Creative Media Practice - Production Project Evaluation

In my last blog for Creative Media Production I want to talk about my presentation and how it went about my project production

Time Planning:

Images: My time planning I felt was just something I had to do when I could as I had to concentrate on other work and I also had work commitments that I could of done without having. I felt that doing my project that once I had finished it I would then be able to reflect about it in my presentation. I began by giving myself the weekend to collect my images for my main picture. Unfortunately I was unable to do this because of different reasons in the ground. I done all my research before had so I knew everything I wanted to do and include. After not being able to collect the image I didn’t want to use just any image off Google. Ian was kind enough to tell me that he had already done something similar and had a few images I would be able to use.

Shooting: I gave myself 2/3 days of shooting so I could ask different people that would be happy to be filmed and have something to say about the topic. In these days I wanted all my footage uploaded and ready for the fourth day so I could edit. I decided to use premier to edit my work, I felt this was the best idea for me as I had a better knowledge of it so it wasn’t as time consuming. If I was to shoot again I would have sorted dates and times with the people I was filming and collected some more footage to include. Maybe starting the project earlier would have worked better because I would have giving myself more time to reshoot any shots I needed to.

Location:

For my locations I really wanted to film in the ground so that it worked with what I was trying to produce. I think I worked with what I had and the people I had gathered then I would go to them and get what footage I need. I felt this was a downfall in my project because it would have really made the project overall. I feel I worked with what I could and still got the footage about what I wanted them to talk about.

QR codes:

I think this was the easiest aspect of the production project, I think if I was to create them again I would have not printed and stuck them on the image, I think this made it look less professional. I feel I should have used Photoshop to edit the QR codes into the seat so it looked like the QR codes where already embedded. Other than that I think this was easy enough to do and they all worked first time with no problems.

Presentation:

I think my presentation went really well and I think I explained everything I could in as much detail. I think if I had the opportunity to present again I would make more notes on things I would like to talk about and I would slow everything down, and find a way to cure my nerves. I really think this is a downfall for me because in front of people in bubbly and then on presentations its like in a different person.

Overall I think  if I had the opportunity to do it all again or expand on what I produced I would just fix everything up, I wouldn’t change my whole project because I think it worked well and it done what I wanted it to. I felt the videos could have been filmed using a different camera as I was a bit disappointed with the handheld one but I think it was a good chance to use it and gain a knowledge from it. My aim was to produce something that I feel could had been placed in a museum or maybe a bus stop where the bus route goes towards the ground. I think someone would enjoy looking at this before taking a trip there and experiencing it for themselves. I really enjoyed this project and would thoroughly enjoy doing it again! 

Creative Media Practice - Final Production Project Presentation

Today I presented my final piece for creative media production, yay!!! 

I decided to present my work in a prezi and expand on my planning, developments and my final production. I decided to produce a Prezi instead of some sort of script just so I had a few notes that I could expand on but yet keep eye contact with Mark and Ian instead of having my head in a piece of paper reading it like a robot. I find I get really nervous at presenting even though I’m a very talkative person once you no more I don’t like standing up whether it be one or more person I dislike it at the end of the day so this for me was nerve racking!  

I feel that my presentation went as well as it could, other than me talking really fast and maybe stuttering here and there and trying to get through everything as fast as I could it went ok! I hope. I liked having a prezi to guide me through even though it wasn’t too much in depth it just gave me guide lines to concentrate on.

My Presentation: Prezi

 

My prezi basically just helped me explain my production further and the steps I took to get there. I didn’t want it too detailed as you can see and images included to just brighten it up a bit. I think I knew mostly what I had wanted to say because I had worried about it that much!

Creative Media Practice - Final Production Project Proposal

My Final Project – For my last project in Creative Media Practice I will be attempting to create some sort of short story using QR codes. I feel I want to do this more so because I think I will really enjoy creating this and because I missed out on one half of these sessions so I think I’ll be able to gain it back by creating a production using them, or it could go the wrong way for me!

