The Day Before Filming

So I have gone down with illness today but we managed to get the filming done yesterday. I will write how the shoot went tomorrow. I feel bad because today i have let Ashley down with filming in market square. I have tried to get some people down to help him but a this stage I am not sure how this has gone.

But i wanted to write a little about the day before filming and what we had planned. So as i put we had planned a few shots we wanted to use with the go pros but we needed to plan a route. We wanted to include both Paul Smith stores to show the journey that Paul has had in his career. Tuesday we chose what equipment we was going to be using and this is the list:

-Bike
-Canon 600d and 7d for filming we wanted to use this because we wanted to film in 1080p and we felt that it gave the video a crisper showing then a camera such as the z1e. It also gave us the chance to use a few different lenses.
-Go Pro this was for the first person angle shot
-Duck Tape to keep the go pro in place while it was on the bike
-Sd Cards
-Tri-pod
-Audio (for the interviews)
This was all picked up on the thursday

The production team who would be working on this shoot came out and we then planned out where we wanted to film. We brought out the bike with us and it gave us a chance but with fifty seconds off video we just planned to get enough footage and then see how it works in editing. The first shot we planned was going out the first paul smith then him going down the hill then our second shot would be going past the town hall on market square. Then the third shot is Max coming around the corner and going down to the new Paul Smith store then walking into the store. Then the logo will come into the ending.

After doing this I asked all the team to arrive for filming at 8:30 to start filming. So all our planning this week let us to the shoot day and i will be writing about that tomorrow

Planning For The Bike Video

The idea to film the bike scene was going to take a lot of planning before we actually filmed anything. The first task was to actually get our hands on a bike. We managed to get our hands on a Raleigh bike which is a Nottingham based company and we felt this would fit in well with the whole Nottingham loves theme. So before filming on Friday we needed to make sure that we got the recces sorted for the shots that we wanted and the route for filming was going to be planned out properly. As well as doing the reece for our shoot i had to do the risk assessment to make sure everything will be safe whilst we are filming.


This is the bike we will be filming with:

Tuesday we went out and did a few reece shots around Nottingham and these are some of the pics that we took. This was a great chance as a team for us to get an idea of the kind of shots we wanted and this allowed to us work a storyboard and it helped us get an idea of the locations we wanted to use

Yesterday me Charlie and Max used the go pro for some practice shots so we could decide which shot would look best and these are the two shots we felt would look best. The first shot is the go pro at the back of the bike. The second shot is a chest shot which we think looked good because the beauty of the go pro is that it gives you a brilliant point of view shot. It shows what it would be like filming around the Nottingham area.

So now we can start planning a route for Max. We have made the choice that we want him to dress smartly so we will have him slick his hair back. And he will be wearing a blazer, smart shoes and skinny jeans to fit in with the fashionable Paul Smith

First Problem Encountered

So on Thursday we met a former employee of Paul Smith to get a feel of how he runs his business and get a bit of an inside to who he is as a person. From the presentation that she gave us we learned that the strips that had become associated with Paul Smith has become outdated and a little bit chavy. So we made the de scion  to change the strips we had started using on the posters to make the colours more into block bright colours that we saw on some of his clothes and on his bags. Mary's insight to Paul Smith was great as she gave us some great feedback on the ideas for our work and she also gave us light of what Paul has gave to Nottingham and how he has always been a down to earth guy who cared for all of his staff. From it i found about how it is important to look into the future and what will be popular in two years as we are in an industry which is changing all the time

The Assignment First Week

So this week was the start of the second year of the assignment. The aim this year is a bit different instead of competing just against the other team there is all of Nottingham. The first thing i did on this project was research Paul Smith and get to know who he is as a person. The first thing i found he is a very down to earth person who is very proud of his roots. His clothes are very much respected world wide and he has used Nottingham as a spring step to worldwide fame. This week we will be storyboarding the ideas for the videos.

This year I am hopeful that I am on the winning team. We have got some brilliant ideas floating around and i feel that as a team we have come together well. With in a few days we have managed to come together well as a team and have managed to come up with three ideas. The first idea is based on Paul Smiths first passion cycling and we are going to be using go pros on the bike to film locations around Nottingham. Tomorrow we will be discussing locations we feel that would be right for the video. The aim of the video is to make the audience in gauge in the video they won't know what the video is about really until the end of the video where he cyclist will walk into the Paul Smith shop. Its relating to the BMW advert recently where the advert had nothing to do with the product. In the video we are going to be changing the clothes for each decade.

