Blender nearly broke me... again

The 3d modelling assignment of creating 2 rooms in a 1930s Birmingham flat I approached with pleasure.  Enthusiastically I researched furniture and fabric patterns of the period.  Merrily I printed out pictures of the type of stuff I was going to create, and happily I annotated what I liked and the importance of detail for authenticity.

When it came to actually modelling the items, however, I was as lost as I always had been.  By the end of an entire day's lesson, I had achieved only 3 walls and a floor and a squashed box for a fireplace.  Blender, I had forgotten, is a nightmare.  I left the class miserably, promising tutor Chris that I'd download the hateful program onto my laptop and go back to the first 3D guide: creating a wind turbine.

This I dutifully did and spent 2 days attempting to follow the guide with over 20 attempts, but without a tutor or fellow students there to help me I didn't get past the second page.  Eventually, the night before the next lesson, having googled "blender for idiots" and "very simple blender guides" and not even achieved a 3D heart - I was ready to call blender a day and admit defeat.  Whatever part of my brain required to 'get' blender was obviously missing...  I was a failure...

The next day I sat down in the lesson and tried again to create an armchair out of a box, and miraculously, sort of succeeded!  Inspired by this I carried on - I managed to model my fireplace to look like my 1930s one!  Before I knew it I was making the standard lamp and an art deco table!  Incredibly, something must have gone in from all those failed blender guides.

I am well behind everyone else in my class, but this process has been a torturous one and to have created what I have (I know it's not very realistic or impressive really) gives me the biggest sense of pride I've had so far this term!

That's all Folks!

Ah well, another term over.  All four module projects have been handed in this week which has brought some highs but also some pretty low points.

Monday - the radio show.  This went really well I think, mainly because I'd had the chance to practice the whole thing on Friday, so tweaked my script over the weekend and was more relaxed when I finally did it on Monday.  Would have liked the chance to hear it, but it was a relief to get it done.  Spent my hour's train journey home writing the report to go with it.

Tuesday, as I've already blogged was the completion of Website design.  Did my best, bit crap with the technology and the apple software, but still feeling quite good.

Wednesday was the completion of the Digital Graphic Design module - not so great.  Have really enjoyed this project - redesigning an old building and turning it into a cafe bar, and designing a graphics package to go with it.  Had done lots of research and lots of sketches, but nothing on photoshop because my 30 day trial had expired (gutted!)

The actual graphics package I handed in was not great.  As usual my computer skills let me down rather and I spent an awful lot of time not producing what I'd planned.  I felt like my final package lacked class and style and was incomplete.

I felt rather down by the time I left class on Wednesday, and more than a little exhausted, having spent 2 days not getting home till nearly 8pm, and knowing that the next day was the one I had been least looking forward to all along... the dreaded Blender completion day.

Blender

I could go on about how much time I have spent on train journeys with my laptop, sitting up in bed with my laptop, boring my children and anyone else who has come near me for the last few weeks about the horrors of Blender, but I think I've already covered that in previous blogs.

In the end the 1930s flat, although only one room was furnished, had a few elements which I felt a bit proud of.  It was a battle and I really don't feel, even now, that I have come anywhere near mastering the unbelievably confusing and complicated program that it is, but am so relieved to have achieved what I did and to have handed it in.

So... That's All Folks! (for this term anyway)

Long awaited TV Station website...

Phew!  And finally, after an incredibly long day of intense brain pain I am thrilled to present my TV website.  Not perfect by any means and I've spotted all sorts of mistakes, but but it works.



http://db.tt/bFoOQwMA

Web Design

Well, I can report that my website for the new TV station - is starting to look like a website!  The links all work to each of the 5 pages, and the Home page is looking pretty good.

