Roles of Employability

30/11/15

We were given a lesson on How to Pitch and Present ideas.

• We listed as many jobs in the industry as possible
• We listed skills required for the jobs
• We've been shown a skills map
• We talked about pitching & what a pitch is
• We were shown types of pitches: Business, video, sales, elevator. We watched a clip from the Apprentice.
• We then talked about our message maps and started making them on Photoshop.

Media Theory & Practice

26/11/15

Today we were answering questions on a Google Doc. We then shared our answers with the rest of each other. I then worked on my film treatment and developed some ideas for my film such as the mysterious phone call.

 

We then worked on our Christmas card projects: we sketched three design ideas on paper. We used Fontpair.com to experiment with font pairing. We then used stencils and letter stamps to experiment our ideas of what to write on our cards. The we all followed a tree tutorial on Photoshop. (see below)

 





Interview with a Guitarist

25/11/15

We all had a recap on the Five Shot method and we were testing our knowledge by using footage we took of interviewing a guitarist. I thought of having my video as a type of intro to a simplistic movie.

The Five shot Method

24/11/15

Today we were learning about The Five shot Method. So we were also given a few clips of some Cambodian women making rice paper crepes to put them into the right sequence by the Method:

1. Hand
2. Face
3. Medium
4. Over the shoulder
5. Random

But  fortunately, there was no law saying it has to be accurate, so a few other things may have had to be missed out.

6 word story

24/11/15

"Peanut brittle bought and ate yesterday." 

I bought peanut brittle at the weekend and finished them off on Monday. I then did an animated gif of the word Peanut Brittle moving across into a mouth with a small calendar depicting it's Monday.

I chose the Dungeons font for kicks. I inserted keyframes and used a classic tween to animate the text across the screen. I added a mouth using the pencil tool, because Brittle is made to be eaten. I needed to find out how to bring the teeth closer together. Some frames were inserted into a new layer and from there I highlighted it and used the classic tween again for the mouth. I added a calendar that says 'Mon' for Monday - that was yesterday. I decided to represent the word 'ate' visually using the closing mouth. I wasn't sure how to incorporate 'bought' so i left it out.

The Forest gives an insight of how bureaucracy, crude media and society affects the lives of wrongly accused people, such as the girl. It makes me feel appalled of how she was expelled from school for 'day-dreaming', how is that criminal? The animation on the other hand has this feel to it that starts off as like normal but the as it progress, it shows a much darker side.

Employability

23/11/15

Today Ed showed us Kloodle blog and how to sign up to sign up to an account. (Could they come up with any more names that doesn't sound like Moodle? People might think they offer the same service as Moodle, but it's only the name i don't like.) We all when we did worked on our biographies on our Kloodle accounts. I think we did all this to get potential employers to notice us.

Thursday lessons

19/11/15

Today we were shown about genres and how they can shown in a movie, TV show, graphic novel or video game. We were told to choose a genre we like. We were also reminded on our task of Film treatments.  I then realized I was suppose to make a film that has the scenario in the brief.

We were then given a Photoshop tutorial on making a good Christmas card. (see previous blog post)

Market research on Christmas Cards

19/11/15

I like the sort of cards with a vintage style fantasy non-contemporary cards, because they show a much more outlandish and magical side of Christmas. These characters and creatures are to be featured in my card(s). I do not really have a favourite design, I seem to like all of them really. I decided that my design is going to be the tree (bottom right) surrounded by Santa the wizard with him holding a present (top left) with a baby griffin (right) inside, The Snow Queen on the White Stag and the two white wolves.

Photoshop practice

I started off by giving the background a gradient effect.

I used the Polygonal Lasso Tool to shape into a triangle. I then used a Paint Bucket Tool to fill the triangle.

I downloaded a Snowflake Brush pattern from the internet and used it in the Paint Brush tool to drag along the sides of the triangle. www.gavtrain.com/ts/snow.zip

I duplicated the layer the Brush pattern was on a few times and resized them to make it look like a real tree.

I used the same Paint Brush pattern but in white.

I added texting "Yuletide Greetings!" with the text tool.

And that's about it.

I kind of like what I did, but it is not really my chosen design.

Foley Unit

18/11/15

This is a foley film I started from last week and finished today.



I learnt that every piece of sound in film matters, because they give audible depth to the set of the video. When I was given the task of adding sound to this mute video I thought I was going to use Freesounds. For this video however, the only thing that cheesed me off was when we had to record our own sound. But I shouldn't complain, I admit I did kind of enjoy recording the sounds we did, especially the thump sound when the guy accidently bumps his head on the table. It wasn't really what I thought I imagined, because the ending did not match the sound we did last, but fortunately or unfortunately I added a crowd booing sound from Freesounds.

