Character Identity

During one of our projects for Contemporary Media Issues. We discussed the different ways in which we can express ourselves using the internet. I suppose it is a way of being stereotypical in my point of view and having the power to judge different people on the way they look and what they do. Ways in which this can be portrayed are sites such as Facebook and Twitter. We were asked to design a character using these websites and update them regularly and come up with different ideas on how you can express different people judging on where they are from and what they are like. The character I chose to create was a girl called 'Isabella Roswerth'. I have print screened a picture of her facebook below to give you a better idea.

My character is a person who can connect with nature and understands the danger that animals can be in, she is free spirited and just loves to care for animals. Isabella is a very clever person and enjoys spending most of her days fighting for animal rights, shopping with friends or hanging out at the beach. I struggled to enjoy this task a little bit as I didn't feel right pretending to be somebody i'm not. It made me understand just how easy it can be to forge being somebody else using the internet. Which scared me a little bit but also gave me a better understanding of what it would be like to live as a completely different person and a different personality. That part I did enjoy quite a lot.

Museum Project (Spurtles, Photography)

During creativity and concept, we were set an assignment to come up with an idea for an exhibition for the museum of Liverpool. We were all each given a topic to work on and asked to go away and think of our own exhibition and then present a 15 minute presentation at the end of this. The topic that me and my group were given was Photography. Which I was very happy with because of how big my interest is with this hobby, so I was really looking forward to creating this exhibition. We all went away and came up with separate ideas that we could do for this exhibition and also created a spider diagram filled with ideas that we could use.

Once these ideas were created, we started to narrow them down to one whole idea that we could easily work with. The type of idea that we decided to go with was an old fashioned/vintage photography exhibition using Lomography cameras and fish eye lens's and old fashioned cameras and new up to date DSLR cameras. We thought it would be a good idea to compare the two different types of photography and express how times have changed with cameras and pictures. We also thought it would be a good idea to try and create vintage photos using Photoshop and compare them to original vintage photographs. All of these ideas were then jotted down onto another few pieces of paper.

It wont let me rotate the picture. Me and my group were so pleased with how everything was coming along, before we knew it , it was time to present our ideas to a panel with our 15 minute presentation. I thought it would be a good idea to bring in a collection of old to new cameras that we had at home to set the mood as well as having fish eye lens's and different sized lens's. I was so pleased with how well our presentation went considering how nervous we were thinking we would have to talk for 15 minutes straight! A link to our presentation we gave is shown below.
http://www.student.ljmu.ac.uk/lsshmacb/University-Life.html
It won't let me upload the PowerPoint document and so all you need to do is click this link and then click on 'Photography Presentation' link shown at the bottom.

Digital Media Tools - WEBSITE IS FINISHED!

After weeks of me attempting to bring this website together and Dreamweaver just hating on me too much. My website is finally complete! I am so happy with how it has all turned out, again though, I decided to change the layout and start all over again after I was struggling to add pictures on to the background. It turns out I made the background into an image instead of a background, and it wouldn't let me overlap two pictures. I did start to panic that it would never be finished. However, after hours of trying/ failing/ rearranging. It finally all came together. If im honest, I was hoping for it to look a little bit better then it does but there is always time and room for improvement if I want to change it or start all over again. I was struggling to work the HTML codes, and kept deleting parts of the codes that I needed. Overall I am pleased with the outcome of it and the fact it is now all up and running smoothly. The link to my website is given below.
http://www.student.ljmu.ac.uk/lsshmacb/

Digital Media Tools - Creating A Website (Updated)

After I realized that I really didn't like the layout I had produced, and I wasn't getting anywhere with it. I had another brainwave and thought a good and unique way of creating my layout for my website would be to design it on an A3 piece of paper and upload this onto Photoshop to edit, change the size and make this design into my homepage. Which is exactly what I did. The picture below shows the design that I had came up with for the layout of my website. I decided to try a different route from it being a vintage/old fashioned design and decided to go down the lines of it being edgy, new and creative.

It wont let me rotate the picture. After this had been created I decided to upload this onto the computer and enhance it to make it look sharper. I changed the writing slightly but I was really impressed with how it all turned out in the end.