Idea:

My original idea was to use a map to create some sort of information map about Liverpool, it would concentrate on main areas around Liverpool: 

·         Albert Dock

·         Arena

·         Liverpool One

·         Football Grounds

·         Matthew Street

Etc…

Idea:

After talking to Mark and Ian my idea began to change and it started to really just focus on Liverpool’s football ground and what it means to people. So my idea went from there really: I am going to produce an image of the ground, a close up picture of the stadium seats that fans sit in week in week out and watch their team play. I thought about placing QR codes originally on the chairs in the stadium but this wasn’t practical as I couldn’t take the lecturers out of the university for my presentation.

QR codes:

I am going to be using QR codes to link to different videos, images and information about Liverpool football club

·         Videos – will include different fans talking about their experiences at sitting in that seat and watching Liverpool. I want to use different ages and both genders.

·         Images – Football images of players, team picture and fans

·         Information – Links to information about the club that will be worthwhile reading

 

What inspired me?

I think I always look to do something about football because I see how passionate fans our about it and think listening to them talk about it is fascinating. I think my dad being a big supporter has had an impact on me from being a season ticket holder at a younger age and seeing the fans and how happy they are and enthusiastic. Also working there on match games and witnessing the same things but at a older age and talking to the fans at half time whether they be done because there loosing or happy because they are winning there is always a big atmosphere. I think in a project like this if done right I could really present their feelings strongly.  

I want to stick to my idea throughout the project and hope I can give it as much justice as I would like to.

Creative Media Practice - Youtube Annotations

Our final mini creative media practice and it was YouTube annotations. The presentation mark produced I found I got into most, as I found myself skipping on ahead on blackboard whilst he was going through each, I felt this was good because I felt I had an opinion to give to the class while we was discussing the different YouTube interactivities. We were shown all different types of ways we could use YouTube to interact.  

There are different areas that concentrate on using YouTube annotations for different reasons:  

·         Play

·         Story

·         Education

·         Campaigns

·         Promotion

·         Websites 

I really enjoyed looking at the different styles that each of these had produced. I think I found my favorite was the Tipp-experience:

 

 

I thought the idea of this was fun and interactive, and really got the viewer involved. I think I found myself having a little bit too much fun typing in different scenarios I would have liked to have happened. So after much more fun I carried on researching the different styles and spoke to my group about something we could produce. 

We put ourselves into groups so I, Coral and Becca decided to work together. We brainstormed different ideas and thought about what we could focus on as the main aspect of the story. We wrote down a list of ideas that we liked and narrowed them down to three.

·         Partying

·         Drinking

·         Drug taking 

We decided to combine the three together to create a story about whether or not the young girl accepts the invitations to go out and it goes from there:

We decided to create an interactive story that would show a positive and negative awareness to the audience by making people aware of the things they need to look out for whether out on a night out or in a house party. For instance drugs and alcohol! We chose to film in a house party instead of a busy pub for risk assessment reasons.  We feel this will be hard hitting to some people and we want the point to get across but not make it too serious.  

Inspiration - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B7gWVA3lts4

Once we had shot all our footage we then sat down to edit it using premier, after the first few shots I really began to get into the editing aspect, I cut all the shots up into individual shots so that they would be able to link together. This I felt was easy enough to do and I done this reasonably fast. Once it came up to uploading onto YouTube, and learning how to annotate actual on YouTube I found that some of my videos needed more editing. This was a good time to notice as I still had a couple of hours to go back and do any editing I needed to. Once this was complete the actual annotating was rather easy because I had put my videos in order. I found annotating quite fun and felt I worked well on it, I didn’t find it too complicated and grasped it fast. I think I would have liked to have maybe used this for my final production.

If I was giving the opportunity to do this again or expand on it I would have made the story longer with more options to interactive with and maybe tried to include something similar to the tipp-expereince video with the typing in what they do. Overall I felt it was a good mini task and I did really enjoy it.  

