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It was very enlightening to observe the Protective Behaviours team watching our finished ident, and even more interesting to listen to their feedback. Something rather exciting was hearing them laugh and approve of the aesthetic, which was never a massive concern in my eyes, but something that was a concern was exactly what they commented on. The lack of dialogue and the choice of words was a qualm they had, which was quickly noted down by the three of us and became a main concern. Dave Austin mentioned that the ident didn't look like it was specifically advertising anyone, so we needed to be more diligent with our promotion near the end. He also mentioned that the choice of dialogue was slightly inaccurate of their beliefs. To change these things for the client and end with a successful piece of work, we can rerecord the end dialogue, and include more text about them as an organisation. By doing this, we can really let the audience know why they're watching the ident, and what the purpose of it actually is.

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The rest of my group has the lofty task of editing, so I sent myself away to busily work on the sound design. Making my way down to the animation studio, I used the technique of Foley to create the sound effects. This technique was something we learned about in first year, and it was fun to finally put it to good use, even though my confidence with it was limited. I had another tutor help me out with a couple of the effects, and use items such as scissors and clay to create effects. Honestly, it sort of worked out, but the soundscape really came to life when I began to collect other sounds online. A lot of these are public domain, public created sounds, and I think that really creates something that sounds less artificial and more genuine. In terms of audience, the soundscape will appeal widely as there is such an emphasis on the human element, even outside of the soundscape. From the pixilated hand, to the use of human voices to create the effect of an apple falling, I personally felt it was really important to humanise the animation, in every aspect of it. Improvement can come in the form of using better equipment to ensure more realistic sounds and effects, as my lack of props left me struggling this time around.

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Luckily for my temperament, we moved like clockwork today. Getting in early was the best decision we could have made, because that meant that all of the animation could be knocked out just before two, making our jobs incredibly easy. Despite how well we worked as a team, I do wish I'd have had more involvement. Sure, we all worked together to move the clay and operate the camera, but one member was a figurehead of the animation and I did feel like I was left doing nothing at times, but that is just a personal pet peeve and I totally understand why this member took control. He really wanted it to look perfect, and by the end of that day in the studio, it really did. We'd pulled off three forms of animation, which means we're not only going to creatively appeal to the audience, but we're going to completely stimulate and garner interest with our visuals, exactly the main intention we had as a team and as a production start up.

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The first day of production was frustrating at best. A lot of things seemed to go wrong in quite a short space of time, and my main concern was the lack of time we had to complete the filming in the limited days and hours we were given. After setting up lighting and waiting around for an extra half an hour, another team member decided we needed to cut out all of the paper figures once again to ensure that everything would fit on the bluescreen. At the time, I was enraged, and the fact that we didn't start filming until 3 in the afternoon did nothing to calm my nerves, but now that I've gained a little clarity, I'm understanding why that team member really thought these changes were beneficial. For starters, all he really wanted was for more cohesive visuals, and when you're considering the audience and how simple we wanted the ident to be in general, it makes sense. Creating smaller cut outs meant we could move them around easier, communicate more movement, and translate our ideas in a much more coherent way. I really think we should have come more prepared and really analysed our materials and props before moving into the animation studio, as this means we would have had more time to shoot, more time to perfect, and less time would have been spent grumbling at each other when something went wrong. I do worry that lack of communication has been an issue, especially when moving to the production stages, but I also think that we can continue to improve as we move along.

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During the presentation, even though I had an overwhelming forefront of nerves, I think it's actually one of the best presentations I've been involved in. Our team had great ideas, but we were lacking on evidence of audience research and general commentary about the audience, so I decided to bring that up whenever the rest of our group had finished talking. By doing this, I was driving home the point of the project as a whole, and genuinely justifying our choices as a collective and my choices as a writer. We all had a range of creative and intelligent ideas, and I feel as if the client picked up on our enthusiasm quite easily, which is really what I wanted to convey generally. I do think that I need to improve on my stuttering, as it can come across as unprofessional at times, but we did get there easily and that makes me feel at ease with the presentation as a whole.

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My part of the powerpoint focuses on the animation styles we've used, and I really think the audience is a primary factor for what we ended up choosing.  Audience outreach really is the important, and the mesh of animation styles we've used reflects that aspect. Out of the wide range of stop-motion techniques we could have dipped into, claymation would always have been the most recognisable of the bunch due to it's mainstream status with hits such as Wallace and Gromit. To draw in and appeal to a wide audience, we've strategically chose claymation as the primary base of our animation, because of these straight facts. Children and adults alike are more likely to focus on claymation, as they would instantly understand the form and it's very easy to translate to short form pieces. Personally, I didn't get to develop my animation today due to other obligations, which means that I have a few things to continue during whatever next test we do. I'm still adamant that my model making skills need to be improved so I can add that as a skill underneath my belt, and improve my creative skills other than just my writing and word skills.
I feel as if something to note is that our animation will include no dialogue, so the audience can digest the imagery more cohesively, so that should hopefully be one thing to hook an audience member onto the skill and effort of our ident, and through that, the rebrand of the organisation.

