Electric December Launch

On the first day of December, the new site layout went live, and the panicked last minute preparations for the launch night were set into motion. At 5:30 we (saying that, It was few people who arrived at that time, but anyway.) arrived in mainly quite formal wear, they sadly persuaded me to wear a dress. There were a few run-throughs of the script, and then people started arriving.

The room was looking very professional and well-decorated, and the layout was well done, with a room to lead the guests through into the main room. Having the voice of a chain smoker or an old cat, I had to forfeit my speaking role, so spent the most part of the night as an onlooker, but at the beginning me, Ruby and Alison were greeting the guests and showing them where to go. When the event finally began, we all filed into the room and sat down, where there was a brilliant mash-up of all the films shown as an introduction, and the rest went very smoothly, with the awards being presented and snippets of each of the films being shown after each award. I was happy, as my favourite film (beloved) won a prize. As there were no seats left due to me greeting the later guests, so I sat at the back. Good placement for running to the food room when the doors were opened.

I must say, the food was pretty dissapointing. With the pretentious and expensive type of food the watershed provides, there was far too little budget and far too little food. Not to put it down, of course, the slice I had was lovely, but for the amount that was spent we could've had at least 50 dominoes. Just a thought.

The mayor and mayoress attended, and it was an honour to meet them. As far as I could see they had a good evening, along with everyone else.

Once the food was gone and the films were over, my little sister was angry and wanted to go home, so I had to leave, but overall it was a well-run evening and it went brilliantly to plan. The Watershed did a news item on the event here.

Ruby and Rick reading out the winners and talking about the event.

Blog 10

This week we were set a design brief to create an e-card invite for Electric December.
We got going with this almost straight away. I began by planning out what I was going to do (I planned two, including fonts, images, colour schemes and logo placements.) I decided to try one from a professional angle, and another with a more quirky, colourful approach. I found this task very fun, as I love using photoshop and graphic design, so this was not too difficult, but it did give an insight into the difficulties a designer may come across when faced with a brief and a deadline. Fitting in all the logos while maintaining a tidy atmosphere was the most challenging part, other than working for a deadline, I would say.

My finished products, once printed, looked good. My only issue was that, under the stress of the deadline fast approaching, I had managed to leave out some vital information from my second invite. I quickly changed this, removed some hyphenations from my other, and printed again. These looked decent. My finished products looked like this:

 The first, with the blue colour scheme and more quirky approach.

The second, in which I attempted to give a more professional feel.

Blog 9

Last week we went to Burleigh Print Works, where they do offset lithography. We got a little bit lost on the way, thanks to our teacher's brilliant navigation skills, but I shall not be mean as if it were me we'd've been crashed into a tree in mexico by that point. (or a cactus, in fact.)
But either way, mexico aside. We arrived, and were greeted and sat down for a talk about the CMYK colour systems and everything they make. We were taken on a tour through the building, going through every stage in the process. From design to formatting to planning to printing onto aliminium sheets to actually printing to cutting to binding. It was pretty fascinating in an odd sort of obsessive compulsive perfection sense. After we had finished out tour and note making, we returned to fairfield and had a session of planning the Electric December invitations. We did some benchmarking, then made note of the things we have to include in our own.

Looking at the design process at Burleigh.

Blog 8

This week we were at the Watershed again. This time, we had returned to look at the room in which we will be hosting the Electric December launch night, did some brain storming on good and bad parties, informal vs. formal, how we will decorate the room, signpost, greet guests, dress, the food we will provide, the plan for the evening, the technology, and produced a rough plan for each to be sent to the Watershed even planner people.

Once we had finished this, we were shown to a watershed screening room, in which we watched the 24 films chosen for E.D, we were the jury on which films will win prizes on the night. There were some atrocious films, some hilarious, some disturbing and some brilliant.

Over all, my favorite had to be 'Beloved', a brilliantly shot film with well-incorporated graphics and an amazing twist at the end. There were other films I liked, but this one definitely shone through for me.

Watching the films. The Watershed has incredibly comfy seats.

Blog 7

Last week we spent the day at Fairfield for the first time in a while. This time we were finding our pictures from alphabet city, picked a few and resized them on photoshop to make them the correct sizing for lino cuts. We then spent the rest of the day creating two lino cuts and making several prints of each. When we had finished our printing we picked our favorite and had it photographed. We downloaded the pictures, then edited together our prints and our reference photographs by changing the opacity of the pictures and overlaying them. We then used filters and adjusting of brightness and contrast to finish our pictures.

Me and Ruby cutting out our lino prints.

