Audience

After completely finishing the editing of the raw footage we will have to set up a focus group which we are now half way through the process of doing now. What we've done is set out the minimum off 10 questions to ask the gathered focus group to complete truthfully after watching our video to show us what our target audience's opinion on our advert is.Before this we will have an informal discussion to get some more detailed answers.

Audience Feedback

Filming And Editing

Whist Rebecca and I were shooting the 3D Claymation Keiran was doing our 2D Stop-motion animation so we were time effective and stuck to our minutes of meetings. Once the equipment was set up by Brendan Rebecca and I were able to go in and make a start slowly transforming our model and getting raw footage. But first we had to angle the lighting to how we preferred trying to make the least amount of shadowing as possible as it would ruin the consistency because we have to shoot the next day as well and leave it over night. Once this was sorted we were ready to begin, slowly in tiny steps changing her profile in minuscule ways and shooting in 2's. If we didn't do this the speed of change would be to fast and we wouldn't retrieve enough footage to last through the voice over.

 Above and beside is me slowly sculpting the model. It tool alot of patience and very time consuming but for me I rather enjoyed it and didn't find it a burden. I had a strong picture in my mind of what I wanted to happen and just wanted to see the final outcome which I am really proud of.




Throughout filming there were not any major problems thank goodness, just some technical difficulties. On the second day of filming when we went into the room ready to begin again, our camera wasn't turning on and it was impossible to run out of battery as we were running through cables and plugs. So after Rebecca and I panicking Brendan managed to fix it. Later on me being me, (clumsy), tripped over the tripod moving the camera angle and turning of the camera again. But once again Brendan came to our rescue and everything was as good as new.

I had great difficulty trying to get her eyelids blinking because the clay was getting stuck to each other and moulding into one, so each time throughout shots I had to re-make the eyes from scratch pretty much, it was a nuisance but not a problem. Other than this everything ran smoothly and how it imagined it, even better.

Here is our raw footage we captured throughout our 2 full days of filming! ENJOY

Finishing off!

Today we were just improving our theory work and completing any outstanding work. I finished my Task one and built the 3D template of a hardback book, and is now fully completed. Also handed in our groups proposal which is now at a distinction grade like the rest off our work :) We are now ready to start shooting our claymation production this Wednesday. All we have to do is record our dialoque voice over which I am about to do now!

Keith Lemmons Clay Character

Experimentation with claymation

Above is the very first claymation live stop motion clay feature I in my group produced. I remember I was so proud of it showing everyone in the class and Lorraine. I think it looks really effective and realistic. At the very end and bouncing and being manipulated throughout, we made it roll as if a real ball would. It was to practice one of the 12 principles squash and stretch which we mastered I believe.

This was the second character we used experimenting. The first character was Keith Lemmons saying his famous catch phrase 'POTATTOO' from his show 'Celebrity Juice'. Unfortunately I don't the video of this but if was impressive. I only have a photo which I will upload soon.
But this character was no-one famous and wasn't the best out of the two I think. Here you see the character crying and over time as the tears roll down which was a long and slow procedure gradually forms a puddle of tears by his side. I wouldnt of improved this by making the movements slower with a small frame of capture. But I think it gets the point across and does work well. :)

Pitch

Today we started with a discussion and Lorraine explained to us what we had to include in our Pitch which we set out in a presentation. We will be pitching this to the class next Wednesday. Each member of our groups have to be speaking for at least 5 minutes so the presentation should last all together for 15minutes.

We have successfully pitched our presentation and earned ourselves a Distinction so I think it went fairly well. As I keep doing them I am getting more confident and happy to speak out in front of everyone. I remember pitching my very first presentation when I first started the course, I was so nervous, heart pounded so thats one thing I have taken away from this course along with many other life skills and new talents.

Sets And Characters

Throughout our advert we originally was going to have a black set with a mask as the head. But this didnt  turn our as we wanted as the mask was to flimsy and would of held the mass of clay and due to various other material factors. So Brendan the technician then showed us a mannequin that would work and have a much more realistic affect to it. So after I'd already made our black box set we discovered it was useless because the mannequin was to big to fit into the box so we had to have a different plan. We decided on having just a black background from a sheet. The only worry with was the lighting, if we had it to high or in the wrong angle you could see all the creases and imperfections so we were limited there but it turned out really well and worked. Whilst me and group member Rebecca were working on creating our model Keiran was sorting out all the images for our 2D animation. It took us about 2 days to complete our model and extra mouths and hair for when she transforms and ages. We were very pleased with ourselves and the finished model. We called her Margaret!

Above is me creating our master piece. I really enjoyed it, seeing the start and then getting it to the standard she is now, watching the process was brilliant and it felt good accomplishing her.

We had trouble with the soundtrack, we originally wanted an older more mature voice but was unable to arrange a suitable date for someone to come into to record. So then we had second thoughts and wouldn't mind a younger audio as it's supposed to be a younger women aging fast, so we recorded Rebecca's voice after a few attempts. We had to go into a really quite room and shut the door because the dictaphone picked up on all the smallest noices.  

Pre Production

To be fair our Pre Production hasn't actually taken that long and not dragged on like it normally seems to. We have just divided the tasks up and got on with it happily professionally by using our minutes of meeting which we have found really helpful to help divide the work load and what has been completed and what not. The only problem I personally had was when I wrote up the story outline and didn't save it probably so had to repeat the process then I couldn't remember where I saved it but that was down to my own carelessness and will be more cautious in the future. There were no fall outs, we all worked together really well as a team actually.

Monday 9th January

On this date this is where we began our chapter design collating all the information we had gathered and noted from Lorraine and each others research into this 8 paged booklet. But me being me couldnt just leave it be as a leaflet. I came up with the idea of actually making it visually like a chapter of a hardback book which is taking alot of my time rather than just printing it off. Hopefully when its finished it will look affective and worth my time and enthusiasm.

Target Audience

We had in our minds that we wanted to only affect a certain selection of audience to dedicate our advert to manipulate and make the most effect on. For this we chose to focus our video for women who smoke. We know being female ourselves that we like to take care of our appearance and are very conscious of our looks. Knowing this helped and gave us the idea of working with this insecurity to stimulate emotion from the audience and decided to use this in our video. We formed a questionnaire, went out and asked our target audience to complete the questions honestly giving us feedback and opinions (Quantitive, Qualitative )to work with.

30th January 2012

Today we each had to write 300-400 words in our groups as a proposal to possible investors using persuasive writing to introduce our production team to them, to try and sell ourselves basically. Normally I tend not to like essays or written work but I didn't mind this assignment and really quite enjoyed it actually. I just followed the points Lorraine my tutor gave me and expanded on it. Now I am working on my blog blog and trying to improve it, but so far today hasn't been too bad. :)

Blog Site

Today is the first day of me having my own blogspot account which was asked by my media tutor so we can develop our reflective writing, enabling us an immediate higher grade. At first I thought this would be pretty pointless but now I've got into it and quite enjoying it, giving me the chance to experiment and I can see how I may use it in the future, passing it onto hopeful future jobs or universities to get to know me personally. :)

Where it began!

When I finished secondary school I didn't really know what I wanted to get into as a career like most of my peers. I knew I wouldn't enjoy anymore time at school qualifying for A Levels. I had a keen interest in media so decided to take a course studying at Harlow College earning me a National Diploma which I am still attending 3 days a week hopefully giving me time to then further decide what career I would like take. Which it has, at the back of my mind I have always had the idea of being a wedding/events planner. So recently made the decision to take action on that idea and have successfully got some voluntary work experience at a Wedding Fayre. So hopefully it will help me make up my mind. :)