The 'Facilities' page keeps the theme going from the Home page, but I'm awaiting confirmation of what the actual equipment is from Chris Headleand.  I was unuable to find a convincing photo of a studio film camera for this page, so instead used a cartoon image from google images, but it looks surprisingly ok:

I have contacted Ros Owen regarding a bunch of professional photographs taken in the studio and she has kindly provided me with a link to them and I will certainly use some of them on the 'examples' page perhaps, since I have nothing else for this page at the moment as the TV studio is not really up and running yet.  Will consult with Ian MacNeill as to where he thinks they would be most appropriate in a gallery format.

Looking at it, maybe it would be better to have the above picture as the backgraound image for the 'Facilities' page, similar to the way I have used Aaron on the desk on the Home page. Hmm... I've got a lot of work to do in the class before 5pm tomorrow...

For the 'Contact' page, I have inserted a contact sheet but I have the task of playing around with the style sheet and changing the text to fit my site (something I'm not looking forward to at all)

On the 'Location' page I have provided a link to Google maps and also found a nice picture of the college  to go next to it.

I will provided a link to the actual website when it's finished - ie after 5pm tomorrow, but for now, here's a great pic of the Creative Tech class in the studio with Chris Headleand:



The Scrumptious Cake Company

Finally finished the assignment in Digital Graphics, which was to choose a project close to our hearts (I chose my own semi-imaginary cake business), research  similar businesses, come up with a brief, develop a specification, produce mood boards and concept development sketches before the final posters created in photoshop.

As I've previously blogged, all was going swimmingly until I stumbled over my own techno-inadequate toes.  But since then I've downloaded photoshop's free 30 day trial and worked really hard at grasping it.  I also take my laptop on the train every day which gives me nearly 2 hours to work.

Two of the finished posters have ended up pretty true to my original sketches, but the one on the right is the one which I believe is the most effective, the simplest design and it came from playing with photoshop and trying different ways of creating a flying cake.

The design which follows the original sketch most closely is probably my least favourite, and my original plans to use  photographs of my own home made cakes I quickly abandoned when I realised the quality of the images was not good enough.

















Our next project is to produce a full graphics package for a local company, or the marketing design for a board game or turning an old building into a night club or retail outlet.  Rather fancy the nightclub... but that's perhaps just because I rather fancy going to one!

Almost fond of Blender!

Yes,  I am learning to have a certain affection for that horribly complicated-seeming 3D modelling program - Blender.  We've spent the last 2 weeks of Dr Hughes' lessons imagining we work for a 3D animation company with responsibility for finishing the sets for the animators.

With a link to a basic untextured monochrome 3D kitchen, the assignment was to make it look like a real kitchen, adding colour, texture and shine to the room and all the pots, pans and crockery in it.  

Some of the textures I used were built in to Blender, while some came from google images. The floor is actually the tiles from the corridor outside our classroom which I photographed and uploaded onto the computer.  If you look closely you can see my toes appearing in the pattern of the floor!

I made the bottles transparent and added lights under the wall units.  Spent a lot of time tweaking the image, adding and reducing shine levels and I'm really pleased with the final result.  The only thing (apart from the toes which I really should have photoshopped out) is the bread.  I couldn't work out how to apply a brown crust to the outside, so it appears rather underbaked!


Next Assignment...


For our next assignment we've been given the task of building a set for a 3D animation company from scratch.  It must contain at least 2 rooms, be fully furnished and have windows with realistic views of the outside world beyond.

We were all randomly allocated a location and decade our sets must be styled on.  Mine is a 1920s Birmingham flat, and I'm going to start researching it over the bank holiday as the weather forecast has sadly  ended all plans of camping trips with my family. 

Argh! I'm a computer idiot!!!

Last week went a really long way to making me feel that I'm not as clever as I thought I was.  Not very clever at all, in fact, and shockingly computer illiterate.