The second idea is related to the reason we are making the videos 40 years of his work. The people in our group are going to bring in four items each and we are going to use 40 items for 40 years. We are using the items like Paul Smith would use items to inspire his work. The past fifteen years he has got items from someone and he uses these to inspire to his work. We are hoping to have interview with members of his staff playing over the top of these items.

The third idea is to have micro interviews with members of the public and ask them to describe Paul Smith in one word. We are not just aiming at people who know his work its for people who are unaware of him so everyone in Nottingham gets the chance to know about his work.

Image of a few of the object that will be used

Team Roles

So we have discussed everyone's role in the team and wrote down what each person will be doing. This way it gives us a chance to get to know peoples strengths and then it will give me a chance to get to know the first years

Happy New Year and The Assignment 2014

So Happy New Year to anyone who reads my blog. I am now back in Nottingham and have started the competition. Last year was a useful experience for myself as our lecturers threw us in at the deep end with it to see how we would cope with a pressure situations as we had three weeks to come up with an ident, logo, marketing campaign for Notts TV. For me personally i embraced it and though in the end other people let the team down i was proud of our teams effort. This year we have been given the task to produce a similar concept except this time it is celebrating the life of Paul Smith. Also this year it is up to me take more responsibility being second year and as i know what the competition holds and I hope to help the first years out.

This year i feel we have a good team which can produce a better campaign. I will be working on the production side of things and have been given the responsibility of being in charge of things. As well as working on the video production i will help with pre-production making some idea of who Paul Smith is and then creating a template for the video with things such as risk assessments, story boarding. Our aim is to create three different videos with each one not making it obvious we are talking about Paul Smith and let Nottingham talk about one of their most famous people. This was only day though and there is still three weeks to go. Tomorrow we are meeting Sean Macaskill at The Hive which will be good to hopefully make a few ideas of how we can go forward.

I will be keeping an update of the progress of how it goes and hopefully Team B will be winners

Critical Thinking Research.

So today i found out i should of being blogging all the information that i have been looking at too help with my work with this flash project(sorry Ben) but for me this project has come together a bit for me as in terms of actually making something that could work and considering the stress i have had on this module i am relived it is coming to an end. Once i realised what would be required of me during this I was a bit worried due to not being used to working on flash before.

When I started on this project I had a look at a few examples of flash websites to get a better idea of how i wanted to set out my site. I took notice of how these sites used pre-loaders and that is when I made the decision to make one of my own. I then had a look at what kind of content was on these pages. Highlighting use in particular of having a good first page and how easy it is to connect to each page.

http://mono-1.com/monoface/main.html This was one of the most creative flash websites I looked at during my research. But I knew I didn't have the skills to make something as flashy as this so I went with keeping the flash stuff simple and the content better.

The next part of my plan to make sure there going to be some decent content to put on to my flash site. I made the choice i was going to be writing about video production and this is what I have gained experience in working with camera and sound as well as helping with editing of videos. So the aim of my site was to help someone who is looking to get in this line of work could sit down look at my flash site and get an idea of what would be required of them and the skill set that is needed for this particular work.

Once this was worked out it was just a case of making sure that everything looked good. The first thing I knew I was going to be doing was my Pre-Loader so I watched a few videos on YouTube to help me do this. Then with further discussions with Ben and a bit of help the homepage was made. Then it was making pages to go on the flash site. I thought the obvious choices would be what is video production? So i will write about the different parts of video production and what is involved with each section. Next i will write down a few key skill sets that will be required to help working in the video production. The last part was the interview with a practitioner which i have had some difficulty with so i will be looking at trying to get a practitioners tips online and putting some key points on to my page.

So this was the easy bit planning everything i was going to put on my page was done. But i still face the challenge of making the site. The key to this is working out the different action scripts on flash to help my work flow. I decided to make buttons that would skip back and forward on each page and the buttons are in the shape of buttons you would find on a camera.With some guidance from Ben i managed to get my pages together so then it is all down to me to add the content that will be needed