordingly and this was the final result.

Finally here is the last logo that i have been working on. I used a similar technique to the last logo for this one. This is my favorite out of the logo ideas that i have come up with so far. However it does contain a lot of detail so i am not to sure if i will pick this one for the site. Any feedback on which of the logos you prefer i would be grateful for! thanks

300 Film Review

2008-04-30T11:32:00.000-07:00

So recently i decided to watch the 2006 movie 300. A recommended watch from a friend and a thoroughly enjoyed it. Yes i know that the film was released two years ago, however when it was first released upon seeing the trailers i decided against going to see it. I thought to myself 300 looks like another Gladiator remake claiming it can do bigger and more action packed battles than lord of the rings. And theres been countless films trying to do this which really didn't impress me much such as King Arthur and Eragon. I turns out that i couldn't have been more wrong about 300 its a great watch with an exciting plot and great use of CGI. I would highly recommend the film to anyone.

300 is set in Ancient Greece, Sparta. Three hundred of the strongest Spartan warriors stand against a mighty Persian empire. Directed by Zack Snyder the film is based on Frank millers Graphic novel.

The story starts in the kingdom of Sparta it takes the audience through the story of the training and hardship a boy endures in order to become a spartan warrior. King Leonidas played by Gerard Butler receives a threat from a Persian messenger to submit to the great god king Xerxes or to prepare for war. Leonidas reacts to this by kicking the messenger down a giant well. The king asks the elders and counsels that make spartan laws if he can take the army's north to face Xerxes armies. However some strong figures in the countries government have been bribed by the Persians so he is forbidden to do so.

Rather than admit defeat and submit to Xerxes and the Persian empire Leonidas takes 300 of the best spartan warriors and marches towards the hot gates in the north. The gates are a narrow pass between two cliffs where he plans to hold his men in formation so when Xerxes armies arrive they will have to fight in the narrow space attacking in waves, their numbers counting for nothing.

The scenes that follow in 300 are amazing. As expected after seeing Snyder's Dawn of the dead remake 300 also contains a lot of blood and gore. A lot, perhaps being an under statement the film is packed full of it but don't let this put you off. It provides the audience with the eye candy of frank millers graphic novel and is almost artistic in this sense. The fight scenes are action packed with impressive coriography and camera work. Some of the fight scenes including one from the pilot episode are shot in 360 slow motion. The camera moves around the fighting focusing on one spartan warriors slaughtering the Persians in the heat of battle.

The films battle scenes are far from dull the 300 Spartans fight their way through not only Xerxes's Soldiers but face clouds of arrows, huge monsters, beasts and masked creatures named the Immortals. Although the film is based on legend and real historical basis there is side of it that ties in with Greek mythology and myth.

While Leonidas and his 300 battle away from home, Queen Gorgo struggles to convince the council men to send reinforcements to aid her king. This storyline is not accurate to millers graphic novels but showed a strong feminine character.

The film nearly entirely shot inside studios uses computer generated imagery in many of the scenes. Using blue screens 300 has some stunning visuals that couldn't have been created if filming on location. The music gives this movie a modern feel to it some of which is the genre of rock including a song by nine inch nails.

An heroic story of great courage and companionship with the gore of a good horror and the excitement provided in good action movie, combined with some stunning visuals and special effects.

Band Documentary

2008-04-07T17:45:00.000-07:00

Heres a documentary based on my band that i created this easter. I researched documentaries and interviews with well known bands mainly via You tube prior to creating this. I found there was a number of different techniques used. Firstly there was either still or free hand. Still camera work on a tripod did occasionally looks good if the interview is with one or two members of the band or if the band are sitting on a long sofa. Free hand camera work generally gave a better feel though and was much better suited for my interview as the band were sitting on two different sofas facing each other.

The other thing i picked up on during my research is that on most the interviews where the camera was on a tripod the person behind the camera would ask the questions and where the camera is free hand or being wheeled around their would more often than not be an interviewer. The problem was that i didn't have anyone available or willing to be the interviewer at the time. This lead me to have an idea that i would edit in the questions on black screens and then fade to the response of the questions.

I was also inspired from watching documentaries and interviews that a good idea for my short would be to cut to small clips of songs after every couple of questions. I did this cut during editing by using a fading transition to move between the interview and 20-30 seconds of the good part of a song.

Logo research

2008-03-28T06:22:00.002-07:00

Logos.

Above is a range of successful mainstream logos. The success of most of these logos is that they have been kept simple. There is no real retail they are just made up of simple shapes, lines and sometimes lettering.

