Week 8

I decided to give myself the first week of the break off to relax which was lovely. I saw my family and friends and enjoyed Easter and went to Melbourne and Bendigo which was all good fun.

Came back to uni on the first Saturday because Tez, Kitty and I had the photography studio booked for the Monday and Tuesday. We needed the studio to complete Assignment 2 for PHT220 and we thought if there were 3 of us sharing it, it wouldn't look so bad to have it for two full days, this also allowed for us to help each other with composition, moving lights, holding up bounce cards etc. and we chose these two days so we knew we would have a few days to touch them up in Photoshop and submit them for printing allowing the 5 working day turnaround for printing. It was all about managing our time effectively.

Not long after this I developed an extremely painful toothache and after a spending the weekend not being able to move managed to get into a dentist and be told I need a root canal done which they started then and there. Good bye more money! Because of the pain I was in no work was completed for any subject really, though I did watch quite a few movies which I can write about for my journal in COM123 so I guess my time of sickness was not completely wasted.

In the week I had off I got myself up to date with my journal entries from the previous term's movies we had to see weekly at the cinema. I also updated this blow with things I had left out by accident. Both of which I did in my down time because they weren't too strenuous to complete and I also felt guilty for taking time off which is not a good thing either.

In the third week I concentrated mainly on my MPI303 documentary on dancing. I started with the footage of Marty and cut together the footage in Premier including titles and freezing the section of footage I wanted to write on. I then attempted to make it look stop motion like and was not happy at all. A fellow student saw what I was trying to do and suggested After Effects. After playing around for awhile I decided that I was happy with how the stop motion was looking with either of my attempts in Premier and After Effects. I feel I was hasty in emailing Jenny and asking her if I could put this down to mistake learned from which she said was fine. However I think it was a bad idea to be working on it so late at night when I was tired because the next day I had another look at it and decided I was really happy with the After Effects stop motion look and wanted to run with it.

I then thought about stylising and the same student also gave me the idea of using a graphics tablet and just drawing over the footage. After another quick run through of how to use layers and draw etc. with her I was set. All I can say is WOW! I love After Effects! It's just like Photoshop for footage!!!

I finished all the visual stuff for Marty's clip and moved on to choosing a song to put with it and I wanted something quite dancey and seeing as he is a Presets fan and I think what he was dancing to originally was a newer Presets song I decided to choose an older one that we both love called Are you the one?, which I edited to fit the clip in Garage Band.

My plan is to continue to have each dancers clip black and white, make it stop motion look in After Effects and then draw over the top with a different colour for each dancers. This makes it stylised and connects them all still.

I moved on to editing Alana's footage and going through it all in Premier I couldn't work out why it looked so crap and my filming was so off and I managed to crop so much of her head and arms out. I didn't know what was going on so I imported Emmas footage to see if that was any better and low and behold it was worse, I couldn't work out how I had managed to crop her head of in every take I had of her.

After a massive freak out and not being able to get hold of anyone that might know I felt I just had to continue on with what footage I had, because there was no way I could re-shoot. In the Tom whose camera I filmed with called me and I told him how stressed I was because it had all gone so horribly wrong and he told me it sounded like I had imported it incorrectly. I went back and sure enough I had chosen the wrong project file to import in so everything had been zoomed in on and then I was left with better footage and everything felt better!

I was later showing the clip of Marty to someone and they said that it was interlaced and this required me to go back in to Premier, export without interlace, which in this time someone else had asked me why was I working in 720 by 576 and then convinced me it should be bigger and then I couldn't make it bigger because I was exporting as an AVI file and I got another friend who is a Proddie to come and help me export it bigger without interlace and we couldn't work it out so I ended up just leaving it that size and exporting with no interlacing.

Then it was importing it all again into After Effects and I had to work out how to copy the effects over to this new one which took some time and more people helping and then at some point I lost 2.10 seconds of the original cut I had which then required me to move individually all the brush strokes in the layer effects over.

Now the music goes longer then the footage and I do not want to cut it down because I have it finishing on a good spot so my plan is too hold the frozen frame for longer, this allows you to read the writing for longer as well as the fact there are no effects after this point so I won't have to shift any pf them over to make them appear in the appropriate spot. I am still working out appropriate music for Alana's clip.

This was the first week back for this term and I couldn't go to class because I became sick, which is very unfortunate but my lecturers were very forgiving and OK with this and luckily my Photography assignment was done so I got Tez to submit it with my medical certificate.

