Beyond the camera

For our first class in beyond the camera, we were given a brief introduction into what we will be doing throughout the year. This class has a lot to do with software equiptment such as dreamweaver, after effects and photoshop.
For our first class, we were introducted to the green screen. The green screen is to show us that if we are planning to add in a background that we do not have, we can use this to create that illusion. For this, the teachers split the class into two groups so that they would be able to show us more with a smaller group.

Once we had been shown the green screen, we were then asked to create a photo using Photoshop with a background that is not real. We had the option of using the Green Screen to do this however I did not. I chose to make my image a funny image, although I had a few different ideas that I think would have worked better than the option that I had chose.

First Week in our Television Studio

When we first went into the television studio, we were giving a class in what happens in the television studio, the rules we have to know and the layout of the studio we are going to be working in. 
Our class were all able to have a chance to work on the HD camera's, were shown the editing room and taught about different parts within the television studio.

Afterwards, the teachers then put us all into individual groups of 5 or 6. I was put into a group of 5. Once we had all been put into groups, we had to decide on what roles we each wanted to take for our production throughout the year. I had chose to be floor manager as I thought this seemed like a good role that I would enjoy doing.

The start of Second Year!

My second year at John Moore's University studying Media Professional Studies started on the 17th September. We were given our new timetables for our new term and talked through all that we would be doing.
Each lecture we went on our first week was explaining what each different module is going to contain.
My favourite module for this term is the TV studio. John Moore's had a new television set built for us students that has all the latest camera and lighting equipment. In this module, we get the chance to film our own live programs in this set. I think this gives us all a great chance to work in different roles in making programs and also gives us a sense for how it would be working in a real television studio.

The creation of John Flavel

For our last task for contempory media issues, we had to create a fake character using facebook. Unfortunately the week that the teachers had given us this task I was sick so was not in class. However, instead of joining into a group the next week, James McKeown and I decided to create our own group to make a character. We discussed different ideas for different types of personalities and how we would be able to convince other people on facebook that our character is a real person.
James and I decided to create a character that is really religious. Although this character is religious, we wanted him to be very critical of what other people around him are doing. An example would be teenagers writing on their facebook profiles about going out and getting drunk, John would not approve of this.
James and I added our own friends using John Flavels account. We were suprised as to how many of our friends accepted a man that they did not know just because they seen they had mutual friends with this person. However, we did have some people report abuse against John Flavel and also had one of my friends having an argument with "John" although it was actually me writing to her.
I thought it would be a good idea to have Johns hometown as a place in Ireland called Knock. Knock is known for being quite a religious place and people may thing that this is why he has become so religious if they seen that.
We also added a Twitter account to make it seem as though John was a real character with more than one social networking sight. On this, we talked about religion and followed religious groups on Twitter. I found that it was harder to have people follow you on twitter because when you add them as a friend on facebook, they can either accept or decline but when you follow someone on twitter, that doesn't always mean they will follow you back.
Below are links to both John Flavels facebook account and his twitter account.
http://www.facebook.com/#!/profile.php?id=100003619638228&sk=wall
https://twitter.com/

Twitter!

In Contemporary media issues, we have been looking at what way people behave online and if it is how they would act when they are in person. Our teachers discussed social networking sites and if we are actually ourselves when we are using these sites.
To give a better understanding of using these sites, we were each asked to make a fake twitter account and by using "weavr" we were going to describe what type of person we wanted to create. We were asked diffferent questions about the persons personality, words used to describe them, words that they might use often, gender and many other things.
Unfortunately, I was not able to make my fake twitter account due to technical problems with google mail however I did try to follow other members of the classes fake accounts.
Once the class had their fake profiles set up, they were asked not to log on as their fake person because the person they made in weavr will take over the twitter account and make his own statuses. Next week in class we are going to find out how everyone got on with their twitter accounts and who has the most followers.

Ghost Stories!!

For our final film of our first year, we have been asked to make a 5minute documentary of anything of our choice. My group sat down and discussed different ideas and positives and negatives of each idea.
We as a group then all decided to make a documentary about ghost stories and why people love them so much. We are going to base this more around peoples views on what makes a good ghost story, why they enjoy the ghost stories and also talk to people that work for haunted walk groups.

I think that this will be a very exciting project to do and to find out why we all love ghost stories so much. Our group have already began researching places around the liverpool area to have the best shots and best locations that we can have for our final first year film.
I am very enthusiastic about working on this documentary and I am looking forward to seeing the outcome to our project.

