Filming For Le 1 Shot ( & Having Frostbite )

Today we did the final filming for the one shot video. To be honest it didn't go very well... The snow was really heavy and the visability of camera was really poor, so we had to keep stopping and starting the film due to snow. It was ABSOUTELY FREEZING & I did moan abit too much how cold I was haa. I did have the idea of maybe filming indoors but the studio had to be booked so that was no good :(

We made 3 attempts of the film & are uploading it onto premier pro on thursday so we can see then what the best one is & hopefully edit. We did keep to the brief in which we only used zoom once.

Elliot was the birthday boy in which he came on during the "spy" scene of the drop off to meet Lee who gave him a brown envolope. Elliot suspiciously opens this to which it is a birthday card & me and Amanda come on to the scene with party hats, presents, etc. I think it only lasts around 45 seconds & I think we could have made it a fair bit better if it wasn't for the snow :(

Here is the unedited version of our one shot:

Design Practice 2 Introductionnnn :)

We had a lecture today on introduction to dp2, my beautiful train in the beautiful snowy weather was delayed so I missed the lecture but looked on the NOW at the powerpoint.

Basically it was about next term when we do interactive space, animation & film again but over a 5 week duration not 3 weeks. We have to

Colour & Lighting

In todays & yesterdays seminar we learnt about colour and light. Yesterday we watched a 90 min video on it & today we had a powerpoint about it and then went on to film in the studio with lights to make it look like daylight.

There are 3 different lights which include:
- key light (hard)
- back light (hard)
- fill light (soft)

Three main properties of light:
- coherence (quality)
- colour temperature (colour)
- intensity (strength)

We found the task to make the studio with daylight difficult at first as it seemed dark in the background with shadows but the characters face was really bright & yellow. Here is one of our first example:



Deb then helped us and said  it would help to change the setting of the iris on the camera and move the lights closer to the character. We set the iris to 0db meaning the quality was alot better than what we had previously filmed in. We lowed the lights towards the character which also got rid of the shadows. obvious shadows.

Here is our final result using light & filters:

Feedback On Interactive Space

I have decided to improve my interactive space as I want to use it for my main work in the assessment presentation.

The link to it is: http://makingnewmaps.com/maps/Hollie_Ferguson/index.html

I would appreciate any feedback on it both positive & negative so I can make any changes to it :)

Thank You :)

Final Idea :) One Shot!

Today we discussed the idea for the one shot. We decided to stick with our first intial idea of the spy envolope / bag drop off but to add it with a twist. The twist will be the envolope is a birthday card & we will be celebrating the birthday. The mood will change from serious / suspense to comedy / happy.

The setting is in the park in which we filmed before, we will need the video camera & tripod. The characters will consist of me, Amanda, Lee & Elliot, whilst Sam films. We will have birthday props such as a cake, party hats & party poppers.

We will complete the risk assessment form later in the week :)

I have drawn my own storyboard out but Amanda's is so much better so using her one :)

P.s Here is part of the risk assessment form we had to do :)

Design Practise 1 Powerpoint

Todays lecture was about the final week presentation of all the projects we have done so far. It should last 10 mins & we will show it to two lecturers.

We were told to produce the main bulk of our presentation using our "best work". I will use my interactive space as I think that it the best one out of the 3 that conforms to the brief. I am going to get feedback from this project so I can improve it a little & explain why I did this.

Essay is nearly complete so will finish that & then start on the presentation :)

Reverse Engineering & Prototyping.

Looked at the powerpoint for tomorrows lecture & it's about reverse engineering & Prototyping.

Definiton: " Reverse engineering is taking apart an object to see how it works in order to duplicate or enhance the object. The practice, taken from older industries, is now frequently used on computer hardware and software."

Prototyping is where a sample is produced to test or market a new product.

I'm doing reverse engineering in my essay so tomorrows lecture & seminar should beable to help alot :)

A Practice At One Shot

Today we filmed our idea :) We tried the idea from 5 different angles & these 3 videos were the best & most effective of them all:

Deborah said if we went on to have this for our final piece something twisted / unexpected could happen to make it more entertaining / gripping. Over the weekend each of us in the group are going to think of ideas to add to this storyline for the final one shot & also think of a few new ideas. We will then discuss them in the next seminar to see which we think will work best :)

Planning The One Shot.

I am in a group with Sam, Elliot, Lee & Amanda. We have the basic idea for the practice of our one shot film to have somebody on a bench exchanging a bag with somebody else suspiciously. We will try this from many angles to see what works best. We are unsure if this will be progressed onto the final one shot film or if we will change the idea completely. The setting is in the park.

We also discussed briefly the process of risk assessment.

Risk: The possibility or likelihood of danger or an accident occuring.

Hazard: Something present that could cause danger or accident.

Tomorrow we will film our idea & then upload to the blog

Below are images of the storyboard & setting

Over & Outtttttttttttttt :)

One, Two, Three, Shot

Tomorrow is our first one shot film seminar & i'm really looking forward to itttt :D I enjoyed doing film at A level & have looked on the NOW at the brief & have heard from other people on the course about what we have to do over the 3 weeks.