Take Toyotas logo for example. Everybody is familiar with this logo. The majority of people that see the logo will be able to associate it with the car company Toyota therefore the logo is successful. However the design is simply just 3 ovals interlinking each other. Maybe if the design had been more complicated Toyota would not have been as well known? This is something one has to bare in mind when designing there own logo. Simplicity is key.

Another brand that I’d like to look at is the cider brewers Strongbow. Above is a few of the logos that the company has used over the years. Starting on the left is the oldest logo the current one is on the far right. It has taken Strongbow a few years to get it right so it’s apparent that companies don’t always make great logos straight away. It can take trial and error to allow further development. The latest logo again is very simple and striking to the eye. It’s pretty much made up of four triangles and a square to form the body and head then a curved line for the bow. This logo makes great use of shapes.

Another thing that is liked about the brand Strongbow is that they use this image and theme of an archer not only on for the logo but also on the website and in there advertising campaigns.

http://www.strongbow.com/

On the strongbow official website, they have made good use of flash to create loading screens and buttons. For the brands button they have animated to logo to shoot the bow. The arm moves back and the bow recoils. I’d also like to be able to make the logo for my box project animated to.

Some examples of bad logos are:

This logo gives off the wrong impression although I can see the message that its trying to put across it fails at it and instead looks like somebody is throwing a small child.

This logo was created by the university of Santa Catalina in Brazil. The logo is supposed to look like the institute against a setting sun, I’m not sure everybody will agree with them there but at least its memorable.

Logos that can be mistaken for explicit nature poked fun of or miss interpreted should be avoided.

Identities 3d Enviorment final piece

2008-03-10T23:06:00.000-07:00

3d Enviorment

2008-03-10T22:59:00.000-07:00

My idea was to combine scenes from the pictures that I found as part of my research. I would use parts from all of them such as the Japanese scenery the Zen style house the waterfall and the bamboo and use this for a 3d environment which contained my 2d photoshoped avatar. I also decided that the environment would be set inside a box which ties in with the second part of this project.

Here is what my 3d rendered environment looks like in its first stages.

First of all I started by following an online tutorial and guide on how to make a realistic looking waterfall this included the two banks even side. It was created using 3d studio maxes partial systems and some downloaded textures. After I was happy with how the water fall looked I started working on the Japanese zen style house. For this I used cubes and extruded them out using the bevel tool on some of the sides to create sloping roof panels.

I quite often added vertices to mid points of lines and then connected them with extra lines giving me more control over how I shaped the building. When I was happy with the shape I positioned it over the waterfall. I then added a box over the whole of the environment and extruded one face of the box inwards to hollow it out.
After this was done i added textures using 3d maxes build in material editor. I used materials for the tiles in the roof the paper walls and windows. This took a while to get it to look right but eventually after tweaking it I found something I was happy with. Textures of blue skies and clouds were also added around the inside of the box.
I then used various shapes to divide up parts of the cubes that make up the banks either side of the water fall. I filled these shapes with various colors and used textures in the middle to make these cubes look like two huge speakers. This ties in with my personality and love of music.

To finish the project I added my avatar into the top of the scene. I had some problems with this I couldn’t make the back ground transparent without losing some of the picture, so I had to use a black background and try disguise it the best I could. I was also quite disappointed that a lot of the quality of the picture was lost.

I found that there are lots of built in trees and terrain such as bushes and hedges built into 3d max as pre sets. I there for decided that these looked a lot more professional than the trees I had been making myself from tutorials and used these in my project.

The time line was extended to from 100 1400 frames and the finished piece lasts 42 seconds in total length.

Instead of choosing a piece of music to go with the project I recorded myself playing the guitar to the song new born by muse. I then edited this to play along with the movie using windows media player to do so. The part of the song i recorded is a little bit shorter than the clip itself so it doesn’t come in for a few seconds.

Further ideas and research

2008-03-10T22:38:00.000-07:00

The idea for the environment that would contain my avatar is to create a Zen garden in 3D studio max. This relates to calm and tranquil sides of my personality but would also includes other aspects of my personality such as my love of music.

Japanese style terrain. A lot of very green and yellow tones as well as some dark red.
Terrain of different sizes and shapes

Zen style buildings. Made of materials such as paper and wood. The roofs are sloped and made up of curved grey tiles. There are few open windows.

Scenic water falls

If possible I will animate the water so it flows.

