Final Artefact - Looking back at what I have made...

After having some feedback at the end of my presentation of my final Artefact, I've realised that there were a few improvements that could have been made. Firstly the lighting needed more consideration to give the video clips a horror feel, with possibly just the use of a small lamp rather than using a normal light.

Secondly after editing I found that I should have merged all footage together into after effects, to upload as one video to youtube, as this would have saved opening a new video for each clip, to continue the interactive story. This would have made the footage more effective as a horror, which as a result would have beeen more enjoyable for the user!!

Work-based report...

Next week I am aiming to start my work-based report on my main placement from summer 13'! I've decided to base my report on my time at Lime Pictures  working as a set dresser/stagehand/runner, as I worked there for 6 weeks and enjoyed this placement the most! Working on Hollyoaks at Lime was the perfect job and I would love to work there after I have finished at University next year. After working in the camera department as well as the design department I managed to get a feel for what I'd enjoy the most, which led me tov want to work in design in the future!!

Dissertation Topic...

After a meeting the other week with my tutor I've decided to base my dissertation on Reality TV, and how particular reality TV shows are so popular and effective in reaching a large audience. I've enjoyed all work on Reality TV up to now on my course so I think that this would be the most interesting topic for me to choose for my final year dissertation!

Final Artefact Research & Planning...

Before I presented my piece of work for the creative media module I researched into the type of project I was going to produce and planned what themec and method I felt most comfortable using! I decided to choose YouTube annotations as my method as I enjoyed producing this during practice excersises. I also decided to base my theme around halloween as I began planning around 31st October, therfore decided to produce sequence of horror clips on youtube, that form a small interactive game. Here is some of my planning/research oahead of the final piece!

For my final Artifact I decided that using YouTube Annotations was the best way to present my project as:

• Easiest method to present a horror sequence
• Best way to combine music and video for a horror feel
• Genuinely preferred using an interactive project as this has allowed the user to make choices throuhhout.

I found this online article useful, in helping me to create the typical edgy atmosphere for a horror film. This gave my guidance in paying attention to the use of Audio, costume, Graphic Scenes, Use of victims and generally creating a spooky atmosphere for the user, when interactive with each short clip.

http://voices.yahoo.com/characteristics-horror-movie-8691959.html

I based my horror sequence on the popular 'American Horror Story Series, combined with the Friday 13th series. Having watched the first 2 series of AHS, I decided that this would be an ideal piece to base my work on; an old fashioned approach to Horror films. The 'Intruder' in my horror scenes is based on character Jason Voorhees, from Firday 13th. I attempted to recreate his appearance and use a sneak-up scene to imitate the muder scenes in the films. I decided to capture all of my footage indoors and base most of it in the living room & kitchen, the same as in America Horror Story Series 1 and also the Friday 13th Series. Many Horror scenes happen in a house in AHS, where my idea of having an intruder entering a home worked. To make this work as an interactive game, I looked at a range of clips from the AHS episodes, and worked out how I would offer the user a set of options/choices throughout the film, before leading them to an ultimatum: e.g. The big decision between picking two items in a fridge, which would lead either losing or winning at the game. For the series of videos, once I had annotated and linked each video togethers, I then picked a suitable soundtrack for each one, and attached this to the video via YouTube. I searched for the most appropriate sound that would give the sequence a horror feel.

Feedback for production project...

Last week I received feedback for my production project. After originally basing our project on the music event we run in liverpool's shipping forecast, we found that from the feedback given, this idea would not work as it is has too much focus on ourselves and would not produce a successful project unless we were basing our work on someone other than ourselves.

After a useful discussion, we have decided to change our idea to basing our project on liverpool's only non-alcoholic bar, 'The Brink'. We think that this would be an interesting and diverse idea that would result in a better final production project with richer and more interesting content! Taking our first step into this, we will have to check out the bar and get a feel for what angle we can aim approach this from...

Production Project Proposal!

Last week we had our presentations for our production project proposals, prior to further planning of what we are aiming to produce for it! I had some trouble gettting to uini this day due to bad weather and handed my work directly into the staff office. My proposal is based on the idea of an interactive websitem, presented as a timeline of events, showing the growth and development of our music event that myself & orlagh dooley set up back in may 2012. In the proposal I have outlined what we aim to include on the website to bulk it up and make it full of interesting content that will work well in a timeline, that the user can interact with! Now it's time to get working properly on this, by beginning interviews and gatehring live footage of some of our events...

