Well I literally cannot believe how quick this first year of Media Professional Studies at LJMU has gone! It has flew by and so much has happened! I am looking forward to next year in our new amazing building, but for now I am reminiscing about this first year.
I love meeting new people, and on this course I have made some wonderful friends who I hope to stay friends with for a very long time. I never thought that I would move out of my house but from July I will be living with three girls off the course and I am so excited. Again this will be another new experience and I can't wait for it to begin!
I have learned so much this year; from filming and editing to how to be more creative. There has been ups and downs on the course with peers and also just because of stress due to deadlines. However, I think that it has been a very productive time in my life because I have made that step away from school and home. I now feel more independent and I think I have more skills than ever as a media student. I couldn't have asked for more, I have had the most fun ever with all of my new media student friends and I am entirely sure that it is going to carry on for the next two years (at least!). Although we still have some written work to be handed in, the first year is actually over - no more lectures! Now I suppose I need to get a job over the summer and start paying for this amazing flat that I am moving in to on Mount Pleasant (just around the corner from the new building). I don't think I have ever been more excited about the future!
Me and few others have decided that we still want to make some films and things over the summer so that is something more close to look forward to. We are called 'Imagine That? Media Productions' and are all, I would say, best friends! I will put a link to our Facebook page at the end.
So what I would like to say is thank you. Thank you to everyone who has helped me in this first year, thank you to everyone that I have met for making this big step in my life a fantastic experience, and basically - ROLL ON YEARS TWO AND THREE! Hope I see everyone over the summer, and if not, enjoy it while it lasts guys!
Here are links to all of my channels, blogs, pages, etc...
Lennon Media Productions Facebook
Lennon Media Productions Twitter
Lennon Media Productions Tumblr
Lennon Media Productions YouTube Channel
Imagine That? Media Productions Facebook
Speak soon!
I have finally finished my website for Digital Media Tools and I am very happy with the final outcome. It has been a struggle learning how to use Dreamweaver for this project but I have come to terms with how complicated it can be. I think that from knowing nothing about Dreamweaver, to being able to use it efficiently is a leap in the right direction! I actually quiet now like making websites and I think in the future I am going to make the one that I have just done better or maybe start a whole now one. The reason for the website is to showcase all the work that I have done in university and also anything relevant from outside. I like having this website because all my work is now in one place instead of on different things such as YouTube and Tumblr. However, I do have links on my website to my YouTube channel, my photography blog on Tumblr, this blog, my Twitter account and also my Facebook page. Having used all of these sites to promote myself, I am very excited for the future to see where such things will take me! Here is the link to my website, I hope you all like it because I am very proud! Also, feel free to look around the linked sites aswell!
Lennon Media Productions Website
Speak soon!
Today we had to do our 15 minute presentation for the Museum of Liverpool exhibit. Again, our user group was Film Enthusiasts and so our exhibit was all about film. We had to present all of the work that we had done to 4 of the lecturers; it was a pitch for the museum piece as if we were actually going to make it. I think that the presentation went really well because we were able to use a Prezi, our Facebook page, camera equipment that we had set up to show what the exhibit would look like, posters that we printed off in various sizes and also users profiles that we created. The only thing that I think may mark us down is that it didn't seem like it went on for 15 minutes. Maybe that is just me because when we were doing it it just seemed to fly by, but who knows! I will link you to the Prezi and to the Facebook page and I will also show you the poster that we created.
Prezi
Facebook Page
There are more images that I created on Photoshop on the Facebook page so feel free to take a look! Alls we need to do now is wait for our results, but that is Creativity and Concept over!
Speak soon!
So waking up at 6.30am was not my favourite part of the day, I have to say; but we went in to university early to make sure that our editing was spot on for the factual film. We spent a few hours editing and then had spare time to neaten it all up. I am happy with the final edit and although I don't particularly like Avid, I am getting used to it. We even had enough spare time to add out takes on to the end of the film! After finishing the editing we had to show our films to the rest of the group and lecturers. I like doing this but it also does make me nervous in case it doesn't translate as an idea. I think that everyone liked it because we seemed to receive good feedback. Here is the film for your viewing pleasure - I apologise if the audio at the beginning is a bit dodgy because the DVD copy just went strange after we burned it. Enjoy!