There are some good tutorials that teach one how to do such things on youtube.com

Bamboo is used as a building material in Zen. It is used often to create fences and furniture such as these tables and chairs

Recent songs

2008-03-10T10:37:00.001-07:00

Here are some of the songs i have recently recorded of me playing guitar in my own time, with the band and also on acoustic guitar with my brother James. The first sound clip i have used with as a sound track for my final Identities project in 3d studio max.

boomp3.com

Avatar Design process

2008-03-09T16:33:00.001-07:00

These are the different stages of sketching and designing for my character. I first of drew a net skellington for my avatar and then fleshed it out drawing the muscles and each limb to the best of my ability. After i that i drew clothes onto the body of the character and when that was done i imported the scanned image to Photoshop and used the pen tool to draw over the lines and the fill tool to colour it. I studied various anime books and guides on the web but this is the first time that i have tried anything like this before. Sorry that some of the drawings and sketches are not as bold as others but i had a problem where if i decreased brightnesses and contrasts down to much unwanted marks would appear on the page.

The design process of my avatar:

3d sutdio Max tree

2008-03-09T14:16:00.000-07:00

I started by drawing a spline and used about five different vertexes. This would be the tree trunk that the branches are attached to. Next i created a circle the size of the circle would effect the diameter of the tree so roughly 5 units across seemed a good guess. I then used the loft tool to connect the circle to the spine trunk and this change the spline into a 3 object.

Next i changed the positioning of the control points in the deformations roll out to change the shape of the trunk. This process was repeated to make two branches out either side of the trunk towards the top, i played with the deformation tool until i was happy with the resulting shape.

For the next part of making my tree i had to create some textures for the trunk this was achieved by making a 2048x2048 canvas in Photoshop. I drew up a striped map and used an offset filter on the image when this was done i imported it into 3d Max using the material editor. After assigning the material to the selection of the trunk and branches i rendered the image and the texture had been painted on these selections. Using the loft length spinner i changed this until i found something that looks most realistic to the bark pattern on a tree.

Last but not least i had to create the leaves for my tree. I went back into Photoshop and created an image with a black background and white leaves and then white background and green leaves. In 3d maxes material editor i imported the black and white mask to the Opacity channel and the coloured image into the diffuse channel. This made the background on the images transparent.

The opacity technique i used here i plan to use when i bring my photoshoped avatar into the environment i am creating for him.

Here is the finished result of my tree. I plan to use a few of them in my 3d environment Zen garden.

V-diary

2008-03-02T14:36:00.000-08:00

My Diary Of V-side

V-side an M.M.O.G which stands for massively multi-player online game is very much different to other games of the genre. In other mmo's such as world of Warcraft that i mentioned before there object of the game is to process in level and skills climbing an online ladder as such to become the strongest and best. This is quite a simple out come but the out come that the majority of the players in these kind of games are striving towards. However in enviroments
such as V-side, there and second life the goal and outcome seems to be different for the user. the user in these environments creates their own objectives whether it is to become the most popular or to collect all the clothes or secrets or perhaps to find romance and fall in love.

The sign up process seemed easy enough i created a basic avatar similar to the one i had tried to create in second life, choosing longish dark hair and the type of clothing that i wear in R.L (real life). This made my avatar look similar to my self image. For some reason i felt it was important to personalize my avatar in this way thus creating something that is individual and different to the majority. I choose not to give away my real name age and location i dislike giving out personal details on the internet. I called my avatar by the alias Juneau, a favourite song of mine and also an interesting word, i was then ready to download the software and begin my ten days as a V-sider.

[ - - Day one - - ]

I entered the game and immediately found that to my liking the controls were similar online games such as World of Warcraft that i have played in the past. Which means that i didn't need any assistance or have any problems learning the basics. This was quite lucky really because i later found out that there is currently no tutorials or anything that teaches newbies to play v-side, the only way to learn is to ask others and learn that way. And like most guys i hate to ask for help i'd rather just look dumb until i work things out for myself.

One of my first impressions was that I liked the style of the online environment. How the Avatars and the world look its very artistic.

I had my first experience of meeting another avatar in this online world. He told me that he was new as well which i thought was great, somebody i can chat to and learn about the world with at the same time. We decided to go and explore v-side together but we weren't going anywhere quickly it appears he was stuck and couldn't get out. The guy with the afro and the midget standing nearby behind some decks didn't seem to want to help either. I suggested he logged out and then came back to meet me.

He disapeared and i waited around a while, however he didnt come back so i entertained myself by having some fun with the various emotions. Includeing a huge range of different dances that i could get my avatar to do. Apparently this avatar wasn't coming back and if he was i wasnt sure how to contact him so i wondering off to have a look around.