I also had been quite stressed out over the holidays and this week with trying to organise to go on Exchange. I have been having a difficult time getting hold of the right people to answer questions as well getting people to approve things and as of this week 8 it looks like I won't be going any more because I cannot find a third subject to be credited for whilst I am over there, and it's very stressful having to nag people all the time and not knowing the outcome and I am frankly over some people's behavior. I am clutching at straws at the moment and if this last attempt for help fails I am defiantly out, which has made me feel very down and unmotivated.

It was all very dramatic and although it might not seem like I did much over the holidays, I had to teach myself more about Premier, learn After Effects and battle being sick. I think in hindsight listening to too many people and being tired and working late are not good combination. I have learnt a lot from these experiences and hopefully now I know what I could expect it won't happen on the next clips. Also I can understand how a blow of disappointment can make you feel unmotivated and that you need to continue with things no matter what, which I am slowly working on doing. I know what I have to do and now I need to get myself motivated to do it.

Week 7

This week I mainly focused on getting my MPI304 seminar together as I presented on Tuesday. I am the worst public speaker in the history of man kind but I felt the best way to do well at this was to be prepared. I practiced my speech over and over again, made my Power Point and made sure it worked which meant checking all the clips I was showing worked as we could loose marks for technical problems. For some reason the clips I put into my Power Point would insert but would only play the audio no visual, this freaked me out of course. I spoke with Hannah and worked out the best way to view them was just to create a link to the clip on my thumb drive rather than trying to insert it.

I wanted to check everything worked in the theatrette and put my presentation on the computer to check, luckily I did because the one clip I was showing the was on the internet did not want to work because  Flash Player 10 was not installed and it would not let me. I found Patrick who was more than happy to install it for me. 

Knowing that everything worked eased my stress and made me feel more prepared. The presentation itself went fairly well, a few technical issues where I thought I was safe to minimize a clip playing and continue talking only to have it start playing again, luckily I was quick in resolving the issue and hopefully it won't hinder me too much. My presentation went for a good 19 minutes which is great and on a personal note I was quite impressed with myself for not speaking at a hundred miles an hour! I feel my presentation was interesting and informative and was not just endless talking on my behalf but having many visuals makes it less boring for the audience as well as not having endless text on each slide.

Because I had to present this week I was not expected to have done any work on my MPI303 subject so that sits waiting for me to look at the footage I filmed of Marty.

For COM123 I saw the film Inkheart which was very enjoyable. It's a children's movie about "silvertongues" who are people that when they read allowed from a story book whatever the read comes to life and the film rotates around a certain lot of bad story book characters one particular silvertongue accidentally let loose and they do not want to return to their book. Was quite dark in some places and I got scared a few times but I enjoyed and it was well done.

Update on exchange is that I emailed Johannes with the syllabus' of the two subjects I need him to approve and am yet to hear back from him. Fingers crossed!

Happy Easter to everyone and enjoy your holidays or should I say non-contact period!

Week 6

Well over the weekend I attempted my first rough edit. I chose to use the footage of Liam to see if the footage I did have really was usable. Took a bit to sort through all of it but I did put an edit together that wasn't too bad. I had to play around a fair bit with culling out parts that were too long, then I tried to speed up certain sections, I put in a couple of transitions and cuts that I felt worked, as well as freezing a frame (copying and pasting the still over and over again) where the text would eventually go for his answer to why he dances. However the freezing frame getting going jittery and the section just before it was freezing as well but I couldn't get a good look at why because my computer was lagging massively! I defiantly need to work in the Animation Lab to make sure lagging doesn't happen again! Then I turned it into black and white as we had talked about the week before.

Jenny wasn't excited by what I had done but she wasn't upset or anything she could just tell it really was a working rough edit but at least I had started and put what we had talked about into practice. She said similar things to what I thought of cutting it down to only a small amount necessary and speeding sections up, and working more with colour grading. She says it needs a lot of work done to it.

I also still need to work out the timing so it has a stop motion look so that it continues to keep with my original idea even if it's done in a different manner.

I also mucked around in Photoshop with the different text fonts I would use for titles and the question part of the documentary. This is what I created:

In class we all decided the last black strip with white writing would be appropriate for my film for titles and asking the question "I dance because..."