Contemporary Media Issues - Wikipedia Assignment Number 2..

During our Contemporary Media Issues lecture, we were asked to create another Wikipedia page based on how social networking is employed to engage audiences. For this project, we were each put into a group and each given a topic to discuss that involves the aspects of social media. The topic that our group was given was the Fukushima Nuclear Disaster. We began to research into what this was and different ways in which it affected the media. We were each asked to talk about a different topic relating to the Fukushima Nuclear Disaster. These topics included:
- The creation of communities
- Social networking as a market and distribution mechanism
- Social networking and identity
- Social networking and democracy
- Collective Intelligence
The topic that I discussed for this project was Social networking and identity. I felt that this was an interesting topic to discuss for the nuclear disaster because I started to discuss about how quickly the news spread and the ways in which it did over the internet. These ways included the likes of Facebook/Twitter/Youtube as people were uploading videos of what was happening and how much damage it caused. I have posted a link of our wikipedia for you to have a look at to see just how quickly news spread.
http://contemporarymediaissues.wetpaint.com/page/Fukishima+Nuclear+Disaster/thread

Digital Media Tools - Creating A Website

I was far to excited about this part of the module, finally being able to create my own website! Which is what I have always wanted to do. I started to look at different types of layouts and styles to give me more of an idea and inspiration for what I wanted my website to turn out looking like. I wanted my website to express myself and how I am using the style and pictures that I would put on it. After looking at a couple of different designs, I decided I wanted my website to have an old fashioned/vintage feel to it to give it an edgy look. One of the main points I was struggling with for this theme was finding/creating a background as I wasn't sure whether I was able to copyright any other images of the internet. Even though I was really tempted too! My first design in my opinion failed miserably. It was a black flower patterned background with red italic text showing my name and links to the different pages. As soon as I had created it, I didn't like it. Even though I did try to make it look a lot more acceptable then it already did.

Photoshop Techniques - Creating the Unreal

I decided to spend another day messing about with various different Photoshop techniques, and came across one online that really interested me and I wanted to learn how it was done. I started to look at Photoshop techniques that would make a picture look abnormal, edgy and unrealistic. My idea was to create an image that could tell a million stories, which is why I decided to learn how the image below was done.

I am really pleased with how this picture has turned out. I shown it too a friend of mine who told me the fact they both have one wing each makes the picture look different and unconventional. Which was the type of image I was going for so I am happy. I did not mean to give them one wing each, I was just struggling to find a set of two wings that I liked online, the site I went on only gave me the option of a right side wing, which was a bit annoying, but at least it helps it to tell a story, and give different people who see it different opinions of what they think is going on, which I am happy with. I hope to learn more Photoshop techniques in the future to use for my Photography work. The two people that are shown in the image are my two next door neighbors Melissa and Sophie.

Production Practice (Its Liverpool)

The next project that we were given in our Production Practice lecture was called 'Its Liverpool'. This was a project where we had to create a short film explaining what Liverpool is all about so that it would attract more people to come and visit the city itself. We had to explain Liverpool using only one part of it, whilst thinking of ideas in our new groups, we decided to base our film on 'Bold Street' and use one character during the film. The reason behind us choosing this idea was because bold street is a famous street in Liverpool ranging from restaurants to vintage stores and clothes stores etc. We wanted to express many different types of cultures of Liverpool from using this street and the different types of food that the restaurants have to offer such as Chinese, Indian, American etc...
This project was done at a fast pace for me and my group because we were looking to move straight into the third project just weeks after It's Liverpool had been assigned. Every spare time of the weeks that we had were spent filming on Bold Street for this project. I am very pleased with how it all turned out, it expresses a lot of types of techniques used within the film such as split screen, fading, time lapse etc.. All to help make bold street a main tourist attraction to visit. The time lapse did take a whole afternoon to film, as we left the camera running for a full hour showing Bold Street. I was very pleased with how it all turned out, although it was very cold. I did manage to take photographs of the day that we went filming, luckily I put them on my facebook as they were on my old phone before it was stolen!

