Annie’s Blog

Well, it has really started to pull together in the last few weeks. With the addition of sound, and the tightening of the shots and editing, it’s really starting to look good. Now that there is a consistancy to the visual aspect, it’s actually alot more exciting to be a part of. Now it’s a very different project, that people from our course haven’t attempted before, and it will be something fresh and exciting in the showcase, where as a few months ago I was worried that perhaps it would become the embarassment piece. But I”m quite confident people will be impressed by it now. It isn’t THE NEXT BIG THING, but it is definately a showcase of our skills and our commitment, our ability to work as a team, and try and problem solve to get things done. And we’re going to have a finished product to show for all our hard work.

I think it’s interesting that the same people seem to be turning up to the production meetings, and group meetings. The same people turn up each time one is scheduled, and the same people are missing once we get into that room. I believe that although we’ve managed to pull through on the project, and its something exciting and something to be proud of now, it is because of the continual effort of the same few people over the entire project, and not the group as a whole. I’m not saying that I’m one of these people, just because I come to the meetings and offer feedback, doesn’t mean that I’m putting nearly as much time and effort into it as Claire and Steph and Mirna. I think it has reached a point in semester where people are too swamped by their other course work to put as much effort in, and so strongly commited people, and highly organized people, have to take up their slack. In no way do I think this is fair, and I’ve tried to put myself out there, to help Claire and the production team when they need it, but I’m definately not one of the driving forces behind the project at this stage.

It’s a pity that we didn’t manage to hang onto the piece as a group, and all commit to it, but each person has different time commitments, different priorities and a different amount of passion for the project. At the moment I’m proud of it. I’m happy to put my name to it, and interested to see people’s reactions to it. So I guess we’ll just have to wait until the showcase to find out.

Reflections on Team Work

Now that we know where we want to take the project, and what it is that we’re trying to achieve with it, we are far more on track than four or five weeks ago. So far we seem to be off to a good start as well. I noticed that once the episodes were written and good to go, there was a great deal of effort and organization that went ahead to start actually creating the episodes, taking photos, working on them in photoshop and editing the eps together in Final Cut. It was really nice to see it all slowly but surely coming together. There seems to be far better communication and co-operation between the group as a whole, now that we know what our goals are, we have set about trying to achieve them. It’s also really good to see that people are keeping each other posted via email, so that when one step or part of the process has been completed then the people working on the next phase can get onto it as soon as possible. In terms of team work I think it’s helped alot that people have set roles, it helps to keep people on track and focus on the work, but also prevents overlaps and double ups of some tasks, and gaps in others, where people thought that someone else was dealing with it. We definately have the right people with the right amount of passion and interest in the project to create something pretty darn cool. The only major problem that I see with the project is that in some areas we seem to be lacking in communication. We’re great at doing what has to be done and keeping the others up to date with it, but there still seems to be a lack of organization in some instances, but I suppose this is to be expected of a project with so many people involved, each with different tasks, and with little prior experience. That’s what PP2 is all about isn’t it, using the skills that we’ve gained over the course in an environment that is similar to that which might take place in a real life work environment, but in the shelter and support of the University.

When I say that we seem to be lacking organization and communication in some areas I’m not being negative, but trying to be realistic and reflective of the project. Recogonizing our weaknesses now means that we can learn from them and work on them in the future. The only major problem I can see in the project at the moment is that some of the images of the characters are extremely strong with the shadows and outlines. They look fantastic and should convert down to a mobile screen really well. Others have an unfinished appearance in comparison. In no way are they worse, they just appear different to the others, and I think it’s REALLY important to have visual consistency across the entire series, otherwise it would be confusing for the audience and doesn’t come across as proffessional and polished if we want to pitch to a business or company at the end of semester. I think this problem arises from the fact that we have different people working on different shots per episode, and each person has their own style and way of doing things. And whilst artistic diversity is a wonderful thing, it is pehaps not an element we’re looking for in Urban Myths. I can’t really critisize too much, because I’m not part of the visuals team, and I know that they’re putting alot of time, effort and work into creating the shots. The only thing that I could suggest, and I’m not sure how viable an option it is, is that people work to a colour palette and line width when approaching the characters (the main ones in particular) and one particular process for adding the shadows in agreed on. I’m assuming this would give an overall consistency to the characters, because at the moment sometimes it looks like Kai and Mirna are completely different people from shot to shot! It would be similar to if the voices for the characters for each episode differed slightly in pitch or tone from episode to episode. It would be disturbing for an audience, particularly if they were engaging with the entire series and not just one or two episodes.

Other than that everything seems to be going well and I can’t see any major troubles. We all seem to be working well together and taking each others feedback, good and bad, well, keeping the best interests of the project at heart. Hopefully we can stay on this track until the end of semester!

So now all the episodes are out of the way, and everyone seems happy with them, i can move onto the sound side of things with Claire. I’ve had really [positive feedback on all my episodes, which is always nice, and the actors didn’t seem to have too much trouble with the run throughs,  so that’s always a positive as well.