Blog 6

This lesson we went to the Watershed in our minibus, and were greeted on arrival by Maddy and a professional photographer. The Watershed staff talked us through our plans for the day, and the photographer gave us a talk about her work, inspiration and materials. We watched a film called 'the dark side of the lens', about a man who has combined his two dreams, photography and swimming, to create an amazing piece of monologue-film with beautiful imagery.
When we had finished the talk and brief, we were issued our cameras and went out to the space around the Watershed, where we began our project 'alphabet city', finding letters in the shapes and forms around Bristol. This was interesting, as it taught us to look for the smaller details, or the bigger picture. Looking at a town we know so well from a different perspective, height and state of mind.
When we had finished this we headed back inside for a brief look at the portraits taken by the other group, and got our alphabet city pictures onto the computers.
We went to make some photographs without cameras. Photograms. There was a table filled with everyday objects, of which we each picked a few, arranged in any shape or pattern we felt fitted the 'world through my view' theme, and left them out on sheets of blue paper in the sun to develop. I created an eye shape and a squirrel shape, which I was pretty proud of.
We finished up with a portrait studio, in which I flaunted my unphotogenic awkward skill in front of a camera, (ohdeargod) and I got some good shots of Ruby.
We ended the session with another talk from Kirsty, and I was awarded chocolate for doing a good job. (loving life.)

Because we look super-fly when we are pushing each other over...

Blog 5

Today we got into school, began a brief bench-marking task (in which we evaluated the Electric December website and one other film festival site, annotating the different flaws and good points on each.) we then were issued cameras and got on a minibus to the Watershed.
On arrival, we were greeted by Maddy (who we met last lesson) who gave us a talk about the W.S, after which she introduced us to the screen-room-controller-guy. (yes, I did forget the word, okay?) He showed us the different equipment, including some pretty amazing looking old film and projectors. We were then led into one of their Cinema rooms, and we watched The Social Network.

The Social Network is a film based on the story of the creation of Facebook, and Mark Zuckerberg's life in result of it. It is a pretty hard hitting film, with mild comfortable humour and well presented soundtracks, it also gives an interesting viewpoint on computer programming and the whole social structure of university. It portrays the sheer power of social networking, and makes you think about the current amount of usage that Facebook actually has. Since creation it has become worth approximately 27 billlion. It is actually a pretty daunting prospect. But the film made us think about how social networking and media could be incorporated into the Electric December promotions.

After the film we were taken on a tour of the Watershed, showed the room we're going to be doing the launch night for E.D in, and looked around their offices. We were also given some bags with the W.S logo on, containing a few brochures and  books, which was quite entertaining to see the boys walking around with :')

We left the Watershed, getting into our white van (run, kids.) and got sandwiches, water and crisps. We went back to our room at Fairfield, ate our lunch and finished off our benchmarking task.

Us looking at the room that we are going to be hosting electric december in.

Blog 4

Today, Maddy and Kat from the Watershed came to Fairfield to give us a talk about Electric December and how they evaluate their competition to improve their own website, we then created a character map of a member of their target audience (either those who will be appealed to by the call for entries, those who will be looking at the website or those who shall be attending the awards night.) After they had finished their talk, they made us the jury of shortlisted films for a festival they are involved in. We reviewed the films, and picked out our favourites and explained why.
After lunch we returned, to save our posters (from the photoshop module) to the M: drive, after finishing we then watched some films from Electric December 2010, picked a favourite and made a vlog in pairs explaining why, I worked with Ruby, but we have yet to edit.

Blog 3

On our third week of BTEC Diploma work, we finished our photoshop posters, and then we spent a lot of time revising research techniques, eventually moving on to questionnaires. We were given a scenario in which a questionnaire would be necessary, then went on Google docs to look at different formats in which to ask the questions we had created for the scenario. (e.g multiple choice, tick boxes, etc.) after evaluating which would be correct for each question, we made it, sending it to all our peers to fill out.

Blog 2

In our second lesson, we started off by being given an in-depth explaination of our levels, the way points are awarded for each section of our course, and how they work, and did some short tasks in our BTEC Diploma textbook.
After break, we did some photoshop work. We had a brief task to learn the basic skills, then we did some more complicated things, trying out the magnetic lassoo tool etc. When we had finished that, we were given cameras and brainstormed ideas for photographs we could take and incorperate into an A5 poster for Electric December, I had the idea of taking some artistic background shots, then taking a picture of someone who has eye-catching eyes, as it were, to create an abstract film-festival feel to my poster. I took these photos, then we returned to 4N07 and uploaded them to our computers via usb cable. I then began editing it into a final product.

After lunch I began writing up my notes into a formal research report on Electric December, and emailed it to myself so I could complete it at home.

Blog 1

Thursday 8th was the first day of the Creative Media btec at fairfield. We started the day with a talk about the course and the levels, then we moved on to a short task, to research and present a news report on the recent controversy over the free schools being run for profit, and the statement that David Cameron made to the media about it. This took longer than it should've, and we didn't meet the deadline, mainly because none of us really knew each other, so picking groups was tediously long drawn out and awkward, but we met new people and eventually things worked out. We finished the day by working in pairs to do some research on the watershed and electric december, and making notes in our books. I worked with Ruby, and found out what electric december is and got some good notes.