Individual Artefact Proposal - Halloween Interactive Thriller / Horror

For my indivuidual artefact for creatuive media practice, i have decided to produce an interactive horror/thriller, as this also fits with the current halloween theme. For this assignment I'll have to consider a variety of factors to form a plan, before i start the task.

- Equipment (camera + tripod)
- Use of after effects
- Use of youtube editor
- Use of outfits (halloween costume)
- Locations (possibly flat in city centre)
- Rooms I would film in
- Length of interactive footage
- Stages of interactive videos and order of videos


Would this work?

What other factors would I have to consider to make it stand out from just a practice task?

Creative media practice - Interactive YouTube Game

Today we finished our interactive youtube game, which pretty much tested our ability to use after effects and edit on youtube, after  a long summer break from it! We managed to get ours finished and based it on a game of rock , paper , scissors, which proved to be pretty simple and basic, forming a very short and simple product in the form of a series of youtube videos. We then presented this game to the class, although some of it didn't work properly!

Rock, Paper, Scissors / Interactive Game (Main) 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HF3DCx_7vBI

Summer placements (continued...)

After finishing my whole week at Lime pictures, I asked at the produciton office there on my last day to check if any further placement were available thorughout the summer, but there were no more vacancies. I was keen to go back and do another placement as i knew this would look far better on my CV.

A couple of week later towards the end of July, I spoke to a friend who has worked at Lime in the deisgn department, who gave my name and number the the head set dresser. Thankfully I received a text days later asking me to pop in for some more work expeirence, this time in design! A week or so later I began working at Lime as a design runner and stagehand / freelance design, which I found out was paid work. This was the best jobh I've had. Loved every minute of it and I met a lot of new poeple in the design department who helped me gain a lot of experience dressing sets and helping out with the creation of scenes for the Hollyoaks drama.

My fourth placement of the summer came when a friend on the course approached me with the chance  to work as a camera assiastant at CREAMFIELD FESTIVAL. I took up this opportunity straight away and camped at the festival for a whole weekend at the end of august. Whilst I was there I carried out loads of smalls jobs such as deliverring food and drink to the film crew from different base camps, as well as assistaning with filming on stage such as cable managing!

Summer 13' Work placements - Action packed summer!

During the summer break between second and final year of the MPS course I lined myself up with a few work placements to add to my CV for when I graduate next year. One placement was set up the university and my course and the other three I found in my own time. Being on easch placement allowed me to get a good feel of how people work in the media industry and I gained quite a bit of experience in a number of different areas.

My first placement was with HURRICANE FILMS, which lasted about 6 weeks. My role was as a production runner which led to me to carrying out small tasks such as helping wityh things in the head office in liverpool city centre, as well as doing my own bit of filming in the city for a project on their online site. I carried on with the internship until I decided to leave mid-July, due to starting further placements in liverpool.

 

After leaving hurricane I started a week placement in LIME PICTURES in liverpool, with the help of an interview set up by my course tutor. At lime  i really enjoyed working as a camera assistant for the majority of the week, whilstm eeting a lot of new people there who were good to work with. I started the week as a 3rd AD (Assistant Director) but then relealised that there wasn't a massive responsiblity or work for me here, as I was ltiterally just shadowing the 3rd AD, which left me with a lot of astanding around watchign the scenes on Hollyoaks. I decided that camera work would have more work for me, so spoke to a camera assistant before carrying on with the cameras for the remainder of the week.

Breakthrough opportunity!

I have just been contacted by a record label in Portugal, offering to make an EP for my track 'Drop' (Techno House). I am absolutely over the moon with getting signed to my first label!

I am currently awaiting the release date, actual EP with remix tracks, and artwork to be sent to me. I can't wait, so happy I have got myself on the ladder to producing house music that is signed to a house label.


Soundcloud link: https://soundcloud.com/tomdaviesliverpool

(Dish Of The Day Records)

Awaken Ibiza!

Today I have confirmed with a student holiday experience 'Awaken Ibiza' that my house night 'GetDown' is now official brand partners with the company, which means that myself and Orlagh (GetDown residents) get to play a DJ set out in summer Ibiza on a party boat. I am absolutely overwhelmed by the oppourtunity! Our aim is to sell as many tickets as we can to help sponsor the experience, and eget as many people on board with the trip as we can! The whole package is £149 which covers boat partys, accomodation, entry in superclubs, pool & beach parties! Here is  our sponsored link for tickets for week 3:

http://www.awakenibiza.com/getdownliverpool

We cannot wait to get out there and playing house music with the Ibiza sunset behind us!