On Thursday I re-shot my footage of Marty. I had decided I wanted to use the corrugated wall outside New Residences on campus or by the corrugated shed just behind there. I also put in for permission to film at the amphitheater behind the council buildings. I couldn't be bothered to film in town so just stuck with my ideas for on campus which is lucky because I was denied by the council. According to the Proddies some students haven't been putting in the proper permission nor following the rules or allowing for enough processing time so they have suspended filming on council property by CSU students until further notice. I think this is really slack because CSU brings in a ridiculous amount of money for Wagga would it really be too much for the council to treat us nicely for once?!

Back to filming Marty he was a lot more relaxed in one sense because it wasn't public property but not in another because it was right next to an open area where many students live. He was dancing really well when someone we both knew decided to come over and watch and this made it awkward because she kept trying to put her two cents worth in for what he should be doing. I found this very frustrating and didn't know how to tell her to go away because our relationship is already tense. It was another learning curve for me to have to ignore an outsiders input as well as give direction in the way I wanted the filming to look. 

It ended up being quite good footage I feel and looking back over the first lot I did I can see that I have improved greatly myself camera wise as well as preparation for each shoot. Being prepared is a must for any assignment but particularly for practical ones as it makes the day run so much smoother and more quickly, another learning curve!

I did a little bit of work on my MPI304 seminar, put into order what I was going to say about each person in each section and where I would place clips and sourcing appropriate clips. Then it was finding appropriate sources on Ladyslaw Warwicz and Willis O'Brien much easier to look for information on O'Brien because he is American.

I finally got to show my photographs for PHT220 to Chris who really liked them which made me feel special for once because usually I'm told they will do and I could possibly use them where as this time Chris was quite complimentary which felt good! He picked out ones for me to use, and a few will need colour correction and cropping but nothing to hard. I am really enjoying this class.

For COM123 I had to see the film Milk which was fantastic. It's set in the 70's in San Francisco and is about Harvey Milk a gay rights activist and the first gay person to be in a government position. Really enjoyed watching this and would recommend it to everyone!

Also this week I had my COM123 first assignment due. It was an essay on the use of Realism and Expressionism within films relating to ones we have watched in class as well as the ones we are assigned to see each week at the movies. I am fairly happy with what I produced I had lots of sources and I felt it made sense by giving lots of examples and I didn't leave sentences and ideas only half finished, so I am quite proud of myself. Fingers crossed Fred thinks so!

Update on me going on exchange to America, well I've been accepted by CSU and have been given a Vice Chancellors grant which is rather lovely! I managed to catch up with Jamie who is one of my course coordinators and he was happy to sign off on the Photography subject I want to take over in the States. Getting hold of Johannes is more difficult he wants me to provide in writing why the two subjects I need him to approve are suitable substitutes to for the subjects I would be taking here that outline workload and content etc. I've emailed Louise who is CSU's exchange program coordinator and she has emailed Leo the Western Illinois liaison for me and I am now awaiting reply for what I am to put in writing for Johannes because I have no idea what each subjects fully entails, I barely no what the ones I am taking over here entail!

Week 5

I showed in class on Tuesday the footage I had shot over the weekend of Alana and Caroline, I just put a quick edit of the different locations together of each dancer. Jenny wasn't happy at all with the footage of Caroline she questioned whether I had listened to her the previous week and it really did not make me feel good. I had listened and had tried to take on board what everyone in the class had told me - feet were included, more full body shots, less head space etc. I think Jenny's big qualm was the fact that I filmed with trees and bushes in the background again particularly in parts where they got in Caroline's way and I can see why she was upset with me.

She seemed quite happy with the footage shot in the indoor pool and said that was better but I think it might have been it's not fantastic but it's better than the other footage. However we came up with the idea that if I used the outdoor footage of Caroline her text could be I dance because... I like to escape. As in she escapes to the jungle in the middle of the city.

Alana's footage she was much happier with particularly the part shot on the grassy knoll and she even applauded me on this.

Overall she said I was going to need to do a lot of colour grading on all the footage and would like to see me one on one to show me which I was happy about.

On Thursday I filmed Emma dancing, she is also trained in many disciplines but we decided she would do more of a contemporary style. I decided to film against the bright blue wall of the New Residences on campus as it was plain and simple and couldn't move!