In groups of 4/5 we have to produce a one shot film - including editing the footage. "You should try to be as original and inventive as possible when developing your ideas and filming your productions."

Rules for design and recording:
- You must use a tripod/camera support when shooting this film
(i.e. not handheld)
- The camera may either pan/zoom/crab or track only once
- Title sequences and credits must be overlaid on to the image and included within the shot if added during post production
(i.e. not on a black background or still shot.)

Here is an example of one shot film by previous Multimedia students:



Also so this on somebody's blog which I really likeeeeeee :)

C.R.A.P Lecture.

We had the lecture for CRAP today and the group decided out of all the images that were brought in this was the worst designed when considering CRAP:

The reasons for this are that the image makes the title say penis & not parents, pretty bad design! The text is too blue with the background colour as well. The image of the baby face isn't needed & looks cheap. The whole design is rather cramped & not well thought out at all.


We were set the task to redesign & improve one of the examples we discussed in the lecture & to find another example and also redesign that one. Then upload them to the bloggggggggg :)

This is my new design:

I have changed the title colour and background to off set the blue. I changed the placing of the title to the side not the top so I could fit the image on. The bbay face image has gone & the design looks less cramped.

What A Load Of Crap..

Tomorrows seminar is about C.R.A.P. I have just looked at the powerpoint for it and it is basically about the layout design - through images or text for screen space.

C: Contrast
R: Repetition
A: Alignment
P: Proximity

Contrast: This is how two different things contrast against each other, it may be large and small text, bright and dull colours, texture is rough and smooth looking, font type face, wide and narrow spacing.

Repetition: Repeat some aspect of the design through the entire piece. Adds visual interest but need to avoid repeating elements so they become annoying.

Alignment: Nothing on page should be placed arbitrarily - meaning "Determined by chance, whim, or impulse, and not by necessity, reason, or principle" Every item should have visual connection with something else on the page.

Proximity: Group related items are together which implies a relationship between them.

For tomorrows lecture I need to bring 3 examples of poor layout design to discuss.

Animation With Sound! :)

Final animation complete with sound :)

Animation 300 Word Rationale Lalalaaa

Outline of my tv ident animation.

Over the past 3 weeks I had the task to create a 30 second animation of a tv ident using 3d Studio Max. The ident was based on myself for example your facebook, twitter or something about you, which then merged together to create an ident for your own TV station.
I did find the software difficult to grasp in the first week & it didnt help that I missed a seminar due to a driving test so I watched online tutorials which did help alot & found it a little easier to use when I had familiarised myself with the software. We were shown examples & inspiration ideas from the bbc idents but I wanted something that was more feminine as BBC has a wide ranged audience.
I researched into Living Tv idents as this is a tv station aimed at females. I found a youtube video with many living idents ( on previous post on blog) in which I got many ideas from. From researching and developing some inspiration, I came up with a few designs that I designed. Some ideas wouldn't work due to my ability of skills using 3dsMax, but I had a basic idea which I thought would work well.
To make my ident relate to me I simply used my name Hollie and although I did want a heart as the "o" in my name I had to change it to a star as i couldn't make a heart on the software. My text was bright pink to represent the femimine side of me with a white background to contrast the bright text. Most people decided to have a character in their animation although I found it quite tricky to make one on the software. I decided to have balloons lifting the "o" in my name which was shaped as a star to reach the other letters of my name floating in the air by balloons.
I used the "bomb" effect on the balloons to make them pop and the letters fall, except the star which floated back down. I then added sound using Adobe Premiere Pro. Sound was important for my animation to get the effect of the balloons popping.
The genre for my ident is aimed at females & I think it will hopefully attract the audience as as feminine person I have done what I know what will work. Semiotics is in which the signs relate to what the audience sees. For example seeing my pink ident will semantically mean to the audience that they are watching that tv station. Tropes from what I can understand is what TV writers, actors & directors use to control the audiences outlook. Tropes are often used to show fiction, which helps us to not just focus on the reality in life, which is why people think badly about different tropes they have seen.

First Attempt Video Of Animation (No Sound)

Animation Update...

Yesterday was the final animation seminar & i've pretty much completed it but need to render it to put on vimeo. I am going to do this tomorrow after tutor. I found animation really hard, I got the basics such as text and shapes but found it hard to animate it how I wanted it. Off to work now so will write up a 300 word post tomorrow on ittttt! :)

P.s after seeing this hot mamaaaa Rihanna last week on x factor....



i've decided to dye my hair red tonightttt ha, not sure how this will turn out!

An Hour On &

I've made about 5 balloons & started to animate. Hour & half left.. time to get Andy on the case! :)

!!!!

In animation have been for about 2 hours & all I have managed to do is this:

Ha it looks like crap, I need to animate it still, ADD SOUND?! & render it to put onto vimeo.

It looks nothing like my design ( on previous post ) as I have given up trying to draw a heart.

NOT a happy child right now

Bonjour :)

I'm still really ill & fed up of visits to the doctors now! Context wasn't on today so have only got animation seminar 3 - 6 but have come in early. Planned to come in for 11 and get some animation done as I missed last week but my train was delayed by a nice two hours so slightly later than expected..

