Celebrity Blogs

Now I am beginning to learn a bit more about these on-line journals, or so called 'Blogs', I decided to do a quick search on the web to find out what other people have been posting about. Whilst doing a quick search on the internet, i found a few interesting Blogs created by celebrities. Most interesting, was the 'Webcameron', set up by the leader of the conservative party, James Cameron. David Cameron has cleverly decided to set up a video Blog to show his thoughts on current politics, as well as what he does in his family home. The video below explains a bit more.





Update:

I found this funny video on the internet which is a compilation of Camerons Web Blogs with the music from Justin Timberlake. The editing is also quite clever! (Thought i would just add that to further justify putting it on my blog!)

You Tube Video Response

We have been asked to post a video response to a video on you tube. I have decided that i will post a video response to the video shown below.



The video is called 'How to build the best paper airplane in the world' and simply shows how to build the plane, but does not show how well it flies. I intend to build the plane and demonstate how good the plane really is by posting a video of me flying the plane. I was never any good at making planes so it should be interesting to see what it turns out like.

1st Experience with Dreamweaver, JavaScript and HTML

In our interactive narrative seminar today, we learned briefly how to use Dreamweaver. Before the lecture I knew very little about Web design. Programming was always my weakest area, and one I found least interesting. However, now I understand the world of HTML and Java a little more and I’m realizing that it is not as difficult as I originally thought. I even managed to create these:

Move Mouse Over Me!

Idea Generation Presentation

Today we presented our idea to Jools and Dominic Shaw. To create the installation we made a PowerPoint that allows the user to select the different slides to represent each clip. There was a total of 12 slides, which had images of the item, as well as an audio clip and subtitles for the death and hard of hearing.

As a group, our only down fall was the fact that some of the members of the group did not take part. Last Monday, everyone agreed to meet up after the group lectures so that we can pull together all the work and work on the project. Having only had a week to complete the project, it was hard to keep contacting everyone and asking them to help with the project. Therefore, anyone who turned up to the meetings had the opportunity to get involved and work on the project.

The group which was responsible for taking the photos (which included Sophie and Aaron) produced some brilliant images. We couldn't include all the photos in the final PowerPoint; however, we were able to select the most suitable ones. Aaron was then responsible for editing the photos in Photoshop.







Me, Les and Romanda were then responsible for creating the PowerPoint over the weekend. We spent over 6 hours, over two days, creating the PowerPoint. We had a lot of trouble capturing the sound, as there was a lot of background noise and the room had a slight echo. With several adjustments and editing, these problems were solved.









Overall, I had a lot of fun creating this PowerPoint. I have learnt a lot of new skills and have met lot of new people, who I look forward to working with again. Jools and Dominic were very happy with the final product and gave us 15/10 for our efforts. Next week we are going to have a discussion on team working which should be interesting.

Image Meaning and Compostion

I was asked to place an example of a personal possession or a photograph of an object that has value to me in terms of both fine and applied (design). The object i have decided to use is a Plasma Light which i brought on holiday a couple of years ago.




Functionality

The main function of the plasma light is decorative. The light could also be used to lighten the room, although it is not very bright. The best feature is ability to react to sound. The lamp can change colour and speed depending on the tempo and volume of music being played.



Aesthetic Beauty

Its appearance still impresses me now. I often put the lamp on at night to help me relax. The lamp looks more impressive when it is played with music as the lamp will change appearance to complement the music similar to a disco ball.



Communication

I brought the lamp whilst on holiday to Tignes, which is a ski resort in France. I went there when I was 14 with my classmates from school. The lamp will always remind me of the holiday and most of all the people I was with, some of which I have not seen for a while.

Decorative / Entertainment Value

The lamp helps to brighten up my room and acts as a focal point which helps the room look a bit more stylish. I am still unsure how the lamp works, which adds to the entertainment value as the lamp, is unusual and rather mysterious. I still play around with the lamp and try touching it with different objects, just to see what happens, which is slightly sad!


I have replied to Rimante's Blog (http://rioreflectivejournal.blogspot.com/) and left a comment on her object, which is a folding fan.

Image Processing - Using Photoshop

In todays lecture we were shown how to use Adobe Photoshop. I am quite familiar with this software as i used it alot last year for my A-level graphics course. Last year I used Photoshop CS2, whereas today i used 6.5. I didn't notice much of a difference to be honest.

