I has perminant blogage!
Hey ya’ll.
I finally got my WordPress blog embedded into my website.
I won’t be using this online WP anymore so, direct your feeds or eyes, bookmarks etc to:
http://www.rockbigdave.co.uk/blog
YES, I know the nav isn’t showing, I need to make me some java rollover imagery – that will come with time. 
But yah, see you all on the other side!
Blogs, blogs and blogs!
So today on my website front was rather productive. I finally got FTP working into my domain! Woot. 
It was my fault really due to the router but it’s sorted now. I’ve also installed WordPress on my website and eventually this blog will reside there. Heres a rundown of my blog’s over the interwebs.
WordPress – http://www.rockbigdave.co.uk/blog/ (currently at http://www.rockbigdave.wordpress.com/)
This blog will be my critical blog, where all the in-depth evaluations of my work and Uni course progress will reside; along with anything work related that catches my eye. As it will be my professional blog, I won’t use expletives unless quoting something and everything will be as detailed as possible. Hopefully, this will be better for me from the view of someone who potentially want’s to hire me. I won’t use the Queens English, I will still type how I talk otherwise you will get VERY bored VERY quickly and that’s not what I want on my blog. Plus, it shows my character and I belive that will aid me in gaining work or contacts.
Blogger – http://www.rockbigdave.blogspot.com/
This is where all the random pictures, funny stuff and swearing goes on. (No, not swearing for the hell of it, but if I want to rant then I am going to rant! ) This will link to my professional blog but this one will be more for personal use like advertising a video I just made that isn’t Uni related, websites or imagery I take/make and the likes. So, for a giggle, head on over there!
Twitter – http://twitter.com/rockbigdave/
This is a micro-blogging platform for anyone out there who hasn’t heard of Twitter. (And if you haven’t, what rock have you been hiding under for the last 6 months?!) This, that I’ve noticed, has become what my Blogger is now there for. If I see a video, I tweet “Haha, omg! xD *insert link here*” and it’s end of. The same goes for anything that inspires my work. Really I should blog it on my professional blog (Like I did before I got a Twitter account..) and say why I like it and such-like.
Now, to instantly recognise that these blogs are mine, they will all have the same theme. But this leaves me with a problem. WordPress looks to be a really had platform to ‘skin’. Which, for me not being down with the coding side of things, will prove to be a tough task for the blog to fit into how my Blog page currently looks on my website. This means me making the banner and modifying the blog post’s layout and imagery used to make it look fancy. Hopefully, it wont be a hard task, but knowing my luck it will be and will take a loooooong time. Untill I’ve skinned it to match my website, this web wordpress blog will remain my professional blog.
Twitter has already been customised as much as it can to match my layout. I’ve used the sunny cloud style from the homepage on Twitter (and my YouTube for that matter..) as it’s a more fun and vibrant style than the dark nighty skyline my blog page is.
Blogger should be a doddle to skin. I’ve skinned Blogger before when it was my only blog. Plus, the upside for me is that there are LOTS of theme builders online. I know that using them is kinda cheating, but I DO go into the code once it’s made to edit things. I can edit the code when I see it but I can’t create it from scratch. This should be easy to do and I hope to have it done asap.
So, blog wise keep your RSS feed’s pointing to my Professional Blog and my Personal Blog – and follow me on Twitter too if you think I’m interesting enough.
PPD progression.
Well it’s the day before presentation and I’m more or less ready to go. I wanted my website to be live for the presentation, but unfortunately I’m having problems with the new server; hopefully shall be sorted asap, but I will have screenies and the website on my pen drive. I also have a concept render of my business card’s and some very basic prototypes really which are physical, touchable business cards. My card’s will be semi transparent/frosted and one place I found (Unfortunately, in America… and $160 too expensive for my wallet) was http://www.plasticcardfactory.com/.
The closest I’ve come across in the UK for me were http://www.e-printing.co.uk/business_cards.htm but they don’t seem to have the type of card I want. I do intend on spending a bit of mullah on some very decent business cards but right now anything more than £20 is a bit too rich for me, also it doesn’t help most places seem to do 200 wads of your cards minimum, 25 or something is more what I need for now.
So, all that really remains is to nock up a CV for myself and get on with it tomorrow afternoon; I’m looking forward to it really.
Short and sweet, adios amigos.
Just how far behind am I currently?
Well, today is Saturday, it’s VERY nice outside and I and well tempted to hop, skip and jump to the park for some footy or get Tom out of bed and go on a bike mission, but staring at my Task Bark/Dock thing (Whatever Windows 7 calls it. :s) I noticed MS Word, Photoshop and MSN. All of which remind me I have work to do. 
