TV studio

Oh dear I must say when I walked into those TV studios doors I was a tad frightened, it was quite intimidating and serious and I was scared to touch anything in case I broke it as I am thee most clumsiest person you’ll ever meet. When we first watched and observed the tutors I was really confused to be honest. However the week after we were put under the spotlight to go for it with the equipment, I was so scared that I wouldn’t have a clue but after a few run-throughs and rehearsals I found it to be a breeze and I really loved it, more than I ever thought I would. So a thumbs up with the TV studio and I’m super excited to be a floor manager. Bossing people around, could get used to this.

Media cultural studies

Oh my Monday lecture, I have one statement that is I love love love love this lesson. Im somewhat familiar with my lecturer Keith from last year and I did love the way he taught and was hoping he would be teaching me this year. I love the theory of media and his views are relevant and interesting, I’m looking forward to the rest of this module. 

Summer experiences

Oh summer was amazing, the best I have ever had. I travelled to Mallorca and ended up staying there for four and half months. Within the mist of the craziness I did manage to receive somewhat of an education within the media. I worked for a major nightclub, 7^th best in the world to be exact, this club attracted a lot of attention as everyday a new famous act, performer or DJ was present. My key role was Public relations where I talked to the public about the club, however my interest in media was soon recognised by my superiors were they even let me do some filming work, being in a real life situation filming famous acts such as professor green, example, Calvin Harris and many more the list goes on for four whole months. The pressure of the job was interesting and the editing was also intriguing to see and watch. What astounded me the most was how quick the media employees produced the piece. It really gave me an insight into real life and the career I will be entering. Many more experiences to come so tune in J

Week one of second year

Oh no, my first week was a bit of a mess dues to my messed up flights. Silly me, So I booked flights for the Thursday before university started and when I went to print out my boarding pass the night before I was shocked to find my flight wasn't for the Thursday after. Woops, with this I have definitely learnt to be more careful when it comes to these fine details as missing the first week set me back big time. Once I had finally arrived I was running around trying to gather up module handbooks and all the necessary information needed to begin second year. After I had learnt my lesson I was fully caught up and in control of my work. I'm especially excited to share some crazy and wild experiences that I have come across over my summer break with my classmates and of course my blog. 

Website
We were introduced to Weavr Which intially was my worst nightmare! However with some help from the tutors and technology help I became really familiar with it all and caught on really quick. I realised this is something I really enjoy doing. However time was an issue, I wish I had started it earlier in the year in order for me to be less stressed coming up to the end of the year. Apart from that my website was success and turned out the way I wanted it to turn out minus a few details but ill know this for next time .

Contemporary media Issues-Identity
The lesson is showing us the importance of identity in social media. our task was to create and idea that has 3 social networking presences.
Our group decided to have an on-line presence of a gypsy due to the large interest in gypsy after the channel 4 show 'My big fat gypsy wedding' we decided to make her a traditional Irish traveller her name was Tara-Marie McDonagh, she was 17 and we gave her a fiancée John-Paul who was 22. To make the identity authentic we made her several accounts such as a Google, Facebook.twitter and eBay account. We tied them all up along with some friends and her finance. we posted her interests such as dresses and cake for her extravagant wedding.  This was such a fun experience, we as a group enjoyed it and we enjoyed everyone else's presentations. They were such a giggle.

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100003625996984

Playing with my camera and editing software :)

Treatments
I produced a treatment on male grooming for our final short factual film, I was so pleased as my group chose my idea for the production, this shows evidence of my improvement in the creativity area. I feel my idea relates to modern day media as a lot of men and women can relate to the increase in male grooming. I have even got our interviewees and venue already. We are on top of this project. I will keep you posted :)

Reflection Talk in creative and concept development

So Today we had a reflective talk in this module which I found really helpful, I put forward my worries about the module and how I felt unconfident and the tutors really made me feel better in the subject as I felt quite inferior to everyone else and even a little uncomfortable. However this talk brought up my fears and they were addressed. So I’m feeling quite cheerful after it and even have a bit more confident J

Prezi Explaining our museum Idea and how we got there :)

http://prezi.com/lppxhawnncay/graffitti-elite/

Museum Project Progress

After wasting a week on an idea that wasn’t good enough we finally came up with our idea for the museum! Thanks to the creative techniques we learnt after some divergent thinking and research we came up with an exhibition and tour of Liverpool Graffiti. Thanks to Thinking cards and thinking hats we have fully developed our idea. We have an exhibition in the museum that is 4 walls of graffiti and with this we have ipads to install the graffiti tour App. When you scan the barcode the graffiti tour will automatically upload to your phone and what appears is a Google map showing you the famous pieces of graffiti and the tourist attractions around each piece. The map is colour coded depending on different artists.

This is our Map

http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?hl=en&tab=wl

we have more to show you within our project J

Social Networking WIKI

So here we go again with the wikis. Not my strong point as ive never been a fan of Wikipedia, However it’s a big part of the social universe and I must get used to it. Our project is too produce a wiki about social networking and our group got the topic of Welfare reform. So straight away we all got stuck into some research and found out a lot about the topic, My individual topic was social networking and identity so here it is J

http://contemporarymediaissues.wetpaint.com/page/Welfare+Reform

Little Photography and editing form my first Train Trip :)

Museum Project

(image I took before entering museum)

This is the beginning of our idea project. Our audience is a first time visitor to the city. Our group in initially finding it difficult as it’s quite a large audience and it’s hard to find something that will please this group of people. We thought visiting a museum would help us so here’s a few images from the museum

 Creativity and concept development: Technique

I just want to take some space to talk about some of the techniques I have developed in this module that’s will help me with my future assignments in this module,

The first technique that I feel is key is divergent thinking; this is when we throw out random ideas within a short period, some of them maybe be farfetched and realistic but they are starting points that need to be further developed as if there’s something I’ve learnt in this modules it’s that great ideas don’t just pop into your head.

