Pics yo!

So, today we had our second film session. We enlisted the help of photographer extraordinaire Phoebe W to take some shots of us in action... here are most of them now, there might be a few more later.

I think that it went fairly smoothly, at least it did for the parts I was able to attend. It sucks that the only day we are able to film is wednesday, when I have Maths Methods in the morning, and Physics in the afternoon! However, I was there for around an hour of shooting at lunch, and before school to help set up.




This was the basic set up for the set, although we did tweak it a fair bit, and brought in 3 more set of lights.. not to mention a big desk and two chairs! don't have those pics at the moment though.
More of the same. The set looked really excellent through the cameras, these stills don't really do it justice.
This is the set after some more lights plus some props have been added. Thats Daniel J in the picture, he was acting for us today, in the part of Neil.

Just another pic of us getting the set ready

Daniel L setting up the HD camera

And again..

The DDR Productions team!

It's good that things went pretty smoothly today.. I was expecting the worst, but it seems that we didn't go too badly. I guess we'll see how good it was tomorrow when we get to have a look att the footage.

We have another film session planned for the same time next week, where we are hoping to wrap up the filming.

I hate actors!

It's been a while since I made an entry in my journal, so I guess now would be a good time to fill everyone in!

We at DDR Productions spent a few days in the holidays trying to organise ourselves in preparation for our first filming session. There was a hell of a lot of things that still needed to be done before we were ready to shoot. We still needed to organise lights, (we needed a lot of lights!), and we needed to build the set. Dan got the wood to constuct the sets from the Margate tip, and I went around to his place to help construct the set. I ended up driving out to the eastern shore to try and pick up some lights with Daniel Livingston, but his uncle wasn't home, so we couldn't get lights from there. Luckily Dan S managed to get some lights from his dads work, plus we used some lights from the college. Unfortunately, I could be there for the actual filming day as I had an unavoidable commitment, and the date of filming couldn't be changed.

Another drama we had in the days leading up to filming was that one of our two main actors had to pull out due to other commitments, which left us feeling mighty stresed out just days before filming! We were really disappointed, mainly because this person had agreed to act in our film previously, and because he pulled out so close to the filming date. In the end, we managed to find someone else to fill the role, but this person was more of a last resort, as we didn't know how well he could act. As it turns out, he couldn't act very well, and he didn't even look at the script until he turned up for filming. Don't get me wrong, we all really appreciated that he could help us out of a tight spot, but I guess we all would have appreciated a heads up on his lack of previous acting experience, and a bit more of an effort to learn the script.

I've seen the footage that we got from that day, and I have to say I was very impressed with how the set looked. I'll try and get a clip or some still shots up for you, it actually looked a lot better than I thought it would.

Since that filming day in the holidays, we've come to realise that it's no longer realistic to expect to complete the film - a combination of a lack of time, coupled with the logisctics of some of the things that we wanted to do. While this is disappointing for all of us, it's just no longer a realistic expectation. We've decided that we will focus instead on trying to get the "oblivion" scene completed instead, which it seems will be a big enough task by itself.

Another complication which has presented itself in recent weeks was that fact that another of our actors is unable to film on weekends, which presents a problem as it was pretty much the only time that we would have been able to have got a large slice of filming done. As it is approaching the end of the year, I can't miss out on any of my classes at this point. So it presents us with a problem. At the time of writing, we have a room in A block booked for our next filming session tomorrow. At this stage we're all set, but I'm sure something will screw up between now and tomorrow. Judging by our previous luck, it is a certainty. We've changed on of our actors around (the one that could act was basically not available when we needed him anyway), which may or may not turn out to be a disaster. I guess we'll have to wait and see. Let's just say that we all have our reservations.

Until next time!

Not done with yet!

Well, yet another week has passed, and I'm pleased to say that we're having some very pleasing progress. We've now finished the script, and other membes of our team have been scouting for filming locations, in time for shooting in the holidays. One thing I know that we're all a little worried about is the fact that we haven't yet had our actors read through the script, which is obviosly an important step. Obviously, it's best to get the actors involved as early as possible. I think that we should be able to get it to them this week, and hope that they like what they read...

So far, we are on track for our main production goal at the end of term, which was to be ready to film in the holidays. We had previously discussed how filming in the holidays was basically as late as we could leave it - any later and we would have had to abandon our ambitions to film our project, and instead try and polish the script as much as possible and use that as our final assesment piece. At this stage we shouldn't need to do that, as we are still sticking well to our proposed timelione for the rest of the year.

I guess for the rest of this week we will be busy preparing ourselves for filming in the holidays. I haven't had a chance to discuss the specifics with my other team members at this stage.

Oh, and by the way, I do plan to put up at least one scene of the script for people to read if they wish... or some of our other work, anyway. Got to get it of Dan's laptop, so i will put it up when I get the chance.

oh...