There were adverts all over the city... mainly adverts for albums and songs as Vside seems to be very music cultured. Anyway this wasn't so bad if this is how they make their money i dont have to pay them anything right? O.k great.. i was wrong! just five minutes later round the corner i found some cash points in the wall. Apperntly you can use these and the user is directed to a webpage where they have to pay for credits that buy clothes and im not sure what else. This is a disapointment but at least theres a lot of ways that i can customize my Avatar that are free.

Later i took a 'Chillaxe' in a spar...to some Chinese style relax music! i'm impressed by the graphics and songs played in different areas, do a lot for the online world giving a good atmasphere to the each place. Theres been a great selection of music so far! i would expect problems loading and buffering these songs but it doesnt happen at all even when im lagging this is real good.
After exploring for a while i decided i wanted to go and find some random people to chat to but the whole place looked rather empty. Or perhaps it was that i was just looking in the wrong places?

[ - - Day two - - ]

Logging onto a different part of the city this time and a bit later at night i choose to go to new Venezia and it wasn't long before i noticed big crowds of people this was more like how the trailers made the online world appear.

I made small talk with another avatar for a while however she (or he) couldn't stay long but we added each other to our friends list, my first virtual friend!
Next discovered a large night club full of people by right clicking them i can see their age and the country that they are from. Most the people in here are from the US which is more than likely why the day before when i loged on early there wasnt many people around. Some of the users in the club arnt there and display messages to let other users that they'll be back later. Perhaps these people never log out.

V-side Just crashed with a graphics card problem and i am forced to restart my computer. This is peculiar because although my computer isn't great it still has a reasonable graphics card and processor, i play high spec games on this Pc and have never had these kind of problems before.

Ding, grats... A level up in reputation. That was pretty cool i get more free items and stuff. Then I discover that i can yell and everybody in the room can hear... not long after i receive a warning about it!

Later that day i went to a comedy night with some friends, there are lots of events like this in the V-side community such as gigs, party's and game shows to win credits. There has also been hosted events where bands come onto v-side such as the Plain white T's and the All American rejects. They give interviews and chat to the community. They've also been known to pick people at random and send them free band merchandise in the mail.

[ - - Day three - - ]

Random people keep adding me to their friends list its started to get strange, that almost everybody i walk past ads me as a friend of course i don't accept people to be friends of mine if they don't make an effort to talk to me. Even a Hi or how are you would do but these friend hungry V-siders dont even bother with that. Things in this online world seem to work very differently to how they do in RL people here are a lot more forward about things to, they will say what they think.

After spending some of my time talking to a few random people that i met around the docks i found out that V-Side had been on the Tyra Banks show and is the reason a lot of people play it and could explain why so many people on here are from the United State seeing as the Tyra banks show is hugely popular and successful in america. One girl told me that she plays because Tyra banks is a role model to her and she wants to be just like her. Tyra banks is ment to
have a character she occasionally plays. Later i'll see if i can find the episode of the chat show that had V-side on it on you-tube.

So apparently i am mean... full of myself and a clever ass... i have never been told that before by anyone, this is what i mean about people being very forward and not afraid to say what they think here whether it be good or bad, moving on..

Me and a friend who was on tonight got bored so we decided to do some pulp fiction Machinima. A dance off followed soon after.I discovered that Tyra banks also has a Studio inside the game dedicated to her inside theres a video that runs on a big screen with clips from the Tyra banks show that was about online environments and v-side. IT talks a little about people that have got divorced because of addictions to 'Cyber-sex'. Interesting. I remember reading a report about a couple that had an online afair with each other. They were both stuck in a marriage for ten years which they hated and was both looking for a way out, they met these people in online worlds that they fell in love with and ended up going to meet. When they realized that it was each other they were so angry that they had both been untrustworthy that the couple got divorced, true Story.

Interestingly enough later that day i spoke with a female avatar that told me she was leaving her husband to meet another man. The wife and mother of two kids had met the man she was very much in love with in V-side and she was packing up to leave to go and be with him in a few weeks time. So far from the information i have collected today these online worlds seemed to be damaging to real relationships.