Emma came up with a bit of a routine and some flowing dance moves and explaining to her what I wanted was made easier because she is a dancer as well as a Proddie and she had a good grasp on what I wanted! She was going to be the easiest person to film thus far. However the first problem was the camera hadn't charged over night the cord must have fallen out so we only had 10 minutes of battery which meant stopping and re-charging and the second problem was the day got cloudier and cloudier and then whilst filming again it started to spit. I used a pizza box I found on the ground to prevent the camera from getting wet but then we decided Emma was getting too many water marks on herself and the continuity would be lost.

Another break and the clouds and rain cleared up and a brilliant sun came out, this was good and bad. Good for the obvious of no rain and nice weather, bad because it was so much brighter that the continuity was well and truly lost. Still the footage of Emma was really good.

Friday I met Jenny in the computer labs to learn about colour correction. We imported some footage I had filmed into Premier and she showed me where the tools were to fix the colour and basically it is like doing the Levels on photographs in Photoshop which I know how to do! Jenny though wanted to blow out the contrast and play about with extreme colour or even black and white to give it a more artsy look. I hadn't realised this is what she had envisioned for my work. I wasn't keen on blowing out the contrast but I was not opposed to making it black and white but I was a little down because the bright colour in Alana and Emma's footage I thought was great!

We worked out that I needed to start my rough edits where I would:

• Edit footage together including space for titles
• Play with timing- speed it up and create stop motion look
• Implement colour correction
• Export from Premier 
• Import into After Effects
• Create hand written text with graphic tablet within frozen frame of footage.

We also talked about music I might use and lately I've been listening to a lot of Fatboy Slim and Groove Armada which both she said were good choices.

I also sourced a few more text and clips for my MPI304 seminar as I wanted to get a head start. I worked out how I could get clips of You Tube to show using a website called Zamzar.com and sourced a few good websites on Tim Burton which included:

• http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000318/ 
• http://www.timburtoncollective.com/
• http://minadream.com/timburton/

The official Tim Burton website was rubbish because it's basically just to sign up to be on a Christmas mailing list there is no information at all on Burton. 

For COM123 this week we had to see the film Love the Beast it was interesting but the synopsis didn't give a full description and I didn't realise it would be a documentary about Eric Banna's love of his Ford GT Coup. The film follows him rebuilding his car and rally racing it and sourcing out famous opinions of Dr Phil, Jeremy Clarkson and Jay Leno about how his car was the campfire for him and his friends growing up as teenagers because they all worked on it together. Was a nice film and had a flow throughout it and the real footage taken from within his car when it crashed was scary and way to real for me as it stirred up old memories of my own crash. It was interesting but some times a little cliche. 

This week was not very eventful with the amount of work I did but that's OK sometimes you need to slow down a little bit.

Week 4

On Sunday I filmed Marty and Liam. I did this outside the council office and library in Wagga Wagga. This was the only place out of the four I applied for that the council gave me permission to film at. The others were carparks and alley ways throughout Wagga but apparently the council won't give permission for any filming in such places because it doesn't comply with the RTA road rules.

So because I only had the one place to film I thought I would try and make it look like two separate places. I filmed Marty first in front of some bushes and shrubbery that I thought would be nice and look like a different location just beside the council buildings. Filming Marty was a bit difficult because he was the only one out of my dancers with no training what so ever and there fore he was shy dancing in such a public place with many people we knew from university driving past. It took a bit to get him moving and he also kept asking for lots of direction which I didn't feel prepared for, I think I went in a little blind being like I'll film, they'll dance, Marty kept asking what else did I want him to do and its a little difficult when you don't know what moves are called let alone what he is capable of. I didn't want to push him so far that he was really uncomfortable and I didn't want him to do anything he didn't want to. 

Marty was lucky that he had some music to dance to from Liams phone which unfortunately died soon after as this helped him keep time a lot better and being the lesser dancer of the day was a good tool to have. Also looking at the footage later Marty would some times talk while he was dancing which is not good when you take away the audio that was recorded and just look at the footage it is very distracting.

Liam is a very good dancer, I think he is self taught but he's had years of acting experience and has a confidence about him that really shows. Also him being a Proddie helped with following my direction a lot easier.

I really appreciated Liam being able to help explain and demonstrate and provide some ideas for Marty and was willing for Marty to "bounce" of him, like boosting himself with Liam dancing behind the scenes.

I filmed Liam right outside the buildings and he was really good, the only downside was that he had hurt his ankle the night before and was slightly limited to what he could do and I was not prepared to have him injure it further and asked often if he would like to stop or have a break, so many breaks were had which was perfectly fine it just made filming take longer.