Claire and I went into the multi track studio the other week to record the sound talent for Kai and Mirna. We were on a fairly tight time schedule, but we managed to get them all done, despite a large amount of mucking around! The only real difficulty we had was with the pronounciation of the Aboriginal names and places. Those that we couldn’t find the phonetics for on the internet somewhere, wee tried to record every different possible reading of them, in the hope that at least one of them would be right.

Then on Friday we took the recorded sound and put it into the final cut pro file that Wendy has been working on, so that the production team can build the episodes around the dialouge, to allow for the right timing and space. I will be assisting Claire in building the rough sound in Final Cut, so that we can then move on to recording and inserting sound effets and the music track. So far it seems to be going ok, but we’re a little pressed for time, all of us, seeing as the end of semester is looming, and everyone has alot of work across the board, not just for PP2 and Urban Myths.

My role within Urban Myth is to write episodes based on locations around Melbourne that have a relatively unknown history. I’ve decided to focus on sites that have a history in Colonialism and the white settlement of Melbourne. Having conducted research on both the web and through the State Library, as well as visiting the Melbourne Museum and its Discovery Centre I have decided to focus on the following locations:

Queen Victoria Market (already written)

Little Lonsdale Street

The Old Melbourne Gaol

Merri Creek

Flagstaff Gardens

All of these locations have an interesting and significant role in the history of Melbourne’s development, and through my research I actually discovered alot of things about them that I had previously never known. Melbourne was booming during the Gold Rush, but from my own experience I found that during school the only history we covered relating to that time focused on Ballarat and the Eureka Stockade, and Melbourne was simply the place that the gold was sent to to be minted. I had no idea that Melbourne’s itself was so interesting, and had a somewhat darker side. I suppose people also don’t really think that much about the history of Melbourne because it is no longer all that evident around us. In cities like Ballarat there is a great deal of architecture that still dates back to the Gold Rush, in Melbourne, with the exception of the Government buildings (such as the mint), many of these buildings are gone. Overseas there is evidence of a rich history that dates back centuries. In Melbourne, because it is still such a new city, many of the old buildings have been replaced by new architecture and office blocks, so our attention is no longer constantly drawn back to the past through the architecture.

After the completion of the episodes I will be moving on to help Clare with the sound recording and production. I will pretty much be her gimp/lackey and do as she bids me. I guess probably my main job will be to source sounds and recordings and help Clare with the editing of soundscapes and what not, because if I know Clare she will want to do most of the editing herself! But hopefully she will let me help, after majoring in Radio in the second year of this course I have a love of Pro tools and sound editing that hasn’t been satisfied in quite some time!

So the whole Mega experience in regards to Urban Myth, and what do I think.

Well. I think it was a good experience in that the people who wanted to push the project into the commercial area and look into selling it to a company. I think that those who attended the Mega conference not only would have benefitted from it by learning what is happening in the area of Mobile and Digital content at the moment, but also how to pitch, what the industries are looking for and how to go about promoting your particular idea, but we benefitted from it as a group, as it gave us a firmer stand point and a solid direction to go in.

So it was beneficial I guess. I think we also learned that we aren’t prepared for the industry yet. We aren’t organized enough and we don’t know what it is that they’re looking for, or perhaps more precisely, how to make ourselves something that they might be interested in buying. From the course we know how to make digital and media content, but we have no idea how to go about getting it seen or bought. So we have the skills to make, but not the skills to sell. From the information I gathered we were grossly under prepared in terms of how to turn our idea into a worthwhile pitch, which was not just the fault of the people who attended the Mega conference, but the group as a whole. Things were too up in the air, and no one seemed willing enough to take charge and make sure that things were getting done the way they should be. I think to some extent, and this comes from being based purely in the creative side of things, we were too busy trying to work out how we could sell something that we hadn’t made or reached any final decisions on, that we came across as not really knowing what we were going on about, because we ourselves didn’t quite know. I understand that the conference was essential to our creative process in that it provided us with an angle to follow and a definite direction to the project based on feedback from the Mega people about what companies were looking for, but as soon as we had that info we failed to act upon it and begin making episodes straight away, or at least decide as a group just exactly what the hell it was we were doing. We’ve done that now, but unfortunately it was too late to pitch. However now we can focus on creating the content, so that it’s there, it’s made and it’s ready to go, so that we can look into pitching and selling it once it’s ready to go. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with using all our opportunities and trying to boost our career aspects by pitching something that’s assessment as well as a viable media product, I just think that we need to be sure of our direction and our content before we go leaping ahead of ourselves.

Dear old Clare sent me this animated video, which relates quite nicely to our idea of Kai moving through the graffitti around the city of Melbourne for our PP2 project, Urban Myths. I can’t say any more on that front, but seriously check this out. It’s pretty darn impressive.

http://www.blublu.org/sito/video/muto.htm

This afternoon out PP2 group, Urban Myths, had a meeting in the labs to learn how to trace and create vector images. It was all fairly standard and easy to pick up, I think that I got the hang of it quite quickly, and I really enjoyed it. I also went a step further and started to animate the image I had created, although we were running out of time, so it looks a little amateur and sketchy. But here it is BBQ MAN! Wooo Hoooooo!

The image you see here is what BBQ MAN originally looked like before I traced and vectored his ass.

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