The second task to be done in Blender was to create a puddle in a street.  We had a set of instructions to follow and tutor Chris Hughes showed us how easy it is (if you know what you're doing) by creating a perfectly authentic-looking puddle with fabulous reflections in about 10 minutes.  The thing is to get an image of a paved or cobbled street taken from above, then a nice reflective image of a street at night above to wrap around it, and finally to create the puddle in photoshop with black patches on the street, then to add reflectivity.   It was a bit of a torturous ordeal, but in the end I created this:

Not a perfect representation of a puddle, but I'm very proud of it considering the 

hard work that went in to creating it!

Meanwhile back in the graphics class, we'd reached the stage of actually getting our designs turned into posters via photoshop.  And once again my computer illiteracy let me down.

By the end of the day my fellow students were producing wonderful designs and I was struggling with the most basic photoshop commands and had so many confusing layers to my unfinished and messy-looking poster that I felt quite miserable.  I left the class promising tutor Chris Headleand that I would download 'gimp' a free graphics programme similar to photoshop.

Gimp proved to be just as nonsensical to me, but I battled on with my ten-year-old son advising me and was half-way to completing a poster when I lost my layers toolbar and was unable to get it back whatever I tried so in the end gave it up til the next lesson.  

The next week we had the fun task of turning images of ourselves taken in the TV studio against the green screen into classic fairy tale film posters.  Again I struggled, but stayed at college late, determined to at least accomplish this task.  At last I was getting the hang of photoshop, little by little.  When I discovered I could download a 30 day free trial there was no stopping me.  I was awake til 3am working on this:

Snow White starring Liz Hutchinson with a fabulous body - (are those silicon breasts?!)

Looking back on the things I have produced this week it doesn't seem so bad, but I've been in tears of frustration because of my own inadequacies, and I've felt like throwing in the towel and abandoning ship more than ever before. It seems I'm an awfully slow learner.  I'm not sure if that's my maturity or the fact that I've never been really fast at learning new things, and not getting my head around the technology has been so very frustrating. 

 But I haven't given up, and I'm trying really hard not to get stressed or upset , because getting emotional is definitely a hindrance to learning,

Moving on with web design

Well, I can report that I'm still almost as confused by the language behind websites, but - importantly - NOT QUITE!  We've now got to the stage of creating the home page of our chosen sites.  I'm using a really great picture taken by a professional photographer a few weeks ago, and this will form the basis of my index page.  As usual I'm struggling to learn another new bit of software - Hype http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xys5JDb2CBw, but I have managed to produce this so far and I haven't torn all  my hair out yet...

Aaron at the helm with the Creative Tech class of 2012 behind in the new TV studio

Meanwhile in Radio Branwen we've been out on the streets and around the college collecting peoples' views on what they'd like to hear on the radio when Radio Harlech officially gets it's license this summer.  I really enjoyed doing this, even though it took a while for me to realise which was the correct button to record and which to pause - (hence a lot of us chatting and not many vox pops!).  It's just a case of having the balls to walk up to people and ask the question in a friendly way and recording the replies.

We've also been brushing up on interviews.  We paired off and wrote 10 or so questions to ask each other in a recorded interview which should be 5 minutes long after editing.  I was lucky enough to get Laura who had plenty to say in reply to my questions which I based around her interest in animation films, and I look forward to editing the recording.

Trying to love Web Design....

Well, one thing I've definitely learned from this module is that I don't want to be a web designer.  I was happier before I had any understanding of the language of the internet and HTML was just a mistake incurred when I occasionally clicked in the wrong spot on a page and the page was replaced with reams of nonsensical code involving lots of pointy brackets.

 And as for CSS or cascading style sheets as I now know them... more complicated code telling the HTML how to look, where to be, what colour to be and generally how to look pretty, this time in curly brackets with a whole new set of rules.  It all adds up to a bit of a brain-ache for me, but slowly I'm starting to understand a bit of the 'behind the scenes' stuff of web pages.