(Except MSN :p) So, to try and aid my brain out, I wanna see exactly how much I have to do and in a rough time frame (from memory).
So, lets begin with the slog.
Personal Professional Development I wouldn’t say I am behind on, I’ve just spent a LOT of time trying to make something small on my website work how I want too and I think it’s a case of the perfectionist inside me wanting it done before moving on. Remember what your teachers said to you just before an exam? “If you get stuck on a question, leave it for now and come back to it once you have finished the paper.” Well, I never moved on, I always sat and gawped at a question until the answer popped out of the page and inked it self onto my page. Granted I still always finished about 30 minutes ahead of time, but it’s the principle. Other than my website, I’ve still to create a business card although I know exactly what it will be, just a case of me wanting webby done then do the business card. (It’s going to be my banner with David Norman in the cloud, cut out to the shape of the cloud and my details on the back. ) The last thing to make is a CV, of which I still need to do my own personal one actually, but anyway yeh, a professional CV for industry, not for Tesco or HMV. This is due in at the end of March! so 9 safe days do get it done in, 11 if I have to push it.
Critical Studies I severely need help on. We have to come up with our own essay this time and write a proposal, this requires us talking to James and getting an OK from him in case it’s absolute turd. I missed my time slot to chat to him a couple weeks back due to the Professional Practice brief and deadlines, so maybe I should email him or have a word with him after Tuesdays session. I have had an idea I wanna do, but not sure if I should use it for this 2500 word essay or leave it for the massive 6-8000 word Dissertation next year… The basic idea is “What are the effects of Piracy on digital medias. (Film, music, game, apps etc) and is it a good or bad thing for consumers and companies.” I guess the title would need renaming, but you should be able to get the gist from that sentence. So yeh, emailing or chatting to James is a MUST DO in the next week before I fail. Terribly. If I recall the proposal is due for before Easter then the essay is due in after Easter. Not a lot of time, but it’s do-able!
Enterprise… is wank but I have to do a thingy plan. It’s big and meh and very long winded and meh. Meh. Meh when it’s due in.
Major Project has started but Alex and myself haven’t done much on it as of yet. We’ve had the idea to do Leeds Ink for ages now, and this is the perfect time to get it done! I’ve been thinking intro sequence lately as that would be a key part of the show, the main research we’ve done so far is looking at how Miami, L.A. and London Ink is all filmed and shot and what their about. I think me and Al have both agreed Leeds Ink will be more like London Ink when it comes to the general aura of the final production. Title sequence however will be unique, maybe based on a the current *city name here* Ink style but will obviously have a bit dollop of Leeds Sauce all over it. 
Other research I’ve done so far is just generally looking at peoples home made tattooing videos and ones that are kinda like the Ink shows but not official. Even though ours wont be an official show that will air on MTV each week, maybe it could sprout into a YouTube craze and do a show each week/month then who knows. Look at CollegeHumor, internet sensation now on MTV! Win. But yes, lots more to be done before anything can be finalized, so I shall blog about this more as more happens. This isn’t due in until the end of this college year, so that’s early June time. That’s a lot of time really, and I don’t wanna sit and wait around until the last minute to work on it. Once Entershize, Critical Studies and PPD is out of the way it’s all MP, and the beauty of Leeds Ink is it isn’t all filmed in a day, it’s filmed on many days at many hours and voice overs aren’t done on shoot so it’s a gradual progression building up to an amazing end.
Creative Writing elective is going steady. Can’t really be behind on it unless I don’t turn up to the latest session and as it stands I have been to the latest session. I’ve not yet done the homework but I do intend on doing it maybe while watching TV or something cause then I could take ideas of characters from the telly and add them into mine. Inspiration from things we see. We have until the end of May I believe so not far off now, and we have a small project at the end which looks to be rather entertaining, so I’m not as worked up about this as I was about my Photography elective last year.
*THIS ISN’T COLLEGE WORK, BUT SOMETHING I DO WANNA DO SOMETIME SOON* Video Blog 3 HD. If Premiere wasn’t so bastard-like I would of had this edited last week, I could use the Mac’s at college but if I was to sit there editing a vlog together, I would feel like I am wasting time where I could be doing something more productive and college inclined. Granted everything baring MP can be done on my laptop at anytime, but it’s still the principle of the feelings. I’ve had a lookie at the footage and it should be enough. There are LOTS of things I wanna put in now on reflection but I guess that’s due to me knowing what I wanna say but not knowing how to say it. I always get that on vlogs. On a blog I can write a lot then add or remove if needed (which is rare to be fair…) but with video I have to know what I wanna say and where, when, why etc and maybe even shoot stuff I wont use, that way I will have stuff I can leave out but lots of content for a short vlog.