[ - - Day four - - ]

I logged into N.V again it seems to be the place where the majority of the V-siders chill out. I met up with some more people and chatted to them for a little while, a few of them decided t give me helpful hints about the game and how i can reach the top level (Super senior). I learn't that there is something called Respekt points in v-side that i can gain for various different reasons. The easiest way i found out, to gain respekt is through giving a rating to the various songs that the game plays through my headphones. However this only gives a very small amount of points. The easiest way apperently to gain these Respekt points is to discover secret places that are hidden all over the v-side citys. These are usually tucked away or in high hard to get places.
Some of my new friends who had discovered all of the v-side secrets were really nice and didn't mind showing me a few and with the help of some useful you-tube videos that i found it wasn't very long before i had discovered most of these places and was raking in the respekts. On top of that I also received a jackpot

which game me a huge amount. Apparently jackpots are when random people get selected and given points each day and i am very lucky to receive one. After a few hours on v-side i had quickly reached level 4 Senior. So i had cheated a little and found out codes and how to reach mysterious areas of the city when some people had taken weeks discovering these places for themselves but if the help is there then i might as well take it.

So anyway my Avatar has gone from wearing the dull boring 'newbie' clothes to wearing something a little better at least and thankfully i didn't have to spend any of my real money either, im still not liking the idea of that. Being a student theres better things to spend it on. Still spending real money on V-clothes is something that a lot of the V-siders seem to do, ive noticed a lot of the ones that have played a long time do at least. Maybe in time i will change my mind, god i hope not.

[ - - Day five - - ]

Alright so today i noticed that In V-side there is much more girl avatars than guys! The girls in the game must out number the guys by at least 5 to 1 a little bit like Nottingham really but im not saying that its a bad thing, not at all. It is however a little bit shocking that 1) Ive only just noticed this after being a V-sider for five whole days and 2) A lot of people say that males make up the majority of the internet, Lies. It is quite obvious that obviously a few male players do choose female avatars something quite common in other online worlds such as World of Warcraft although i don't understand the psychology behind that. This still does not change the strange fact that there are so many female players in v-side. Ive played online games such as counter
strike, team fortress and various other ones over the years and to find a girl playing these games was a rare event.

I spend a little while today thinking about this and speaking to a few of my V-side friends on this matter and most of them believe that this is because females that use the internet and enjoy games prefer to play simulators or real life such as Second life, V-side and there where as males that play online games prefer First person shooters and action style games.

I remember reading an article about gender and video games and how a reason for girls not playing the action games as much as males is to do with the back of the eye and how each gender looks at things. The article stated Males focus on one object such as a car driving down a street where as a female will look at the whole picture, all of the cars as a whole instead of picking one out indurvidualy with her eyes. This was the articles theory on why the audience of video games is heavily male based.

By the time i had finished thinking about this i decided to say goodnight to a few people and have an early night.

[ - - Day six - - ]

I logged on a little later than usual today and made some new friends and people to talk to. MY friends list was getting rather full so i decided to get rid of some of the people i never talked to v-popularity is not one of my v-goals.

When Filling out my profile for more Respekt points i noticed that some v-siders had over 200 friends on their lists somehow i wasn't surprised. How can they find the time to talk to so many people, i bet they only speak to about five of them. so i spent some time filling out my profile and about me tags. These are tags such as interests, favourite music, role models etc. They are tags because when you click other v-siders is displays the tags that you both have in

common with each other, quite a good idea really when decided who your going to talk to. I was also rewarded with more Respekts for this and after shockingly receiving three more jackpots in the space of about an hour i quickly reached the top level, super senior. I say shockingly because according to friends of mine its not a common thing to get a jackpot. A lot of them that have played around a year have only ever been given one or two jackpots so it was very strange.

Ive decided that i have gained as much as i can from v-side in the way of expanding on my identity and learning from the environment. So today i was mainly reflecting back on what ive learnt about V-side since ive started spending time here and how i can addapt my self experiances in this online world into the designing of how my avatar is going to look. One thing that strikes me that i enjoy doing in V-side is hanging around with groups of people i like the
company of others because i am a social person this may be something to bare in mind when creating the scene and setting for my avatar in 3d max. I have also been able to draw up some sketches and plans for an outfit my avatar will wear based on the designs of the clothes my character wears in v-side.

2008-02-24T12:44:00.000-08:00

Okie so heres my next post its been a while since i posted up on here i have a habit of not posting for a while then post all the work i have been doing over the last few months all at once.

Below is the first animation that i have completed in Studio 3d max i followed a simple tutorial to make the text move and was quite pleased with the final out come.

So anyway since then i have been trying out various tutorials i found some good ones on www.youtube.com to do various things such as create realistic hair and fur and cloth effects which i am sure will prove useful when creating my character. However none of the tutorials i found for a while were really helping me make a good start on my avatar. I have made some good designs mostly sketches and drawings that i've been trying to follow but this has been very difficult with my rather basic knowledge of the program but i did find the following tutorial helped me out a great deal.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yr4liDcdVA0

This is the first of a series that explains a simple way to create a head a great starting point for modeling an avatar. This was great! i have been doing a lot of research on creating heads and most of the methods that people used looked like they were far to complex for me to get to grips with yet.

