Visual Diary - Kathleen a by Kat Albiston

Thursday 17th September 2015

keeprunning — 2015-09-17 14:49:14 UTC

Today's brief was to create a pair of mood-boards about a selected topic in the build up to my first project which will be creating a tutorial on how to do a particular media skill. I chose to focus on Final Cut Pro X and specific camera shots, in which I used various examples and researched videos in order to get a good, collected board of information that will benefit my project. I think I may do a podcast when the time to create rolls around, and I seemed to get a wider range of information on camera shots rather than the former subject I took on. I learnt a lot of basic skills from my research and understand both of the subjects on a better level at this point, having gone in blindly.

Thursday 1st October 2015

keeprunning — 2015-10-01 14:12:07 UTC

Today involved us finishing the mind maps that we had started the week before. As you can see, my ideas expanded further and further with the aim of creating a good tutorial. It's full of thoughts and snippets from my head that will help me piece every little part of my podcast together by the end of the unit. As well as that, we had two workshops, a camera session and an editing session. I found the editing session to be beneficial as Corey covered the basics and the camera session was a challenging but it's shown me how I can improve in the future with team work and technical skills. I know that confidence and teamwork and big things that I need to focus on improving and strengthening, and now I know how to set up a camera and a tripod! They were both useful, small workshops.

keeprunning — 2015-10-07 18:38:39 UTC

Summer project 1

keeprunning — 2015-10-07 18:39:38 UTC

Summer project 2

keeprunning — 2015-10-07 18:40:00 UTC

Summer project 3

8th October

keeprunning — 2015-10-08 14:58:32 UTC

Today we began to work on storyboards for our final podcasts. As I'm doing types of shots, I decided to base mine with a narrative of walking in the woods, making it a little creepy and interesting to watch. It will include various examples of voice clips of me explaining exactly what is what and how it can be done when making a film. I began to draw my frames and shots and get ideas for the class with the help of Delta and her advice at the start of the lesson, as well as the guidance I got from her a little later in the lesson when I was stuck on what to do. I included the types of shots, the narrative, the music I used and various technical parts. I could improve my confidence when starting off my work, but I feel as if my drawing skills are improving and once I got going I really did get going.

Visual diary 15/10

keeprunning — 2015-10-15 15:03:26 UTC

Today we were working on further pre-production aspects in order for us to create successful podcasts and have them as spot on as possible. With guidance, we began to work on planning forms and develop a clear list of various equipment we may need. This also included filling out a location visit sheet, various risk assessment forms and what not, and a production schedule. This is important as we need a clear guide of how to exactly get stuff done. I still need to loan a camera from Brendon the technician but that can be done soon, and learn how to properly use Blendspace and pages. I could have been more pro-active, but I did put effort in.

Visual diary 24th September 2015

keeprunning — 2015-10-21 22:16:47 UTC

We finished off our array of mood boards today which properly inspired me into creating a podcast about types of shots. I found the subject to be the most interesting out of all of the ones that we were able to choose from, so I went with that in the end. Creating a Blendspace account and not doing anything with it until a couple of weeks later, we then began to work on mind maps and get a proper idea of what we were going to do. I found the mind maps hard, as drawing isn't my strong suit, but it ended up being incredibly beneficial and vital to the creation of my podcasts. I feel as if I could have been more confident with this, but I ended up getting a mind-map that I was actually very pleased with and I learnt to develop my skills from doing this and facing trial and error.

Visual diary 22/10

keeprunning — 2015-10-22 14:08:30 UTC

Today was mostly practical and marked the first day of me properly operating a camera and awkwardly directing the group in an odd interview scenario. We moved to the University building and then into the TV studio in order to stretch our skills and have an opportunity of being the crew for once. My skills were albeit awkward, but it was interesting to put myself in the shoes of a camera man, as I'd always assumed the job to be pretty basic and even a little easy. From having a go, I've discovered that it's anything but basic or easy, although I would very much enjoy attempting again and developing those skills in particular. I really should attempt to round out my own confidence, as when I was attempting to direct, I must have seemed a little static and even awkward because I felt a little self conscious, but I know that in general it's something I need to develop and improve on. In general, I learnt little things from why the green screen is green (it's the furthest colour from human skin) to focusing a camera properly. Over the half term, I'd ideally like to start shooting, but I might only get around to doing a test shoot.

Visual diary 5/11

keeprunning — 2015-11-05 16:19:28 UTC

Today included editing workshops that were taught clearly by Brendan, and he explained each function in a clear manner, albeit only the raw basics of the program as we didn't have masses of time. Unfortunately, I've yet to completely get the hang of editing and had a bit of trouble, although I got some help and assistance and managed to add a title in the end, I'm sure it's something that I can work on in the future and then hopefully excel in, as I was enjoying playing around with it and attempting to function it. I'd finished most of the paper work the night before, so I hadn't had much work to actually do during the times where we weren't editing, but I got my self evaluation all finished by the end of the day, which was a huge relief. I really do need to work on my time management, as I've often left things to the last minute and then panicked when they weren't done, which is a terrible trait to have but something that I've been working on within the context of this course, and even though I've hit somewhat of a blip, I feel confident. Some of my original plan for the project has changed, such as the removal of a narration, but that gives me more to talk about during my evaluation.

Visual diary 12/11

keeprunning — 2015-11-26 14:01:00 UTC

This week had formative feedback coming for the entire class, everyone having a time-slot ready for to go for the day. Unfortunately for me, I was a fit of rather pointless panic when I discovered that a lot of my work was incomplete. I decided that I probably wasn't fit to have an assessment or any kind of feedback, so I spoke to Delta and began to check over varying points in my paperwork. I struggled, honestly, stressed and convinced that nothing would be done by the time I got to the deadline, but I'd go on to prove myself wrong. I could have done a lot more work today and calmed down my own worry, but I never became as fulfilled as I'd have hoped. On the bright side though, I finished up my self-evaluation sheet, which was one plus side to all of the upset, as I'd been meaning to get that done as a whole for quite a while, and it was soon done.

Visual diary 19/11

keeprunning — 2015-11-26 15:29:06 UTC

After getting my shots and entire production finished in the week leading up to today, it was all uploaded and ready to go for the screening that took place today within the university building. A group of us gathered in the afternoon for a couple of hours to watch each other's finished videos and then provide various snippets of constructive criticism. Mine didn't go down as well as I'd have hoped, as Delta found bits to pick out that I took as bits of advice for any future endeavours into film production that this course leaves in my hands. A big criticism was that my location wasn't really utilised as well as it could have been, which I hadn't really realised until that moment. Aside from that, a lot of my feedback wasn't incredibly poor, neither was it amazing, but I appreciated it for what it could really teach me. I know now to think further when creating concepts and not get too ahead of myself when it really isn't going to benefit my final product.

Visual diary 26/11

keeprunning — 2015-11-26 15:46:19 UTC

Today saw the completion of the unit, and a collection of all of my work coming together in the form of Blendspace and other forms. I hadn't thought that all of my work was completed, so I was pretty thrilled when I found out that I only had a couple of documents to edit and go over instead of finishing and completing a lump of work. Actually, the main task of today was to complete my visual diary and get everything set up to be sent off for submission, including finally producing the QR code that was the subject of the unit. Not much went wrong today, as it was pretty straightforward and simple in format, but I was a little slow to get motivated and prepared to work. It took an hour or so, but my work began to shape and slowly complete.