I think that’s everything. Only got other personal errands to run really and maybe turn the Xbox on for the first time in a good few weeks.
Creative Writing – Journal 2
You may notice that there isn’t a 1st journal, this is down to the Professional Practice brief taking up majority of my time and many, many things were let slide and forgotten about.
So, were technically into the 5th week of creative writing as it currently stands. The first two weeks Char was ill and the 3rd week we had our first lesson. I missed the fourth, again due to Professional Practice and I literally forgot it was on! Then we come to this week.
So, I’ll start off on week 1.
I didn’t know what to expect with this elective if I am honest. I had a rough guess from the name of the course and I was quite far off. Our tutor is Char March. “She is well-known as a performance poet and her work has been published widely in literary magazines and anthologies in both Britain and the States. Grassroots Press (17a Bainbrigge Road, Leeds, LS6, England) has published four books of her poetry. She is also an award-winning playwright for radio and stage, as well as tutoring in creative writing, performance skills and reader development initiatives.” (Click the text to go to the page.) Straight away I could tell this would be a a lesson where I should be on my toes. Our first task was to continue on from the a beginning of a sentence she give us and write anything that came to our mind. The idea is to write, write and write more without thinking. This is something I can generally do alright, I ramble on enough in these blog’s so I have a bit of experience. We were also asked to go outside and write down different things we can hear, see, smell, sense, feel and taste. When we got back inside we were given a poem about a spider being trapped in a glass and asked to write a response from the perspective of the spider. I attempted a poem but failed due to me working out the rhyming words first and then making sentences to end up on that word. This meant I was working backwards a bit and the poem didn’t really make sense.
I can’t remember much more of that lesson if I am brutally honest, so shall go onto the next lesson.
I didn’t attend this lesson as I was working.
3rd Lesson started off much the same as the first. We did another free writing task and this time we were all given a different opening part of a sentence. I didn’t manage to write as much this week as I did initially and I don’t know why if I’m honest, maybe I was thinking too much when it came to what I was writing, although the idea is to not think about what your writing. Char has her own rules when it comes to lessons, one being once we have written, to read it out we must get up and stand in front of the others and read out our own work. It’s quite a weird thing for me if I am honest. I’ve done presentations in the form of slide shows and playing my video work in front of the class before and never have I been as nervous as I was when I had to stand up and read out what I have just written. It’s like when you text into one of them ‘txt to screen’ shows on the music channels. You text in your message and after a while it might pop up on screen for a bit. Or it’s like waiting to hear your numbers being read out on the lottery, at least for me it’s the same feeling. I know, I am strange, but over time I hope to master it. Anyhuu..
After that Char taught us about character building. The concept she portrayed to us was as if they were icebergs. You only ever see a bit of the iceberg above the water, but bellow the water is a vast hunk of ice hidden by the water. The idea being that the part above water is the stuff you show about your character, Name, Age, Race, Employment etc etc and there stuff below are other random things right down to minisqule things such as how they might order their CD collection, if they love DVD’s or prefer good old VHS’s and such. The idea being you only show the small part, but as the writer you must know everything about your character to be successful in a way. After this we did ‘hot seating’, the idea of this was for someone to take the seat and be given the basic info about a character. It was up to us to ask questions to try and find out what the characters secret was. An example was the character was a 40 year old builder called Paul, that’s the basic info given but everything else was conjured on the spot to give this character more depth; depending on what question was asked. Eventually his secret was he wanted to create stain glassed windows (Like in Church’s). We then split into groups of three and did the same within our small group and had a chat after about who our characters were and their secrets and stuff. I was Sheila Walkers, a 40 single mum who worked in a café. The rest was made up as questions were asked.
We were also given home work this week, and from the sounds of last weeks home work (which I think I would of done quite well at or at least did my bloody best at!) is just as good. We have to develop our characters or, if their shit, make a new character. We then have to put them into a setting where they would feel very uncomfortable. As Sheila doesn’t like control (due to past experiences with men) and doesn’t like her mother (due to her mother being a strict Catholic, of which Shela rebelled against as a kid) some setting of which she hasn’t got the highest authority will suit, no idea where yet but we shall see. Or, I will make a whole new one which will be better! As already it is a bit hard to think of something for Sheila.
Webbie webbie websites!
So today after filming random stuff on a camera and writing up my evaluation for the ITV2 brief, I set about working on my website for the PPD brief.
As I close Dreamweaver tonight, this is how the currently worked on pages look.
First off, thankies to Sam again for the help on the grass at the bottom! Also thankies to Dreamweaver for not crashing Explorer.exe today.
I toyed with the layout a little today. Between banner and content it was just a mash of endless plain colour, so I decided to box my content so the content didn’t blead into the page and also did a nice curve on the tops and bottoms. Maybe not a huge feat for a lot of you, but for me this is huge!