So i have pretty much used this guys method to get the shape of the head it took me a few attempts to find something that looks right but here it is so far

Well alright it looks a little bit like a person that has had a sock pulled over their face put it isn't bad i am reasonable happy with the shape at least because it does look human... sort of. I was a little worried the face of my avatar would just be a cylinder for a while but this tutorial has given me some hope.

Ive also realized that since i have started to get more into 3d Studio max i've been trying to looking at objects in real life as nets to get an idea of how they would look re-create them in the program. Anyway i shall post up the progress of my face and avatar soon.

Images that scream colour and light

2008-01-31T23:08:00.001-08:00

This was a tricky one, finding something to photograph that really screamed a lot of colour and light. I thought that some good shots of a rainbow would be a good approach to this task. However there was one big problem, how long would i have to wait for the physical phenomena of reflection, refraction, dispersion and total internal reflection. This was particularly a big problem when i could only keep the camera that i had booked out for a total of three days.
After seeing another students wonderful photos of shapes and patterns formed with glow sticks in a dark room i started to have some new ideas. I decided that i was going to photograph the city street and lights from traffic with high exposure to see if i could get any random effects with the camera. Below is the results of my experimentation. To be quite honest having no experience with high quality Digital Cameras in the past im quite pleased with how this turned out. Especially for a first attempt. Its also something im going have another go at in the future to see if i can improve the end result.

Identities Module, Second Life and There.

2008-01-31T13:30:00.000-08:00

As part of the Identities module the task was to investigate the online role playing environment of Second Life. The screen shot below shows the different types of avatar the used can choose to play as inside second life. I liked the look of the Harajuku avatars because I felt this avatar was some what familiar to my own image, having the same type of clothes and hair.
Unfortunately there have been a few problems with second life and i wasn't able to finish creating my account instead i decided to take a look at the online world of There.

Once the user enters There they can change the default characters clothes appearance and hairstyle. However I soon found out that the user had to pay a one off payment if they wanted their avatar to look anything like the other users in the game. I’m sure the company has to make money to keep running but this is something that I was not willing to do.

Still take you home (cover)

2008-01-20T07:35:00.000-08:00

Cover of the song Still take you home by the Arctic monkeys. The video was edited and exported in Adobe premier pro. The file was to big to be uploaded to any video hosting sites i could find such as youtube and myspace video so it was then loaded into windows movie maker and exported as a lower quality video that was under 10mb in size.

The band

2008-01-09T11:49:00.000-08:00

A project and hobby of mine over the past six months has been to play guitar for a band back home in bury st Edmund's Suffolk. We formed in August of last year and have been working towards gigging then releasing our own EP. The band meets up and jams in a practise room once every week or every fort night however this has been more difficult since i moved away to Nottingham but we still do when we have the chance.

Although being a band for almost half a year we are still debating over the name. Last week we narrowed a list of ideas down to four names and picked one out of a hat. This seemed to be the best and fairest way to do it but afterwards the majority of the bands members decided that we liked some of the other names more than the one that was chosen, Typical.

Anyway we're currently putting the finishing touches to a few songs and have a huge number of cover songs that we can perform at gigs. These songs range from Still take you home by the Arctic monkeys to Hysteria by muse and Beer by reel big fish to Killing in the name of by Rage Against the machine.

Last week i filmed us playing a few of the covers at practise, these shall be uploaded soon.

Flash Website

2008-01-09T10:54:00.000-08:00

Here's a website that i put together over the summer. It has been created in Flash MX as uses some basic action script. I have uploaded external SWF files containing video clips and pictures. The objective of the site is for me to show some of my creative skills in my portfolio and also to put some techniques Ive learnt in flash on my Digital media course into practise.

note:

The SWF's for the videos are all external and i couldnt upload them and get them to work on the site i hosted my website. The reason for this is because the site i uploaded my website to is a free quick uploader for flash websites. I will try to find somewhere to host the whole of my site includeing all the SWF's so you can see the whole thing in future.

Object Aesthetics Review

2007-12-20T08:41:00.000-08:00

Nintendo consoles

The first of the Nintendo consoles were released in 1977. These were large console control pads all in one that connected into a television set. They played early games such a pong. There were five different consoles in the series.