The next technique was De bono thinking hats: This is when different people take on different roles in order to address all aspects of the idea, it welcomes praise and critic. It then gives you a good interpretation of what the idea can become

What needs to be done after this is convergent thinking, this is where we organise and put everything into perspective in order to have the fully developed idea. It’s all about organising and structuring.

Little picture 

Personnel profile

Our personnel profile was based around the student radio presenter Miles Joshua Groce, He’s someone I know as he lives near. I thought he would be a great character as he’s well-spoken and has a great personality for the production. Miles agreed to do the profile so that was perfect as we could just start shooting straight away. His radio show aired between 6 and 8 on a Tuesday on Looprevil radio so this was our chance to catch him in action. When we arrived we realised the visuals were quite limited but we still got lots of shot. We faced some difficulties on the first shooting as our microphone was acting up. However we got plenty of visuals done. The next shooting was Miles interview where we asked him a series of questions about his job and interests. Through the experience of filming in a radio station it has heightened my interest in radio broadcasting and I hope someday I’ll be confident enough to try and become a radio broadcaster. 

Camera Workshops
We have a few camera workshops witch heightens our knowledge when it comes to working with a camera, its very useful as its very detailed and they tell us a few tips and tricks to improve our work. This week we got to have a sound workshop where we were told how to use various microphones internal and external. It all got a little complicated but once i played around with the camera i got the hang of it

Location Bases Narrative
In a group we have been asked to tell a story with locations on the Google maps. We thought wed have a lot of fun and make up a crazy story, However we needed a starting point so we decided to sleep on ideas after Uni. Getting a taxi after uni was over with the group and the taxi driver tell us a story about these secret tunnels under the ground of Liverpool as soon as he said it BINGO. That was our starting point our story dated back to the Victorian times and we used all different locations to bring the story to life. I found this very enjoyable !

Stop Motion Animation
Our initial idea for the animation was a face that was gradually changing with make up then a body with different outfits on. We tried this idea and unfortunately it did not work out they way he had hoped it would. So now we have been panicked to create a new one which was simply drawings of the seasons and it shows a character adapting to the changes of the seasons. I feel it is a rushed production and could use a lot of work however we have ran out of time and have to submit it . Hopefully my future animations will be better .

Avid

Oh Avid you complicated scary feature of media!

Yes I’m scared of the Avid editing software, I found it quite difficult to understand and get the hang of. Today in class we had the workshop to learn the ins and outs of Avid, it was so difficult at the beginning however the more I played around with the software the better I understood. A useful aspect is the two screens used as it spreads out all the work and scenes so it can be broken up and it keeps all the work nice and tidy. Hopefully the next time I blog about Avid ill be buzzing over it

Fingers crossed!

Technical Difficulties

As usual I again have been having trouble with computer, it just isn’t my thing is it guys! Ok so I’m up and running and again and will be posting all the blogs I have saved over the last few months as I’ve been saving them to my documents, so none will be missing out on my dashing posts

Filming The Big wheel

For our production practice module we were filiming the big wheel. We did various shots including alot of time lapses, in doing this i discovered how hard filming is and the downsides such as its SO COLD and it takes up and extreme amount of your time. Throughout the filomg I had to go on the big wheeel for the first time and i ahve to admit it was really scary as we had to move around alot in the box to get the exact shots we ahd planned, this led to the box rocking and swinging. It wasnt good for the stomach. But I did love teh scenery!
 
Through this experience and the other films i have filmed i realised that camera work may not be for me.

'The Artist'

As I told you I visited The Fact cinema last night and the film i watched was 'The Artist' I was intrigued by this film when I seen  it advertised as I'm a big fan of old style black and white films, However I didn't research it as much as I should of as I discovered it was a silent film, My first feeling were shock and I thought 'Oh my how will I sit through a silent film' However it was spectacular, I loved how the director used this method of old style with modern thinking. For example it may have been silent an din black and white but some of the shots were clearly shot by a modern director. There was one shot of the 2 main characters on these stairs and I love how done a long shot of the complete stair case and hall and all the busy people walking by , its something you have to see. One negative I have to comment on was the ending, I feel if the ending ruined it in a way because throughout the film was so different from modern films I believed the director would  not have followed down the path of the standard narrative (Equilibrium to disruption to solution and back to equilibrium) However that's exactly what he did. Maybe if he would of left it when the main character was going to kill himself it would have had a much bigger effect on the audience. 

The Fact Cinema
So I decided to go to the cinema but I wanted an experience not just a film, and from listening to my tutors I thought I try 'The Fact' to my amusement it was in fact an experience due to the lighting, picture,sound and seats. I felt it brought the film to life.The sound was clear and striking, the picture was on a larger scale and to a great quality, The lighting within the cinema was just right and the seats were beyond comfortable.With all this in mind I felt it was quite a posh place due to the fact as I was opening a bag of crisps I received a few dirty looks, sighs and 'Tut tut's' but all said I believe if your looking to watch a good film in good surroundings and comfort then 'The Fact' is the place to go.