Tech Support

I’m very pleased with the outcome of this short film. Some slight editing needed to be done to script during the shoot. Obviously this is one thing I will have to work on for the next script I write. The lighting and camera position were well thought out and all together the shoot went smoothly.

The quick cut at the end of the film is intentional to provide humour. The humour running though out is very subtle and for this reason many people may not understand or find the film funny. But for those who do they find it to be a very amusing film.

Aesthetics THIS!

With a mixture of functionality and simplicity the Nintendo Wii’s aesthetics to me are beautiful. The tiny white box is a refreshing change compared to every other games consol that has been released. Undistinguished hidden panels none intrusively cover synchronisation buttons, control stick and SD card ports.

One Shot Film OVERLOAD

Filming of the second One Shot Film is set for today. We will be filming in a computer room as our "set" needs to look like a telecom company. Hopefully because of the simple camera shot the shooting wont take long which is lucky considering I was only able to borrow a camera for the day meaning that the only available time to shoot is in the 90minute gap between when my seminar ends and I have to return the camera.

The only problems that I foresee are issues with the script and leaning of the lines, although this shouldn't be too bad as we can easily have a script up on the computer screen.

Also another problem will be being able to create and convincing atmosphere. Obviously we were planning to shoot much later in the day when our location would be emptier and therefore easier to control background sound and people moving into our shot.

Over all I'm looking forward todays shoot and I think it will go well. I'm also looking forward to making a film that isn't set on campus or in student accomadation. ^^

One Shot Film WTBH!?

The post production for the film noir one shot film went very well. The dialog was recorded again to make it more in time with the actions in the film and also because better quality sound was needed. The speed of the dialog is in my opinion is too fast, but it had to be at that speed to fit all of the dialog in.

Enjoy




Will did a brilliant job with the filming but because we didn't have any kind of steadycam equipment it does look shaky in places. I think that we were a little too ambicious with this film with all the camera movements and lighting that was needed.

Over all I am quite pleased with the end result, no matter how many rules were broken from the breif, and I think the music really gives it an edge.

One Shot Film

Last Wednesday we shot our first one shot film. The script was written by Will. Filmed in a film noir style we kept the lighting very dark. This created the mood of the film. Also it helped disguise our location from looking like a typical student accommodation to a small flat.

Although I think the filming went well and we got good experience with using proper lighting I still have some concerns, mainly due to the restraint of having to film in student accommodation and the fact the filming was hand held. Although I'm sure the end result will look good I'm not convinced that it will be enough to get the grades I'm aiming for.

As a contingency plan I have written a short script myself. Heavily influenced from a scene from "The Office" (see clip below) It will be a conversation between an annoying IT specialist and a telecom worker. There will not be any need to move the camera during filming. In doing this my group will be able to focus more on the quality of the lighting, framing, mis-en-scene and acting.

Synopsis of Ray DiZazzo’s “Corporate Media Production”

I chose this book purely on the cover and the fact that I was quite impressed by how many Z’s the author had in his name. Thankfully after reading just the first page I was pleased to see that the book offered more than just a hi-larious name on the cover.

The book is easy to read and seems to cover audio visual media from preproduction to distribution of the product. DiZazzo’s writing style is also very casual and personal with many rhetorical questions and comical use of punctuation. This gives the book a more convocation like tone which helps the reader pay attention and remember what they’ve read.

Example: “No generation loss, no dirty lists, no confusion, no problem! It’s digital!”

“But how about the content of corporate media programs? Has it evolved as well? Absolutely.”

Terminology is well explained and either in quotation marks or bold which helps break down the more complex sentences.

The content has a great layout making it easy to find any topic that the book may cover. From the main roles of a director and producer to script terminology to budgeting.

This book is the AV Bible and I strongly recommend it to both novice and professional film makers.

Pixelation

Here's a short pixelation video made by Will Thomas and myself. We chose to do scenes with stairs because the idea of gliding up them appealed to us as it is impossible to do in real life but very easy to mimic with pixelation. Also because the stairway looks the same on every landing it would have been possible to loop a section of shots to make it look like the stairs were infinite.



As I promised before here is my second pixelation.

Reflective Practise

I'm a firm believer in learning my mistakes and have found that failure is the best way to learn. In all honesty I haven't done as much work for my course as I would have like to so far. This is mainly due to me not being able to download any software that I need. Although this problem should be resolved soon as thankfully there are nice people on my course who I'm able to pike it off.

Until I manage to sort my computer out with what I need I'm going to be using the equipment that the university has. This obviously isn't ideal for me as I find it nearly impossible to concentrate in computer rooms.

Okay, done with the excuses section and now back to the topic at hand. I think reflecting back at my time at college has made me realise that I need to be much more serious when it comes to my education. I'm determined not to re-live the mistakes I made during my college years.

What I Want Out of My Course

Being the youngest of three children, and the last to go to university I feel that there is a bar that has been set for me. Considering that both my brother and sister graduated with firsts this bar is set considerably high and I hope to reach it by the end of my time at NTU.

I really want to achieve, and use these years I have at university to the fullest. At the moment I'm hoping to improve my skills with a broad range of software packages and finally go into a career in Web Design.

Web Design for me seems to have perfect blend of design and technical aspects. Also I like the idea of something I create being interactive.

As I said I really want to achieve and improve my skills on my course, but I also came to university to enjoy myself as well. I just hope that I manage to find the perfect balance between the two early on as I feel the time I had at college was wasted due to lack of self improvement to my skills and general loss of enthusiasm in my course.

I'm determined to not let this happen again now that I'm at university. Thankfully after meeting just a few of my lecturers I don't feel lack of enthusiasm will be an issue for me.

Freshers Week Lessons

As you might assume lessons during the freshers week weren't too taxing, but they were still fun. It was a really good opportunity to get to know some people on my course and see more of what it had to offer. In my first lecture we made a white board animation (see below). At first i thought my group was getting ahead of itself with the introduction of so many abstract things that we needed to animate. But now I know that it was a really good thing that i was grouped with them because it just made our animation interesting. From now on I'm going to be much more open to random suggestions and ideas during group work as they can turn out to be really good.




My groups contribution is the first one to be shown.


My second lecture was about pin hole cameras. We made our own cameras out of beer cans, card and tape.


My first and second attempts at getting a picture failed. But I was lucky enough to get one on my third try:

Previous Work

Here is some of my previous work that i've done at college and in my own time.


Design project for my first year in college. My assignment was to create a games cover that would fit on a dvd cover.



I also did some animation work in my own time. Here is an example:

Introduction

Hi,

My name is Geoffrey Jay Jackson-Hicks, but everyone just calls me Jay. This is my NTU Multimedia Blog. Over the next few years I will be displaying projects that i'm working on. I hope for both the readers and my sake that it gets filled with intersting and origanal work.

There isn't really too much to talk about in this first post, but if you would like to get to know me better:

www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=556340407

www.myspace.com/radicalewok


Or send me an old fashioned email:
radicalewok@gmail.com


Cheers