As said earlier Liam didn't have any music to dance to as his phone had died by this stage but he was perfectly fine to bust out some terrific moves. I also did some filming of Marty and Liam working together walking/dancing down the steps which looked cool but I am unsure how to work that into my film.

Monday I organised my week so I would be prepared.

I showed the footage I shot on the weekend in class on Tuesday and Jenny didn't like Martys at all, she said it needed to be an arty background not shrubs and bushes that swayed and looked like they grew out of his head and that we needed to be able to see all his body. This was quite confusing for me as we had previously said that I should film up close and far back and this is what I had tried to do and what I was showing was only a tiny bit of what I had filmed which the rest did contain full body shots. Other class members gave me feed back as well, particularly the Proddies saying things like I had too much head space etc. and I tried to take everything in that was said to improve the next shoot.

For Liam's footage Jenny was a bit happier because the background was more what she was wanting though again told me she wanted to see more full body shots and questioned why his feet were missing from the shot etc. 

Again I took all that was said in an felt I could work with Liams footage but I should re-shoot Marty's but it would have to wait for a few weeks until I had organised filming of the others. I explained I was going home on Wednesday and was planning to film Alana on Thursday and go to Melbourne on Friday to film Caroline. I wasn't going to bother seeking council permission in either place as I didn't think I would get caught in any way, it's not like Wagga council who are on the look out for students filming - I really think Wagga council should be a lot more helpful towards the uni!

Wednesday night I managed to get a Shepparton councilor to help me get approval for filming the next day - mum luckily is friends with half the board and what's a small town without doing favours for friends! I was dealing with someone quite high up for the approval and by Lunchtime Thursday I had permission to film and was told I "Shouldn't have even bothered to get permission as we had forgotten we even had a policy on this, you should have just gone ahead and filmed!" This was strange to hear after the run around I had with the Wagga council and how every single person I spoke to on the Wagga council repeatedly told me " In future you are meant to give 5 working days notice" it was a vast contrast!

Alana is trained in a few disciplines but is an amazing ballerina and won a scholarship for her dance school a few years ago. I wanted to make sure this time I had plenty of footage in as many locations as possible so I wouldn't have the same issues as this week. I also wanted to give her as much direction as possible so told her to have a few different leaps and twirls and just to repeat them over and over as I would be filming from different angles and up close and far away.

Firstly I filmed Alana in front of a corrugated iron shed on her family's farm. This was difficult because in the background cars constantly went past and in front of the shed where she needed to dance were wooden stumps in preparation for an extension, however it was different.

We then went further down her property and I filmed her by the windmill. This would have been cool but I couldn't do up close shots as well because you lost the sense that she was next to a windmill. Alana performed some beautiful moves, leaping and twirling across the screen which were amazing. Again though there were trees in the background. I felt the very far away shots looked cool as if she was entirely alone.

We then moved down into the dry creek bed below the windmill and in some parts it has boulder or rock walls which I thought would be an interesting background. However the creek bed is sandy which is quite difficult for a ballerina to jump on and perform point work or any twirls as she just sank and lost her footing in the sand.

We ventured into Shepparton to film at the locations I had permission for. The first was a bridge over the river. It probably looked cooler in my head but it was still nice and she could use the handrail as a bar like in the dance studio which meant she could perform a lot more point work up on her toes.

Problems with this location were the bridge actually moved and bounced with each movement, which I was concerned would show up too much on film. The bridge had trees hanging over it slightly which concerned me with Jenny's previous concerns. Also I never realised how often the bridge was actually used, we had to stop numerous times because people came right into frame whilst crossing the bridge.

I had permission to film with the empty lake in Shepparton in the background but I hadn't realised that the council had started dredging it so there were bobcats and constructions fences and tape up in the middle of the lake which really didn't make for a nice background nor did the grotty bits that hadn't yet been touched by the council.

The last location I had permission to film was on top of this green grassy knoll right next to the lake which is a fairly big contrast! I got Alana to go on the top of the knoll and I stayed at the bottom with the camera angled up. The grass was bright green and the sky was vividly blue so that was a nice contrast as well. Alana did many twirls and leaps across the screen and many jumps and upper body movements all which I could film far away and up close. It was a great location!

Filming Caroline was a little more difficult because I didn't have time to get the council approval so Jenny had suggested filming as much on private land as possible. I came up with two locations the first being our vacant block in the outer suburbs of Melbourne and the second was my cousin's place in the centre of Melbourne that has so much over growth of plants and trees (all carefully landscaped!) including a 200 year old chimney from when this property was a farm as well as apartments strewn throughout the property.

