Researching For My Portfolio

The start of research into my portfolio meant I had to think about what line of work I want to go into. My experiences so far have had me been involved in a variety of roles such as camera operator, director of photography, runner just to name a few. Doing research into some practitioners has kind of opened my eyes a bit about where I currently am as a practitioner. I feel with the time I have left I want to get involved with a few more different projects


http://www.scotthouston.co.uk/- Scott Houston is a freelance camera operator and editor based in Glasgow his website is something that I enjoy watching his work. It is polished and has great colour grading. As you can see by his homepage he has got splash shots of some of his work he has done. Personally I don't think I will be doing this for my website because i don't feel currently I have enough work of a high quality. But obviously I'm hoping once I grow as a practitioner it will allow me to develop my show reel and work. So what I will do to for my site is having a show reel of some of my work and just had a few splash shots of videos I have done. But as a great reference this has given me a lot. The colour scheme is black and white so I think because he does video work it always makes me think of VHS videos are a source of inspiration.

below is a link to a showreel on his vimeo: -

https://vimeo.com/79488095

PORTFOLIO PLANNING ARGHHHHHHHH

On the 6th March we have to deliver a plan of what we want to our portfolio too look like. It has something that has troubled me for a little bit because if i am being honest I am not sure how i want it to look right now so I will be starting a bit of research into different practitioners sites to determine a few of the basic things such as:

-Content
-layout
-background (Colours maybe a problem due to being colour blind)

I think I will have a website for my portfolio because I feel that is a something that seems a bit more professional and in terms of access and applying for jobs you have something visual for them to see.

Methodologies (Negotiated Client Project)

Today I am back in Nottingham and our first seminar was learning about four different methodologies which i will be using when it comes to my negotiated client project. They are SCAMPER, User Centred Design, Ethnography and Creative Practice.

SCAMPER stands for:

Substitute
Combine
Adapt
Modify
Put to another use
eliminate
Reverse

Personally when putting this to a product i feel the purpose off it is to take a product and improve on it or taking two products and then combining then into one. I got two examples for this the first one was the selfie stick it has taken the craze of big group selfies and then the stick allows it to make doing it a whole lot easier. My second example was Coca-Cola which has used the original brand and added different flavours and the using the method you can reverse it for example and still have the original coca-cola brand.

User Centred Design (UCD)

This is where the end product is designed for the need of the user. every aspect of the video will be designed to allow the user get what is required from the product. This more common use for something to with software but I believe that it can be put to use with a video and a client. It is simply taking the brief and using the same thinking process. The first part of it is making sure you know who your target market is once you have established this it is then a case of making sure that all the work done from that point is used for your target market. This means that doing things such as questionnaires will become important.  My two examples for this were the editing keyboard. this has taken the aspect of using a simple keyboard but making it so in edit suites it can be used to help with products such as premier pro. My second example was Fotmob which is a football app but allows the users to keep updated on their favourite team aswell as live football scores.

Ethnography

This is where a practitioner will spend a certain amount of time in a "alien" environment which will hopefully allow them the time to get to know the people a lot better and even at times feel sympathy for a certain extreme group for example. For this i used the example of Louis Theroux who usually spends long amounts of time getting to know certain cultures which are usually seen as extreme or not well liked. My other example of this was to the "Benefit Street" documentary which allowed to us to get a better insight to what people living on the dole live like and at times you warm to the people even if they are doing bad things.

Creative Practice

To me this is where as a practitioner we take our own creativity into our own work and work out a style that we like. Anytime we do a project or something it is allowing a creative thoughts to flow a bit more

Difficulties Of Getting Back To University

This week has been one a great struggle for myself personally. If I'm being honest I have struggled to get back into the routine of doing my work and getting a good nights sleep. Personally this has been something that has effected my first two years at university anyway and sometimes it is something that I have perhaps brushed under the carpet a little and hoped it was something that would go away.

With this being my third year and final year I want to make sure that I can form some kind of routine that will help with my work not just at uni but outside and personal activities. In a few weeks I will be doing some filming and hopefully this will help things click for me but now I have booked myself a session with a student mentor and hopefully this will give me some help with getting a timetable or routine.

