New Project

First blog of the new project!!!
When the project was launched I came up with a few ideas instantly but felt like I was playing it too safe. And so I decided upon the 1940s as my decade. To be honest I wasn't really that passionate about this decade, I find the war interesting in a strange way, I thought I could do something arty perhaps a factual book with some emotive imagery, perhaps a scrap book that looks old and war torn, perhaps not! All the ideas I came up with were obvious! So I went home, more confused than usual and began to look at old family photos and other random bits of memorabilia. I started to get inspired and... the lightning bolt struck in the early hours of the morning.
I think I'm going to enjoy this project.

Busy, busy, busy...

The title says it all!

This week I have been working on my reflective report, which turned in to a bit of a can of worms but its done! Am i happy with it? Of course I'm not! I have also been working on our presentation, I have far too much to say and I have found it pretty difficult to limit it and I have also found myself constantly putting over my point of view, what I would change, how I dealt with the difficulties. So to remedy this I deleted all that stuff and will work with the group tonight and get their opinions. Our video clip is done but we may be altering one tiny litle thing tonight and then its presentation all the way and then its finally over!!! I have enjoyed it but I can't wait to work on my own again!

War and Peace

I think perhaps I may need to set myself a word limit on my reflective report! I have decided to try a few different ways of communicating my thoughts for my report because I doubt that a lengthy typed report will be fun to read or write for that matter! I will continue blogging, and perhaps use some extracts from this in my final report and I have also decided to teach myself InDesign and make some sort of visual reflective report using that. I have a few other random ideas but I may be getting carried away.

As I mentioned in the previous blog I was unhappy with the project but couldn't quite put my finger on the problem. So I showed the rough version of the final clip to a very honest and good friend, Jen and she too thought there was something not quite right but wasn't sure what at that point.

And so, the pair of us went on a day trip to Salford Quays and decided to go in Daniel Libeskind's Imperial War Museum. I am a huge fan of architecture and the Imperial War Museum as a building isn't particularly special but its interior and the reasoning behind its exterior is in the words of Ben, 'Awesome.' The excellent lighting scheme and the angled positions of the walls make you feel disorientated and uncertain.The dark interior evokes every emotion that war does. We also watched a 360 degree show that lasted 15 minutes in the museums main exhibition. The show was filled with real life experiences from a variety of wars, thought provoking imagery and excellent sound effects. I watched and compared it to our project, we had the imagery in ours, we were working on the audio and then Jen hit the nail on the head... we were lacking emotion. I filmed a couple of minutes of the show and also found several other linked items in the exhibition, eg, videos of the Manchester blitz and also some info from the Manchester 1996 bombing.

Back at college and talking to the group I brought this up, with the help of Jen. They agreed and so we are well and truly back on track. So this week Tim is working on the audio, Chris is reworking his script, Tom is working on our title sequence, Adrian is working on the editing again and they have told me to have a week off...somehow I don't think that is going to happen!!!

I don't like it!

Still doing group work! Last nights lesson with all the group present and reviewing what we had was great and gave us back some of the direction I thought we had lost. We are still steaming ahead, working hard and striving for perfection. Last night we had completed our first, very rough attempt at the final film clip and with five weeks to go we are well ahead of schedule.

So far what I have said doesn't fit in with the title of my blog so I probably should explain. We worked in to the clip a lot last night and it seemed my phrase for the night was 'I don't like it!' It is getting there but something isn't quite working yet. The clip made perfect sense to the group because we understand the message we are trying to convey but if an impartial person was to take a look would they understand that message? As it stands at the moment I don't think they would and I do intend to test this theory.

I have also posted some of my new sketches on our google group so they can be added in to our second attempt at the film!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/31392076@N03/

Things I have been doing...

We decided a couple of weeks ago to add a stop motion to our film project which I mentioned in the previous blog...I think. So it became my task to make it. I borrowed a mac, a decent camera and a tripod and set to work. The idea was fairly simple, for me to draw the urbis and photograph it in various stages and at regular intervals. For first attempt I used the time lapse setting on the programme I can Animate, so a still was taken every 15 seconds and I could draw freely. I set myself up on a drawing board with lighting behind and above me so I could see what I was doing. The entire drawing took just short of two hours. This sort of worked apart from I was featured too heavily in the final film and I didn't want that!!! So for the second attempt I moved away from the drawing board on to a flat surface, set the camera up above me instead of behind and used natural light. This time I decided to manually take photographs after completing part of the drawing. This attempt took three hours and 300 frames, a bad back and a cramped hand but was much more successful. However, being the perfectionist that I am I have found fault, the use of natural lighting caused the lighting to change subtly in virtually every photograph and because the surface was not as solid as the drawing board in the original shoot the drawing shifts slightly in every frame too! One more attempt and I will have it perfect.

Other than stop motion I have been looking in some depth at property programmes to see how architecture is filmed and also how architecture is photographed in magazines and books to give us a clearer idea for our filming (which is why I have been bookmarking random pictures of buildings on delicious). And finally I have been continuing with my sketchbook and making some progress with my reflective report!

Its been a while...but here goes!

Thought I'd better make a reappearance on here since we are about eight or nine weeks in to group work! It seems like only yesterday we started it.
So here is an update on Group Four (at least I think we are group four).

The original idea, 'The regeneration of Manchester,' the group (Chris J, Tim J, Adrian B, Tom G and myself) had in our first lesson still stands and we are steaming ahead with it. We began by researching in to everything about the city and the bomb that was the catalyst in its regeneration. The research has now gone on to completely different levels with members of the group contacting specialist websites and the architects behind the Urbis,

An idea for the style of the film came quite early on, it was like a lightning bolt! We decided to utilise our skills which ended up with a few of us having a go at 3D models and I created some hand drawings to show the concept stage of Manchester's regeneration. Then came the treatment with was easy enough to write once an overall idea and style had been established. Also utilising other group members skills we decided who would work with the audio and decided that a voice over would be used as well as an original audio track.

In week seven came our presentation and at this stage we had completed our storyboard and started to experiment with animations/drawings/audio and photographs we had already taken. We began parts of the production stage early as it helped us with our research and develop our storyboard. At this stage we were also told we had to include a stop motion in our final clip which is something we had already discussed so this cemented that idea and we went ahead with it.

At the moment we are still in the production stage and have been out to film our video footage on location in Manchester on two separate occasions. We have filmed the stop motion we may be using twice also and have also created a shot log for all our still photographs and video footage.

To summarise, I'm fairly happy with the way I have been working with the group (they may disagree) and I'm also happy with the group as a whole, a lot of hard work has taken place!

When starting group work, I was very apprehensive as I know I work much better on my own and have had nothing but bad experiences with group work in the past. I have however been pleasantly surprised, so far it is going quite well. I won't lie and say it has been completely plain sailing, I have had my fair share of frustrating moments. The idea behind our work is a subject that I am quite passionate about, that is the architecture, not Manchester. In fact, after eightish weeks of working on Manchester I am beginning to loathe it as a city. The modern glass facades of Urbis, Beetham Tower and No1 Deansgate mixed with the ornate beauty of the Manchester Cathedral, The Triangle and The Printworks is making Manchester look like Frankenstein's monster, does anyone agree?