Digital Video Skills: Outcome 1.

What research did you do:
I searched Google for information on the Regimental Museum. I couldn't find anything useful initially, however I managed to find information on the Argyll & Sutherland Rangers through the Stirling Council website. We also watched some Documentaries and read a few things about making documentaries.

Documentary makers that we researched:
Anthony Q Artis - Website. The author of "The Shut up and Shoot Documentary Guide." We read parts of this.
Morgan Spurlock - The man behind 'Super Size Me.' Wrote, directed, produced and starred in the film. Link.

Give 3 examples of display and/or storage methods for Digital Video:
Display:

• Monitor
• Television
• Projector

Storage:

• Tape
• Memory Card
• Disk

Describe the process for creation and use of digital video sequences by three artist/designers:
These people have a vision for a final output. They have to plan out what they are going to do and how they are going to achieve their objectives. Their work will eventually be shown to an audience via a selected medium.

Describe, step by step, the process that you went through to produce your Digital Video clip and how it is to be displayed/stored.
We have to research our topic. Then storyboard/plan how the film will be made. When it comes to making the film, whose job is it to do what. Perform the tasks that you set out. Edit everything together, output the finished result and evaluate. My 'group' film will be edited into the final class film and this will be put onto a DVD disk.

April overview.

Throughout the month of April, we:

• Started Monoprint in the Art & Design class on Mondays.

• In Brian's class, we did some research on Stirling Castle, took some photos that were on the drive and made a slideshow.
• 
  
• Thursday's class consisted of finishing off our non-fiction tv show and prepared for our Stirling Castle trip. (Scripts etc.)
• 
  
• We had a two-week holiday.
  

Script.

The Regimental Museum of the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders details their eventful history from 1794 to the present.

Its wonderful artefacts, ranging from:

• the magnificent regimental silverware to
• flasks bearing bullet-holes,
• from medals for heroism
• to poignant letters home,

bear eloquent testimony to the Argylls' glorious history, and show why the regiment evokes such pride in the town.

Their connection with Stirling is as alive today as it has ever been.

Since 1881, Stirling Castle has been the "home" of the legendary Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders, a regiment with an illustrious history of heroism and selfless dedication from the time of the Napoleonic Wars.

The regiment is fiercely proud of its links with Stirling, as the town is of its own regiment. Many of the almost 7,000 officers and men who laid down their lives for their country in the Great War were "Sons of the Rock".

Since the Second World War the regiment has seen more active service than any other Scottish regiment, further enhancing its unsurpassed reputation for professionalism, whether in combat or in support of a civil power.

Project 4

Project 4 is a documentary about the historic Stirling Castle.

We will be making a video showcasing the historic beauty of the castle, with most of the class planning to do a bit of presenting.

My job is to present a segment about the castle museum, more specifically the regimental museum.

I will be writing a script for a 2-3 minute piece that I will use on the day of filming.

We are scheduled to visit the castle on Thursday 29th April, and we need to get all filming done on that day, and everything else can be done afterwords.

Review of March.

Forgot to keep weekly blogs of March's happenings.

So from memory and work that I have, I can gather a few things from this:

• For Arts class, we worked with clay to create letters for experience and to possibly use them for our Magazine project with Brian. Once we had created the basic letters, we were allowed to apply our own creative touch to them. After working with clay, we moved onto Monoprint. Monoprint is a new method to most of us, and needs focus, because it is very easy to lose control of it, and get it all messy. We will be using Monoprints in our Stirling Castle project.
• In the Tuesday class, we worked on our Magazine articles, and covers, and trying to get everything decided and done, and ready to print as soon as possible after the holidays. Before we finished up, everyone's articles had been finished, edited and everything is pretty much raring to go, with just a few tweaks here and there to finish it off.
• With John's class, we decided on what we will be doing for the next project, I have to research the Regimental Museum at Stirling Castle. We have been practicing making videos and getting used to the camera's. presenting and getting confident with all these aspects before we make our film on Stirling Castle. I worked with Reece and James M to create a funny video with questions about the course, while we're in the middle of making another video where I am working with James, Jennifer and Abii to create a fake news report for Rob's class. We had previously been working on creating a Non-Fiction tv show idea, describing what happens, who's in it, and creating our set via drawing or Google's Sketch-Up tool.

