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 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.