The last 8 weeks have been really fun i didn't expect to like so many different things i had never tried before, although there where a few things which where not as good as i hoped they would be overall the course has been great.

Starting with photography, it was something i didn't expect to like so much. Taking photos never really sparked my interest, i knew some basics but my heart was never really there so when i found out we would be doing photography for the first two weeks i was a little underwhelmed. The first day was alright i found out some interesting stuff on past photographers and what sort of work they did but when i started to learn how to use a camera and begin taking pictures i became really interested. The first week when we had to have a picture for our first crit was very enjoyable i liked being able to take photos of things i would not normally do.

The way i got to my final piece was i looked at every different picture i had took narrowed it down to six final test shots and from those i took one and used it as my final piece. I tried to focus mostly on memory and future memory and when i was setting up some of the shoots i used a lot of things that had i or people i knew had memories associated with them.

Animation was great, I knew from the start that it was going to be something I enjoyed. We where put in to random groups at the start of the two weeks which was good as everyone got on in ours and we all had lots of ideas for our final animation. On the second day we where told to each draw a storyboard as a pitch for our short animation, i drew a comical cat with makes things worse when trying to help. We didn't go with my idea which was a good thing was our idea we went with was really good. It was about a man looking into a photo album at past memories. We kept expanding on this idea and as iv mentioned in previous posts we went from a eating book to the chain of evolution until we settled on a fly just trying to find his paradise.

Creating the animation was really fun we used a program named I stop motion where we took two pictures for every shot we wanted. we only took one some some shots as we wanted them to go really fast for example the fan starting to spin. Overall i think we worked really well as a team as we all knew what we wanted the animation to be and everyone was really open to new ideas expanding on our project. The final crit went quite well for us and we got some really good feedback in terms off the the way we shot it and also some feedback on how to improve it for the future.

Sound was interesting i learned a lot of things about it i didn't know before. On the first day we learnt what how to use some of the equipment and software which was alright but not particularly interesting until we got to use some of it. It was fun going around looking for objects that might make interesting sounds. When we got to week two we where already in groups of our own choose this time. My group and i worked very well together as we all where contributing ideas. I came up with one idea about having a scenario where we have nature turning in to a city. We where told at our first crit it was cliche so we went about changing it and reversing the idea and adding some more to it.

When we came to the final crit of our sound journey it went really well we didn't get much negative feedback aside from one person not understanding what was going on. We where praised for using all of our own sounds to create the journey and i think that me and my group did a really good job together as we got on and had the same goal in sight for what we wanted to do.

Film was undoubtedly the best part of this course so far. On the first week we got started by looking at some chase sequences which where all very different from each other. There where only three people in my group but we all knew each other and got along really well. We spent the last half of the first day planning what we wanted to do and that was when we came up with the idea of having a surreal chase. we kept changing our story with all the feedback we got so we could make a better one.

On the second week we started filming, unfortunately on monday due to the weather we could not do anything so we carried on planning and doing some test shots. all of the test shots we did really help us out in terms of planning for the day of shooting, since we where using actors from another group who had to do there own film as well all the planning we did made it very easy to film what we needed fast as we had a shot list which we followed to some degree so we could set up our shots fast and get them done.

Overall i think that the last eight weeks have been really good and surprising as i was only really ever interested in film and animation, i didn't expect to like sound and photography so much which was a good thing as they where both really good. Things which  thought worked well where all of my groups as we all got along really well and contributed lots of ideas towards the projects. Another thing that i think world well was the way in most of the projects the use of trial and error, seeing if one shot worked and if it did we would use it and if it didn't we would not. Something that i think i didn't work so well on was the blog i have written a lot to it but i have not enjoyed much of it.

Final Film Crit

On the final day of the film unit we had our last crit, all of out footage was edited down to one minuet and we started to watch everyone else's final films. It was interesting watching other peoples films and to see how they had done there chase sequences. Some where very direct with someone being literally chased where others where more subtle but all where really good with lots of different interesting shots and stories.

Listening to the feedback that was given to people about there work was helpful to us as well. Although not directed at us the feedback could of easily been applied to ours, an example of this is when people where told they needed a more clear story or that some shots where odd and listening to this i could see how our work could be improved from it.

We where the second to last group to show ours so it was nice to see everyone else's before ours. once we had shown it we got a mixed reaction as to where some people had understood the film others had not. We got some fair feedback saying that the story was to weak and not very satisfying with the main character ending back in the exam room at the end, so we where told we needed to work on it for the future and that some of the shots where not amazing which was also true. The more positive feedback was directed towards the fact we didn't base out chase sequence in reality and tried to be creative with the setting which was one of our goals from the start.

The things that worked well on the film unit was definitely my group we all got on and where able to cordinate to work together as a team. Thought out the planning stages we all worked together to come up with an idea which we all liked and agreed on and once we got feedback from it we could change it again until we where all happy with the idea. Another thing which worked well was the filming stage we all worked really well as a group in sharing the roles of filming with us all each getting our fair share to do. Editing worked well as just like before with the filming we shared the role and got on with it each doing different scenes.

Things which did not work so well was the amount we filmed, we thought we had quite a lot but when we came to editing we realised that we did not have all the shots we needed but we had to make do with it. Another thing that did not work so well was our story. the final story we all thought was good but it turns out that it was not as good as we believed which was a shame.

For the future i think getting more options from people outside of the group to look at the story and see what they think and showing the rough edits of the film to see if they understand it will be a good thing to do.