Last week our group got a very scary wake up call, I don' think that any of us had really grasped how much time our project has taken up and how much time left. We have since come up with a revised timetable for the production of our project:

Pre Production

Week 21: present week-rough draft scripting-research
Week 22: expected rough draft script completion-edit read through of script-journals
Week 23: Final edit of script-good copy completed-research
Week 24: Location scouting for scenes. script reading with cast.

Production Phase
Week 25: Holidays-final cast adjustments-Film oblivion & montage shots
Week 26: Holidays-film alleyway & Scene3, Scene 4 conclusion

Post Production
Week 27: Post production editing using equipment at the shouzen-adobe premiere CS3 pro
Week 28: Final edit-tweaking-start distribution stage-journal week 29: Project completion deadline. additional support documents & clips

I've copied this timetable from steelydan17's blog, as it's the one that we had agreed on last week during class. I've cut out the last couple of weeks though... we don't have 32 weeks, danny!

The main problem with leaving this amount of time for all that work is that we have very little room for error. Basically, if anything goes wrong, we'll be very stretched to get everything done. I think in one of my earlier posts i mentioned that we wanted to leave a ,ot of time for any problems that we may come across... unfortunately, some things have been a fair bit more challenging than we had expected/anticipated.

Because we're now getting tight for time, we've decided to continue our work on the project in our own time, after school on tuesday for another couple of hours, plus other times whenever ( i think Thursday). However i hope i can get home tonight, it's supposed to snow to 100m tonight. I think we're substantially above that here at the college! Also we have our project submission document due next week, a lot of work to do there as well.

I think that's pretty much it for now, hopefully Dan can get here soon so that we can get on with our work!

Work continues...

Well, it's been a while since I updated my blog (again!). I guess the main reason the rate of my posting has decreased is because progress has been a little slower than we expected. Looking back to when we orginally began writing the script for this project, it seems amusing to think we could complete the pre production stage so soon (i think we gave ourselves until the beggining of term two). However, I am confident that we will be able to conclude the script writing phase soon, and begin filming. I believe that we have organised our actors for the project, so once we complete the script we will just have to work out the locations for filming before we can begin.



Yesterday the two Daniels and myself had a group meeting/script writing session, and we got a lot done. I think that we're all starting to get a sense of urgency about the project, as the end of the year isn't that far away and we still have a lot of work to do.



I've also resurected my del.icio.us account which I made about a month ago, it's probably about time I added some of the websites which I've visited during the course of my research during the year (especially seeing as I'm getting assessed on this!!). I'm also currently doing my self-assessment for DIM. Hopefully I'm not doing too badlly!

Apart from all of this, I've just finished my exams for the MYAP period, and now I have a few days off before heading back to school.

I think thats pretty much it, until next time.

Well, it's been a while since my last post on this journal. We have written the first four or so pages of our script, and also done the background info on all of our characters. We have made a change to how we want to begin our film, so we will have to re-write the beginning of the script.

Last week we made a presentation to the rest of class detailing what our project is about. Unfortunately this ate into our class time a little, so as a result we are beginning to fall behind our pre-production schedule. Hopefully we should really get going with our script writing now so that we can give ourselves plenty of time on filming, post production, etc.

Last week or the week before we held a team meeting with a voice recorder so that we could use that as documentation of our planning and development of the film. We uploaded the sound file to Danny's laptop, so perhaps he will host it on his blog if he remembers...

Well, I think that pretty much covers it until next time.

Word Up.

A Quick One...

Just a quick one today, basically we're continuing the script writing stage of our project. Everything is coming along nicely, hopefully we should have the script finished within the next two to three weeks, all things going well.

Today Roger gave us a presentation about Mentoring, which was OK i guess, but I didn't think it was as useful as some of the other presentations we've had.

Well, I'm going to get back to script writing. Until next tine!

Script Writing

Today was a productive day in interactive media. We made some good progress on the script writing front, with the first two scenes well on their way. It's pretty cool to see the script coming together. We ahve given ourselves a deadline for the completion of the script, which I believe is late July/early August. I think we are well on our way to meeting that deadline, which should hopefully leave plenty of time for messing around later in the year when something inevitably goes seriously wrong.



Also, Roger gave us a short presentation abouot concept maps. It was certainly a useful presentation, as I can certainly see myself using these to help with our video project. Having just read Daniel's blog, I imagine we might be working on one or two of these in the not so distant future!

Thats pretty much all for this week, and I would say that my post will all be pretty short and boring whilst we are in the scripting/pre production stage. Hopefully thing will get more exciting once we begin shooting!

Stuff happens...

After yet another week in interactive media, things are finally starting to come together. We have started to draw up the initial storyboard and should hopefully be finished soon, which will allow us to start writing the script. Also I've signed up to del.icio.us, and now I'm beginning to research the genre so that I know some more about what we are attempting here. The whole cyber punk genre is fairly new to me, so I guess it's good to gain some more knowledge before we get deeper into this project.

