Moving on.

Now that I'm starting FMP I have made a new blog for just FMP posts.
It can be found here:
http://tcowmanualfmp.blogspot.co.uk/

3D Workshop

Last Thursday I took part in a 3D workshop. I now know how to use the band saw and disk sander. I decided to take part in this workshop to acquire the skills. I don't know when I'll need these skills. 

But I think it's better to know how to use the equipment, rather than have to learn later.  Here is a picture of me using the disk sander and a copy of the hand outs.

 

FMP Launch

We are now officially working on our FMP (Final Major Project).
I sat through the presentation twice to make sure I fully understood it. I need to do two things for the 22nd of April. I need to write a 500 word essay on 4 points. Self review, Ideas and concept, Contextual research, Techniques and presentation and Evaluation and reflection.
I also need to prepare a presentation to voice my ideas to all of the tutors on the course.

Progressing to uni. Unit 6.

So after this course I'm looking to go to uni, like most.
Step one. Look on UCAS at what courses there are available. I searched 'media' and got 1301 results. I did have a quick skim though the few pages but decided that I should narrow my search down.
After an hour or so of searching I still felt lost in a mass of options.

A week or so later I went to the UCAS fair in Manchester and spoke to a hand full of unis. I think this helped a lot as I could find out more information from them, rather than just reading course descriptions online.  I left with the idea of going to Leeds or any of the three in Manchester. (Man Met, Salford and Man central.)

With in the weeks following the UCAS fair my tutor offered me a direct entry to a BA Filmmaking course at Man Met. I quickly put my name down and eagerly awaited to find out if I had made it. Due to my triple distinction I got from last year I made it. Now I had to apply though UCAS the usual way but only for that course at Man Met.

They have replied to me requesting my GCSE results and any others that I wish to share with them.
Now I wait even more for a reply from that. Had I known this was going to be such a faff I think I would have preferred applying to more places the usual way.
Although I'm sure I will enjoy my time at Man Met.

Invisible drumming

So I'm thinking of acquiring a drum kit.
I'm thinking of recording the sound of me playing the drums. I can't actually play the drums so it will clips of me playing short beats.
I'm then thinking the visual will be me playing the short drum beats with out the drum kit.
A mix of Rowan's invisible drum sketch and the amateur clip that I linked a few posts back.

I'm not to sure where I'm going to get a drum kit from, I might be able to use my cousins' or try and pinch one from college. I'll look into it a lot more after half term.

Filming and editing Shisha.

We recorded the VoiceOver Wednesday afternoon in the radio booth as it is completely sound proof. We did a couple of takes and opened them in adobe audition. We cut out all the pauses and any other unwanted sounds. We added EFFECT to make it sound older, we also added a crackle to the voice over.

We started filming at 12 on Thursday. We filmed in it chronological order, except for the shot of the clock, which we did when everyone went for lunch. We started with a wide shot of the room showing all the students sat around the room. We then filmed the main piece, a medium shot of Jordan, acting as Sally. While filming, James read though the script so that the reactions were in time with the voiceover. Unfortunately this didn't seem to work. I think James read it at a different speed unintentionally. so when we got to the edit, it didn't fit together as well as we wanted. So we had to cut the footage and think of a way to cover it. We decided to have a shot of a scientist infront of a whiteboard with a diagram of a shisha pipe. For some unknown reason the science department in college don't use lab coats. So instead we covered it with a time lapse of me drawing a Shisha pipe.

In the end it looked good. I don't know if it has been worth all the work. But it's done now.

Shisha advert. Again...

So cooking with john is so bad we are working on a new idea.
We are looking back, so that we can move forwards. The 50s to be precise. We are going to make our awareness advert in the style of a 50s public service announcement.  We started wring a scrip and we watched a few psas.  We spent most of the day working on the script.
Plan to film on Thursday and record the VoiceOver tomorrow.

Cowman's Drum Beat

Yesterday I used the footage I could find of me drumming in the shisha Re shoot.

Cowman's drum beat.

That is the final piece made. It only took me a day. I had to redo the ending as we had a small problem with the macs power. (My friend accidentally hit the switch at the plug.)  So I remade the end. I don't like it as much as the original. But this was just a quick test piece, just to get the idea into a physical piece of work.

I plan to make another. But with more thought around the visuals. 

Memory is the Key final film and The Big Wings are Coming

So here is a link to the final piece.
Memory is the Key.