Our YouTube annotation:

 

Creative Media Practice - Isadora

Todays session involved us looked at a programme called Isadora. I have vaguely heard about this software but never really looked into it.  

So first thing I done was look to see what it was all about! It was first created by Mark Conigilo a composer media artist, focuses on art forms and technology.  

Mark spoke to us briefly about Isadora and what it was, giving us a small insight and showed us how we could access it. Troikatronix website is where we would have to download the software from.  

After researching about Isadora I found that it has become an essential resource for creative ingenuity for thousands individual artists, designers, educators, and companies in a variety of disciplines and environments worldwide. Because all patches in Isadora are created from scratch by their user, they are as unique as their creator.

I looked at how Isadora is used to help in music videos using sound, I found that this looked amazing! The graphics linked in with the music was beautiful and shows a lot more depth. I would love to look at creating something like this in the future.  

 

Applications - How it can be used

 

Isadora Software

After talking and researching it was time to be put into random groups. We then looked at ideas for out Isadora project. Our brief was for our story to be Halloween based, so what better way than a murder we felt. In our groups we brainstormed ideas and then decided together on making some kind of interactive narrative with a game twist to it. A girl was to miss her train home and she would then have to find her way back to her friend’s house. But would she get killed! This was then going to be the Halloween based aspect.  

As we talked about our story it came clear that we could expand this at each step with more ideas coming in constantly. The next day I couldn’t attend to help with my group for certain reasons but I was happy that my group was confident with the idea and knew that they would produce good quality POV shots for all the scenarios we wanted to include. I felt then I could help contribute more towards the editing aspect as I had a bit more time to watch the tutorials on Isadora, this is time consuming but I felt myself engrossed in them. We didn’t want our production to become too complex so at each stage took a step back from maybe something we would have really liked to have done thinking about the time we had to produce it. A plan was drawn out of a piece of paper to give us a clear view of what it was we were creating. Going along the steps we realised some ideas where to complex and wouldn’t make scenes so this gave us the opportunity to change them.  

When coming to edit the next week unfortunately no images had been produced for different reasons that couldn’t be helped. So instead of getting annoyed we done what we could and used what we had to produce something.  I think the group was disappointed that we couldn’t have done what we planned to the extent because I think it would have been a really good piece of work but these things happen when working in groups.  

I then went on to create a short project using different images I collected that ranged around 4 stages. I don’t think what I produced was anything special but I felt it gave me a good insight to using Isadora, which I had never done so before. I think the software is really good if you like stuff like that but I feel I wouldn’t like to go back and work on it so in depth again, or maybe I would after watching more tutorials, only the future will tell!  

For my final project I think I will be keeping clear from this software as it doesn’t allow you to save it and I think the software may still have some technical issues itself and my confidence on it for a final project I don’t think would have helped me produce something good but I am happy I got the opportunity to try it.

Creative Media Practice - QR Codes

Unfortunately I missed the QR code session on Thursday as I was unwell; I found this frustrating because I found creating these fun as I have worked on them before in the past. I have created them in sixth form and looked at them in university. Id of liked to attend this session, but there is nothing I can do about it now unfortunately. 

QR codes are used in a way to load information to your mobile phone or any other device that allows you to have the app to access the information. Qr’s can link to various things such as: 

·         Picture

·         Video

·         Blog

·         YouTube

·         Website

·         General Information

And many more. This is now a way in which people look for information in all different destinations, whether it is at a bus stop or even pub toilets I know now have them!

 

Different styles can be used on QR codes! J

A TIOLET! I found this bizarre but if you have the time it is a quiet place you can look maybe. QR stands for ‘Quick Response’ hence what it does! These where originally made for companies but it caught on that much that the whole world is going mad for them. 

After being off until Thursday I was able to attend the next session where I joined a group and looked at what they had been producing and helped out in any way that I could. The task was to make a short story using five QR codes. The group decided to use a story involving a missing cat that would eventually have a twist at the end of it.