After all the filming and editing was complete, after many days spent day and night on bold street. The film was finally complete! I have posted a link below showing just how it turned out, I hope you enjoy it!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=iLBOhWE3cmU

Digital Media Tools - Web Design Techniques

I was far too excited with this lecture because we were looking at creating our own websites which is what I have always wanted to do. The only website I have ever created was my own piczo back when I was about 14/15, I am prepared to share the link but I don't know why, its very embarrassing! The link to my old piczo website is -> http://www.piczo.com/h4n4-0xx?cr=1

This lecture taught us how to use HTML codes and imply this into Dreamweaver. I have only ever used Dreamweaver once before briefly whilst in college, so I was very excited to learn more skills and techniques using this software for future knowledge. We were taught how to structure our own websites and creating external links and how to use split view in Dreamweaver which enabled us to use the codes that we would need to know to add whatever we wanted to our websites. This was one of my best lectures being able to use Dreamweaver! I now feel like I have more skills for future reference to create my own website which I am very happy about

People On The Move - FINISHED

We have managed to finish our People On The Move assignment! The filming went down really well, we did re-take a couple of shots as they were not too good, and when we went to go and film outside, we struggled with the lighting and the L.E.D lights, we felt the shots were a little too dark for us to use, but tried to work our way around this and it worked out okay in the end. I was pleased with how this film had turned out and we were lucky enough to gain a 2:1 in this film which I am very happy with! The editing was a bit of a struggle as it was our first proper time using Avid, but we pulled it together in the end with minutes to spare! Phew! This is definitely one of the best films I have made whilst on the course and am very happy with the outcome.

Digital Media Tools - Photography Techniques

I would definitely say that digital media tools would be my favorite lesson because it is the one I can relate to the most out of them all. Throughout my years of college, I studied an Interactive Media & Photography course which I enjoyed so much and so feel that this is the best lesson I can relate to the most.
We had a lesson about learning the different techniques to use in Photography, as I did this in college, it was more of a feedback lesson for me. We was taught about the following topics:
- Composition Rules & Guides
- Working with Lines
- Playing with angles
- Rule Of Thirds
- Cropping
- Depth of Field & Background
- Light and Color.
I am fortunate enough to own my very own SLR camera, which is the Nikon D40x, and so during the summer before university this benefited me a lot and was able to teach myself these techniques whilst out doing photography shots. I was pleased that this subject was being taught on my course and felt I could relate to it really easily. After all, every image tells a completely different story, you never know what you might pick up on photography shoots.

Oh No!

I have realized that everything that is listed on my blog is in the complete wrong order, oops!
Starting to worry now, The order it is supposed to start with is my people on the move assignment, and then work on from there with Avid and Camera workshop being next. My people on the move project was created in November/December 2011 and everything else followed on from there. I am really sorry for the mix up this has caused on my blog! I really need to get to grip with putting everything in order.

People On The Move Updated..

Our story had been created! We all went away and thought of our own ideas of how the story could be brought together, and I was very happy with the outcome that was produced. I have taken a picture of our story and this is shown below.

The next stage.. Filming! Now that we had been given our lecture in how to work the cameras, it is time to put that lesson to the test. I was very excited about finally being able to film our story, and how it will all begin to come together!

Contemporary Media Issues - Google Maps Assignment.

During our Contemporary Media Issues lectures, we were given an assignment to split up into groups and create a certain story using various different points of the world. We were each given a starting point and had to work from that point and find and plot five different points of the story onto Google maps. The starting location that me and my group were given was St James Gardens, which is situated just next to the Anglican Cathedral near upper duke street. We discovered that St Andrew's Gardens is a cemetery and we thought it would be a good idea to document one of the lives of a person that has been buried within the cemetery. We started to look into the lives they lead and tried to find the most interesting one to use for our story, and came across a person called Sargeant Arthur Herbert Lindsay Richardson. We discovered that he lead a very interesting life from being a dental surgeon apprentice, to becoming a law enforcement officer.

Above I have shown a picture of what he looks like, I started to get really interested in this project once we had found an exciting story to work on. Although I was a bit worried at the same time as I am petrified of graveyards and cemeteries. So I didn't feel very comfortable going to visit where he had been buried at St James Garden's.