I've chosen to make my website on the new TV studio at Coleg Harlech.  It is an exciting project and I would like to get involved and use the facility for filming and editing stuff for broadcasting.  I've looked at other local TV stations' websites and assessed what I like and am not so keen on.  I've roughly sketched out how I'd like the site, which will contain 5 pages, to look.  I've devised a questionnaire which I've handed out to Chris Headleand and Ian McNeil, and from their replies I'll write the brief.

Luckily we've got til the end of term to complete this, so hopefully it will become clearer to me as we carry on.

Well into the new term, and I've been feeling quite awash with new, difficult, technical stuff that I'm having to manfully grapple with.  To begin with... good old photoshop!  Will I ever get the hang?

The Digital Graphic Design module has so far been a real pleasure.

I've chosen to focus on my own home-made cake company (which doesn't actually exist).  By asking myself a number of questions using a design brief sheet, I have come up with quite a comprehensive brief, done lots of research to arrive at my design specification, had the enormous treat of creating my first ever mood board, and am now at the stage of concept development, ie sketching ideas of how I would like the final piece to look.



The Joy of moodboards...




My initial sketches took place at 2.30am on Monday morning, not being able to sleep I found myself thinking about the project, so grabbed a pencil and paper and sat up in bed sketching my thoughts out because I knew I'd never remember them in the morning!

To counteract this rather pleasurable module there are the horrors of Blender, a 3D modelling programme which is almost certainly not as bad as I think it is.  I'm finding it really hard to get my head around, in spite of the endless patience of Chris Hughes, our tutor.  I will be surprised if I manage to get a grip of this in one term, but it's possible I suppose.  It feels a bit like maths and I seem to have a brain blockage to anything that is too mathematical-seeming but I will persevere and do my best to get it.

My wonky wind turbine created in Blender

And on to the radio module....

Radio work is always fun.  So far we've written, recorded and edited some news, and today wrote and transmitted a live 20 minute programme.  This went really well for everyone.  It was great to have Tutor Trevor there to support us and make sure no one made any major cock-ups.

End of term whoopings!

Hooray!  Handed it all in!  It's over for this term and what a ride it's been.  I've learned more than I could have imagined about theatre lighting, I've  blogged, tweeted, made a website, managed to use an ipod with my sausagey fingers to make an animation,  been wheeled about on a 20 foot vertical ladder, even sang on my own in a recording studio, and spent a whole term making a film which took more than 20 hours to edit.  And here it is: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=52F0-HL0x1w&context=C41420eaADvjVQa1PpcFNsK2IZqfAnUZXiz5dTAIcPjzpNJeCTY-U=

Looking forward to decorating my bathroom and gardening for a few weeks. :)

Busy busy busy

With less than a week to go before our first four modules are assessed it's a busy time for us Creative Tech students.  My brain is so full of stuff I wake up thinking about what I should be doing to improve my projects and last night I actually awoke in the middle of the night and had to grab a piece of paper and pen and scrawl some ideas down in case I'd forgotten them in the morning.

We had our last theatre project on Thursday which was to choose a piece of music and light it up on stage.  I spent a late night getting lost in You Tube and had a bit of a realisation about how it's possible to spend so much time there, and still didn't have a choice, but enjoyed wandering among all that fab music.  In the end I went for a Moby track which I'm fond of and could envisage how to light it.  Only had half an hour to programme all the different lighting states into the desk, but just about managed it and lit up "Why does my Heart Feel so Bad?"   It's true you  feel a bit like God as you change the look of the stage at the flick of a switch.  Unfortunately didn't have time to film the results.  Bummer.


Monday in the recording studio luckily saw a great bunch of musicians coming together and we had the chance to mic them up and record them.   After an awfully brave attempt at singing over an excellent recording of 'The House of The Rising Sun', I need to edit it (if I can bear to listen to it again!) and write up my experiences. I do not, however, need to ever sing into a microphone alone again.  That personal hurdle is over.

There is... a house.... blah blah blah!