The QR code links: 

·         Missing cat poster

·         Cats eye view

·         Last QR was text based but didn’t work as was meant to speak out

I really enjoyed researching about QR codes even though I had past knowledge about them, I think they can be really fun to use if you use them in the correct way and can be very informative. I like the idea that you can do something so simple through a phone from a bar code. Sounds a lot more difficult than it is!

I look forward to using these again in the future hopefully.

Creative Media Practice - Triptych

Creative Media Practice – Our first look into our mini projects was to look at and create and triptych, this is also known as split screen. As a group of 3 to 4 people we was to create a narrative together.  

After the lecture I decided to research more about triptych, I found that a triptych is a work of art that is sectioned into three sections, mostly panel paintings. Triptychs are a beautiful way to show art and display it to people.

 As a group of three, me and Natasha decided to work together to try and create our own triptych. We were to create a video triptych that showed a video within three split screens. We chose to focus on churches and that inside and outside feel to them. 

 

 

Before going out and capturing I decided to research some similar triptychs that were out there, I came across a lot of image based ones but not any video. I didn’t really question why. We decided we wanted to make ours visual than think of a story at focus on the main frames.

Cathedrals we looked at:

·         Liverpool's Anglican Cathedral

·         Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral

These cathedrals gave use the opportunity to gather some beautiful images. We wanted our triptych to be seen as someone viewing the cathedral for themselves. So we had basically a afternoon to shoot as much as we could ready for editing the next day.

We began the next day by using after effects which didn’t work out as planned, we managed to get half way through before we realised a lot of the images weren’t working on the software. I made a big decision in the group to change to premier so that we at least had something to show at the end of the day. This gave me the opportunity to work with both software’s which was fun but I am more comfortable with premier.

 

 

I enjoyed using this style technique I had never heard about it before and think I gained a lot from researching about it before hand. I think that if we had a little more time we would have been able to make the triptych something completely different. I feel the way it was going on after effects looked good but we didn’t have time unfortunately to put that much effort into premier. I think next time that images need to be all the same size scale because this was definitely noticeable when it came to showing and was difficult to work around. I think the change in light in the cathedrals could have been worked on because they both has different contrasts that was shown clearly.

I think if I was to expand on this or do it again I would work on my story a lot more before going ahead and shooting! (You learn from your mistakes) I should have maybe suggested premier in the first place but it’s not a one man team. I would like to expand one day on this story because I think the images would make a beautiful triptych.

 

Happy to be back...

So my time back at university has been overwhelming! I realised I had a lot to catch up on and got a little worried and upset about it all. Felt that I wasn’t going to make it into my 3^rd year. I have got my head down though and felt like I have been trying my hardest to get up to speed with all my work.

I need in my own time to thank the lecturers personally for the support they have giving me after returning to university as they have really helped and have offered with more work I have to do over the summer. It means a lot to know the lecturers  care.

Hopefully I will have done good enough to get into 3^rd year!

FINGERS CROSSED…

Applied Media Research - Results

So after some anticipation waiting for our results we got them back and to my surprise we got a 2:1 GO US!

I was really happy with this because I thought because of the lack of presentation it may lower our marks. Now im thinking if it was even better we could have got a 1^st!

But… im really pleased with myself, Coral and Cathryn getting a 2:1 and hopefully look forward to working with them again.

WELL DONE GROUP.

Convergence Media Teamwork - Transmedia Activism

So we have another presentation to do! This is due on the 28^th March, all other lectures have finished we just have this one to complete and there where off for the summer! With a few essays to submit that I will be getting on with as soon as I can J

We chose our groups ourselves because of a vote from the classroom wanting to choose who we worked with, In my opinion I think the lecturer picking the groups works better as you get to work knew people and learn what different things that they might be good at that you might necessarily not be. So I was in a group with Coral and Natasha, I like these to work with so I was happy to be in a group with them as once we get into something we do work hard.

