End of Studio Paper 1 summary and presentation

The summation of paper 1 consisted of a small group presentation with a Tutor, 1 second year student and three year ones,

The preparation phase of a week was a somewhat stressful, I learnt that stressing out panic attacks are contageous. I decided to mundanely follow the briefs instructions presenting just an A1 poster and A3 supporting pages in the floor, for the supporting pages I decided to keep them succinct, In previous experience people just ignore supporting material and in the rare cases they do have a look its often a daunting thick padded experience that they just skim through. a presentation isn't the place to introuduce people to the banal detail you went into to develop your project. Im assuming that the presentation was about introducing a outsider to your work.

My poster was a large timesink but is the most likely to be looked at aspect of my work. with only 3 photos being previously used content. the rest being created for the sole pourpose of the presentation. the crown peice being the grid of video frames. which show the progression of my video through every 8th frame in a contact sheet. this is adequate to show the a cohesion between one frame and the next without losing the ability to see some of the detail upon closer inspection.

I created a dvd of the 3 projects, with a semi coherent cut of RoboDance: West-side Story with footage that had only been seen by two people and 3 NXTs previous till now. a shoot that I’m glad Judit and I partook since I certainly wouldn’t be easily coerced into doing at this stage. (un)surprisingly none of the other group took up the opportunity to film theirs in a controlled environment. My prosthesis’s sample output footage which like the unloved middle child it is was only relegated a 10 second section. and the previously presented version of Rollycam’s video “glimpses” from brief 3.

Overall my presentation was somewhat modest without the embellishments of some of the others, I didn’t want to add for the sake of adding as its easy to break the intended professional appearance by overdoing it. and couldn't really think of a appropriate quirk that wouldn’t break the cohesion before the due date. A special mention has to go to Jason's twister pajamas affixed to the wall as being the most justified of those who did go that route. I personally think my poster is strong enough to no get lost in the visual orgy that is the current state of the hallway.

The critique went well, it was a good mixture of people who have seen what I have done previously with a tutor who had only seen the inital concept, and a completely new person who hadn't even heard the breif before today. this mix seemed to not weigh down presentations with too many questions.

In a reflection of the semester it has been productive. Ive assimalated new skills and become so familar with things that its hard to remember when they weren't commonplace. even though I opted for a individual approach to the 3rd breif its still somewhat like a team project. Due to the strong comunity feel thats building within BCT. I like how the skill set of many of the students complements each other. I haven't had a hair cut in 99 days. My favorite part of this semester was. the completely shattered moment after finishing robodance after me and judit had comanded around our little peons and the robots too ;p , just sitting on the bean bag, exhausted. so ephoricaly proud of what we had acheived.

Thats how I rolled. (photo entry)

project conclusion & crit

The final hours whittled away Thursday my final for presentation video cut down to the require 3 minutes (with 8 stray frames over) in the morning, and i started creating assets and arranging the layout of my DVD, with a small community of BCT students staying into the night. even though I could have completed final preparations for DVD at home its much better staying in a area of limited distraction. with people giving opinions on aspects of the works and you helping them out also the hardes part was trying to get a widesceen SD version.For me this ended at 7:40 when I got asked to leave due to not having a swipe card. surprisingly this happened just after my last render finished and was the right timing to catch my bus.
a attempt to try out an idea for a title but in the end it didn't fit in with the aesthetic

My project presentation I became some what sparse in eloquentcy. which was somewhat Embarrassing in retrospect but doubt it would have influenced my results greatly. The short was well received and as it was the early part of the days marathon session of watching critiquing. my documentation also premiered with it mostly consisting of a piece to camera explaining my apparatus as on purposely naff title proclaiming "lets roll" belatedly followed by a badumtish, and footage captured from the Myers park rolling session. Sadly most of the Myers park footage didn't make it to the final short. with only 3 of the takes making it into the video. but that's what happens when you have excess footage. I could easily give others the video and they could come out with a entirely different video.


The others::::::::::::::

9 days ago I proclaimed "my preemptive thoughts about how groups would progress have proven false. groups seem to have worked surprisingly effectively. Whereas individuals have procrastinated slightly to flitting around to compromises and indecision about what they want, and the odd strike of irony in the steel fabrication"
This statement came to bite back today, with the individuals being generally better. The multi headed monsters of a group were quite patchy in their output, with the occasional moment of standing out of the crowd. those who spent the modestly late nights near the end did better than those who didn't. Its somewhat a smug moment having James saying something you've said to the person previously that they just shrugged off. crits seem to have improved in the dialogue its no longer just a one on one crit with a audience, but now multiple people join in the discussion.
maybe a bit too compressed from the original 1080p 30 fps

Glimpses

A final shoot was done on Tuesday evening I got 2-4 very good takes one near the new gallery, the second at the the swings at the playing fields, the playing fields where I was treating it like a soccer ball at Victoria park and the final a 1 minute section on the skate park half pipe. All within the briefs "last day to shoot" now the issue will be cutting my collection of footage to within the 3 minute maximum. I'm obviously going to have a bonus features with the directors cut or something. The addition of the night footage brings a balance to my project, previous it felt a little lop sided, with nothing really depicting the city setting. I could have shot it anywhere. (except for in the documentation you see where i shot some of it)

A large proportion of my shots were taken in the city's parks.
Albert Park
Myers park
Victoria park
Which wasn't much of a conscious decision town planning seems to lead you too them as areas of interest. Albert has the hill of yellow leaves. Myers has a playground. Victoria has a skate park.

I've manage to draft out the video Wednesday, a 4:30 minute rough cut. with most of the area that needs refinement being the night section. transitions have been mostly when the camera points to the ground and goes black, allowing a easy transition with it even tricking me into not noticing a cut at times. There is also a swing section where it cuts from the swing to me pushing this breaks the video down into 3 segments. day, swing swaying between day and night , and finally night. I love the swirly blur of its motion. Ironically my camera had an update allowing manual video control which luckily wasn't available since the whole nature of this project was a degree of playful spontaneity, with me even not bothering to exposure lock whilst it hurtled down hills.

The shorts name is currently "Glimpses" but much like the fleeting moments of focus and clarity within this project it may well change before the end of this project.

The class dynamic seems to be shifting. With changes in comradery starting to become evident. and a segregation of those who leave early and those who stay later. the respect for some has lessend and for others have gained. although first impression were mostly right.
with the looming prospects of another crit iminent discussinons have turned towards the presentations and the one thing that seems lacking from the crits are critique. James seems to butterfly dance around ripping a project apart, and is usauly missing another tutor to support. one of the things previously heard from the year two's is I don't really like one of the tutors, with the sole reason being that he disliked their project. The class isn't confident enough to point out flaws. Is it worth giving a go? Or atleast asking more dificult questions.