I chose to use my cousins place first, I picked Caroline up from La Trobe University in Bundoora. I explained what the assignment was about and what the others had danced and the moves they had done and again explained how it would be fairly repeatitive as I did different angles and zoomed in and out. She decided to create a dance routine to perform so it would be the same each shot.

We first filmed on the winding path throught the property this was difficult as it is made with cobble stones and I didn't want her to roll her ankle. There are some wooden parts so we attempted to keep the dance as much as possible on this. I also gave her guidelines on where she would be out of frame. Again though there are bushes everywhere and the camera does not give the garden justice.

We moved on to a more squarish courtyard section which I filmed from up top in the raised garden, the major issues again were trees hanging and getting in the way and a barbecue in the corner that I did not want in frame. Also the communication between Caroline and myself about what actual style I wanted her to perform was lacking. I couldn't get across to her that I wanted a more jazz or broadway style rather than her hip hop style routine.

Then the idea came up of filming in the inside pool. We scoped it out and I filmed from one side and Caroline danced on the other side against a rocky wall. She altered her routine to include more jazz and broadway type dance moves which also included twirls acorss the frames and the whole thing had a Mission Impossible feel to it which could be the music I choose to use. The downside was there wasn't much light inside the pool room. I was able to do upclose shots of just the wall showing and some floor then further back ones where it had the pool in frame. Filming here was good as we could better make use of the where was in frame and where wasn't and there wasn't as much OH&S where she could roll her ankle.

I made use of my time in Melbourne and went to Federation Square on Saturday as there was a Multicultural Festival on for Diversity Week and I thought this would be good to photograph for my first photography assignment of Documentary Photography. It was heaps of fun and I got some good shots, I didn't bother asking for permission from most people because then they pose and that looks contrived, it felt more real to capture them doing what they were doing without them knowing I was photographing them. I really enjoyed doing this assignment and it was made easier by my friend Michael Brereton coming with me and caring my camera bag and handing me different lenses when I needed them as well as being a second pair of eyes for me!

Two photos I took I was ecstatic with of a big dark women with a bright yellow headdress against the bright blue city sky dancing to the African band playing and it looked amazing and just after I took the second shot she saw me and came up and made me delete the photos I had just taken. I couldn't hear what she was saying because of the band but I think it was something to do with her religion. Everyone said I should have just pretended to delete them but I felt bad and I was also a bit take aback by some one objecting that I did delete them.

Sunday I started work on my MPI304 Seminar. I didn't do much just made a master plan on what I was going to do my seminar on. I decided to do mine on Stop Motion and did a little research on the topic and thought I would:

• Define stop motion
• Brief description of American pioneer - Willis O'Brien
• Brief description of European pioneer - Ladyslaw Warwicz
• Bio on Tim Burton
• Include lots of clips to make my point

That was about all I did, creating the master plan but at least it gave me a starting point to look and research on these sections.

I feel this was a very productive week and I did make the most of my time and with doing as much in whatever location I was in for all my assignments.

Week 3

On Tuesday I was feeling quite anxious as I had my interview to go on Exchange though I needn't have been, I was prepared and it was quite casual and relaxed in the interview and I had had constant contact with one of the ladies via email the whole time I was organising to go on Exchange. So overall I left feeling like it had gone quite well.

I had MPI303 and 304 straight after the interview and we presented to the class again our weekly update of progress. I showed a PowerPoint presentation of the models I had organised to be in my film. We had discussed 5 and I've organised 6 in case someone pulls out or for another reason, I ended up with 4 girls and 2 boys. The girls are quite diverse one is performing ballet for me, another jazz, another hip hop and the other ballroom, all are trained. Both boys are self taught one is very much into break dancing and the other just has a couple of nice moves that flow well and will bring the tone of "It doesn't matter if you can dance or not as long as you enjoy yourself" which is the whole meaning behind my film to make it arty and not so commercial. I also updated the class on the locations I had planned to use. Over the weekend I had taken a snippet of footage from the film Little Miss Sunshine and dragged it into Premier to practice playing with the footage I will acquire. Every 10 frames I took out 5 frames and when I told the class they suggested I play around a little more and not take out to many frames which I am happy to try.

