Monday 13 February 2012

Update 13/02/2012

I say this every time, but here it goes...I should update this more often.

Client Project -

For my client project i am working with Dan Stewart for the NTU Alumni, big gig. We are creating three videos for their campaign this year. One is an informative video about the cancer research center in Clifton and all the work that they are doing. That will be directed by dan and i will be doing some of the other bits and bobs, i believe i will be editing. the next video is a profile of the scholarship students that the Alumni has helped this year, this is to entice alumni students to donate to this cause. The interviews will be around a minute long and there will be 15 of them. I will be directing this one and i have come up with a sort of roulette idea as the introduction of each student just to add something fresh to it. It will be hard because there is so little you can do with an interview to make it new and exciting so looking forward to that challenge. The last video is a reminder pledge video that will be 30 seconds and remind alumni to donate. We both came up with a sort of typography idea, like the "McDonald's pound saver menu" advert that will be quick sharp and to the point however after discussions with the client we are unsure whether this will work so back to the drawing board. we are leaving this last as we do not need to rely on location or actors as of yet.

Its going a tad slow for my liking because the client is busy with his work and unfortunately we have to go through him to get anything confirmed. due to privacy laws we are not able to contact the scholarship students directly and the cancer research center has to be booked through him also.

Research Project -

Now this one isn't fun at all, so hard to come up with an idea for an artifact to further my research. One that i am working on now is the evolution of aspect ratio in television and film. This consists of looking at 4:3 why it changed to 16:9 and the cinemascope ratio of 2.4:1 that is used in movie theatres today.

I am looking at why television switiched to widescreen (16:9), this was to give the viewer 25% more of the image than 4:3 gives as well as give them a more natural viewing expereince than the tunnel vision that 4:3 gives. It was also updated to match the widescreen aesthetics that the movie theatre had to offer which in turn was an action to combat the growing popularity of telelvision.

I will then look at why many films have opted to use the 16:9 aspect ratio, films such as Avatar and Toy Story use or modify their format so that they will fit perfectly on a 16:9 screen.

At the moment i am portraying this artifact in a short clip using a 16:9 clip shown in different ratio screens. Im not keen on this and after finishing it will redo it. I have seen a video that i plan to adopt the same style...



I like this style to proove something so will get working on this.

For another artifact idea im planning to get in contact with someone working at the broadway cinema for an interview about my research project.

Monday 24 October 2011

Long time no see

Ok its been a long time since iv even been on this blog, to be honest i had some trouble remembering what it was called.

So whats happening?

Got back to Uni, Laptop broke, met some people, got loads of work to do.

After that?

Fixed laptop after a month (thanks acer, really sensitive to the amount of work iv got to do), attempted some work, finished one deadline, struggling with the rest.

In depth?

Ok so im happy with my research topic, im a tad worried that it might not be relevant at the moment but im sure i can fit in somewhere. I find it really interesting and technology is always moving forward so there has to be something there. The topic is "digital cinema and how it has impacted the movie theater" in short.

The client project iv had a little trouble with, first idea was not going to work, i didnt like it at all. but i like my new one. Its going to be a long the style of E4's Fonejacker, showing a real (simulated) phone call from one of the call centers, getting an alumni to give charity. - I like it.

And the last one is the Business report, my idea is to do with advertising. The idea is to have screens on vans that people can rent out and of course we make a short video for those screens to advertise their event or what not.

FInally, saw this vid and makes me happy im from london. Also its amazing and cant take my eyes off.

London Bus Tour from moritz oberholzer on Vimeo.

Sunday 27 February 2011

Adobe Hell

I haven't posted in a bit so Ill give an update. Documentary is going well, filmed everything now its just up to editing and possibly a few more montages to be filmed.

Essay is on its way, half way but struggling to be honest. However i am enjoying it more than the previous essays which is odd. I have storyboarded by title sequence and also discussed it with Jools who gave a few good ideas which i will put into it. I was hoping to film this weekend but haven't been able to.

I ordered Adobe Production Premium and it came this week so i have been playing about on it and trying to get to grips with it....finding it hard! I have been watching tutorials and sort of getting the hang of things on AE but Photoshop is a mind boggle and think I'm going to need someone to teach me how to use it.

I have made the title for by title sequence that would be shown at the end of the 20 seconds...

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Its heavily copied from a tutorial but i have tweaked a lot of things to make it more appropriate for the film.

I have also come up with some ideas for the documentary...while the voice over is happening instead of films being shown, we can use 3d moving still images. Here is one i made and i think it will add some uniqueness to the film.

Tuesday 18 January 2011

Documentaries and bad food

OK so I'm not feeling too well, think i had some bad food yesterday and been up all night, but other than that everything is good.