Flash

17/11/15




I was finally introduced to Adobe Flash. We had to take screenshots of our progress


But first we all watched a couple of videos: including a low budget film 'The Giant Claw', a short video explaining animation and a clip from The Box Trolls.


We were given a task on animating a 2D bouncing ball (see two examples below), I did this by creating a series of key frames and used the 'Onion Skin' tool to ghost the previous images/frames onto the current one. I think I did reduce the number of frames per second of the animation played at from 24 to 10. I had an issue with the colours, but then counteract it by letting the ball stay the same colour after the first bounce.


I then realized I need to add a second bounce, so I did. In the second animated GIF, I to elongate the ball on impact the second and when it takes off to make it more cartoony.

16th November's lesson

16/11/15

We were working on our presentations on job roles within Media.

• We all picked at least 2 roles that seam suitable to our interest, I personally chose Concept Artist and Video Game Test.
• I had to choose 2 skills needed for each role and write about them.
• We also worked on skills in the roles that needs a bit of improvement for jobs similar to them from websites like Prospects or Total Jobs.

Thursday's lessons

12/11/15

We worked on our movie mood boards, especially me. But when I got word that the town Laredo was very expensive to hire, I almost felt like giving up. Later we were then put into pairs to recognise three elements on script we were given.

Then much later on, Leanne showed us the task brief for Christmas cards. We all then went onto Pinterest individually to create our own Pinterest boards. Leanne explained to us that in this task we have to make our own Christmas cards using our drawings and Photoshop. We then went out into town to look for examples of existing Christmas cards, including their price, their style and their content.

My first stop motion film

10/11/15

 



 

This is a stop motion clay We Bare Bears video, I made in iStopMotion. I did this, similar to the GIF I made, by taking photographs with the Bear stack moving shot by shot.

Changes:

What I could of done was give Grizz (top bear) the movement when he lifts up his paw to say hello.

Clay motion

10/11/15

We were shown three videos made by clay motion:

Adam

Adam was funny I guess. Though I know in the bible Adam and Eve were naked when they were created by God, but does his privates really need to be shown? I do like how Aardman Studios included a real man's hand as the hand of God, who created Adam.

Darkness, Light, Darkness

At first I found it weird for the moving limbs, but then it turned damn right creepy and disgusting real damn slowly. I was very grossed and very creep out by this short, how does Jan Svankmajer even sleep at night with this imagination he has?! Where did he get the brain, the tongue and enough sanitizer from?

Morph

I haven't really much to say about that Morph short, except that it was quite hilarious, but adorable at the same time. To be very honest as a Morph short will go, I was kind of expecting Chaz to play a prank on Morph like he sometimes or always do.

Roles in Media

09/11/15

Today in Employability, we were talking about the different roles in the media industry. There are apparently a lot of roles in the industry, such as,

• Editing
• Designing
• Reccee
• Location scouts
• Proof reader (possibly a lot)
• Production journalist
• Camera operator
• Floor manager
• Gallery director
• Script writer
• Multi-platform editor
• Bi-media editor
• Head of context

Leanne then gave us a task to talk each other about the skills of these roles

• Broadcast engineer: He/she is responsible in building or repairing equipment in a broadcasting studio
• Media planner: A media planner sources out anything in the industry for a client's brand or product to use

We then watched The Story behind the Poppy charity video.

Play-Doh character

05/11/15

We were tasked to create our own characters out of Play-Doh. But of course mine didn't last long due to the fact of how dry or brittle the substance.

Only a few people explained our characters to each other and Leanne, because most of us were not finished. But those who did "finish" their characters also explained their character's histories, personalities and dialogue.

My character was Conark. He is a Orc warrior who has a soft spot for humans, while his twin brother Azub, who is also leader of the Orcs, does not. One day Azub banishes Conark for assisting a human merchant caravan through a bit trouble. Conark soon joins a group of mercenaries and does what they tell him to do.

Sound Effects

03/11/15

We discussed film sound effects used in video examples and watched a video tutorial on sound effects.



I sourced my own sound effects for the muted Assassin's Creed video by registering to FreeSound, an online resource for sound effects. How chose my sounds was I searched for a specific sound, such as the musket fire or the Wilhelm Scream, I listen to the previews and went for the one that felt right. I saved them into a folder and then dragged them into Adobe Premier, I matched the sounds with the video.

