Beyond The Camera!

In our most recent sessions of beyond the camera, myself & Orlagh have pieced together an audio file of sounds in a school during breaktime, so that we can add this to a moving image & photographs for our project! We are currently up to date and just making sure our audio file is saved in a secure location to prevent any of it from being lost/deleted.

Digital Media Cultures question...

During our last session of digital media cultures last week, we all handed in our plans for which question we had chosen to answer. After looking into a few of the questions I chose to base my question on how Apple Inc has impacted on the contemporary media industry!

TV Studio assignment!

For our tv studio assignment we orginally planned for a local DJ to come in, for our group (group 7) to interview and broadcast a performance on 'the decks' however as we have been assigned two singer/guitarists, we have changed our personal guest and are yet to confirm our new plans. Once we have this sorted we plan to then approach the lighting/set technicians in the studio with our requirements for the layout/look of the set!

On 8th November (Session 8)...

....we used the pc suite to plan further how to answer our chosen question, and then met with a member of staff to inform them of what we had done so far. Our particular question seemed tricky to tackle and plan ahead for however using links and projects from previous talks we have had in other sessions we managed to piece together a vague plan for answering the question!

Session 7 - 1st November...

We presented our plan to the class and tutor, which showed our approach to the question using our research plan.

Session 6 - 25th October...

In this session our teams were announced and we interrogated our question and planned our research and divided the workload between us so that we could answer and plan as a team.

During sessions 4 & 5 (11th october/18th October)...

...we were set the second and third questions, which we were also asked to plan an approach for. At the end of session 5 we gave feedback on our favorite question then split into teams to answer our chosen/preferred question!

Session 3 - Applied media research...

On October 4th we were all given our first question, in which we were all expected to break down into areas of discussion so that we were aware of what approach to take when answering.

During our second session of applied media research (27th September)...

....we looked into putting these this method into practice, by looking at how to design focus groups, conduct interview and participate in participant observation.

Applied Media Research module Introduction...

On thursday 20th september, we had our introduction to appliedc media research. This introduction included mainly focusing on designing and utilising quantitative research methods. We discussed how surveys and questionnaires are useful and familiar forms of this method!

Interactive Games Design...

On 22nd November 2011, myself and Pete designed a plan for our very own interactive game. This was based on a using a main projector and  corridor to test the idea, along with other smaller projectors than were based along the corridor in order to produce holograms such as footballs/skittles/goals and other sports related materials. Here are our initial ideas for the game. (pasted from the document)

Interactive floor projection games

Playing environment

Entire length of LSS corridor

Concept

Interactive gaming environment projected from floor to ceiling and ceiling to floor.  Users stand at one end of the corridor and have to fulfil challenges for points.  The points are added to a leaderboard and there are prizes for the winner on a monthly basis.  The points would be converted to a virtual currency for use in other games or could be converted to print credits, shopping vouchers, beer tokens etc.  The gaming experience is similar to that of the Nintendo wii, but on a massive scale and without handheld devices.  The player would use their feet, hands and body to interact with the gaming environment.

Multi-platform

For some games, other players (challengers) can register their phones to connect to the game.  By doing this, other registered users would receive updates or push notifications from their smart-phones,  letting them know when a player is about to take up the interactive floor challenge.  These users would receive an interactive map of the floor scenario onto their mobiles and could set additional challenges for the player using the actual floor. (ie obstacles to prevent the player from reaching the destination wall)

Eg, you could be on the bus, or in a lecture and your phone would notify you of a prospective challenger.  You would then receive a 30 second window to add an obstruction (using points as a wager).  The challenger would then see a quick 2 second layout of the obstacles added and would have to memorize these obstacles in order to get their object/player to the destinltion wall.

Possible game ideas:

1.     1-aside football

2.     Pong (retro)

3.     Breakout (retro)

4.     Bowling

5.     Squash

6.     Tennis

7.     Dwarf Toss

8.     Tightrope challenge (over canyons, volcanoes, waterfalls etc)

9.     Stepping stone challenge

3rd & 4th essays completed and submitted...