I’ve come across a blog which has something I want! If you go here and look at the post titles, they have an image around them. This is something I want to do for my portfolio page when it comes to rain splashing off of artwork, but for my blogposts a cloud round the title text will look mighty nice. I can’t seem to work out how I can put an image around the title. If the text was always there I’m sure it would be easy, even I know I could do that, but for something dynamic being pulled in by FeedBurner, it r hard.
I’ll work something out, but as of now, the above is what I have to show for a lot of stress and dedication.
xx
ITV 2 – Evaluation
Evaluation
I’ve not written one of these for a while, so bare with me.
Alex, David, Thomas and Myself just finished the ITV 2 Ident brief for YCN Online, it was a long but short brief this one. Initially I wanted to do the Feel Good brief as I had several idea’s for it, but after having a word with my tutors and laying down ideas for the ITV 2 brief, I stuck with it. Straight off Alex, Tom and me wrote down quite a few ideas, we had one major idea of a 3D TV breaking out of a shop and racing or chasing a man home, another also major was the man fed up of the TV not listening to what he was doing (Pressing the remote to change channel, etc.) Around this time, David joined our group which was nice as I have wanted to work alongside Dave on a brief. After re-reading the brief, these idea’s didn’t really fit with the deliverables so we read over it with a fine tooth comb (A highlighter) and pointed out all the key elements and started from there. We settled for the idea of the ident’s being recorded in a pure White environment with elements of the cast or props being colourful. Also, our main aim was to make the logo itself to be more interactive than a static object on the screen.
In past ident’s, shadows would be cast and bent around the ident as if it was physically there when recording, this is in a way interactive but we wanted to add a fun and more physical interaction between actor and object. The brief stated the ident should take place in a day in the life of a 24 year old so we jotted down things 24 year olds would be doing. Working, moving out/moving house (as they would be leaving Uni at this time), music, games, socializing and more. We ended up choosing music, working and moving out. Thankfully, we have a rather musical group. Alex can drum and Tom can play the banjo and guitar; all of which we story boarded as idents. Other talents within the group was rather high too, I can edit in Final Cut/Premiere and After Effects, Dave can make 3D models and animations, Alex is good with a camera, ideas and editing and Tom is rather good with editing along with sound design. So all in all we had a rather well rounded group.
Dave, Tom and me hunted out places for filming. We knew we wanted an all White space so we checked out the theater in Blenheim Walk. It was a White breeze-blocked wall behind the projector screen which was good but had a Black lip at the bottom (Kinda like a 12” big skirting board) of which will not be easy to edit out when it comes to full body shots of cast members. We then had a look at the infinity curve in the Photography department and instantly said this is what we need. A few weeks later we booked the room out but come shoot day it turns out we shouldn’t really of booked it due to a crit being in there and also the tutor was being monitored or something by an external source so everything was a bit hectic. Due to that day (on the day we booked it) being the only free one it was a week from deadline and we couldn’t re-schedule for another day, so thankfully we were allowed to use it and the tutor took his class into another studio they have.
Filming on the whole went well, if we were to do this project again the whole process of shoot day I would change. I wanted to put the ITV2 logo into some tracing paper on the screen of the camera, this way we can act around it and know where we can and can’t position things. Unfortunately we didn’t do this so everything was very educated guesses of which all 4 of us put in. Another thing would to be more true to our storyboards. Alot of the work was done via word of mouth or someone telling another what it is were doing and going off that, I think next time we should stick to our storyboards like glue and also give everyone a copy along with a run down so everyone is in the know. I, personally, didn’t see a reason for us to hunt out actors for this ident. Other members of the group would of like to have them but I feel that when it comes to the music, Tom spent a good while working out what to play on both banjo and guitar, so when it comes to writing down the notes or telling other people what to play would of just been a massive pain in the rear.
Overall I liked the project. I took on the role of time managing and editing. I think I wanna get into editing when I finish the course, so I jumped at this position. I’m also, usually, very good with time management. Everyone does slip a bit and maybe on this project I did. Some things were out of hand such as booking times for the infinity curve and Dave’s friend not being able to make the day we booked, so some things were cut out. One main thing cut was the ident with a 3D removal man. Dave did spend a lot (and I do mean a lot!) of time making that van. Unfortunately, we filmed it and what we filmed physically wouldn’t work with the 3D Dave did. One MAIN thing for next time we shoot, if we shoot another ident would be to plan exactly what a camera would see and what angles we will use. I hoped to plan shots before shoot, but most were worked out on the day and this wasn’t exactly efficient when it comes to placement of the 3D and other elements.