In 1983 the Nintendo Entertainment System or NES was released. This 8 bit console was large rectangular and had two slots in the front for controllers. The controllers were quite large and a similar shape to the console they didn’t fit in the players hand very well. I don’t believe this console was very ascetically pleasing however in terms of what it could do it was very advanced for the time.

The Super Nintendo Entertainments system or SNES was released in 1990. This console used new technology and was a 16 bit console making it much more advanced than the NES. It was much more ascetically pleasing also. The console was not only half the size but had a much more design to it that the previous consoles lacked.

The Nintendo 64 was released in 1996. It was Nintendo’s third big console for the International market. This being a 64 bit console there had been a huge leap from the previous ones. There were a lot of design changes to. The console was larger but a lot nicer looking than the models before. This time it took games as cartridges instead of them being built in. The console also had four slots for controllers instead of two and the controllers were designed to fit comfortably in the user’s hand.

Nintendo Game Cube or GNC was released in 2001. Instead of using the conventional CD that the other consoles were using at the time the Game Cubeis the first Nintendo video game system to use a disc-based media--in this case proprietary 3-inch, 1GB discs--rather than cartridges for its games. It comes with four built-in controller ports, a built-in carry-handle, and two memory card slots. Its designed well, looks good and its also small so it doesn’t take up much space either.

The Nintendo WII or its codename Revolution
Was released in 2006 and is Nintendo’s latest gaming console. The console is very slick looking and is comes in a silver and white finish. Colours that seem to be most popular in this day of age, because represent modern and new age. The most interesting change in this consoles design however is the controller. It uses wireless controller called WII motes. That may be used as a handheld pointing device and can detect motion and rotation in three dimensions.

One shot video project

2007-12-10T12:10:00.000-08:00

One shot video project
No time no space

ONE SHOT VIDEO

The task for the one Shot video project was to produce a video short. The rules were that the the video had to be a still shot and last no more than two minutes in length But apart from that we could film pretty much anything.

In a new group this time we wanted to come up with something creative so i decided that we should do a time lapse of the city. One way a time lapse can be done by speeding up video during editing, this doesnt give a blur to the video just gives the effect that everything is moving much faster.

While researching this i found a numberous ammounts of youtube videos that gave me insperation for the project. And example being a piece called night and day includes a lot of shots of traffic passing by. A lot of the shots at night in this video are most impressive as the lights of the cars blur and leave trales.

We decided that for our project we'd do somthing simular and film a street from a high point like the top of a building or a bridge. The group found a good spot where a lot of people and traffic passed below us. The plan was to film for a few hours so we could really speed it up as much as we wanted, the more footage the beter the editing could be. we also wanted to get the sky in the top of the shot so we could film the sunset and clouds going by. Unfortuantly however the person in the group responsable for getting the equipment had only managed to book the camera for a short period of time so we were only able to film approxitmly 30 minutes of footage.

We did have the opperutanty to go out and shoot again but we were all impressed with the result after speeding up the film by around 10 times its original speed it was looking quite like how i'd imagined. The only problem we faced was for two minutes it wasnt very interesting. The blur effect also wasnt as appartent as i'd antisipated. To overcome this problem during editing in adobe premier we added a trailing blur effect to the piece. There was also some minor reflections in the window we had filmed the shot through so we decressedthe brightness and increased contrast quite dramaticly to reduce these.

The editing for this project probabily was the longest part, it took us quite a while to find somthing we were all happy with however the project still lacked somthing. There was no music or sound so to watch it was quite dull and bland. It was decided that we'd use a philisophical speach along with some slow tempo music to accombanie the video. One of the members in the group had a lot of experiance with sampleing and mixing music tracks so we left this part of the project up to him to come up with somthing.

I enjoyed working on this project and was again quite pleased with the final result however after the file was uploaded to youtube a lot of the quality was lost so it doesnt look as good on my online blog.

The technque of Time lapse is new to me, and ive seen it used a lot on telivision and in the media to speed up the process of a wide variety of different things. An example being in some wildlife documentarys time lapse is used to speed up flowers or plants growing and opening. I have found that another way to create a more sucessful looking time lapse called time lapse photography which uses digital photography instead of video. In video the less frames per second that are recorded, the faster the projection will look. Here is the equation to find the percieved speed. The images are captured by taking photos from just a few seconds to a minute or more apart, they are put together as a sequence allowing you to view the event over a short period.

I have also found to create a good motion blur that exposure must be used in different ways.
Its a subject that interests me a great deal and somthing i want to research more and defently come back to before i finish the course.