I still don't like it. A few of my friends and family enjoy it though. It could do with some improvement. For example the shot where I'm on screen twice. At college it looks fine but at home the black background becomes more of a murky grey, so when I crop the shot there is a jet black box on the right.

I don't really want to revisit this.

Also here is The Big Wigs are Coming...
The Big Wigs are Coming

These are both hand prints.

Audio Nizual

We have created a short intro film for the people involved in Audio Nizual. For this we looked at the intros for The A-team and Borderlands. We wanted to give a 'badass' feel to ordinary things, such as operating cameras and flicking a switch, because for obvious reasons, we didn't have access to helicopters and explosions. We each have two clips to show who we are and then we have a freeze frame of our face and a name.
A-team intro
Borderlands intro

So these are Wilson's 3 main shots. His first is of him running, as he reaches the center of the frame we freeze on him and zoom in, revealing his speed. We then cut to him bursting out of an edit room and throwing ID cards like shurikens. Why are these Wilson's two shots? Because they are two things he is good at, also they add action to the film.

After Wilson throws the cards the camera zooms into his face and freezes. We then removed the background and replaced it with a blue sunburst effect that slowly span. A name tag then slid in from the bottom left with a job role above it.

James' two shots were a bit quirkier. Because James is a quirky person. His first shot is him in the recording studio screaming into a microphone, then it pans to me at the mixing desk giving a thumbs up.. A part of me wants to re-shoot this so that you can't see the camera man reflected in the window. His second shot starts on a close up of him flipping switches and then zooms out to reveal him looking at a ferret on the computer. Just like Wilson's it then froze and everything but James was removed on photoshop and given a red sunburst back ground.

For me we decided to use the green screen. I had thought of a shot I would like to use as one of mine. It starts with my umbrella open pointing at the camera. It then closes to reveal me drinking from a mug. Looking at this makes me feel like a young Bill Lumbergh from Office Space (1999). We put a tropical beach over the green screen as we thought it to be cliche and added an air of mystery. Why would you have an umbrella on a beach? Why would you be drinking tea in a tropical climate?

The second shot for me starts with a close up on a plug, I then lean into shot flick the switch and the camera quickly moves so my face is in the center. From this shot we then froze and removed the back ground just like before, but this time in yellow.

Katherine's opening shot shows him gracefully rolling across the studio floor, because that's what everyone does on office chairs. This elegant movement fits perfectly with the calm part of the song we had, what a lovely coincidence! I filmed this free hand. It's a little bit wobbly but not so much to ruin the shot, maybe a little bit on the zoom. I rarely film free hand and could do with more practice. His second shot is of him using a studio camera dramatically. I filmed this on a tripod as the camera didn't need to move as much. From here the shot then freezes and the background is removed. For Kat we left the camera as we thought it would look out of place without it. We either remove the wires that cover Kat leaving gaps across him or we leave them covering him. So the camera stayed.

We decided that we would need a group shot. I looked at a few of the Charlie's Angels posters and shared them with the group. Just like the individual poses it freezes and then the background is removed. And this time we added a 4 colour gradient to make us our own colour. Each of the colours represents one of the pins that holds up the Audio Nizual sign in 'our' edit suit and matches our colour in the freeze frames.

 We then cut to a second group shot, except with a bit more action. It starts with me on the lighting desk, then it quickly pans to Wilson on the vision mixer and then it quickly pans again to James in a hard hat giving us a funny look. The intention was to make it look like we didn't know what we were doing and to hammer home the idea of James being the odd ball of the group. Unfortunately Kat did not appear in this part as he operated the camera.

 We then end with 3 dings. Each introducing a line of the end title. Originally it said Audio Fucking Nizual, we decided to chage it to flippin' to give a friendlier feel to the end.

The song we chose to add to this was Skrillex First of the year because it starts with the phrase "call 911!". I'm not really a fan of dub-step but it fit with the footage we have so I'm okay with.

What would I do differently if I were to do this again?

For starters I would have a 5th person so that we can have all 4 team members in the final shot.

Other than that the only things I would change are small things like the mug I drink from and my job role from Cow Captain to Bovine Banker. The group pose shows a bit too much of the set up as we were waiting for the 'drop'.

Here is a link to the final edit.

Audio Nizual Team Intro.