Today I submitted the remaining assignments for this year. Although leaving the most difficult until last...I was able to complete both confidently! Looking forward to next year...

2nd essay submitted...

Today I submitted my second essay...based on my digital media tools module therefore I had to include evaluations of my my reasons for my photography, editing, short animation and website development. This essay was long-winded but has given me more knowledge of how to contruct and layout an essay professionally!

TDavies

A link to my soundcloud page and my mixes...



TDavies

Personal website project...

Today I have the final draft of my website ready to submit. I must say I enojoyed working on this website as I have develpoed skills in areas I was not totally familiar with before, for example in dreamweaver. I learnt how to link phgotoshop and dreamweaver together to successfully construct a website that can run live. The website has a homepage, personal interests/about me page, films projects page and a photos page and includes a brief amount of content to make a basic site.

Virtual Gardening Presentation...

Today myself, Drew and Orlagh presented our ideas for the Gardening Fanatic assignment, by feeding back our thoughts on a new concept for garden fanatics. We met up on several occasions before the presentation and added parts to 2 seperate prezi's that we had made, whilst making notes on paper of our initial thoughts and ideas that we ended up imporving to come up with the Virtual Garden idea. Planning this presentation was challenging for us but once we linked each other's ideas together our prezi's began to flow, however I found the presentation itself quite difficult just being put on the spot even though we had thoroughly planned our work.

http://prezi.com/yuvvtmkdkd9-/virtual-gardening/

http://prezi.com/1_eo5tontcev/copy-of-virtual-gardening/

Working on the website...

Today I worked on my website, which proved to be quite a challenging task, but has gave me experience on using Dreamweaver!

Identity Task...

The facebook for our fictional character is now live, along with a twitter and a Tumblr. 'Riley Scott' is our unique, fictional character and he is an unsigned rapper who represents a gangster type youngster, who thinks he is part of the 'Hood'. This task is proving to be a lot of fun! Links for the Facebook, Tumblr and Twitter are listed below.



https://twitter.com/#!/rileydarapper

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100003625547036&ref=tn_tnmn#!/profile.php?id=100003625547036

http://rileydarapper.tumblr.com/

Gardening fanatic task...

Today I completed a Prezi for an assignment where I have to come up with a gadget for gardening fanatics to use to. For this task I used a prezi to describe how myself, Drew and Orlagh have come up with the idea of a personal app for smartphones that allows users to create a virtual garden using a touch-screen system in museums across the world and scan barcodes of personal profiles of plants, to import that plant into their virtual garden! This was an unusual topic that I've not come across before but nevertheless completed a prezi to assist our presentation! The link is for the Prezi is located below.

http://prezi.com/yuvvtmkdkd9-/virtual-gardening/

Role of Reflection Prezi...

On 23rd December 2011 I created an online presentation using 'Prezi' to discuss the Role of Reflection in Learning and Creative Practice. This presentation was quite challenging and made me look in detail at theorists in this field and their particular views on reflection. I submitted this assignment online once I had finished it and got a good understanding of Prezi through completing it! The link for the Prezi can be found below.

http://prezi.com/ilur8rhcogly/the-role-of-reflection/

Another Wiki...

On Tuesday 21st February 2012 we finished a Wiki based on the legalisation of drugs, with myself analysing the social networking marketing/distribution mechanism of the leggalisation of drugs. This Wiki proved to be slightly more tricky than the previous wiki's however with research and deep thought I managed to piece together a thread based on the social networking side of the topic. The link for the wiki is below!

http://contemporarymediaissues.wetpaint.com/page/Legalisation+of+drugs

Day of filming the big one...

Today we filmed our last short film for the year and suprisingly it was a success! We got as much footage as we possibly could and interviewed three people for our documentary, to provide a voiceover. A successful day for me, Nicki, Amy, Rio and now we are going to begin the editing process.