Once I have done this it will hopefully help me get back into a routine and help me focus more on my work. Even though this week I have been distracted I have still help start an idea for my group project on the Nottingham Makes

48 Hour Challenge....Conclusion

Today was the conclusion and presentation of our 48 hour cricket challenge. For me I was happy with the outcome of the video even though looking back there was certain things that I would do different. With this being third year I need to say something if i feel unhappy with a certain shot or idea as this will be the best way of me growing into the practitioner I want to be.  Saying that the last two days has been a great way of helping my creative mind and hopefully now I can carry this onto the following few weeks at university.

Watching some of the other videos made me think if only we had perhaps a few more days on this challenge and how potentially good our video could of been. On the project I have worked with two new people on the course and I have got on well with them and has shown to myself that I have the potential to develop a lot more this year in terms on being in charge of certain things. Looking back at some of my placement work I have relied on other people sometimes but with this I took charge in getting things filmed without worrying about the quality of my work and this helped me feel a lot more relaxed about my work. It also made giving out team roles a lot more easier.

Our idea for the video was to make a video that would keep the audience engaged. With it being young children we want to make it fun. Micah had a problem with the video and the when it come to presenting the video we had to remove the audio which had got a lot of content which we needed but we feel the video we would present would be good. Jules and Danny felt we had a good start but felt that we went down hill a bit from there due to how we presented some of the shots such as when i demonstrated some shots in the middle of the wicket.  But overall I felt that we got a positive feedback from the class as people felt it was fun and if i'm being honest I feel if we had got the audio micah had done it would of looked a lot better.  Looking at some of the videos that people presented it was obvious that some people had not done enough research on the game and we had demonstrated the  thought of just going with traditional test cricket but thought about going with a game which anyone could play even though our video at times didn't showcase this.

Hopefully this will be the same team I stay in for the group projects because I feel i could learn more about after effects from the people in my team. But it will be more then likely that I will have a new team for next weeks Made In Nottingham.

Below is the video produced for the 48 Hour Challenge

48 Hour Challenge....DUM DUM DUMMMMMM

Today Jools has put us in groups which I assume is the same one I will be working in for my group project on Nottingham Makes. This is a test to see how we work within a team and working with new people from outside the Fda Course. The challenge set to us was to see if we could produce a video that would explain the rules of cricket to children aged nine to ten.

For me this great because I am a fan of cricket anyway but the hard part was thinking of a way of showing kids how to play it. The game of cricket has so many rules explaining it to children without it being boring would of been near on impossible. So as a group we sat and discussed what we thought would be the best way of showing a game of cricket without being boring. So we went with kwik cricket which is a fun way for all players to get involved with the game.

The best way of showing this would be filming a small game of how to play it. We want to avoid lots of speaking because we want to keep the game engaging and encourage the kids to actually play the game. The first part of the process was getting a kit which would include a bat, ball and bails and stumps. Once we had that it was a case of getting my kit and going out and filming the whole thing. Because we only have 48 hours to do this I wanted to make sure that at least some of the filming was done tonight to make sure we can finish off and that is what we did.

Tomorrow it is about finishing the filming off to allow the time to edit the video together to hand in wednesday.

Third Year Start

As part of my first week back at Trent I had the challenge of showing my creative work life so far in thirty seconds. For my I found this a challenge because being honest I didn't really know how to tell my story without talking about it? Part of the challenge was to explain myself to someone who did not know me at all. My strengths? weaknesses? and showcasing some of my work.

Having a short amount of time to do this as well meant I had to look back at everything I had done so far. So because I had to explain without telling my story I decided to take pictures to explain myself. So I found a variety of pictures to do with strengths and and weakness and let that build up a overall picture of me. Including this I put some videos from work I have done and this would be used to explain everything about myself.

With this is as a first challenge to come back it was quite a challenge and shows to myself that I need to work a lot harder this year to accomplish what I wanted to do when I come to university in the first place. Personally with my work I always think I have had to prove to myself I can do it.

In terms of next week hopefully I will get a better understanding of the course and what is going to be expected of me for the next nine months.