Now going to attempt my tv ident with no help from Andy until my seminar. I could be very angry / frustrated by the end of this seminar. Last animation lesson before it is due in & tbh I am pretty behind :(

Essay Underway..

Or so I thought haa.

Been researching into the essay a fair bit today and came on here to blog about it but just saw Sam's comment on my previous post:

"you didnt get that "checklist" task on tuesday did you? apparently meant to use your own process as example too to pass criteria!"

I missed tuesdays seminar unfortunately due to my 12th driving test where I was failed again. Brilliant. Anyway... I found lots of examples for the essay today but now after that comment I assume i'm suppose to use some of my own examples from work i've done?!

We don't have next weeks context seminar so will meet up with Sam & catch up on her notes from last week & hopefully she can help :)

Off to see the fireworks now, beautifulllllll

Essay

Going to research & make a start on my essay today..

Discuss & argue from 4 methodologies - Reverse Engineering, Prototyping, Opsen Source & Market Research.

I have researched into all 4 methodologies & now need to choose the 2 I want to use in my essay and research into how they influence the design process & examples.

Design For Ident..

The first image is doodling I did in the drawing seminar. This gave me ideas for my ident to do my name & I then did the blog on the living tv idents in which I liked the idea of the balloons with my name. I don't know how well this will work on 3dsmax but will give it a try! :)

Tv Ident Ideas

Decided to start researching ideas for my tv ident animation..

The fact that it has to be based on my twitter, blogger and facebook rolled into one makes the topic very easy to create around.. me :)

My blog is very pink & feminine and decided this is how I want to portray myself in my ident too. When looking at the bbc idents ( on previous blog ) the problem is that bbc is a very general tv station male, females, young, old, gay, straight. So to give me some ideas I thought of tv channels that are aimed at women so I could have a look at the idents they use. For example living tv has programmes such as Americas Next Top Model, Dating In The Dark & Four Weddings. Here is the link to the website.. www.livingtv.co.uk

By looking at idents aimed at women it would give me ideas on how to make my ident feminine.



I absolutely love some of these such as the balloons lifting the "living" text. The colours offset well together, white text with bright coloured balloons. The ones with the light shining on them to create a shadow are quite simple but effective to look at. The lanterns are very girly and have a warm feel to the ident which I like. The slow motion of the text being blown apart is really good & interesting as an audience to watch however the fact it's being blown up & quite full of action goes against the convention of being feminine as such although it does work well. The glass shattering and revealing another laver is possibly my favourite & may have to ask Andy if this would be possible to do on 3dsmax.



This was a link when looking at living tv idents, never heard of diva tv but I enjoy some of the idents such as the first one which is very simple and attracts the audience due to the fact it has the main colour of pink standing out. I love love love the wine glass one & would want to do this on my ident! The liquid in the glass swaying around is quite calming and makes you want a glass of wine to sit down with for the programme. The spinning paint brushes are good but I don't like DIY in anyway what so ever so couldn't apply it to me :)

Diva idents are different to the living ones in which the text is quite small & focus more on the design / colours. Living Tv bases the ident around the text which takes up the tv screen. I think I prefer this in which you can work around the text of the ident.

On the living tv idents I do really like the one where the woman is in fancy dress with crazy make up on a swing for one of the letters. I can't use people in mine but I like the text used which is white but when you see the side in 3d it's crystals / diamonds & I love this effect!

I think i'm just going to keep the text simple of my name or intials - HTF with a heart. I want to use glitter / diamond / crystal text if possible with a pink shading background. I like the idea of using balloons to lift the text or maybe shattering text/screen. I don't really have an idea about sound yet as we haven't been told about it and what we are and not aloud to use for example if its not aloud to be copyright.

The genre for my ident is aimed at females & I think it will hopefully attract the audience as as feminine person I know what will work. ( I hope haha )

Semiotics is in which the signs relate to what the audience sees. For example seeing my pink ident will semantically mean to the audience that they are watching that tv station. ( I think?! )

Tropes from what I can understand is what TV writers, actors & directors use to control the audiences outlook. Tropes are often used to show fiction, which helps us to not just focus on the reality in life, which is why people think badly about different tropes they have seen.

These are tutorials to help me when i'm on 3dsmax so I can always look at them :)

Poorly :(

I have felt so ill this week :( which meant I couldn't go out at all for halloweeeen! :( I have however looked on the NOW at the context powerpoints on colour & light which covers topics such as the rainbow refracts white light with a prism, colour wheel, electromagnetic spectrum, primary colours, hue, tint, tone, shade & saturation. I also had a look at the powerpoint on assignment vs learning outcomes which is more to do with doing tasks in the seminar tomorrow about the essay.

I have once again tried to download 3dsmax for another 12 hours with no luck so I am going to read the tutorials on it on the NOW although it is aimed for 2009 software hopefully it will help me a bit as looking at a few people's blogs they all understand it pretty well! :(

Also got all the books I ordered that were on the list of books that we need. Flicked through them & don't really understand a word of them haa :(