We decided that we were going to pick something we felt strongly about and there was a strong background too. We chose the issues against animal testing. After picking what we were going to present about we was off to the computers to research as much as we could!

So we began our research and it was shocking some of the things we found! It was interesting to see other sites and campaigners and the different companies that do and don’t test their products on animals. It was also interesting to see the reasons why companies use animals and why others use humans. There’s a big subject and I feel there will be a lot for us to talk about when it comes to the presentation. This also gives us the opportunity to use a variety of media platforms

·         Facebook

·         Twitter

Here are the links to our Facebook and Twitter pages:

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Against-Animal-Testing/460078944061894?fref=ts

https://twitter.com/AnimalorBeauty

So the first lesson working on this we decided to make the Facebook group and tell users that we are an organisation against animal testing on beauty products, this was to make users aware and to make some people that feel strongly about this come forward and have their say if they feel they can’t do it alone.

We will be looking at the argument against animal testing and gathering some strong information to support what we have to say.

A no make up for the day campaign will get anybody that agrees with this to make other people aware of what is happening to these animals and hopefully make people look at if different and think before they buy certain products. This will help us gather some of our own statistics.

We have spoken recently about creating a App and a Webpage that people will be able to visit and find out more about what companies are testing on animals and why. Maybe even a type of photo booth that you can take a picture of yourself with no make-up on to encourage other people to do so .

We hope to make this presentation good and look at all transmedia aspects we can involve into the presentation, so fingers crossed we do well…

Applied Media Research - Presentation Day!

So presentation day was here!

NERVOUS wasn’t even the word. I’m not very good at speaking out in front of people so presentations scare me a little. We tried our hardest with this presentation and I’m glad I was back and was able to take part with my group and give them the help I could. Unfortunately because of the snow we couldn’t meet up the week before so we decided to cram as much work in as we could the week before and thankfully our essay wasn’t till the afternoon so we had some time before that as well.

I felt that we had a lot of good research and statistics to back up our presentation that we had gathered from our focus groups and a very strong conclusion to how we felt about this, even adding in our own little opinions.

I think that if we was to do it again we would have made a strong PowerPoint or maybe even used Prezi, although Sarah mentioned the PowerPoint wasn’t to be all text based I still think it could have done with a little more on to look at as we was speaking.

Overall I think we worked well and hopefully produced enough information and presented it well to get a good mark as I felt we had work hard for it.

Now to write the report!

 

Digital Media Cultures - Group Work

So I was put into a group of five. Myself, Coral, Natasha, Sinead and Rio, we was then put into 2 groups out of our group of five. I, Coral and Natasha was a group. We was going to research for articles on reality TV. We started in the library by looking for five different references from different books and online resources about reality TV. Annette Hill was someone that stood out a lot to each of us so we felt we should use some of her work as it was really good and interesting. Once we found three that spoke about reality TV in a whole we tried to look for ones that spoke about big brother as it is probably the biggest Reality TV programme around lasting 10 years.

After we have found our five references and wrote our half of the essay then Sinead and Rio will be able to come up with a title that they will write as a dissertation. This was given to us as an insight to dissertation writing. I still don’t understand why we were in groups for it but it did help as we worked well together.

 

Digital Media Cultures

So it was time to get into groups four our 2000 word essay with Keith. So we was put into groups based on what question we wanted to answer:

1. How are public service broadcasters responding to the challenges of the contemporary media industry?

2. “Developments in digital technology are democratizing the media industry”. Discuss.

3. Choose one area of the cultural industry and assess the impact that the Internet has had on the way that particular industry operates.

4. Outline and discuss the shifts in the relationship between producer, text and audience. Your work should acknowledge recent theoretical shifts in audience studies.

5. Analyse the impact of formats on the television industry. Your essay should also analyse debates that relate to the potential social and cultural impact of formats on audiences.

6. Analyse the relationship between developments in media and the processes of Globalization.

7. “The pursuit of profit has become the driving force in the development of media and has ultimately had a negative impact upon culture.” Discuss.