Personal Profiling video!

For our class Production Practice, we had to make a perosnal profiling video for someone who had an interesting life and that would be a good speaker for a video. The group that I was in decided to make a personal profiling video on a teacher that we have for a different class called Keith.
Keith used to be a DJ and was offered jobs in different places over the world. He has a very strong passion for music and had a very interesting story behind his career as a DJ.
Keith took in his DJ equipment which we then got images of him setting up his equipment, plugging in the speakers and hooking up all of the wires. We also got Keith actually using the equipment and playing some songs for us.

I thought that we had a really good person to do our personal profiling on. However, because our location was in a classroom I thought it didn't quite set the mood right for what we were trying to achieve. Our teacher also gave us the same feedback as he thought it would have been better if we had showed his setting up his equipment in a nightclub. I still thought that it was a very interesting personal profile but I think we could have made it alot more eyecatching for the viewers.

Tahrir Square - Egypt!

In class, we were asked to make a wiki on wet paint to show how we can recieve information of the internet about particular topics and events. Each group consisted of four or five people. We had five in my group. We were then given a topic of what we had to write our wiki on, our topic was Tahrir Square. We were each given a bullet point which we had to write a thread for our wiki's on.
I had to write my thread on Social Networking and identity. For this I had to talk about the riots that happened in tahrir square and how people uploading images and videos of footage to their social networking sites would effect peoples judgements of them online.
We also had a main page that everyone contributed to. We added pictures, links to social networking sites and videos so that people reading our wiki could get a better understanding of what was happening in tahrir square during the riots.

Before I started writing about this topic, I had very little knowledge of what had happened in tahrir square. I found out most of my information through the internet which I also think helps to show how important the internet can be sometimes. I also learned alot about how people want to make themselves appear online and how that can be different to the person that they genuinely are.

Below is a link to our Wiki that we created based on Tahiri Square.
http://contemporarymediaissues.wetpaint.com/page/Tahrir+Square

Why we need creativity and concept.

In our creativity and concept class, our teachers decided to discuss why we need these lessions for helping us become more creative.
From this lesson, we were given a BBC CV with all the different types of questions that they will ask when applying for a job in the Media industry. With this application form, there were alot of questions which we will need to come up with our own creative answers for so that our  application form will stand out against all of the applications that will be sent in for the same job.
This is why our creativity and concept class is so important for when we leave university. We need to be able to show that we can come up with good  ideas for programs, are able to problem solve and that we can use our own initiative.
Our creativity and concept class shows up different techniques that help us to come up with new ideas and also problem solving techniques. From looking at the BBC application form, I now understand why this class is so important for our university class.

You Tube!

In class yesterday, we were all given the name of something that we had to go and search for on YouTube. I had been given "Model Aeroplanes" to look up. Once we had searched for our topic, we had to take note of how many views there had been, how many likes or dislikes for the video, how many comments there were and what where the comments about.

Once we had wrote down our findings on our topics, we then came back into the classroom and discussed what we had each found. From this, we then discussed You Tube, how we would discribe it to people that don't know what it is and what You Tube means to people. After we discussed what YouTube is, we then watched a 55minute long video on how youtube became so big for so many people around the world. From this video, it was found that YouTube became a place where people were able to communicate with others all over the world and how this had mostly started from one man dancing to a song which people had seen and then joined in by adding their own dances onto YouTube.

From this video I discovered how much YouTube means to people all over the world. For me, I would mainly just use it for watching videos and listening to music but this has helped me to see that there are so many people that use YouTube as a way of communicating with people all over the world and even people that they don't even know.
I found this video very interesting to watch and has taught me more about YouTube.

Creating a website.

For our class Digital Media Tools, we have been asked to design and create our own website. So far, we have been shown how to basically use Dreamweaver which is what we are going to be creating our website on.
In my previous course which was a Btec national diploma in media, I had already created my own website with dreamweaver, however there are many things that I would have made differently and this time I would like to be able to make it up to a more professional standard. I thought that having a workshop of Dreamweaver again helped me to remember all the different tools that there are for creating a website which I had previously had forgotten about.

I have looked at different websites and different layouts to help me come up with an idea that I think will really work for my website. I also looked at what colours work together on the internet and which ones don't. I am going to draw out different sketches of what I would like each page of my website to look like. I think this will help me to visualise my aim for my web page better.

Google maps.