After presenting our film last week, I'm happy to say that I'm genuinely proud of what we made. We first saw film which i thought looked amazing and the presentation of their group work was genius! However i feel i have to comment on their presentation on the film tea. To be honest i was a bit shocked, when evaluating someone Else's work, especially if its a group project i think that you shouldn't give it the 'Simon Cowell' approach. I believe they said something along the lines of "This scene was good and we thought that it was out of place because it was the only shot that didn't lack imagination". Some constructive critism guys! Tea's evaulation of our work was good, i think they did a good job.

Anyway!!

So we have started our documentary project which im excited about, we had an introduction to it with Jeanie Finlay, a documentary maker based in Nottingham. She was really interesting and helpful and i personally think the best guest speaker we have had. We had to come up with ideas for documentaries and film a teaser a proposal for it. Phil came up with loads of good ideas and we decided to stick with a documentary about the characters in an english pub which evolved to the decline of the english pub which was a stronger topic.

We went out with our equipment and went to the nearest pub so that we would 100% have something filmed. We got in and asked to film the pub and they said no problem however they didnt want to be filmed and niether did the custoemrs which was unhelpful but we worked around it. We filmed a lot of shots and then went looking for a different pub down the street, However it was closed which kind of prooved our point. When we got back i started working on a proposal and the other boys in the group worked on editing. We kept our proposal short and sweet and used traditional and patriotic music in th background which helped our proposal a lot!

After everyone had gone Jeanie and jools said that ours would be the film that they would commission because of the proposal which we were chuffed at.

Overall, a good start to the documentary project. (However im feeling awful)

Saturday 1 January 2011

2011!

ok this is the first time I have had time to sit down and think about uni. I have been working non-stop! as soon as i got home from Uni, that evening I was at work and because it was xmas i didn't have a day off until today...well of course xmas day but couldn't do anything then.

Ok so that's my excuse.

I have to write up the notes I have on our film as well as write about the film my group will be evaluating (Feel). We showed our film and it had some mixed reviews. My group think that it was very good and actually told a story as well as made the audience have to think rather than watch....I have to admit the music was a bit overpowering but it will be sorted out by the time we are back. have to give praise to Alex for editing the film so well.

The film that we are evaluating is Feel, which i have to admit looked amazing and Ben did a fantastic job directing it. there were a few bits which i didn't like as well. Il get on the them in detail when we give our presentation but they were mainly things like continuity errors.

Other news, I've been looking at the essay brief and just wrote up a quick swot analysis so it should come along in a bit.

O almost forgot, watched a couple of good films during Christmas, as you do. Christmas Tv was bollocks this year btw.

The films were Prophet, a french film about a north African prisoner in France and the divide between the french and Arabs, as well as how he coped and survived in prison. the next film was Lebanon, an Israeli film about the 1982 was in Lebanon. The majority of the film is filmed inside a tank with some shots looking through the scope of the tank to see the outside. I thought this film was amazing and so clever. Recommended and if you do watch it, let me know what you think.

Thursday 2 December 2010

Behind the scenes

Heres the behind the scenes for Train....

Train. Behind The Scenes. from Petalblossom on Vimeo.

Thursday 25 November 2010

Ooops forgot about you!

K i haven't posted in a while, must have slipped my mind which is not a good thing at all. But anyway here's whats gone on in the time I haven't posted:

- New Project, so the project was to make a 6 minute film in a group. We were in groups of 7 and all had a role to play, I was the producer. I got the role because basically I just asked for it and it seemed that no one else wanted to do it. Was quite happy about that one! Some of the other roles were fought over but sorted out nicely. After we agreed on the roles we read our script, Train which was written by Jools. At first we didn't like it that much, we didn't think that it ended very well so changed it, MASSIVELY!!! then a whole lot of organising and planning went ahead. I found the location which was a student house in west bridgeford that suited the script so well, it was if the house and street were made for the story! so we got risk assessments and recce forms all made up and we were set to make a proposal to the group and our lecturers. OK so all was good, or so we thought...turns out we got the script so wrong and jools was furious (in that situation he seemed it, I bet he really wasn't that bad) so he explained and we saw the error of our ways and changed it. All coming together nicely now. We got our second set of storyboards done and then it came time to rehearse. Rehearsals went really well, this was when we met our actors for the first time and they were perfect, this made director, assis director and I really excited to film now.

The day was finally upon us, shoot day! so i had all the equipment in my car and the actors wanted to drive themselves to the location which meant all of us had a ride there and back which was amazing! it started of slow, this was no ones fault really was just a case of getting used to how to work with the actors and get the best performance and footage. it all started to flow better and everything was done....There were no hiccups really, just losing the chalk a few times and Alex losing his keys which after 20 minutes of searching found them in his pockets.

Now were are just waiting for Alex (Editor) and Andrew (sound) to finish it all up and then we can all move along.

Another thing that happend was the Network Essay. I quite enjoyed this essay, didnt find it as boring or pointless as the last one I did and also got a desent grade on it, B-, think il just say B from now on!