Wiki....Transmedia Storytelling

Creating this Wiki was not the easiest task Ive ever carried out however once I got into the flow of things I was able to add a thread of my own for the wiki, with sufficient research included. I researched Transmedia Storytelling by creating a summary of what it actually is and then showing a key example of it by providing a link. As this was one of the first Wiki's Ive ever made I was just getting used to it when I submitted my thread. Have a look it is actually quite interesting...


http://contemporarymediaissues.wetpaint.com/page/Transmedia+Storytelling

Photoshop task...

On Wednesday 26th October we took 3 photos with a digital camera and uploaded these onto the computer to edit in Photoshop. We changed the background and foreground colour and alterned the saturation of the foreground image in each 2 of the photos (favourite, chosen ones) until the foreground image stood out nad the image was edited well. This was good practice for me and a good opportunity to get used to using Photoshop whilst being a fun task to carry out!

5 Images to tell a story...

On Tuesday 1st November  2011 Me and Nicki took 5 snaps on a digital camera that could be put together to tell a short story. The story we used was the basic process of myself trying to purchase sweets from the vending machine and it taking my money, so I resorted to kicking the machine to get the sweets. The 5 images below tell the short story. The task was very basuic and straightforward but was quite fun and interesting!



   

Mystery postage note game...

On 13th December 2011 we were put into groups with different topics to base a mystery postage note game on with my group having to use postage notes to tell a story about a man who fell out with his wife before she shortly passed away. I played the part of the man and had to act to put some of their story together. It was an eventful session!

Personal Weavrs/Twitter account...

Today we checked our Weavrs that we made last week and connected up with Twitter. We had a look at how many followers we had and what the Weavr had tweeted about and found that theres is an obvious link between followers and tweets with the interests/hobbies that we gave the weavr last week. My Weavr, Leo-John, personally had 4 followers with only one follower being a real person. One tweet was about weightlifting because in the hobbies I had use the word 'Gym'. I am guessing this was how the connection was made anyway!

Online character.....I play the role of a 'dolite' in Liverpool

Today we took the online character brief on board and came up with several ideas for a fictional online character who we will create a Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr and Flickr for. Each of the four members in my group will be responsible for one of these websites and upload content based on this character. This should be an interesting two weeks!

Our next film.....the biggest one yet

Today we hired out the relevant camera equipment in order to carry out filming for our next short film. This next film is going to be a documentary-type film based on an MMA/cage fighter who train in a gym in St Helens and fights every month. He is an amateur fighter looking ot turn pro and we are seeking to find an interesting story that reflects his life/past or another fighte'sr life/past who trains at the same, that we can include in our documentary and use htis story as a focus point. We plan to film next Monday, as long as we can find an interesting story to use. An alternative would be to film a band and a rapper and interview them.

It's Liverpool film...

By 15 february 2012 we had completed our second short film, this one being based on culture and the atmosphere in the city of Liverpool. We went on the Liverpool tour bus and explored the city whilst filming on the top deck of the open top bus. We captured all the major landmarks in Liverpool and once we had enough footage (around an 60 minutes) we began editing and projected our views on our work, to our tutor. Afterwards we then recieved feedback and realised that we would recieve a better mark for our film if we captured extra footage of people getting on the tour bus and the tour bus leaving, therefore we went out again with the camera equipment and captured this extra footage. Once this was done we returned to the editing suite with the extra footage, editing the whole thing by picking out the best shots and clips then we added effects, burned the file onto a disk and submitted our work. Overall this assignment was successful!

Skittles Animation...

On Tuesday 29th November 2011 we create a stop frame animation of skittles creating random images, by taking  hundreds of photos and using these stills to create the animation. This was the last day we had to finish the assignment. We altered the beginning of the animation to myself eating the skittles then we spelt out the word skittles as well as producing images with the sweets. Me and Nicki completed the task after a long process of taking many snaps and we are both happy with the final product, with only a few things to sort out.