8. Outline and discuss the impact Apple® has had on the contemporary media industry.

9. Choose one area of the media industry and assess how the shift from analogue to digital has impacted upon that industry.
 

Convergence Media

Multi-platform techniques

We were placed into groups of three for this work. I was put with two people who I have never been with before so was happy to get to know them as well as get on with the work. We were giving a list of Disney stories to choose from to create a story to make it more realistic and something that would sell today towards adults.

We chose snow white and the seven dwarfs and decided to put some sort of big brother twist onto it. We decided that the dwarfs would create video blogs of themselves talking about snow white and how she needs a man in her life!

This then resulted in three prince’s competing by different social networks to get people to vote for them and get snow white to themselves. Once they had pleaded for votes. The public would be allowed to have conversations with then and have hour long question and answers with them each night. Once a week was over the public would vote on which prince they wanted to rescue snow white from the  witches spell. Then really the rest of the story was left to your imagination.

Did it end well of didn’t it?

                                                                   "apple of my eye"

I liked this little task as it got us thinking of all the different interactions there are around for people to get involved, this made me think towards our applied media research and the different ways in which people talk about shows and show how they feel about them. Whether it is a Facebook status or a tweet on twitter to just general chat to friends about the show on social forums.

Applied Media Research - Back to the Presentation



So we are back after Christmas and getting on with the Applied Media Research presentation. We have been looking at what cross platform television is to go towards our presentation. I found myself focusing on the more popular shows and what second screen interaction they had to offer.

We put together some questionnaires and gave them out, The envelopes contained 4 postcards each for a different section of the questionnaire. These were: age, gender, technology they owned, what second screen apps they used and information about how they use social networking with television.

As you can see from the graph, we did not ask the same amount of people from each age group but started to concentrate on more on the age that actually used a second screen, which leaned us more to the age 16-22 and 36-50+. We also asked an equal amount of male and females to see the ranges in gender but from the answers we got, the only range of answers was depending of peoples ages.

Most of the people we asked used a social networking site, most of them using Facebook with 14/20 people saying they had a Facebook account. 60% of the people we asked used a social networking site whilst watching the television. The ones that said this said they like to post statuses or tweet about what was going on and therefore can have online conversations with friends about the programme. With further investigation and research into this popular statement we realised there was clearly a lack of attention on the television programme itself, which could potentially lead to a serious issue for advertisers.

Missing University

Due to an accident I had before Christmas I was unfortunately unable to attend university so missed out on a lot of the work that I would have liked to have been able to complete.

I felt that because of this I had let my groups down by not being able to attend meetings and meet deadlines with them; thankfully I am ok and back at university now and trying to catch up as much as I can.

Also my team in Television Studio Production have done amazing! I love the outcome of what they produced and wish I could have made the final production with them.

My work for applied media research luckily didn’t suffer as much as my team welcomed me back with open arms and I was able to take part in working towards our presentation.

Time to get my uni work back on track and get into 3^rd year where I hope to be in all year!

 IM BACK…

Picking the Question...

Today was the day!

We was about to pick which question we wanted to answer. To make it fair we was giving the chance to personally pick our favourite questions and rate them 1,2 and 3. 1 being our favourite, 2 the middle favourite and 3 the one we didn’t want so our least favourite

I decided to rate mine in this order:

1.       Nine Lives Media

2.       Onteca

3.       Digital Fiction Factory

The reason I chose Nine Lives Media is because I found that it was something I was interested in and that its something I often find myself doing while watching television and using second screens. Also the fact that I heard a lot more about Nine Lives Media opted me towards this as well as I was unsure of the two other companies.

So that was my choices, the papers were collected in and Sarah the lecturer went away and worked out the groups on what questions people had opted to work on. The lecturer tried her hardest so that everyone got the question they wanted first.

I got the question I wanted! Yay.  

My groups consisted of two other people Coral and Cathryn who I get along with so was happy with my group and was looking forward to doing some research and making a good presentation.