For our unit Comtemporary Media Issues, we were put into groups within the class and then given a specific place in Liverpool as our starting point. From this, we then had to create a story with five different places around the world. My groups starting point was the Chinese Arch. We then built up a story around this where it ended in China.
In class, our group then had to present what we had created on Google maps. I was in a group of four people so we each took turns to talk about one place each.
I think that our presentation went well. We all worked as a team taking turns to talk and also working together to come up with the story for our Google maps idea.

First film for Media Professional Studies.

In our first term of Media Professional Studies, we had to create a film that could be based around the title "People on the Move". We named our short film as "A race for love".
Our group decided that we were going to create a film where a boy spots a girl in a park that he wants to get to know, while he is staring at her, he notices that there is another boy looking at her.
The two boys then both start to race to get to the girl first. However, each try to stop the other one getting to her first by using things like a frisbee's and chasing eachother with a saucepan.
In the end, her boyfriend shows up before either of them get to her.
I really enjoyed making this film. I think that our group worked really well together and everyone got a chance to give their views on what we should do. We were all there for the filming which made it easier and I really enjoyed working on this short film.
Below is a link to the short film we made.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HrFA8oMayVA

Six thinking hats!

In our creativity and concept class this week, we learnt about the six thinking hats. The six thinking hats is a thinking tool used a lot for group discussion but also for individual thinking. This technique was created by Edward de Bono, he wrote a book on the six thinking hats to describe how it helps people with thinking in different ways to their normal thinking. Each hat is a different way of thinking and also has a different colour.
Information: (White) - considering purely what information is available, what are the facts?
Emotions (Red) - instinctive gut reaction or statements of emotional feeling (but not any justification)
Bad points judgment (Black) - logic applied to identifying flaws or barriers, seeking mismatch
Good points judgment (Yellow) - logic applied to identifying benefits, seeking harmony
Creativity (Green) - statements of provocation and investigation, seeing where a thought goes
Thinking (Blue) - thinking about thinking

In class, we were each put into groups of 5 and told to come up with different ideas for a John Moore's student party. We then gave our ideas to the teacher who then mixed them up and gave each group a new idea to what they had. Our group had the six different coloured hats which we used to think of ways we could make our idea better, looking at all the flaws and trying to make them better.

I thought this workshop was good, although most of the different thinking techniques I found that I would normally use when trying to make decisions. I still thought that it was good that we separated the thinking into different hats so when we had a different hat we looked at the task with a new thoughts. I think I will look at different tasks and think about if I have used each thinking technique.

Using sound and camera equipment.

In class on monday, we had a workshop on how to use different techniques on the cameras and also how to use sound with cameras. In this workshop we were shown what all the different buttons on the cameras where and what they were used for. Once we had been talked through all the different effects on the cameras, we were then shown how to use the sound for cameras, what level the sound should be at, how to hold it when interviewing someone and if needed how to use a boom for the microphone.
Afterwards, we where then asked to get into our groups that we are working on for creating our films. We were then each  given a camera and a microphone and asked to go out and film eachother to test out using microphones.

Although I found this workshop very useful, I had already used this equipment before when I was in college. I still thought it was good because I was able to have a reminder of how to use the equipment. We will be filming our short film this week and will hopefully have sound in the film.

Telling stories through Google maps.

In contemparory media issues class, we have been giving a task of creating a story though using Google maps. For this, we have been put into groups of 4 and have each been given a location in Liverpool where we have to start our story. The story has to be in 5 different locations and we have to make up what is going to happen in each of these locations.
My group has been given the chinese arch in Liverpool. We have decided to create a love story around chinese arches.Our group is going to start off with a girl who has a dream she is under a chinese arch and meets a man who she falls for. We are then going to have her travel to different chinese arches around the world until she meets the man from her dream. The last location is then going to be in China under the chinese arches where they are getting married.

I think the idea of using Google maps to create a story is a good idea. It helps people to use their imagination more which is what I did when thinking of stories for this.

Back To University.

When we came back after our Christmas break, our first class was Production Practice. In this class we talked about what we had achieved in our first semister. We talked about our short film "People on the Move" and our storyboard photographs that we made.
Once we had recaped on everything we had done, we then were given new handouts of what we are going to be doing this semister.
In this semister, we have to make 3 different short films. For our first short film, we have to base the film around Liverpool. Because our group last semester worked so well together we decided to keep in the same group. We have discussed different ideas and thought that basing our short film around the bombed out church in Liverpool would make a good short film.
Our group hopes to have our first short film completed within the next 2 weeks.