I personally enjoyed doing all this because I feel like I'm giving back the atmosphere in this video. Perhaps I could have added a kicking sound after Conner fired the musket through the Red Coat's torso. The one sound I loved using was the iconic Wilhelm Scream, because it has been used very often in movies, games and possible radio.

Film treatment

05/11/15

In today's lesson, we were given the task of writing our own film treatments. I was disappointed that I didn't feel like I could do a fantasy movie, but luckily I had a backup plan and it was a western movie!

I included lots of things that I can for this film such as the title, characters and a synopsis. My Western movie treatment

If it was possible of me to make this idea a reality, I had the do the research of where I would film. I narrowed it down to Laredo in Kent, but I had my mind set on an old movie set in Spain. (Possibly the same one used by Clint Eastwood and Burt Reynolds)

Below is a screenshot of an email to the owner of Laredo to ask for the town to be filmed.

I am under a lot stress and frustration right. It was bad enough I did't pitch my fantasy  film idea, now I can not be able to pitch my western film idea, all because of some stupid scenario! The scenario just limits my imagination and it just makes me very angry, because the scenario has limitations, because of the phone and envelope and I have to film it in Bath. It's all too contemporary. Yesterday I worked on the scenario, asked what kind of phone is it? I decided to use a pay phone, because I think a mobile is not enough. I decided for the man on the other side of the phone to have I like a type of mysterious gruff voice, because it adds some sort of thriller esque feel to it. I thought of Gimli's voice from Lord of the Rings, but it's not really a mysterious gruff, it's more of a friendly gruff.

Wednesday lesson

04/11/15

In today's lesson we were looking at an image of a location on screen and we each spotted the safety hazards that can happen on set.

 

We all went into teams and head out into three different locations and shared the different roles of recce, location scout and risk assessment.

 

Recce is a military term that has been borrowed by media production in the United Kingdom and New Zealand, derived from "reconnaissance" in the noun sense and "reconnoitre" in the verb sense. It refers to a pre-filming visit to a location to work out its suitability for shooting, including access to necessary facilities and assessment of any potential lighting or sound issues, and is closely related to location scouting.

 

Location scouting is a vital process in the pre-production stage of filmmaking and commercial photography. Once scriptwriters, producers or directors have decided what general kind of scenery they require for the various parts of their work that is shot outside of the studio, the search for a suitable place or "location" outside the studio begins. Location scouts also look for generally spectacular or interesting locations beforehand, to have a database of locations in case of requests.

 

Risk assessment is the determination of quantitative or qualitative estimate of risk related to a concrete situation and a recognized threat (also called hazzard). But in this case mostly, it over looks any hazzards that could befall on the production team or the people around the set.

 

The locations we did were Norfolk crescent, Green Park and Royal Crescent.

Ted and Shane

21/10/15

This is a short film made from the videos me and a few other students did couple of weeks ago.



You may mostly see are two-shots with one person next to the other.

Manga Facepalm GIF

03/11/15

This is a GIF of me doing an angry face palm with some iconography.

Before we started on it, though we were given an introduction on what a GIF is and Steve showed us examples of his own GIFs. A GIF, short for graphics interchange format, is raster image that was introduced by CompuServe during the late 1980's and has been widespread across the internet for it's portability.

I created it in Photoshop by using different photos taken of me doing a different pose in every shot. I then added features to the GIF inspired by manga/anime, for example the angry eyes and the red anger mark on my head. I asked a little help from Steve on how to show the anime eyes in the specific place at the right times and if you can see properly, it was solved.

02/11/15


In today's lesson what we did was:

• write down about our time over half term. We discussed about it.
• did an employability skills matching game as a whole class.
• talked about employability skills such as, organizing, writing, teamwork, computing, oral communication, leadership, motivating others, numeracy and persuading.
• look at each other's cover letters in pairs and checked with Leanne's checklist.
• worked in pairs to research/discuss where we wanted to look for work experience, discussed our findings as a whole class.

• Leanne showed us the college code of conduct as a class.
• talked about anti-bullying week and different types of bullying and who to talk if any problem.
• Also she mentioned Children in Need and fundraising ideas.

19/10/15


On that day, we did some comments on each other's CVs saying what we did right or wrong. Then we had a discussion on what is good to see on a CV. The next part of the lesson we talked about cover letters and what we should put in them. The cover letter goes to the interviewer. It should of why the sender wants the job. Including specifics about the company. How one can benefit the workplace. And gives them the chance to give their traits to the interviewer.


We looked at cover letters on Facebook and started commenting on them as a class. We were told to create our own cover letters over half term.