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?