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. :)
Friday, 23 March 2012
Friday, 16 March 2012
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.
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. :)
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! |
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. :)
Friday, 9 March 2012
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....?
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....?
Friday, 24 February 2012
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:
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.
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!
Thursday, 9 February 2012
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:
From yesterday, we all had a chance to arrange each other and these are the resulting shots:
Wednesday, 8 February 2012
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!
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.
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
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.
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