2007-12-01T05:52:00.000-08:00

At the start of chapter 5 of The Language of New Media, Lee Manovich discuses how human computer interface can model and manipulate date in its own way. He describes Human computer interfaces or HCI as having its own logic on digital data. The chapter covers three main computer media operations these are Selection, Composition and Teleaction. Manovich later goes onto talk about the relationships between professional and amateur relationships in media design. The gap between the two groups has become a lot smaller over the years but is still noticeably there due to the difference in prices of software packages.

Sleep walking, Stop Motion Animation

2007-11-04T07:47:00.000-08:00

Stop motion is used to produce animated movements of objects. It is created by using photography and taking a large ammount of stills that are put ogether in a sequence. The Brothers Quay use objects such as dolls and toys in a lot of their stop motion shorts. The form of Stop motion that involves the animation of living humans is refered to as Pixilation.

Our task was to produce a Pixilation short lasting at least two minutes in length. The thoughts and ideas behind our groups piece of work were that we was going to create somthing quite random and sureal.

While researching and thinking about how we wanted to approach the project i watched a Stop motion pixaltion short called Gisele Kerozene by Eisa Cayo and Jan Kunen. In this short the characters move around from scene to scene by giving the impression that they are flying. This effect is created by jumping each time a still is taken, if the photo captures the character in the air each time one can create the illusion of floating or flying. This was defently a technique i wanted to experiment with in our project.

However although the group liked the sound of this it was very difficult to put into practise. Everytime the person in shot would jump the cameras flash would go off and second or two late which only lead to photos that eventually had to be edited out.

For part of the project we took the idea of doing a pixalation version of a newton's cradle as shown in the picture. Where one person would slide across a bench knocking into the next and so on and so forth. This seemed to work rather well and add to the obscure nature of the piece.

When it came to editing the video i Used Adobe Photoshop to posterize each of the images a small ammount. This gave a very dreamy less detailed astetic to the photos so i decided to call my animation Sleep walking.

Stop motion animation is a totaly new area to me and learning how to do it was not only interesting but very enjoyable. Our group managed our time very well we finished the practical side of the project reasonably quickly leaving ourselves lots of time free for editing.

At the end of the animation one of the group who was been filmed gives the impression hes switching an invisible light switch. The idea here was to add a click of a switch type sound to this part in editing, The screen would then go black this would be a tidy end to the project. However disapointly i found it difficult to find a suitible sound file for this so unforutantly wasnt able to stick to the original plan in this respect. Although somebody else in the group managed to do it well for their project.
I was impressed with how our groups overwell work and i thought the project was a sucess.

Reflection

2007-11-04T07:39:00.000-08:00

An example of some reflective practise that the group made on work i was involved with here iswhen we first started our Stop-Motion Animation for the Narratives module our group was struggling for ideas on how we could come up with something creative and original. The previous week we had created a Stop Motion Animation as a practice to get a feel for how its done, what works and what doesn't. So our group reflected on what we had created before to make the decision of where and how we would do our animation this time round in order to create something better than before. I'm glad we used reflection in this instance it helped us learn from our mistakes in the first animation and produce something really good.

A little about me and my 1st week!

2007-10-22T12:43:00.000-07:00

Okie,this is my first blog I've used forums and message boards in the past but never done blogging so this should be interesting!
Well firstly as you've probably gathered by now my name is Jason. I'm 20 years old and i moved up to Nottingham on Wednesday the 17Th of October. Yes I'm a late starter i missed freshers week and the 1st week of study. I was doing a degree at Ipswich for 2 years but decided it wasn't for me and made the late decision to move away, i knew i wanted to go through clearing but had to make a hard decision out of 3 different unis. Anyway Nottingham seems great so I'm sure Ive made the right choice!
Okie, what else, I'm originally from a small village just outside of Ipswich and I've lived there for the past 20 years of my life so its a big change for me to be bang in the middle of the city. The most noticeable difference about living in the city is the most obvious the noise! but apart from that I'm enjoying it. I'm living at Gill street its all very nice I've got a large room with en suite which I'm grateful for and the flat mates all seem cool.
Ive met some nice types in my lessons at Uni and despite starting late i feel very welcome there. My first activity here at Nottingham Trent was to do some stop motion work. "Stop motion (or frame-by-frame) animation is a general term for an animation technique which makes a physically manipulated object appear to move. The object is moved by very small amounts between individually photographed frames, creating the illusion of movement when the series of frames is played as a continuous sequence."
i don't want to ramble on or anything so i hope this has given you an insight into my life over the past week! I'll post up again soon