Fantastically I have actually finished my stop motion animation.  It took hours and hours of snipping out bits of black paper, photographing with 'I can animate' and editing with 'imovie' on the ipod.  Major effort for very short (just over 1 minute in total) unpolished and unprofessional bit of animation.  Gives me some idea of the incredible work of real animators and film-makers.  Here is the tale of Clarissa:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rBexAs6FoZs&feature=g-upl&context=G25d3b4dAUAAAAAAABAA


And on to the suspense film project... bit of a disaster unless I can get a bit more footage.  Planning to go to my actress and either beg or offer to make her lots of cakes for just a half hour more of filming... This module has been so much more challenging than I had envisaged, which is ok as long as I've learned from it so that next time I choose something achievable.

All in all I'll be glad to be blogging next week when it's all over. :)

4 Yorkshiremen (with varying regional accents), and a nice stop motion example

An exercise in recording in the studio and editing with Logic software on apple macs.  Worra lorra fun it was :-)

http://audioboo.fm/boos/703184-4-yorkshiremen

Starring Phil, Aaron, Owain and myself with sound engineers Sean and Kris, and edited by moi.

Getting on with our film projects... I've hit a bit of a blank wall with mine, after injecting some suspense back into the script and getting fairly inspired, my actress has run out of steam.  Can't say I blame her, it has turned into a far bigger, lengthy and more hassley beast than the little favour I originally asked of her.  Not sure where things are going on that front at the moment.  May have to invent Plan B...

Stop motion animations are becoming fun.  Have decided to create a trailer for my my monomyth story using silhouette cut-outs, and have begun messily snipping away at black paper and creating my characters.  It's going to be a lengthy process with zillions of pictures to be taken to create even a few minutes of footage. 

An nice example of the sort of thing I'd like to create: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pYr2WYsSmaI


Been given a lovely  practical assignment for the theatre: Choose a piece of music 2 or 3 minutes long, and light it creatively.  Decide where the lighting cues will be, write them out with timings, use a basic lighting rig with plenty of colours and plot it into the lighting desk and light up the stage with your chosen tune.  How fabulous!  Now, what to choose....?

An excuse to play with lego

Well, as I bored myself with my last video blog I'm going to stick to writing them for a bit.

This week has been really hectic and it feels like we've moved on heaps from where we were a week ago.  After more filming of Elen, my suspense film actress on Tuesday, spent Wednesday doing a bit of editing of the footage.  Unfortunately some mystery problem meant that I couldn't upload most of my clips onto Adobe Premier video editing suite so didn't get a great deal done.  Ho hum nothing's ever simple.

Thursday was the big theatre day, and, working as a group we were given a selection of short plays and more or less left to our own devices to choose which one we'd use, decide where the lighting cues should be, what those effects should be, plot them on a lighting plan, hang the lights, cut and insert colour gels where we needed them, adjust and focus the lights, plot them into the lighting desk and light the play... which we did.

Kris is the priest, Laura is a praying boy and Owain the ghost of his father, crappy quality - sorry.

The whole thing was a big learning curve, partly about team working and the need to allocate jobs.  it took us a good chunk of time to even agree on which play to choose, and another whopping chunk to agree on the interpretation of the writing and therefore how to light it.  I realise that I was probably guilty of making too much of this part of it...  anyway, thank goodness for Aaron who has really got his head around lighting plans.  He got it all down on a  plan before going for a well needed lunch.  It all felt a bit stressful at this point.

After lunch it all got better.  Everyone was busy making it happen.  I spent quite a long time being wheeled around on top of the tallescope adjusting lights.  Felt a bit like Boadicea in a very tall chariot!
Finally we took it in turns to stand on the stage and see how the play would have looked.  We didn't actually read through it - a blessed relief as it was a japanese opera!

Today I took some lego in as we are starting to develop stop motion animations based on our monomyth stories using the ipods.  The chaps in the class spent the whole lesson playing with it, and i had a little go after in the library:

The theatre just gets more and more interesting...

