Michael's Multimedia Blog

2010-02-28T08:53:00.000-08:00

The video below is a video I found very inspirational and I love the idea and concept behind it, its not anything I have ever seen done before.... and whats more is its by a designer from Nottingham! Check it out...

2010-02-28T06:41:00.000-08:00

It's been a while since my last post due to having been very due to some good opportunities for me outside of uni, so I'm gonna start by letting you know what i've been up to the past month.

I've been working on my flash quiz project. I decided upon a racing game, in which the objective is to get a car the entire way around a race track by answering questions correctly to provide the car with fuel. In Photoshop I have produced the majority of the images that I require within my flash quiz, however I still need to write out all the action-script and insert these images into the correct frames. I imagine this will be quite time consuming, and as I am now behind schedule with this project I am looking to get on with it and finish it as soon as possible.

I've also began my short film project. The script we were given is titled 'Figure', and as a group we interpreted the script as a dark and sinister plot, in which a man is being awarded for a piece of art... a figurine he has made. We interpreted this script as a man who creates figurines based on real people who are chained up in his basement without consent, in the pose he wishes them to be in. We have began to plan out various scenes of the short film including content, camera shots, lighting, mood, music, sound etc.

We have decided upon our individual roles as a group, which is as follows:

Director: Sketch

Producer: Me

Editing: Chris

Lighting: Tom

Sound: Alex

As producer I have began to plan out everything we will require in order for the production of our film. This includes equipment, actors, props, locations etc. Being quite an organized person I think this role will suit me well.

Aside from uni, the event that I ran in February was successful and have since organised events for both March and April. The poster I designed for the February event can be seen below.

2010-01-26T10:03:00.000-08:00

Just thought I'd upload a few designs I created for KWG last week. The first design is the new company logo that we've just started using. This is only a quick idea that is still to be developed further when I have more time. The second image is the flyer I've just designed and had 2500 A6 copies printed of, for our next event in a few weeks time. I also did all the promotional writing for the facebook groups and online promo etc, all of which can be seen by following the links.

http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=433074305353&ref=ts

2010-01-26T09:39:00.000-08:00

What has my creativity been for the last few years?

1. Who for?

Myself, Sixth Form, Art Foundation, University, KWG

2. Why have I done it this way?

The way projects are done tend to be how I want them to be done. I tend to have very little motivation to work towards somebody elses briefs, but have massive motivation to be creative when i can just express my ideas in any form I like. Even with projects in which I've had to work to a brief, I've pushed the boundaries to allow me to do things how I want them whilst still sticking within the brief. I find it very difficult to work to someone elses needs.

3.What do I want the future of my creativity to be.

I would like to continue to do what I want to do and follow my own route of creativity, making my own decisions along the way. I know this will be tough financially, but I know myself better than anyone and if I don't want to do something I simply wont do it, and I therefore feel this is the route I need to take. I'm trying as best as possible to make as many connections as I can and form myself a route into events management, as I feel my creative skills can be combined with my business and management skills to achieve my dream job of setting up my own business. If this didn't turn out to be successful I guess I'd just have to go freelance.

In what specific ways can research help me get to new places?

1.Which research starting point do I feel most drawn to?

If I'm honest I don't like research. I understand the concept of it and can see how it can make a product more successful, but it isn't how I work and I don't feel particularly drawn to it. I like my designs to be created entirely through my own ideas and inspiration. I know most people will frown upon this, but have look at Apple - they don't do market research either and look at their success. I do however use technical research such as anthropometrical data, manufacturing methods etc. along with existing product analysis.

Practioner Development Activity

2010-01-16T09:08:00.000-08:00

I’m run a dubstep night called KWG. As a promoter my role includes hosting music events and bringing dubstep artists to Nottingham on a regular basis. Creative activity is present during most elements of organising a music event, right from listening to and continuously searching for new music and artists; designing flyers, posters and other promotional material; and setting up different types of professional sound and lighting equipment. My involvment with KWG also includes continuous work on other projects including music production, DJ’ing, acting, film production and various design projects from web to clothing.

Other creative activity

-Watched films/TV/Adverts/Youtube

-Read the paper/magazines regularly

-Read LeftLion

-Listened to a variety of music from different genres

-Organising next event (planned for Feb 9^th @ The Bodgea Social – sorry had to plug myself lol)

-Began designs for new KWG logo and website.

-Searched different flash games, played them and began to review.

-Did some illustrations and stencil work in my spare time.

-Practice mixing for approx 1 hours on a daily basis using Serato and timecoded vinyl.

-Started to draft some new beats in Reason 4.0

2009-12-15T18:29:00.001-08:00

A little animation I came accross that I thought was quite interesting! I remember seing something in magazine a while back where somebody had covered an entire house and its contents in post it notes and the effect of the combinations of bright colours looked really good! Would love to do something similar using post it notes sometime.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BpWM0FNPZSs&feature=player_embedded

2009-12-15T17:57:00.000-08:00

Just had to rush my arse off to get my essay finished in time! Realised at 8 tonite that it was due in 23:59 today, not tomorrow which i thought it was! badtimes! uploaded with 3 minutes to spare though!

