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.

Week 1

I am a little behind on my posting so will endeavour to catch up.

In Week One I was given the assignments for all my subjects:

MPI303 involves 3 assignments based around 1 major piece of work.
MPI304 involves this blog on project management as well as a 20 minute seminar.
PHT220 involves 3 photographic assignments in the areas of Documentary, Still Life and Portraiture.
COM123 involves 2 essays and a journal and I am doing this subject via Distance Education as it classes with both my MPI subjects.

This blog is one of the assignments in the subject MPI304 and is worth 50% of my overall grade and is about my Project Management skills and tasks and everything to do with how I manage all my projects across all subjects. It's a little confusing as it coincides with MPI303 and they are related to each other so the assignments can get a little confusing as to which subject they are for. Also trying to understand what I am to blog about is another confusing aspect as at the end of the semester this is meant to be made into an essay and essays don't talk in the "I" form. The 20 minute seminar that we have to give to the class is very daunting and needs to be done on an artist or practitioners in the field of the area we are doing our major piece of work. Researching is not the scary part it's having to stand up in front of the class for 20 minutes! Most people think I am a relatively confident person but public speaking along with needles are my biggest fears and I am meant to stand up there for 20 minutes and act like I know what I am talking about, I may as well stand there and have everyone throw needles at me as I don't think it could be any worse than that!

The subject COM123 I feel fine about it's a first year subject so shouldn't be as stressful as the others plus we have to go to the movies every Sunday or Monday and this is instead of buying a text book. The journal assignments sounds good, every movie or TV show, article, book etc. that you think is related to the subject you write about in your journal and I've looked at some 2nd years journals from last year to see how they did theirs. Although this class clashes I can still attend the 1st hour of the lecture each week which can only benefit me.

PHT220 I am slightly nervous about, it's a second year subject with a combination of 2nd and 3rd year students and it makes me feel like I should know something more than the 2nd years because I am a 3rd year but I don't know anything! I am trying to think of a decent even to photograph for the Documentary assignment but it's very hard to come up with something original - much like most of the Photography classes - that the rest of the class won't be doing as well. I initially I thought I could document the Victorian Bush Fires as this is something that was affecting me as my dad had been told to evacuate or put into place his fire plan and he had chosen to leave and had not been back in some time and we had no idea if his house was still standing or not. However I was worried about being intrusive as victims have asked everyone to allow them some breathing space, though I never intended on approaching people or trespassing it would have only been public property and I would use the utmost discretion but still decided to not go ahead with this idea.

For MPI303 we had to come up with the idea for a major piece of work for us to complete over the semester. We were told we could do it individually or collaboratively and at the beginning of class Jenny our lecturer asked us what area we would most like to be involved in once we finish our degrees and I said probably photography. This is one of the reason I immediately thought I'd like to do stop motion, apart from the fact I wanted to try it first year and was told maybe not for this assignment, then I wanted to try again second year and was told again perhaps not for this assignment. They were all for valid reasons that it is time consuming but I figure this is my major piece of work so I need to do something that will last all semester.

That night I emailed Jenny my idea that I wanted to create an entertaining stop motion documentary (for lack of a better word) of people dancing. I wanted to have a faux British accent over the top commentating to make in humorous and I had the dancers sectioned into trained, self taught and bad with appropriate music over the top. Jenny replied and said she liked the idea but would like to see it be more arty than commercial. Not being sure what she meant I tried to nut it out with my housemates and family and eventually decided I needed to have a bit more purpose to the film. This lead me to decide to make the documentary on Why People Dance keeping it the same but adding voice overs of the dancers explaining why they dance or what they love about dancing in a mini interview style.

With this new extended idea I began my first assignment for the year and class, a proposal for my major piece of work to be carried out over the semester. I also was trying to come up with ideas for Documenting something and trying to understand this subjects assignments.

I think for the most part I will enjoy the subjects and assignments I have been set and can only hope I do my best!

Introduction

I am a third year Photography/ Multimedia student and for the subject MPI304 Multimedia Studio and Project Management I have to keep a blog on my Project Management skills over all of the subjects I take. This is where I will be doing that.