The theatre, which felt like one of the least interesting modules of this CT course to begin with just gets more and more fun the further we delve into it.  Today we paired off and were given short plays to read through and design the lighting for.  Laura and I had a bizzarre piece by Eric Kaiser called 'Sustained'.  Everyone had random and different plays to design for and we all really enjoyed the process.

From yesterday, we all had a chance to arrange each other and these are the resulting shots:

A lovely day at the seaside

Didn't we have a lovely day the day our marvellous tutor took us to the beach to do a practical photography
session.  The weather couldn't have been more glorious, we had live subjects (ourselves) and an unpredictable one (Hunter, Chris's dog).  Spent the morning lining up shots, using the rule of thirds (I now know what that annoying grid is for which pops up on my camera screen), and having a wholesome walk in the fresh air - a welcome change to the theatre. More sessions like this please Mr Headleand!

Tweetilicious

Good day in Harlech today.  Nice to see the theatre so full of folk interested in the seminar - Creative Technologies within the Welsh Environment.
Some nice presentations, particularly from Rhys Jones & Tom Beverley from Acknack Ltd with their cool collaboration ap, PageSend, Chris Headleand on Social Media and Martin Owen from Inventorium, a group who help turn innovative digital ideas into sustainable businesses in North Wales.

Thought provoking stuff from Ian McNeill's presentation

How green is your device?  Environmental issues tackled by Rebecca Colley-Jones

 Us CT students got on with our designated jobs and it was great to be part of the crew running the day.  Shaun did a fab job of the lighting, Catherine was Sound Technician, Laura was in charge of Audio Visual - one of the more challenging roles involving changing the slides for the huge projection screen

The sound and lighting crew

Owain gets ready to film

Last minute chat with Stage Manager Aaron

 Aaron was a super-efficient Stage Manager, Owain filmed the presentations, Phil did still photography and I was approving any tweets which came in so they could be projected onto a live tweet board.  Not many did come in, mainly from Ian McNeil, so filled the gaps with my own.

Meanwhile, out in the theatre foyer art tutor Miranda had a gathered a group of artists and photographers who were creating a live collage of proceedings.  By the end of the day they had made a wall-sized piece of art using the photos printed in black and white and glued in an arrangement which represented the day's events.

Zoe Taylor photographs proceedings for the giant art wall

 

The day was rounded off (after a yummy finger buffet lunch) with workshops from the  Inventorium Crew.  An afternoon of thinking up business ideas and how to utilse the creative technologies we'd been learning about all morning. 

Time afterwards to help with the get out before I got out myself and went wearily home.





The need to jam... plus Queen of Tweets

A day in the music studio bringing frustration and satisfaction mixed.  Satisfying to be getting my head around the zillion-buttoned mixing desk, getting the hang of micing (that is how you spell it - honest - I've checked) up the instruments.
Totally frustrating that those with an ability to play (about half of my class) can just get up and jam together and I can't join in!  Resolved to get 14 year old mega talented son to teach me to play guitar...

Tomorrow is the Creative Tech Seminar in the theatre with an afternoon of workshops.  Quite a buzz of excitement around college today. http://www.harlech.ac.uk/en/workplace/seminar.php

Oops - not exactly a thrilling visit to the theatre there, and the 3 blokes seemed kind of busy and I'm not quite up to marching over and demanding interviews yet... 

Feeling a wee bit sorry for the guys who live on campus and are expected to stay behind til 9pm to help set the whole thing up. 

Not looking forward to getting up at 6.30 in order to get there on time.  What's my job again?  Oh yes - Queen of Tweets.

Meanwhile back in the theatre....

An absolutely freezing (literally) day in the theatre, with not a beam of sunlight to warm the minus celcius temp, and working with LED lights which give off no heat at all, we learned some scarily technical stuff about DMX, how it works and how to convert binary code into a switching operation which sets the DMX address... sounds complicated and boring, but actually a challenge to get your head around and rather satisfying when you do.