2009-12-01T04:42:00.002-08:00

Just something I came across earlier on today that I thought was quite an interesting idea for a short film. It must've taken ages to make!

2009-12-01T04:42:00.001-08:00

These are the pictures I collected as part of The Meal Project. I only collected a 120 photos in the end because the task, as most other people seem to have found, proved more difficult than had been expected and it was quite hard to remember to take a photo every minute whilst concentrating on other tasks as part of my daily routine. I do however feel I collected sufficient photos to represent the various things that I did though-out my day and how long was spent on each of these things.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/45220771@N05/sets/72157622801344659/

2009-11-23T11:28:00.001-08:00

Heres a link to something I came across on youtube today that I thought was interesting as it was relative to the Interactive Narrative project that we're doing.

The Meal Project

2009-11-19T08:20:00.001-08:00

The Meal Project is a collaboration between students at NTU and Shangai Institute of Visual Art (SIVA). This is an opportunity that only my tutorial group have been offered and although it doesn't count towards our degree, i think it could provide me with valuable experience and a chance to work with students from other cultures.

Task One: Documenting Your Day

Take 1 photograph every minute for each hour of you waking day (not that you will need to annotate these afterwards with a short discription of what you were doing in each specific photo.

We have been discussing our thoughts on this task during the last few tutorials and there has been a few concerns about what we are doing with the project, which were unable to be cleared up due to cultural and language differences between NTU and SIVA. I however planned to complete this task today to the best of my understanding today, with it being my only free day this week, although in the end I decided to wait until tomorrow to take the photos because it could provide a more interesting and accurate resemblance of my daily routine, including walking around town and to university. I will upload these photos as soon as I've found a suitable server to upload so many photos.

2009-11-15T08:54:00.000-08:00

This week I continued with the Interactive Narrative module by choosing one of my favourite 3 ideas to develop in order to produce an interactive narrative of my own. I wanted to choose an idea that could be used to target a particular cause or problem in a similar way to that of the 'Choose a Different Ending' videos. I therefore chose to use my firework display narrative idea. I began to develop this idea by noting down things that could potentially be included in the narrative, including the decisions that would have to be made and general notes on associated ideas such as camera shots, scenery and setting etc. I also produced a quick plan of how this narrative could be structured to allow it to lead to the different final outcomes. Below is a scanned image of the plan i made:

INSERT PLAN DIAGRAM HERE

Introduction to Interactive Narrative

2009-11-15T07:46:00.001-08:00

Last week we I was introduced to Interactive Narrative module of the Multimedia course. I had a previous understanding of what interactive narrative was before this session and it seemed like something I didn't think I'd be very interested in so I was a bit apprehensive about completing this part of the course. However, to my surprise I enjoyed this session as I found i had to think quite deeply about the structure of my interactive narrative ideas.

We were briefly introduced to flash in this session and I feel it looks quite complex and is something I want to get started on learning as soon as possible in order to get my final interactive narrative completed to a high standard. I will begin to look into this before next weeks seminar in order to gain some degree of understanding of Flash beforehand.

Choose a different ending:

An interactive narrative that focuses on raising awareness about knife crime. The user can make choices that lead to the outcome showing the consequences of knife crime, including the death or arrest of a character. This is a interactive narrative that I had heard of previous to beginning this course as it has been quite popular on TV over the past year or so. It consists of a number of short videos shot in first person from the viewers point of view, placing the audience directly into the narrative. Each shot shows a situation and then places the audience with a decision to make, for exmaple to take the knife or not. I think it is a very good example of interactive narrative and that it fulfills its objective of raising awareness of the potential dangers of knife crime.

I also began to brainstorm some initial ideas for what my interactive narrative could be, and my favourites were:

- Narrative raising awareness of the dangers associated with a firework display.

- Narrative of daily routine and how decisions made have a direct effect on your action (i.e. being late for work)

- Narrative of decisions made in order to get a sick person help as soon as possible (could raise awareness of diseases/illnesses and how to prevent them or what to do in an emergency situation)

I will begin to look at these ideas in more detail before the next seminar and begin to produce a plan of how my chosen interactive narrative will be structured.

Draft Edit of Film

2009-11-09T11:23:00.000-08:00

Below is the first draft edit of our groups film. We decided upon the title 'An Apple A Day' for the film which I feel works very well as the films based on a doctor/patient scenario.