Although not perfect i am happy with the end result of our final film and here it is. 

Tate Modern Reveiw

Going around the Tate Modern was an experience, having never been i was not sure what to expect. Walking around floor called Transformed Vision there was one room which caught my eye. In one of the rooms there was 10 photos of empty streets and squares in a city, looking at them i was trying work work out what it was about until i overheard one of the tour guides who walked in the room talk about it. She said that the pictures where taken in Syria and that the person who took these photos (Hrair Sarkissian) used to walk past these places where public executions took place. I didn't expect to hear this and was shocked to see that these pictures i looked at where about executions.

I looking at the work for some time longer i found it a bit ironic that Syria where it is believed civilisation began is so oppressed. Because of the surprise i got from learning more about it i found it more interesting as it stood out to me more than other pieces of work i had looked at before.

These are some of the pictures i took of the work.

 I was deffiently impressed with the tate as i was not quite sure what to expect and some of the diffrent exebitions i found really intresting including the one named Word. Sound. Power which i went to first

Today we started filming our short film. We started by doing the beginning and end first in a class room and shot from a variety of angles so we will have a lot to work with when we begin editing. The second location we filmed at was a park, unfortunately the camera was low on power so we had to be fast when filming we got all our shots and went back to charge our camera before going to our next location.

I think we could of gotten more footage in the park but we where limited with the power but overall today went very well as we got all the shots we needed with a variety of shots done on the tripod and without so we had a good mix.

Film test shots

When coming up with our ideas for what our film should be on we made a few test shots to see if our ideas could actually work on screen. One of our ideas was going though doors and ending up in different locations so we did test shots so we could see if it was clear that the actor was going though the door without showibg what was in the other side.

One of our test shots for the door idea. 

We also created multiple storyboards so we could have an idea of what shots we would use and to get an idea of the flow of the film. we kept changing and creating new storyboards for when  we would change some of the details of the story. Here is one of the different storyboards we created.

With all of the feedback we got we kept changing our storyboards creating new ones and taking elements and ideas from the old ones. We carryed on doing test shots to see if our idea could acctually work on screen and most of the results where good. We also started to look at locations for where we would film the one we have so far is a park area in Greenwich and thinking about using somewhere iconic in london and a corridor for another. 

Here is the location shot we took once we looked around we decided on using this in our final one so most of our storyboards incorporated a forest of some description to make it feel surreal.

Photography

The first week of photography was interesting i didn't expect to like it so much but i was wrong it was fun shooting different shots from different angles and learning about aperture and other technical things about my camera. Because of the first week i am able now to do things with my camera that i didn't even know it could.

Here are some photos on the say we looked at lightning we used eggs and where told try and make a picture of them with emotion. We went with love as we had a red filter which came out pink which was great for us. The other picture is off one of my object we had to take in, although we didn't do anything with them i wanted to take this picture as i thought it looked good.

When it came to the second week and we had to get over 40 diffrent pictures i was a bit worried but i looked for all diffrent types of objects with intresting shapes and got all of these.

These where the pictures i took and the ones that have circles around them where the ones i used for my final 6 test shots. I used different lightning, filters, angels for the same objects and the results where really good. Some of the object which looked boring look really good in different set ups.

Sound Design Week One

The first week of sound design we not as intresting as i was hoping the first few days of testing out some of the equipment and software was very unintresting to me. while i can appreciate sound design for what it does and how it is used im not very passionate about it. Saying this my intrest did spark up when we started moving on from just testing out the stuff to coming up with an idea. I had a few in mind and after looking at the handbook and seeing what types of sounds would be needed (atmospheric sounds and some others) i came up with an idea to have a natuer atmosperic sounds turning in to a city.

When me and my group started to come up with ideas for sound design we sat and talked about our ideas which came in to our heads which included driving, sport, food and some other things once we had all these ideas we voted on our top three and the one with the most votes was the one we would chose.

The top three ideas we came up with where food, cars and my one which was the nature to industrial. We ended up going with nature to industrial but when we went for our crit we got some good feedback which made us go back and rethink our idea. We where told that the nature to industrial was too cliche and that we should change it to be different. We reversed the idea by having industrial turning into nature and then connie in my group came up with the idea to have a natural disaster so the transition would be more obvious so people would get what was happening

Some of the other ideas which we came up with where sports, musical instruments drinking, driving, transport, food, technology and weather. we didn't end up using these as the main idea but we did incorporate some of the sounds to fit with our main idea like weather for example we needed that for the natural disaster so we set back trying to record some good effects.

I think we all really worked well as a group and we managed to come up with some good ideas. similar to the animation once we had a main idea we all started to add different ideas to it to make it better and improve it and i think that worked really well and helped us to come up with a good idea for our sound journey.

The new idea we have now is alot better now with having a city atmosphere which then leads in to an earthquake and then finally a nature atmosphere.

Week 2 Final Crit 

In the final crit for the sound design unit i got feedback regarding my final piece, the feedback was mostly good as we used only sounds we had recorded our selfs the only negatives where that some people did not get that it was an earthquake happening.

The sounds we used ranged from a recording of the birds early in the morning to cars and throwing chairs down. We tried lots of different ways to make earthquake sounds and combined them all in soundtrack pro.

After hearing feedback on the previous friday about how our idea sounded cliche, there was no mention after we changed it around and added a natural disaster. One way i think we could of improved our work was if we used a different variety of sounds as we mostly used items in a kitchen and some chairs and lockets banging.