And that, is essentially March wrapped up!

Non-Fiction

Non-Fiction

The One Show

This is non-fiction because hosts Adrian Chiles and Christine Bleakely are not trained actors, and interview real people on the show, with a live audience. None of this is scripted for actors; it is real life and talks about real life. A studio is set-up with aspects that relate to the topic of the show. There are couches for the presenters and guests.

Link - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m-Ij0QGult0

MasterChef

MasterChef is non-fiction because it pits real people against each other in a cook-off style competition with real judges criticising their work etc. Normal people are involved and nothing is scripted to act. This is real life and is set it kitchens or restaurants as they would be set up as normal.

Link - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-R-J2lakJCw

BBC News at Ten

The news is always non-fiction because it is a real life presenter fronting a show where they are reading out real life stories to real life people watching. A permanent studio is set up with a desk and chair, with other furniture and a large screen for visuals.

Link - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=62ozKxFjd1E

February Overview

Before it's too late, I should update on my progress.

With Angela's monday class, we had been researching Andy Warhol and Pop Art, so then we took profile pictures, picked our favourite and traced over the picture on the projector, and painted ourselves in a Pop Art/Cartoon style, with creativity to do what we want with it, colours, extra detail and so on. I managed to complete my piece yeserday.

With Brian and Taylor's tuesday classes, I have been off on tuesday for the past 2 weeks, so I missed out on quite a bit, mainly researching images and draft text, being introduced to Scribus. However, I caught up on that today.

With thursday's classes, we had done a questionnaire about the difference between two Michael Jackson videos, then we visited BBC Studios Glasgow to appear in the audience for "In it to win it" with Dale Winton. It was a good day. The college had in-service days last thursday and friday so we weren't in.

EPK Website.

A bit late but I thought I had already posted this link, here is our finished EPK Website, completed by Reece, James M and I.


This site was completed in November, proof here: click (Bounce)
EPK Website

Review of the Week: 25/1/10 - 31/1/10

Monday:
We went to the library to research popular artist Andy Warhol and his work. We had to select 3-5 pieces that we really liked and explain why we chose those images and why we liked them.

Tuesday:
We got 2 new lecturers today, we were introduced to Brian who has took over from Ewan, and Taylor who has took over from Laura. We looked at the anatomy of a magazine and the terminology involved. We traced a double-spread and outlined certain aspects of the piece and annotated the features of the structure. With Taylor, we looked at different styles of learning and created a piece to reflect our style, which we found out by answering questions.

Thursday:
We pulled everything together and finished off the animation project, put everything in order, sound effects, etc. Really glad we managed to finish this, the project was quite stressful.

Animation Report.

"In your own words, describe how animation has changed from traditional techniques to those used today."

200 words plus.

Traditional methods of animation started as far back as the 19th century. In the 1800's The Magic Lantern was paraded around the United Kingdom of Great Britain by a number of projectionists who wanted to showcase their work around the towns and villages. One example of a popular work with children is The Rat Swallower. Here is an example on Youtube of a production using this method: click

The most common method of animation that has been used in modern times is the flip book. This is a fun method that anyone can learn to do very quickly. First introduced in 1868, it was regarded as a breakthrough within the animation scene. In today's culture, it is merely based as a novelty for children.

Stop Motion works in the same way as the flip book, only differing instead of hand draw images and flicking the pages, it is rather a combination of a number of images that go hand-in-hand with one another.

The most advanced piece of animation, which is growing stronger and stronger as time goes by, is Computer Generated Imagery(a.k.a. CGI.) CGI was created by graduated students Edwin Catmull and Fred Parke. 1973 was the year it was first seen, in feature film Westworld and then 3 years later in Futureworld. The major breakthrough for CGI was it's use in George Lucas' massive hit Star Wars, which used it for generating the Death Star and targeting computers on ships. Several films failed to use CGI efficiently until 1993 revived the promise it first showed, with Steven Spielberg's Jurassic Park. 2 years later Disney's Pixar made the first full length film fully using CGI. Toy Story became a great success and since then it has gone from strength-to-strength with 2009's Avatar claiming enormous critical acclaim, and is tipped for Oscar succes, with heavy investment on CGI.