I think our film works well, but there are a few things i would like to change to improve it. When watching back the film I feel its a bit long winded and a lot of the content could be taken out to make the film a bit shorter. The story has a clear start and finnish, both of which work well, although I think the main content of the film is a bit dull with not a lot to keep the viewer entertained. I think that this could be improved by adding additional content, for example the doctor being rushed for time whilst a patient feels they require all the time in the world. This would provide some tension that could keep the audience interested, as opposed to a simple, boring conversation.

The other thing that I think needs improvement is the editing. The blur effect comes over the screen instantly when it appears and I think it should come into effect gradually and smoothly in order to give a better effect of the patient coming in and out of consciousness. The patient could also seem more realistic if I had used a voice which made me sound more ill.

In order to correct the film to be how I would like it, there would be no other option than to reshoot the film. But with film potentially being an area that I'd like to progress into this is something that I'm considering doing providing I have the time to do so.

2009-11-07T09:27:00.000-08:00

My most recent creative project in terms of visual design was my FMP for my art foundation course. This was an 8 week long self directed project for which I decided to work for a real client. My client was King Of Slugs, and unsigned acoustic duo from Nottingham. I designed for them a collection of 3 CD front covers and a back cover for their promotional album. With collaborations with artists from a variety of genres, the bands music is of a unique style which cannot be pinpointed to an existing genre and I therefore wanted to also incorporate something unique and interesting in the design. I did this by creating a front cover design that allowed users to get more involved by completing a dot to dot to create the imagery on the cover. I also felt that this unusual aspect of the design could attract even more attention to the band potentially increasing awareness of them and their music.

Transferring Footage

2009-10-28T18:39:00.000-07:00

Today we got the film transfered to the computers using tape decks and got the footage we required to use rendered in Adobe Premiere which was quite time consuming. Chris Cooke was unable to attend this session (our last one on this project) which caused some difficulty because we weren't entirely sure what we were doing and it made this session a bit of a waste of in uni time. However this footage is now ready to be edited with the required effects and sound. We plan to get this done at some point during the next week to have our video completed in time for the deadline.

Our one shot film is in 1st person shot from the patient/cameraman point of view. We plan to edit the film using blurs, adjustment of the focus and distorted sound in order to create the effect of an ill patient fainting.

Shooting the film

2009-10-27T11:42:00.000-07:00

We got started on the short film by producing a quick 1 minute long test film to get a feel for the camera equipment we were using. We did our filming in an art gallery area of the university and the story included me and Chris acting as immature people in the gallery who were annoying Kieron, the mature art lover!

We got started on our main short film by arranging a time to meet up together to come up with a story line and to get the film shot. We met up on thursday and agreed on a story line based upon a doctor consulting a patient and filmed in 1st person from the patients point of view. We arranged to meet again on Monday (yesterday) to get the film recorded. I also went to book the equipment out that we needed along with booking the TV studio to use for filming, which was 1 x HDV camera, 1 x tripod, 1 x lights, blue gels.

We managed to get the film recorded on monday with the only problem being that the first time we filmed it the sound was not recording, but the second take was more successful. We each brought in different props including a lab coat and a stethoscope and used a desk in the TV studio to create the doctors office. In the film I was narrating for the patient whilst also being the cameraman. I enjoyed my role because it meant that I could be featured in the film in addition to being involved with the production, and it allowed me to get more experience with the equipment we were using. I feel that this filming session went well and I'm looking forward to getting the footage transfered to computer and into an editing suite.

DP1: Single Shot Narratives

2009-10-18T11:25:00.000-07:00

I had my first proper start to the course the other day with Chris Cooke introducing us to short films, risk assessment forms and our first assignment. I found this session interesting because I have been involved with short films in the past through KWG - a small creative group of students from Nottingham. I played the lead part in 'Joe' by Luke Radford , a short mockumentary focusing on the life of a teenage drug dealer. I've also been involved with various short films and comedy sketches over the past few years.

Joe

Our first assignment is to create a single shot short film in small groups. The subject/story and all aspects of production are controlled by the group, with our only rule being that the camera must stay on the tripod in a fixed position at all times. I feel that this may limit the content that we are able to include in the short film, however i also think it will teach me to focus upon finding a perfect location for filming and encourage the use of different camera techniques such use of the zoom. This assignment is something that I know I'm going to enjoy and I'm looking forward to getting started.

Multimedia

2009-10-07T04:53:00.000-07:00

My name is Michael Close and I've just began Multimedia at NTU. Yesteday we had our introduction to the course and made a pinhole camera from an empty 440ml drinks can. I have made pinhole cameras in the past so I already had a general idea of what I was doing, although previous cameras tended to be a bit bigger and were made using a cardboard box and a lens from a magnifying glass. The advantage of the method used yesterday were that there was less parts used to make it and therefore less things to go wrong. The smaller size of the camera also meant that it could be carried around easier when taking a photo. The downside of this was that the pictures produced were a lot smaller. I found that the pictures taken were of good definition but pinhole cameras used in the past produce clearer images.