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I've shown more weakness this weak by not really focusing on my group but focusing on everything that was going wrong during the creation of my proposal, or in my case, the lack of creation. A mental block had me not finishing the task at hand, and it's a pretty vital task, so hopefully this weekend will see me finishing that work instead of falling behind again like I'd so easily done during the Halloween week. Ironically enough, I have gotten a lot done for all of the units, but it was all of the wrong and opposite things. Despite my annoyance at my sloppy work whilst 'writing' the proposal, my strength this week was creating a strong team dynamic. Countless times I was checking up on the boys, using our group chat to swap files, making sure things were running smoothly. I think our production team is a perfect fit, as all the personal skills we have blend so easily. Josh is a fantastic graphic designer, Jack takes on a really smart and confident leadership role, and I'm doing my favourite things; sound and text. Having such a strong team means that we can blend and mesh well together, so that's where my own confidence lies this week. Not in myself, but in Galactic Animations as a unit. With our considerable skills, we can work together to finish this project with an appropriate ident and an audience friendly animation, from our colour scheme to the composition of our animation.
To improve during the upcoming weeks, I need to start getting more sleep and therefore pay more attention during class. I do admit to a weak week, and I will blame it on my minimal focus, which I know that I can change and twist and make better. I am a good, hard worker, and one off week isn't going to change that.

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Because our group has such a wide range of concepts and techniques we plan on using, it was important that we put our best efforts into exploring all three of them with vigour and vehement. By going into the animation studio and honing our development with claymation every week, it meant that we could craft and kindle our skills into something manageable and successful. I feel as if these weekly tests and tryouts ensure our ever growing improvements and allow us to create a viable pathway in which our talents for areas such as graphic design, writing and editing can ensure a solid animation project. A main problem we had was figuring out how to properly time and pace our sequences, often doing 3 to 5 takes in order to test out different speeds, and while this was all experimental, it was an annoyance for all of us to keep going back and starting from the beginning, repeat, repeat. Although it was an annoyance, this was exactly how we beat and solved the problem, trying out the sequence in sets of 2 shots, one shots, and more. By doing this, we could watch them all in succession and figure out which one would create the most seamless stop motion picture. If we could figure this out, then our final ident will have the audience appeal of not being jumpy or inconsistent, which makes all of the difference when thinking of the audience.
Personally, I would love to improve my model making skills so that I can have a minor role in the set design. I find the process challenging, and would really enjoy being able to get a bit of the credit in the visual aspect as well as the audio aspect. It would also be vital in rounding out the skills I find tough, which happen to be most technical items and what not.

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I'm not aware of much right now, but I am aware that I really want to convey positive and friendly energy with my team's finished ident. Since we're finally in groups now, there's more people to pick up the workload, and more people to bounce ideas off of. Luckily for me, everyone came in with their own concepts and plotlines, which meant we could all discuss and figure out exactly what we wanted and needed to do with our time. After dealing out the tasks rather easily, me taking up the script and sound duties naturally, we got into an easy conversation, going over the animation style we wanted to use and the angle we wanted to go for. Going with pixiliation and claymation as the primary animation techniques, our concept is a little complicated, mostly centred around the idea of bringing the tree logo of the client to life. Now, I'm not very confident in the idea of writing a script sans dialouge, but I've been reading a few modern silent movie scripts and attempting to build my knowledge on the genre. With my own personal research, I feel as if I'll be able to carefully and quickly improve my own skills, and add a new skill to my mental bank.
I'm genuinely worried that the entire plot of our ident is too ambitious, but I hope that breaking the whole thing down into easy segments and having each of us working on our own things throughout the project will influence some confidence and coherent work out of us. I know that we need to look a little more into the diversity aspect of our ident, possibly conduct a little more audience research, but I don't know if I'll be the right person to do said research.

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Research keeps your ideas fresh, and it's important to understand that without research, your ideas would be rehashed and unintelligible in the first place. I think my research this week has allowed me to understand the audience a little more, but I do realise that my research has been majorly lacking in all departments and I really need to step up my game, focus, and add some more elements to the ordeal. I seriously do not enjoy research, and I would rather spend my time creating the project, but I understand that to succeed within the rest of the year and the FMP, I need to focus and knuckle down with my research. I will be putting in extra work over the weekend to strengthen what I think is honestly a weak effort of a portfolio. I need to put in more dedication, more care, and more hours, and maybe then I will be happier with my limited research skills. Although this may sound self deprecating, and it could be, I need to become better and become stronger in this part of the job, so the rest of the job will be equally as engaging and as strong and as good.

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Experimenting is benefitting my understanding of stop motion very well, and with the struggle of an often unfocused group (myself included), I willed the three of us to try a few new things and a few interesting concepts that I'd had on my mind. Operating the equipment and moving the model, I played with pixilation, the principal of squash and stretch, and claymation. Easing into the process rather unevenly, I soon became used to switching between the camera and the clay, and created a product that actually looked passable for what it is. An issue I came into contact with was framing, something I feel I need to research and improve my knowledge on before I can ever confidently operate a camera, but I must admit that progress and improvement can really be made, with the help of aforementioned research and maybe some tutorials. Regardless, I took some pride in my third animation foray, a form of film that I find to be rather difficult in terms of creation and development. I wouldn't mind taking on more of a director role in the future, and maybe I'll focus on that was we approach the production and pre-production stages.

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The first year displayed my researching skills as awkward at best, often relying on friends to help me out with things that should have involved me getting out there and gathering information from strangers. My research plan is a plethora of ideas that should help me to achieve the goals I want to, such as doing a focus group with members of another course, and really expanding the amount of unbiased strangers I talk to. With this method, I should get some really interesting results that create fair and broad results, not 15 of the same exact thing for every survey I send out with my Facebook account. I'd like to create something that really reflects the brief and the company to a T, and by focusing my research a little more on every demographic, I feel as if I can do exactly that.