Subscribe to my YouTube channel whilst you are here! - Subscribe
Speak soon!
Today we went out filming to the museum because we haven't quiet finished the factual film yet. We needed some interviews from people visiting the museum and also more steady shots of just the doors themselves. We also decided to do a time lapse of the outside of the museum because the weather was lovely and we wanted to make it our establishing shot. It was a very productive day and I took some photographs to document it.
I like to document our days of filming with photography because not only does it allow me to practice my photography, it shows that we have been out and filmed and shows the locations that we have been to.
We are hoping to edit the whole film tomorrow and Monday, I think we are making good time considering we haven't been able to get hold of people to interview, etc. Anyway...
Speak soon!
I have started more work on the Creativity and Concept work for the Museum of Liverpool exhibit. I have been off for about a week so I am slightly behind, but I decided to make a Facebook page for the fake exhibit. The reason that I have done this is because on the poster that I made, we have a Facebook logo saying follow us on Facebook.
I have tried to make the page look like other pages that I have seen on Facebook. I have made a few different images to on the page, I have put photographs that I have taken of the museum and also inside the museum. I have even put Google maps on the page to show visitors how to get to the museum. I think that having this extra bit of media will allow our exhibit to look like it is actually happening, because everyone uses Facebook to promote these days.
Here is the link to my Facebook page for the museum presentation:
Facebook Museum of Liverpool - Film Enthusiasts
Speak soon!
I have blogged about my original designs for my website, showing all the designs for the pages. I have since updated to look that I am going for because I thought that it needed something else. Here is what the pages look like now (still in Photoshop).
I have decided to add a background image to the pages because I thought that there was just too much white. I found an image on the internet but I have since edited it and changed it completely in Photoshop. I have matched the colours with the theme of the website and I have made it so the file is a PNG. This will make it much easier to put in to Dreamweaver next session. This is all the development that I have done for now, because I need to start using Dreamweaver and learning how to do everything. I think that I will be okay because we have done a few sessions of practice. I am confident that I will have my site ready for the deadline.
I also need to choose what content I would like to put on the website, this is things such as films, photographs, etc. I can't wait until I have a finished product!
Speak soon!
So I have started heavily developing my fake online character for this lecture. Jacques is coming along nicely and so I will give you a sneak peak in to what he is like and he has posted online!
Firstly, I took a photograph of myself and edited it on Photoshop so that I looked more like a French man. Here it is!
Looking pretty French there... So I thought that this would do as the profile picture for all of the accounts that I have made. On Facebook, we have also created a group called 'Flat 34' and this is all of the members of our actual group in a Facebook group. We wanted it to look like we are real students who live together. Here is a screen shot of the group:
My Facebook is quiet detailed; I have given Jacques a lot of interests including books, films, etc. I have also included people who inspire him and even inspirational quotes that he likes. Here is the Facebook information page for Jacques:
As you can see I have tried to flesh out the character quiet a bit to make him believable. I tried to base it on what my real Facebook profile looks like in order to make it realistic. Facebook has also been used for events being made. For example, 'Sage' which is Becca's character, created a charity event about whales (because her character loves them!).
Here is the Facebook event for that:
We thought this would be a good idea because it is in Liverpool and also makes our characters have more of a life outside of Facebook. We all apparently went to this event (even though it was fake) and we also got our real Facebook's involved to spark more conversations and interactions. I decided to make a poster for this event, to make it more realistic still. Making the poster also adds to Jacques character as he claims to very creative. Here is the poster:
Facebook: Jacques Benoit Dubois
Twitter: JacquesDubois26
Tumblr: jacquesdubois26
Pinterest: Jacques Dubois
Flickr: JacquesDubois26
I also provided my two email accounts for Jacques on Facebook incase anyone wanted to get in touch:
jacquesdubois@hotmail.co.uk
jacquesdubois26@gmail.com
I did make a YouTube for mine and Elicia's characters to have a vlogging channel but I don't think we will have time for it. However here is the logo that I made for our 'company':
I wish it was real because I love this logo! Anyway, the presentation for these characters is next week so we will see what happens!