Essay - Transmedia Storytelling

I have just finshed the 3000 word essay on our trandmedia storytelling question. With lookig back at the research wityh used for the presentation I was easily guided however answering the question in 3000 words proved to be very challenging, but good practice!


Question 1 (Our question):

"The internet, social media and other open systems have allowed for user generated content, crowd sourcing and other forms of audience participation to prevail in digital media but how do we translate these features into storytelling experiences, without treading on the toes of the author?"

Myself and Orlagh and our underground house event......

Recently I have taken up the responsibility of running my own underground house music event, based here in Liverpool. It was back in May 2012 when i decided that I wanted to start up my own night, as I am really passionate about the house music scene and wanted to get myself involved with anything that i could. Then i figured, its not that easy getting yourself noticed and making an impact, plus I didnt want to be relying on other peoples events and plans to get myself out there and get on the scene, so I decided to start up an event myself.

As soon as I decided that i was to go ahead with this I asked Orlagh immediately, if she wanted to get invovled and co-found the night. Once i realised she was keen we planned our name, venue, first event, DJ's and prmotional techniques that were going to be associated with our night.

Today, we have just realeased the news for our April event, which will be our 8th event to date, which we are extremely excited about. Our recent poarties have been such a sucess and our most recent one locked out with 240 people crammed into the basement of our venue, The Shipping Forecast.

Here are our most recent posters:

Idea is forming....

We have an idea for our media convergence project. After discussing things today we have a good few ideas to create a plan for the project. This will be based on mine & Orlagh's (the rest of my group) love for music. Hopefully this will create an interesting project.

Feedback for Transmedia Storytelling presentation....

Recently I have received feedback for our group presentation based on transmedia storytelling. Having been awarded a mid 2:2 grade I am fairly happy, as although the presentation was not the best we put a lot of effort into the content and a lot has pulled off. I found this peice of work very challenging as exploring this area of media research proved to appear very vague and hard to grasp. I definately think that if i was to improve this in the future I would make sure I fully grasped the area I was going to present during presentation, as although i put a lot of research into the group I found it particularly hard to explain parts.

Apple Essay feedback & mark..

 

A couple of weeks back we received our grades and feedback for our digital media essays. My mark of 50% means that although this proves to be a 2:2, I have realised that I had described too much in my work and need to analyses more often. I the next assignment, where I am working with my group on the topic of Popular Music I will makec sure I thoroughly analyse throughout, in order to increase my mark!

TV Show feedback...

After submitting our DVD for the TV show assignment, we were told that the disc would not play on any machine around university, leaving us with one option....a resit in the summer. Myself and the group are not overwhelmed with happiness about these circumstances however that being our only optin , we know we have to deal with it if we aim to pass the module. Exam will be capped at 40%.

Research for group storytelling presentation...

Over the last month or so I have been gathering information with my group for the group storytelling presentation. We have been assigned question one which has proven to be a tricky question however as a group we think we that we had collected enough research to throughly explain our answer during the presentation. Some of the research I gathered at first is listed below.
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Q: The Internet, social media and other open systems have allowed for user-generated content (UGC), crowd – sourcing and other forms of audience participation to prevail in digital media. But how do we translate these features into storytelling experiences, without treading on the toes of the author?

 There are a number of ways to translate features into storytelling experiences, such as involving the audience in a project. One project that successfully does this is Digital fiction Factory’s social film (first ever) called ‘inside’ that engages and involves the audience.

This project uses Facebook, Twitter and Youtube to let the audience communicate directly with ‘Christina’ , the main character who is trapped in the main room.

Interactive movie ‘Inside’ / Digital Fiction Factory project:

·         First ever social film

·         Internet connection proves to be the only method of letting the audience in to engage with the issue that the character is faced with ie: being trapped

 

 

 

 

 

Another example that we have is Digital Fiction Factory’s story that engages with and uses the audience, called ‘Take This Lollipop’. This is a features that, with your permission, accesses your personal information via facebook, and interprets in the short film as part of the plot, to set the user up as the victim of a someone who is spying on him/her and looking to find him/her. This is a powerful attempt to tell a story that involves the audience, as it take upon itself the horror theme which automatically grips the user, as would a normal film.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

‘Alice for ipad’ is a further example that takes audience involvement into account, as this is a game for the ipad that lets the user move items about in the game by shaking & moving the ipad. This doesn’t completely convey to a large extent how the audience can be involved, as much as take this lollipop does, however it still gives the audience the opportunity to alter effects in the game just by moving the ipad itself.