To familirise myself with the software, which i haven't used for a while, i decided to experiment using various functions we were shown in todays seminar. I experimented using the brushes, magic tool, selective colour, shadows, blur, healing brush etc.

Narrative Meeting 1

Today, three of the narrative group members met up in the Glo Bar, Me, Sophie and Aaron. We tried to contact the others but were unsuccessful. I got a reply back from Nick Hannibal and he said that he is unable to make it due to family problems. The other two in the group are Neil Jones and Kamal Hussian. We will hopefully find the others soon.

Back to the meeting, we discussed possible options for the two minuet narrative. Sophie had come up with an idea to make a story about a pair of shoes that goes on a journey around Nottingham.

The outline of the story is that a guy gets a new pair of trainers for his birthday and the old trainers get neglected. The old trainers escape and explore parts of Nottingham. On their journey, they meet a pair of sexy stilettos (which they share a passionate kiss), and are then interrupted by a woman who has returned to take the pair of stilettos away. Separated, the old trainers go in search of the stilettos, before finally finding himself outside a shoe shop which loads of new shoes in the window. They then go into a dream, recapping early times when the shoes were clean and new. Desperate to become new, the trainers try and clean themselves in a pond, but unfortunately sink.

We both like the idea and began to come up with some ideas of how the film is going to look and the target audience. We decided that rather than use recorded video, to make the film different, we thought film should be shot using stills and edited in Photoshop to give the style of film noir. The term film noir (French for "black film") focuses on black and white images\video. A modern day example of a film that uses this style is ‘Sin City’. We hope to create similar style to this. Here are some images of film noir.

"The Big Combo" demonstrates the visual style of film noir at its most extreme. Image courtesy of Wikipedia

"Sin City" is a modern example of a film that uses the film noir genre. Image courtesy of Wikipedia

We would also add captions and animations to enhance the narrative. The story would be aimed at 5-14 year olds, which I personally thought was too young, as young children may not relate to the film noir style and the love scene and the suggested death at the end may also no be suitable. Sophie however, justified that the children will like the comic book style and there would be expose of bright colour that would capture there attention. The story is also simple which would help young children to understand. A lot of kids animation nowadays, such as Sherk and Toy Story, are aimed at kids, but are very popular with adults who will go to see the film with there kids. Therefore, the older audience will hopefully enjoy the style of the film and also enjoy the humour of the story.

We will try and contact the other members of the group so that they can have an input as well. E-mails have been sent so we hope that we will hear from them soon!

Trent Media Meeting

As I really enjoy working with different types of media, I decided to go along to the Trent Media meeting today. Once there, we were told that there are three different types of media, Fly FM (Radio), Platform (Magazine) and Trent TV (TV obviously). All three sounded really good so I ended up putting my name down for all of them.

Trent TV is new, and is still in the preparation stage. They require an array of different people including camera operators, sound technicians, editors, production crew, writers, and generally anyone with program ideas. I thought this would be a good opportunity to see how different equipment and will give me an insight into how a TV crew operate.

FlyFM (official best show in UK Student Radio, as voted by BBC Radio One and The Student Radio Association) is desperately trying to go global and broadcasting on-line. It will be re-launching in December.

And finally, Platform is currently running and are looking for writers, photographers and reviewers. I really enjoy watching films, so I put my name down as a reviewer for the film section of the magazine.

The presentation was held by Andrea Vassallo who is an editor for Platform. The Trent media sound like a lot of fun, and not only is this an opportunity to meet new people, but I will hopefully learn more about the different types of media and how the operate, which will hopefully help me with my multimedia studies.

Interactive Narrative

The project for Simon involves creating an interactive narrative created using HTLM and JAVAscript. This is a slight concern as i have never used either. Still, we were shown examples of previous narratives (http://lab.constellations.co.nz/) and it looks like good fun and hopefully i wound find the world of web design too mind boggling.

We were shown one example in our lecture today which shows an example of intereaction using flash. Although the narrative has no real story, the principle is there.

I have already began to think of some ideas for my project. My idea involves being able to interect within a small area. I though it would be good to base it in me room, in my halls, as this is where i sadly spend a lot of my time at the moment! The idea would be that you have to navigate round the room and find objects by opening draws, looking under the bed etc. You can also interact by turing items such as the TV and the Lamp on and off just to add to the interactiveness (if that is a real word) The idea is to make it as if you are there and you have complete control of the surroundings.