Speak soon!
In another Creativity and Concept lesson, me and Ashleigh further developed our work for the Museum of Liverpool project. In this lesson I created an advertisement poster and also a diagram of the museum exhibit. I wanted the poster to be bright and attract a lot of attention, this way when people see the colour they will read what it is for and encourage visitors. I hope that this would also attract families with children because it is easy to read and attractive for children. Here is the poster:
I made the poster with Photoshop because I am getting better each week at using this program. I think that it has turned out good and we intend to print some off to show to in the final presentation. I would like to have an A3 version of the poster just to show what it would look like if it got put up around the city.
After making the poster I made the diagram of the exhibit. I think the diagram that I created updates our original ideas and we have decided to make the 'do', 'watch', 'listen' in to one room instead of 3. This allows the exhibit to run faster and give people the chance to use all of their senses at once. When presenting this diagram I want to have it large on the projector so that we can talk through the diagram, rather than having it covered in text. Here is the diagram:
The diagram is very simple and has a few symbols to show what certain objects are. When this is in our presentation, we will be able to go through each section and show exactly what each part is about. We have put this in the Prezi presentation that we are currently creating; this way we can go straight to it inside the presentation itself. We also want to create a 3D model of the exhibit if we have the time, but we will see!
After creating these we had a meeting with the lecturers just to see where we are up to. This was useful because we basically had a realisation of what needs to be done in the next week or so. I think that we will have a solid 15 minutes presentation for this piece.
Speak soon!
On our day off, we decided to go to the museum and see the exhibit as a group that we are basing the Production Practice assignment on. The doors exhibit is really something special and so we took time to read every poem and find out where all the doors are actually from. This will eventually enable us to choose a story to follow in our film; making the piece more intriguing.
I decided that I was going to look at these locations on the doors:
The Everyman Theatre
Strawberry Fields Children's Home
Hartleys Hut, Albert Dock
Anfield and Goodison
Madryn Street, L8
I think that using the Everyman Theatre would be very interesting as it is an icon of Liverpool. I have emailed the access team to see if we could film inside the Everyman and possibly ask about where the door was, etc. We could then follow the story of the person who donated the door or even what the door used to lead to (I.E. the stage).
The Strawberry Fields Children's Home have donated a lot of doors to the exhibit so it only seems fitting that we use this place as a story to tell. Unfortunately, I cant seemed to find any contact for the Strawberry Fields site and so this might be a dead end. Also, the original gates have been moved so we wouldn't have that nice setting to go off.
Hartleys Hut on the Albert Dock is names after the architect Jesse Hartley who created the Albert Dock. I do think that there could be a story behind this; and the Albert Dock is well known so we would have a wide audience. I have emailed a contact that I found through the Albert Dock website so hopefully they will be able to tell me more about filming and interviews.
I know that Anfield and Goodison are both long shots, but I think that the stories behind these doors would be really fascinating as we could focus on a multitude of things. I was unable to find a contact for Anfield, but I was able to find a contact for Goodison through the Everton website. I have send an email and I am not waiting for a reply. Fingers crossed!
I didn't know anything about Madryn Street in L8 so this intrigued me to research in to it. I found that Ringo Starr used to live on Madryn Street, although the door is not his, it still has a connection to the area. If the site hasn't been knocked down yet (which it was getting threatened) then we may have something!
Once we had chose doors to look at for research I decided to just sit and take in some of the poetry. I thought it would be nice to include a poem to pay homage to Roger McGough and all his efforts towards this project. I have started working on something so we will see!
Speak soon!
Image Credits:
theatresonline.com
musicpilgrimages.com
walkingbook.co.uk
panoramio.com
bluepoolimaging.com