I told Jenny that I would be filming the boys dancers this weekend just gone (13-15 March 2009) and asked if I needed permission or anything, I was told I did need to lodge a form with the local council to seek permission and a classmate gave me the website to find the form and said I would only need to give a few days. Little did I know the drama that would arise.

Wednesday I got the form and was trying to find the appropriate person to sign off on it so I could lodge it with the council before the end of the day thinking that would give them a few days to approve it and I would be right. After eventually finding someone to sign the form I then used Google Maps to locate exactly the locations I wanted to film at for the form (I thought this was quite clever of me) and went to the council office. I was told by the girl at the desk that I also needed to fill in another form and that I would need to supply a layout of where I wanted to film or photographs. I rushed back to uni for a camera and headed back to town to photograph my 4 locations those being Berry Street Carpark, Barretta Lane, Tongaboo Lane and outside Wagga Wagga Civic Centre on Baylis Street. I managed to photograph these places, get the images printed and handed it all back into the council office well before closing time and was then told it would take 5 working days to process! I asked the girl if it could be brought forward as I wanted to film that weekend and she said no, there were a lot of others ahead of mine.

Well this lead me to break down in tears and cry to my mum as I'd been so stressed and run around all day trying to get it in on time that this just pushed me over the edge! She had a good idea though she told me to get on the Wagga Wagga council website and look up a council member and phone them and tell them what had happened as ask for their help. I did this and got hold of Yvonne Braid who said she would ask at the council meeting she was on her way to and could I call her back at 8pm. I called her back and she told me how she had spoken to two people and I was to call one of them Janice Summerhayse first thing the next day and she would be able to tell me who I was to deal with out of the two of them. I rang the following day and she was in a meeting and was asked could she call me back, three hours later I still hadn't heard from her so I tried again and was told she was on the phone and could she call me back. Her secretary eventually phoned back a few hours later and said that Janice had passed my application on to Greg Minehan and he would call me back as soon as he was free.

Eventually Greg phoned me to tell me that he couldn't allow me to film because they do not allow anyone to film on roads and this includes alley ways and carparks as it does not apply with road safety rules. I said that was perfectly fine I understood and asked if I would at least be allowed to film outside the Civic Centre and he said he would allow me to film their this weekend and we finished our conversation with him saying no I didn't need to come in and collect anything he would just make note of it. He phoned back a few minutes later to say I hadn't handed in the Universities liability statement and he needed it to process my application correctly. So after a lot of hunting and various stressed phone calls Katrina in the SVPA office was very helpful and emailed it to me straight away. I handed it in Thursday at around 4.30Pm and Greg Minehan had already left for the day, I want his job!

Basically the bureaucracy of it all is that the council likes to big note themselves and make life hard for uni students who with out the university this town would not have a lot going for it. I think the council should take greater care of the students here, I understand the reasons for the forms but we are not big production companies these are assessable tasks only and I don't feel we should have to go through the same process to be able to do an assignment.

The rest of Week 3 consisted of me trying to come up with a better idea for my documentary and all I can think of thus far was to photograph the Bacardi Express concert coming to Wagga Wagga in 2 weeks or the couple of 21st birthday parties I have on back home.

I'd originally thought I have to attend the Sydney Travelling Film Festival that came to Wagga Wagga on the weekend for COM123 but as my Distance Education pack finally arrive on Tuesday and stated distance students didn't have to go I was quite thrilled. Instead I did hire some videos from Blockbuster to watch to add to my journal as I thought if I wasn't going to the film festival I should at least do some film watching to write about.

Jenny said we really needed to have some work to show in class for the coming week for MPI304 on our seminar. I said I was going to be doing my research seminar assignment on stop motion. So far I have thought of Tim Burton to study with his films Corpse Bride and Nightmare Before Christmas. I also would like to study the makers of the short film that first really grabbed my attention of stop motion and really made me want to try it myself called Ten Thousand Pictures of You which was directed and written by Robin King. Though from what I can tell he mainly does short films for a company called Stand Alone Films and I am not sure whether this will be alright to research as it is a little off topic. I think I will also look at Aardman who created the Wallace and Gromit animations. Willis O'Brien and Lady Starewicz who seem to be the leading pioneers in stop motion in America and Europe respectively.

I'm sure I will find more to talk about for my seminar this is a rather broad assignment and can lead you anywhere.