Ideas Generation

We were all asked to bring in an object that we had found on the street for today’s lecture with guest speaker Dominic Shaw. The object I found was a bike reflector. Once at the lecture, Dominic Shaw asked us to get into our seminar groups and then come up with a story using the items we had found.

The other items we had found include:

MP3 Player
Bottle
Beer Can
Lighter
Receipt
Chewing Gum Wrapper
Conker
Filter Tips
Tram Ticket
Train Ticket
Cinema Ticket
Little Man Tate Ticket

As the majority of the items were related to drugs or alcohol, we decided to tell the story of a person’s journey of abuse. Unfortunately we could find a way of using my item. We came up with a brief working storyline. We join the character the day after the night before, he as had his heaviest night out yet and as awoke with a banging, banging hangover. He remembers that today is the day he is going to be seeing his son for the first time in over a month and needs to get himself looking presentable. He is already late and is desperate not to let his son down, by not turning up or having to cancel. He sets about trying to get himself motivated and begins a mad dash to get his journey started.

We then planned to make the story interactive, where the user will have to put the story together by watching 11 short videos on 11 different plasma screens and then decide which order they go in. There is no right or wrong route.

We were then told that we will have to pitch our ideas to Dominic next week. Are initial thought was, "where the hell do we get 11 plasma screens from". We soon came up with the idea to create it using PowerPoint. We all split up into different groups. I’m going to be part of the editing group using PowerPoint. It’s going to be interesting to see how this turns out.

Short Films

In preparation for the Narrative project i have looked at a few short films.

I have looked at short films under several different genres including drama, documentry, music and animation. The ones i found most entertaining however, were the 'comedy' films.

Nigel Bristow short film 'Hide', about a man who, after finding several beautiful women dressed as deers, decides to follow, dressed as a stag. The film is rather bizare at first and has a humourous twist at the end.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/filmnetwork/A14136347

I found more short films at, http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcthree/filmmakers/gallery.shtml. The film 'The Ball' was very interesting. Lasting for 90 seconds, the film is about a man who finds a bouncy ball and decided to bounce it, which causes it to go out of control. Although the idea is simple, it makes an entertaining short film. Some clever effects are used when the man swallows the ball to make it look like the ball is bouncing inside his body.

Another short film I viewed was 'Cannon Fodder', which is a 'thriller' style, classical narrative about a young couple, who are violently attacked in their home. The film begins with a clever twist that helps build tension and suspense towards the viewer. The story follows a classical structure as the lives of the characters are changed (quite dramatically), there is conflict, as well as casualties, questions are (vaguely) answered and the film follows a linear storyline.

Multimedia Presentaion

My First assignment is to create a three page presentation to show to the rest of the group about myself. I have decided to use PowerPoint to create my presentation as I have experience in using the software. The software is also available on several computers throughout the university and there are several help tutorials available on the VLP to assist with the creation of the presentation.

The presentation must include details such as:

My Name

Area of interests (work & play)

Favourite Bands

Favourite Designers

Favourite beer... Etc.

One example of a presentation we were shown is this one below:

I found an interesting video from a guy called Russell Davies about PowerPoint. Russell offers some of his advice and ideas on how to improve a PowerPoint presentation. Although the video is aimed at people making big set-piece PowerPoint presentations, some of Russell’s ideas were quite helpful. In section 5, Russell offers some clever ways to shorten PowerPoint into fewer slides by using short sentences and images.

My First Post

This is my first post on "Blogger". I am new to so called 'Blogs', and have never used them before. To make a start here is a little bit about me. My name is Paul Kacarevic and I am a first year Multimedia student at Nottingham Trent University. I am from Coventry, but have decided to come and move to Nottingham so that I can enjoy the independence of university life, as well as enjoy a more exciting night life!

I studied English, ICT and Graphic Design at A Level. I decided to do the Multimedia course as my interests are in film and television as well as design using IT. My strengths are mainly in design, using programs such as Pro Desktop and Photoshop. I also have a bit of knowledge in video editing and web design.

As part of an on going task, I have been asked to produce an on-line journal, showing developments and ideas I have made on projects that I will be working on throughout the year.