On other news, I actually got an overseas hit on my blog! Someone from Oslo, Norway found it using Blogger Search, using the keywords "gas mask". Thats pretty strange, if you ask me.

Apart from that, I dont think that there is much else going on; hopefully this time next week there will be more to report about.

Progress

Since my last entry, there has been a fair amount of progress on the project that I am helping Dan with. In our last lesson we held a pre-production meeting to discuss the idea and start to try and sort out a storyline. Basically, it's going to be produced as a "cyber punk" film. We did record the audio from the meeting on my phone. The quality isn't great, and unfortunately Adam and Kate (from another class) can be heard discussing a road trip to New Zealand in the background, but for the most part it's OK. I might post it up onto my blog, when I figure out how.

This morning I helped Dan shoot another film for his Art - Video Production class. Thankfully my acting skills weren't particularly tested, as I was wearing a gas mask, and all I had to do was stand in front of the blue screen.

I find that helping out other people with their video projects is a really good way to keep yourself excited and inspired to continue creating videos.

As I am writing this, Dan is drawing up the initial story board. Hopefully, there will be some more progress to report when I make my next entry.

Until next time.

Another update...

Well time for another update on my blog... not a lot has been happening recently, much to my frustration. Last week we missed a lesson because the school was shut for the entire day due to a power blackout, because of "hurricane force" winds. The power was out at my place until the late morning, which made things a little boring! I did try and use the time to try and search for blogs written by people doing short film type projects, however I didn't have any luck. I guess if i was less fussy I would have found some blogs to comment on/follow, but mostly they didn't seem to interesting at all.

Right now I'm commenting on people's blogs, as is required by criterion 2 and 3 of the course. It's pretty interesting reading about what everybody else is up to in the class, especially all of the other guys making short films. Some of their ideas are pretty cool; I can only hope that my ideas live up to theirs!

My plan for world domination through this blog seems to be failing at this point in time... I have only had six hits on this page, and I'm pretty sure that 4 of those were me :P

Anyway, thats pretty much all from me. Until next time...

Back from Holidays

Today Roger gave us a presentation about our assessment and what we need to be doing. I found this was very helpful and a good reminder of some of the things that I need to do now and later on in the year.

Roger also showed us how he used Site Meter to see who was viewing his blog. I thought that it was an interesting tool to use, so I decided to use it on my blog as well, just out of curiosity. It seems to be pretty easy to use. I have it all up and running, so it'll be interesting to see if I get any overseas hits.

Apart from that, I didn't get to much done today... the lack of computers was frustrating. And then once I found one, it was really slow and took ages to boot up.

Thats about all I have to report about at the minute. Hopefully I can start work on my own short film pre-production soon.

Last lesson before easter :)

Well, here I am wondering what to do for the next hour before I am officially on holidays. I have little to do at the minute, because I am basically waiting to have some spare time so that I can seriously consider what I want to do for my own personal project, hopefully this will get done in the next week.

I also joined up to the Glassbiscuit Developments wiki, and had a good look around. It's impressive how much work they've managed to get done. It makes me feel a bit slow!!

First post in ages!

Well, it's been quite a while since I updated my blog for my Interactive Media class. I have agreed to help Dan make a short film involving the line between the Virtual world and reality, whilst I am still trying to come up with an idea for my own personal project.I know that I am interested in making a video, but I need to come up with an idea for my video that I think I will want to work on for the rest of the year - there is nothing worse than coming up with an idea only to lose interest in it half way through the year - especially if it is too late to change your mind. I am now aiming to finalise my creative idea for my project in the easter holidays, and hopefully get some preliminary storyboarding done as well. Once i have completed my storyboard i might upload it to this blog so that everyone can see what I'm doing.

Apart from this, I've been trying to play Second Life, with mixed results. I tried to play it at home but it seems that my internet connection is a bit slow to be able to play it, which was annoying. Then I tried to play it school, but it wouldn't work. After a week I managed to play it a little bit, but it kept crashing on me so I got annoyed and therefore I am going to give it a rest for a while.

I've also attended a number of various presentations by Roger and Dirk during regular class time. These have been interesting and I'm sure they will invaluable in aiding the way I think about this course, my future project and the way I go about it.

First Week in Interactive Media

So I've just had my first week in my Interactive Media class at Hobart College. As part of the course we've been told to sign up to a whole bunch of website & blogs, so that is the reason for creating this blog. This is the first blog I've written, so I'm not really sure whats going on at the minute.

So apart from signing up to various website I've been trying to think of some awesome ideas for my major project. Unfortunately I haven't had many ideas worthy of mention on my blog yet. Hopefully by the next time I write I will have a better idea of what I want to do.