Week 2

In week 2 for MPI303 we presented to the class our proposal for our major piece of work, I'd created a PowerPoint presentation to show for mine. I was very nervous as again I don't like to do public speaking even if our class is only 10 people! Most people in the class had decided to make a website of some sort or do a whole heap of other design stuff and finish of with a website. I really did not want to do a website I am over them and Cindy was the only other person to think the same. Hannah and Alice are the only ones in the class who decided to collaborate which was interesting to see.

As in my proposal I'd said I wanted to do a entertaining stop motion documentary on why people dance however I hadn't really thought about the amount of work and said it would go for 10 minutes which everyone scoffed at and in hindsight it was rather stupid of me to say it let alone think it! It would require a lot of work and Jenny asked to see me after class. After class Cindy and I both stayed behind and nutted everything out with Jenny and we came to the conclusion for mine I would still do a documentary on why people dance but the way I was to go about it would be different. Instead of photographing my dancers to create stop motion (one of the reason I chose to do stop motion was so I could photograph as it is an area I want to be apart of after my degree and what I feel comfortable with most) I would film them and then take every X number of frame out to still give it that jittery look of stop motion. We also decided no voice overs, we would have text for the dancers answers and appropriate music over the top. I left the class feeling a lot more settled and with the homework to source dancers, locations, play with After Effects, ask my dancers why they dance, and source equipment.

For COM123 that week we had to see the film W at Forum 6, which is a film about George W. Bush and the lead up to his presidency and the whole debacle of the Weapons of Mass Destruction. I was excited to see this film but left feeling exhausted. It was very interesting to see his younger years of going to college and joining the Skulls and to see him as an alcoholic. I don't know a lot about politics but I have always thought of George W. as a bit of an idiot but this film really portrayed him as basically retarded with the lowest possible I.Q. of anyone ever. Now I have to think he is an idiot but he did manage to become President - twice! So either he's not that stupid or the American public is for voting in an idiot, made me think a bit. Was well done with characters portrayed well and it really showed Cheney in a terrible way that he was manipulating Bush a lot but at the same time Bush was being easily persuaded and manipulated by a lot of his advisers but not as much as Cheney was. The film went for way too long and concentrated a bit too much on his presidency and I would have preferred to see younger Bush's life. They chose to do some extremely bizarre camera shots which really were not needed and were nauseating in fact. Forum 6 also needs to turn their cooling down as freezing in the cinema definitely makes it harder to watch an excruciatingly long film!

In MPI304 we all questioned different things about the two assignments we have an trying to distinguish them from our MPI303 assignments. We were told we really needed to start our seminar as we would be presenting them very soon!

In class for PHT220 we watch recent episode of Media Watch which was all about the different media companies trying to get the latest scoop on the Victorian Bush Fires even though the public had asked them to respect their privacy and give them some space. It showed different News companies trespassing through crime scene areas and reporters harassing victims and saying they understand they want to be left alone but continuing to harass them. It was interesting and quite sad because at this point my family was still unsure about whether or not my dads house was still standing. Chris gave an interesting lecture about photojournalism and photo essays. The book of photo essays that was passed around called something like 18 was very interesting look at 5 or 6 young 18 year olds who had had a hard life so far, 2 of the stories were from my home town and area which shocked me a lot. We did a practical in the studio where some of the actors played different famous people and some people had cameras and had to capture the image according the instructions Chris gave i.e. once a certain line is spoken you have 5 seconds to shoot.

I came up with the idea to follow someone for the day as my Documentary photography assignment. My friend Tom turned 19 on the Saturday so I thought it might be interesting to follow him as well as the fact we were having A Night of Passion that night (a night of drinking Passion Pop to celebrate his birthday). The following went quite well was a little boring at times and was a little repetitive, also that night I joined in the celebrations too early and forgot about the assignment and by the time I remember I didn't want to bring my good camera out and get it ruined so that part of the idea kind of failed and looking at the other photos I think most of the idea failed. It's hard to make this idea interesting and as you are only allowed 5 images it was hard to choose good ones and there would be massive gaps of time between them and they probably wouldn't make sense as a whole.

This week I also had to prepare myself for the interview I was having the following week. I was having an interview to be apart of the Exchange Program here at Charles Sturt University and had been given 9 possible question which they would ask me 6 and was asked to make sure I was prepared for them all.

I knew this weekend I had a large amount of homework to complete before the next week and I felt I managed to complete a satisfactory amount, in saying this my parents have also been quite impressed with my attitude to work thus far and this is also making want to continue with my work efforts so they remain impressed.