Spent the afternoon playing with colours.  Far more like fun.  Setting different lighting positions with different colours to create moods:

Laura does "evil" (note devilish horns)

Aaron does brooding (or was it foreboding?)

Catching up on Creative Tech

Well, it's all happening on the Creative Tech course at the mo! Still moving on with our projects (mine, black and white suspense facebook stalking affair), most of us have taken location shots, written a time-line and a roughed out a storyboard. Currently working on character development and more research (must watch Hitchcock movies).

We're also writing stories which we'll hopefully be animating using stop motion techniques (i pods apparently on the way with stop motion filming aps to help us), with a view to turning them into games... for the computer? x box? phones? not sure, but rather exciting anyway. The stories have to follow a traditional route using the Heroes Journey as set out by Joseph Campbell, and followed for centuries as a basic plan for stories.

And, rather incredibly.... (or did everyone else already realise it?)

Riding the Tallescope

TALLESCOPE - A retractable alloy vertical ladder on an adjustable wheeled base. The platform at the top is just large enough to hold one person. Used for rigging lanterns, focusing etc, (according to a glossary of theatre terms).  

In reality it's more like a terrifying daredevil circus act and I would have felt better in a sparkly tutu with a drum roll!  

Lots of fun in the theatre today learning about the effects created by differing angles of lights, as well as adjusting and focusing them, we had the chance to create our own moods while lighting a single subject.  

Got ourselves some groovy little cameras

Amazing! How easy is this little pink Flip video camera to use?  Incredibly!  Is that the death of the written word then?  Possibly, but I'm sure there will be times when I don't feel like sticking my mug in front of it and others when it runs out of charge or I don't have the right handbag or it doesn't go with my outfit...

Sesh in the studio

What would YOU do if the dead arose from their graves??

A very chilled day in the recording studio of Coleg Harlech learning some teccie stuff about microphones. I now know, for instance, that an SM57 dynamic mic is best for a snare drum, while a couple of condenser mics like ATM33As, would be better at capturing acoustic guitar.

Got involved in the recording of a serious ad (for Evans Zombie-proofing for goodness sake!) and looking at music which works with Aaron's chocolatey voice.

A great start to a week potentially oozing with creativity!

Oscar Cooks Brownies! 12/11

Here is Oscar, my youngest son cooking brownies back in December.  This was my first attempt at film-making and the brief was to make a "3-minute wonder" on a subject of our choice.  It was fun to make, and a real learning curve for me as I'd never attempted anything like it before.  I filmed it in my own small kitchen with a basic video camera and tripod.  It took an entire evening with lots of interruptions from other members of the family who wished to make refreshments!  In the end I had about 45 minutes of footage and I edited it down using Adobe Premier.  Stuck for a soundtrack, I ended up using a free one on the PC already, but I think it kind of works. 

(For some reason the video won't play on the blog, but if you click on the youtube logo it will play there).

Getting Theatrical

A rather splendid day at the theatre darlings!  Learning about the technical side of  stage performance.  Lots of health and safety stuff, but also a chance to explore the space, clamber up vertical ladders (a personal challenge for me) and start finding out what the different lights can do. Looking forward to playing more next week...

1st project

Getting to grips with first Creative Media project. Hope I can get my teeth into it easier than I'm getting the hang of blogging! Battling an evil sore throat and getting my fuzzy head around my idea for a film without colour or sound with fear and suspense as the subject. My overview is: A short film featuring a young woman using facebook finds that social networking is not as safe as she thinks. Encountering a strange friend request, she becomes frighteningly involved in the chain of events which lead up to the disappearance of her friend and the realisation that they have both been stalked...

It all starts here

Today is the day it all starts for me on my year-long voyage on the sea of learning and discovery.  It's going to be a rough passage I think, as I'm a slow (if enthusiastic) learner... and pretty mature at that - but not in a grown-up way unfortunately.  Hello Creative Technology Course.  Pleased to meet you.