The Next Step

So my 3 minuets was a bit naff, where to go now?
Well I realized on my way home the other day that I have the potential to make something I have always wanted to. Well I have always had the potential but I have filmed the footage I need with out knowing it. Meaning that I have already put half of the effort in, with-out feeling like I have.

While working on the re-shoot of Cooking with John (Blog post about it will come soon) I played an imaginary drum kit between takes. I intend to take each clip and make a short song. The visual will be jumpy but that is the intention.

I have found a handful of videos on Youtube that are similar to my intention.
Amateur
RT Life: Michael 'Rage Quit' Jones
YYAA
I also found a sketch by Rowan Atkinson that involves an invisible drum kit.
Rowan Atkinson Invisible Drum Kit

After my assessment on Tuesday I'll look though what footage I have and  see what I can make of it.

Self Assessment

Unit 1: Research Methods
What Some Might Consider to be Research
Sunday
Blackburn MuseumVisit

Unit 2: Ideas Development
The Reef Initial Response
The 3 Min Project Memory is Key
Memoryis Key Door Has Been Opened
Memory is Key Just Incase You Forgot
Fine Art and Textiles
Even More Fine Art and Textiles
3D Sculpting Pathway
Shisha Awareness Advert

Unit 3: Materials and Methods
Standing Tall Wed11th Thurs12th
Scanning Paul Kenny
The 24 Hours of Dolphinholme

Unit 4: Evaluation and Reflection
Media and Photography 2
Even More Fine Art and Textiles
Scanning Paul Kenny
Editing Memory

Specialism
I have applied for a BA Film making course at Manchester Met Uni. I enjoy creating films. I think I enjoy creating short films more as they are quicker to make and thus I get the feel of completion much sooner. I don't know where I want to work, so for now I'm looking into exploring my ideas in film.

Personal comment
Since September I have engaged in all of the activities thrown at me. From sewing in textiles to creating a scratch film. I comfortably eased into the course and started work as soon as the roundabouts were done. Currently I'm expanding on a few ideas for short films I intend to create over the year.

Derpinholme!

I forgot to put the video from Dolphinholme on here. It may be a bit late but better late than never...

Here it is.

It's a good little documentary. It was a nice warm up piece of work to ease back into college with after the summer holidays.

Editing Memory.

(December, it didn't post this when I wanted to.)
Oh gee...
It didn't turn out how I hoped.
I'm not really sure what went wrong, but I really don't like how Innocence looked on screen. I will not be submitting this as anything. It's main use will be to say what went wrong and how I plan to move on. I want to do that with examples, which I can't get till the 7th of January. So the main review will have to wait.

Not all of it is lost though. I started to make a short piece for Audio Nisual.
Audio Nisual is a small production team that consists of 5 students. We use the footage from our own work and create something completely different. Mostly for comedic use. It's mainly about the way it's edited. I'm thinking of naming it 'The Big Wigs are Watching.'

(January 7th.)
So this is the first day back after Christmas. I wish I could have continued working over the holidays, better than just sitting at home. But it doesn't matter now! I can continue to edit my horrible 3 minuet film. Memory is the Key, and I wish I could forget it...

Too bad it didn't save everything.
The Big Wigs are Coming went from just short of a minuet to 10 seconds. Practically all of Memory had gone. I just continued working on them, redoing most of it again. Oh what fun!

So lets look at the first screen shot.

I think this character is the best lit character in the film. But I think what lets this down is me. I have no acting experience. I don't know how to best show the emotions that I'm trying to portray.
The background may have been a bad choice. But I don't see much of a set to show inside someone's head. My only other option would be a full white background.

So here is the only part where I appear on screen twice. This shots shows just how darkly lit my faces are. Some floor lights would have helped a lot. I also forgot to film intelligence listening, so rather than having intelligence already there he fades in just before he says his line. Thankfully I remained silent after saying my line. I think this could have been a good shot if I had put more work into the lighting.

 Here is a shot of the full sequence I'll add a link to the film later. 

Above is a shot of the full sequence for The Big Wigs are Coming. It's about 50 seconds long and was created from curiosity. I wanted to see how many times we swore while filming Memory is the Key. While editing if there was a point where we swore I cut it out and copied it over to a separate sequence. I then shortened them down to quicken the pace of the entire thing. I didn't use all of the swearing because I had issues with saving. I think it loses it's comedic effect after a while so I wouldn't have made it any longer than a minuet. It wasn't till after making it that I decided on the name. A little reference to the old T.V.