I struggled to get to grips with working the Google Maps software at first and pinpointing each place that Arthur had visited, but after a few tries I started to get the hang of it and was proud of what me and my group had accomplished. The places that we pinpointed included,Southport, Canada, Cape Town in South Africa and Liverpool. I felt that we could have been a little bit more organized for our presentation but am pleased overall with how it all came together.

Here I have uploaded a picture of what St Andrews Garden's looks like to give you a better idea of the story we have produced.

Production Practice (Camera Workshop)

This lecture was spent on us learning how to use the Sony cameras for the first time. I was really excited about this lecture because I was really looking forward to going out and exploring all different parts of Liverpool using the film cameras. We was given a booklet on how to work the cameras just in case we got stuck. I was really happy that we had this lecture because it taught me a lot more then I originally knew about film cameras. The main points of the camera I was looking at were zoom, iris and shutter speed. The lecture covered these points and a few more to make sure we knew what we were dealing with all round. The camera's that we are using to film our projects with is called the Sony Z1E. I was very happy that we had this lecture because now I feel a lot more confident about going out and filming my own projects with no worries.

People On The Move Assignment...

Okay, so I probably should have done this post back in 2011 when this project was developed, but I suppose it is better late then never. During my module 'Production Practice', we were asked to brainstorm a couple of ideas for our first major film project 'People On The Move'. This project involved us coming up with a short story that had to be between 1 and a half to 2 minutes long. The story could be any theme we wanted it to be put it had to relate to people moving to different places.

Me and my group thought that a good starting point would be to write down a range of ideas for themes that we could first start of with. The main idea that we all agreed on best would be 'Conflict'. Following on from this we thought it would be a good idea to do a spider diagram of all the different ideas we had that would relate to conflict. Ideas for a good story for our film were then developed from this spider diagram.
I thought that this was a good way of keeping ourselves organized and on target with our work. I have taken a picture of the ideas that we had and this is shown below. I was really excited for filming with the ideas that we had in store, I felt it was a good story that we had brought together and couldn't wait to film it.

Wikipedia Assignment 1..

During our contemporary media issues lessons, we started to look at media articles and asked to bring in a media article that we found that interested us. As I am a huge fan of the television show "F.R.I.E.N.D.S", I thought it would be a good idea to bring in an article relating to this topic. I recently heard a rumor that F.R.I.E.N.D.S were planning to create a comeback film which I was very excited about. I started to research into this more and found an article relating to it on the daily mail. The link to the article is shown below..

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-1216441/Friends-reunited-Stars-hit-TV-sitcom-make-movie-version.html

Once this task was complete, we started looking at creating Wikipedia pages relating to many different topics. We were split into groups and were each given a topic to create a Wikipedia page on. Our topic was a book called "The Medium Is The Massage" and our task was to 'Discuss why the authors have used the word massage rather than message which McLuhan used in his earlier book 'understanding media'. We started to create Prezi's relating to Marshall McLuhan's past and giving our own opinions of what we thought of the book, as well as answering the question in our own individual way. I found this assignment very interesting and was happy that I was creating my own Wikipedia to a particular topic. The link to our Wikipedia page is given below..
http://contemporarymediaissues.wetpaint.com/page/Marshall+McLuhan+-+The+Medium+is+the+Massage

This is a copy of the Prezi that one of the group members created on Marshall McLuhan relating to his past.
http://prezi.com/zdmqfe4liw-w/marshall-mcluhan-his-background/

Little Bit Of Extra Work..

When I was 16/17, I was given the chance to appear as an extra on the television series Waterloo Road. I was so happy to have given this opportunity as it taught me a lot about being behind the scenes of a television production. The hours that are put into making a television series and the amount of takes you have to do until the scene is perfect. I was there for a week overall and then a few random separate days after that. It was so much fun being able to meet the cast and talk to them about how they got into the business and what work they have done before. On top of this, i was paid! One of the best work experiences I have had and recommend anybody to give extra work a go, you really do learn a lot.

ScreenR..

