PPRD Essay
Personal Planning, Reflection and Development Year1
First year at Arts University College Bournemouth has been an eventful and have gained a lot of skills.
The first unit that we started off doing was the Principles of Computer Graphics, which was the Night Out project. For this I produced a stop motion film and added effects in After Effects. The idea of it was to show the getting ready stage of a night out and for me this is the most fun part, instead of just showing the “getting drunk” stage of a night out I also changed the speed that it planned and put some music to it. I did a lot of brainstorming and writing down word and expanding from them words to come up with my idea, I then started looking and drinking awareness adverts to get a feel of peoples reactions and movements. When it came to adding the effects in, I had a look at colour physiology to get a feel of what each colour represents. This was the main section of my project when it started developing it and it started to all come together. The only problem that I came across was that when I imported the footage in I cut it up in sections to rearrange them, i then wanted to speed the footage up but where I cut them into pieces I couldn’t do this all at the same time so had to do them individually, which took up quite a lot of editing time. Overall I really enjoyed doing this project as I like going out so had a lot of knowledge and experience.
The second unit was Principles of Sound and Video Production, which was the Viral Video project, which we worked in groups. There was a lot of research involved in this as there is a lot of viral videos on the internet nowadays. I had to get a clear idea of what a viral video actually was. I was looking at videos on YouTube as this is the most popular site for viral videos. I was looking at pranks, April fools and TV shows like Trigger Happy, this is because we was planning on doing something funny that will make people laugh as in our research it came across that the reason a video becomes viral is because it makes people laugh and they send it around to their friends. As we were doing out planning and storyboards we came across a competition to make a Blu-Tac Advert. We then interlinked this to the projects as most adverts are viral due to the fact that they are watched by thousands or even millions of people. So we watched all the previous Blu-Tac adverts that have been made to get an idea of what not to do as we wanted to do something g different to what has been done. In the brief it said that we had to use Blu-Tac in the advert, we decided to do a stop motion video of Blu-Tac being moulded into famous places around the world. The idea behind this was that Blu-Tac can be used to do anything and anywhere. The problems we had was with the filming as it was stop motion it had to be done in really small steps for it to run smoothly. Also we was making 3D models so had to make them stand upright. We had a play around with the Blu-Tac beforehand and didn’t realize how hard it was to work with. So we filmed it and it didn’t turn out as well as we thought it would do, so we developed it by changing it so that the models would be flat on the page and to make the Blu-Tac into tiny balls that moved along to join to model, this worked a lot better but it just meant that we would have to reverse the footage once imported into Premier Pro. I learnt a lot of interesting information doing the research and did enjoy the project up until it came to producing it. If I was to do this project again I would not do the Blu-Tac advert and would change my idea completely. I think this is because there is so much you could do to create a viral video I would of liked to do something a bit more fun.
Another project we had was to create a 3D animation which came under the unit Computer Graphics for Animation and Film. For this we had to produce a animation or video in 3D. I was really excited about doing this project as I haven’t really worked with 3D before so I was experimenting using Maya and After Effects as these programme are both 3D. In my research I was looking at shapes and very abstract pieces. I was also looking at colours and how the shapes move in time with the music. I looked on YouTube and posted a few videos onto my blog that gave me some ideas. In the brief it also said that we had to create our own music to go with the animation, so as I have no experience playing or making my own music I used the software called Garage Band. This was really fun to use as you can experiment a lot with different instruments and tempos. I wanted to create my own Drum n Bass style, which I managed quite well. For the development process i was looking at Audio Visualisation and light strokes. I then taught myself how to make light strokes in After Effects and animated them using a tutorial off the internet. I had quite a few problems with this unit, as I wasn’t at all confident using Maya and the idea that i wanted wasn’t suitable for that software. Also when i was animating to make it 3D in After Effects I had to put a camera and make the camera move to change the angle. I made a cube and put the light strokes that i made onto each face of the cube. This was a good effect as the light strokes movie was playing whilst the cube was moving around. For me this was the most challenging unit for me so far as I was not very experienced with it, but made the most of it and manage to teach myself a lot. I also had a lot of help from Jason. I could of improved this by having a lot more going on rather than just a cube moving around the screen, I felt that it wasn’t my best piece.
The whole class is working to get on a project called Short Form Video, we are creating a short drama called Hostage. Our tutor Phil Peel wrote a basic story line of what he could visualise happening. In the drama there are 6 different groups: Lectures, Students, TV News, Police, Terrorist and Documentary. I am part of the Students groups, which there is not really much going on. It’s basically just four main students who will be talking and then there will be others that will just be in the background creating the scenery. There was a lot of planning involved as we had to collaborate with all the other groups as some of the scenes had the others groups involved or they had to film the same section. The idea of it was that each group films their each part and then for all the footage to be put together to create a drama. I think that the whole idea of the brief is a good idea but wasn’t too sure if this was going to work out as well as it sounded. I wrote out a script for the scenes, which had to be detailed as this is the main thing for the person directing to visualise how it’s going to look, so it had to include dialogue, time of day, actors and actions also a description of the scene. Any props that are involved also need to be included, and a detailed description of what is going to happen. I must admit i didn’t find this unit that brilliant as it was mostly filming and editing which is what i am least interested in doing, but it was a experience and would do it again if the opportunity came along.
Our Final project of the year was Post Production this was the unit i was most excited about. It is the kind of thing that i would to be able to do in future. I have made a floral animation and filmed a bit in my garden which I will then put the animation on top, I also going to change the colours and brightness and add some effects to the animation. This have been my favourite project of the year, although I have found it the hardest to come up with an idea for. I am pleased with my overall outcome of the project as I put a lot of work into it. I found it harder to manage timing as I went on a 3 week placement in London. Which took most of my time up.
This year at AUCB has been very eventful and in some cases a real life changing moment for me which is why i have decided to take a gap year.
(JUST A NOTE IN THE ESSAY I HAVE ORINTED THERE IS PICTURES AND REFRENCES)
