CDME1001 Communication Skills in Digital Media - Week 9 (25/11/2011)

This week in communication skills my group set about to finish planning and filming the short film assignment we were given last week called "A Chance Encounter"

We had pre booked the camera and tripod and had originally planned on meeting up on a Tuesday to finish the storyboard and treatment but ended up not doing it despite my going to the place and time decided to find no one around.

Regardless we managed to get it done although crudely.

We set about filming it using my flat room as the set, we couldn't figure out how to attach the camera to the tripod so for the shots that warranted it we just stuck it on with masking tape.

Personally I feel that the team was unprepared and somewhat unorganised, we really should have put more thought into our story board and treatment and should have asked when we were unsure about what to do as we had some difficulty figuring out what a treatment even was.

I have to say I don't think the idea we chose best reflected the idea of the task and seemed almost like a random nonsensical film with no real plot. I felt we should have brainstormed more on ideas instead of what seemed like use going for the one that seemed the easiest.

I don't mean to sound egotistical but I did like my idea of a man finding himself in an unfamiliar place as we works his way in deeper to the place he finds that he is being pursued by an unseen monster. I would have ultimately have the film end with the moster catching up with the man and having it cut to black.

Sadly it was deemed "to difficult" by our group but I think it could have been relatively easy to execute, using the university hallways for the "unfamiliar place" and having the "unseen monster" simply be me holding the camera moving in a monstrous fashion, sure it might have been a little dark but that how I like it :).

In addition I think we should have ask the technicians on how to attach the camera to the tripod before leaving with it as some of our scenes did seem somewhat wonky due to the camera being poorly aligned before being taped to the tripod. Also when it comes to the actual filming process I think we should have planned it out a little better so as to include all the group in the process.

Well thats all for now, thanks for reading :).

CDME1001 Communication Skills in Digital Media - Week 8 (18/11/2011)

Ok so in my friday lesson we started off by presenting the web pages we created last lesson, after that we were given the task of in the groups we had be assigned for the final project to create a short 4 to 5 minute film on the subject of our choosing.

We spent most the lesson coming up with ideas, I had the idea of a man finding himself in a dark world and is chased by a mysterious creature, but we eventually settled on the idea of a Man having a strange dream.

We aren't aloud to edit the video so we must film our shots in the order they will apear in the film.

Near the end of the lesson we boked the equipment needed for next weeks lesson which is when we decided to begin working on the film and worked on a short story board of the events so we had a better idea of what exactly would happen.

Thats all for now, kind of a short one I know, well thanks for reading :).

CDME1001 Communication Skills in Digital Media - Week 7 (11/11/2011)

This lesson we got together in our groups and talked about our final project for the module which is to rebrand and pitch a product.

We all decided to rebrand "Hai Karate" aftershave and body spray.

We did a little research such as looking up sales adverts and comments on how the product did.

We were then told we would each have to do our own research and rebranding (so I'm not really sure how we are supposed to work in groups then but still) s we all decided on what kind of marketing campaign we would each try, I chose a paper campaign which I presume is to do with posters and billboards etc.

After our break we were given the task of creating the design for a basic website using Microsoft PowerPoint.

We were supposed to work alone but the hand out said to work in groups of 2 so I did with one of the people in my main groupe.

We decided to make a make a website for the artwork of Leonardo Da Vinci and chose 3 of we best and most famous art for our 3 linked pages we chose the "Mona Lisa", Leonardo's Self Portrait and the "Vitruvian Man".

We chose a pretty cool and classy page layout and text font.

Over all I think we did pretty well, we both pulled our own weight and managed to design a website that both looked classy and was easy for navigate as well as being able t get a little basic info for each picture on their respective pages.

Well thats all for now, thanks for reading :).

CDME1001 Communication Skills in Digital Media - Week 5 (28/10/2011)

This lesson was pretty boring as we had to have a Health and Safely Risk Assessment lecture, now I'm all for being safe and everything but I have trouble paying attention to a 4 hour lecture on the subject.

Although we did get to see a gory clip from one of the Final Destination films.

Anyway about half way through the lecture we were split into groups and given the task of finding a place in the university and filling out a risk assessment on it.

My group did pretty well, each giving ideas on what could be dangerous and how bad it could be.

And thats about it for now :).

CDME1001 Communication Skills for Digital Media - Week 4 (21/10/2011)

This week we had to hand in our tasks that we were assigned. The task was to create a 2 to 3 slide presentation  of a digital media artifact.

Unfortunately I was a little confused as to what exactly we had to do and thus was unable to do it in time. I however was able to whip up at least a quick plan of one at the start of the lesson but I should REALLY make sure I understand what we need to do for each task before the end of the lesson.

Anyway here is what I did in the end for that task.

Slide 1 the intro.

Slide 2 the premis of the product and who it would be for.

Slide 3 how the product would be made.

I really should make sure I understand the task so I don't repeat this mistake again.

After that we were told about our Major Project for the module (I don't know for sure if this is THE major project for the module but due to the submission date it seems likely). The task was to do a pitch lasting about 20 minutes for one of the pre-selected products using one or more of the pre-selected mediums, this will have to me much more professional then the task done for homework and will take multiple month to prepare. For this task we will be working in groups between 3 and 4 people but we will be assessed individually. The due date is the 9/1/2012.

Finally we were given a task for the lesson in which we had to use Photoshop to edit a picture in specific ways.

Here is the result of my groups work a long with an explanation of exactly what we had to do.

Here is the original image we had to edit.

The first thing we were asked to do was to crop and straighten the image.

Then we had to lighten the image.

We then had to view the Histogram for the image.

We were then told to Colour Cast the image.

Next we used the "Dodge" tool on it.

After that we used the "Sponge" tool.

And finally we Sharpened the image up.

Over all I feel that my group worked pretty well on this task, it was only 2 of use working on this (our 3rd member was doing the task by himself on another computer) but we both took turns on it and made sure we both did our fair share :).

CDME1001 Communication Skills for Digital Media - Week 3 (14/10/2011)

Before the lesson I went to meet my new "Note Taker" in the uni reception (I'm disabled and need support in class). In today's lesson the tutor started off by asking us to consider any media we might have seen over the past week that we particularly liked. We were then told to come to look out each week for some digital media that we like and to come to class with some ideas of exactly what you liked about it and what made it appeal to you.

We then sat through a power point presentation on the history of communication only covering key milestones ranging from the earliest cave paintings 32,000B.C. through the advents of early alphabets, forms of printing, photography, the telephone and culminated computers and macs in the 1980s.

We were then given a task to do 1 hours research an invention or product of digital media using the resources available in the uni library only (we were not allowed to use computers or the internet), My group decided to research the history of Video Games which thinking back to it wasn't a good subject to go with purely due to the lack of research material available on it. We were able to find 2 books that at least somewhat matched what we were looking for and were able to get some note down from them however we didn't go over the research in depth when we returned.

Finally after we came back from researching we talked about the task from the previous lesson to create a "Learning Log" (this blog). I hadn't done this previously so got to work starting it all off (mostly just doing the template and getting it to look decent).

And that's about it for today, I'll continue making posts relevant to my studies such as more module updates and my progress on tasks and work set for me. and now I have to e-mail this to my tutor (the one for this module) so goodbye for now :).