For Creativity and Concept, we were asked to create a Prezi on the subject 'The Role of relection in learning and creative practice' We were asked to discuss the topics:
- What is Reflection?
- How can we reflect?
- Why do we reflect?
-Personal Thoughts on Reflection
-Images of Reflection
-David Kolb
-Graham Gibbs
-Overall Conclusion on Reflection
and a few more, I found this a very interesting topic to talk about because it helped me to look back on the work that I had created and what I felt about it. This Prezi was a great learning technique for me to do and I really enjoyed putting it all together once I had made a start on it.

I was so happy once I found out my results I got for my ScreenR. I was really proud of how well it all came together, as it did take me a good few attempts to record it because of the barking dog in the background. (I know it can still be heard faintly, but I gave up caring after the 4th attempt). Below I have given a link to the ScreenR itself so feel free to watch and learn about all of the different creative techniques I have learned whilst at university and my thoughts against them.

http://prezi.com/mw6r1zalcpys/the-role-of-reflection-in-learning-creative-practice/

Photoshop Techniques

Whilst I had a free day, I decided to try and teach myself some new techniques to use in my Photography using Photoshop. I began researching many different tutorials to help me to create atmosphere and different mood's within my pictures, there was one that I was particularly proud of, and it is a photograph that I have managed to merge together into one to create a dark, upsetting mood showing loneliness and worry. The picture is shown below and I am very proud of how it had turned out and that I can share this with you now.

Im Struggling To Adjust..

Recently, I feel as though I have been struggling to adjust to university life, moving out to Liverpool and attempting to handle everything on my own. Finances, cooking, cleaning, deadlines and my social life. I still feel as though I am too young to grow up and move away and handle everything on my own. I'm not going to lie I have enjoyed the experience of moving away more then anything I have ever done, but it has been very difficult. Hopefully next year I will begin to relax a bit more and enjoy myself as well as keeping on top of my university work which I have definitely struggled to do during this past year. I don't know, we will see.

Edward De Bono Technique..

I managed to do some of my own research on Edward De Bono and his six thinking hats as I didn't manage to attend the lecture it was discussed. I learned that the six thinking hats are a special tool that helps groups and individuals to think more effectively and begin to process ideas more easily to other members of their team. It is a very useful group technique that can be used when ideas are struggling to come to the table. It is also a very fun way of learning and thinking to help get your brain into gear. Each hat is a different color and represents a different kind of mood or emotion to help you think with. I have shown a picture below demonstrating the six different hats and how they are beneficial to help brainstorm new ideas.

Why Creativity & Concept Is Important?

I began to wonder how creativity and concept actually helped me to benefit myself and why it was so important as a module because during my lectures of playing with Lego and making hats, it all felt a little bit pointless to me. We had a lecture discussing the reasons as to why this module is important, it turns out the BBC use most of the content we have learned on this module to help them to brainstorm new ideas for the public. I was amazed that they do this, we went through a BBC application form and outlined all of the parts that were important and how this module has helped us to easily fill one out. Below I have taken a picture of the application form to give you an example of the layout and what we discussed. I found this lecture very useful to me for future reference and now understand clearly the techniques that we have been shown whilst on the course.

Photography..

One of my all time favorite hobbies is Photography and for years I have always been interested in capturing interesting and unique images using my camera. A few years ago I was given my very own SLR camera and could not have asked for a better Christmas present. The camera that I was given was a Nikon D40x and I can easily say it has been the best present I have ever been given. I started to capture a number of different images and my friends helped me with a few different photo shoots which were then edited using Photoshop. I have shown below a couple of examples of my Photography work since I have had my SLR camera.

Avid.

Well I have to say, i am not the biggest fan in the world of Avid. I am still struggling to get my head around it now, which isn't a good thing considering. I really need to just sit down and teach myself how to use it, with no distractions. Might get a bit further in life by doing this and actually start to enjoy it, but for now I do feel as though it is very annoying when having to edit. Maybe this is because I have spent the past 3 years editing with Adobe, and I am not used to moving to a new editing software, but I do find it a little more difficult then Adobe to get my head around it, hopefully I will start to enjoy the software soon and edit with no problems.