Capturing December - Challenge Accepted

Whilst on Pinterest the other night I came across a photo-a-day challenge that someone had pinned. This challenge is entitled 'Capturing December' and lasted for the whole month and, being Christmas, had a Christmassy theme to it. I repinned it with a view to perhaps having a go at it. Now, I've decided that am going to take up the challenge! All of the photos that I take will be uploaded to my Flickr account and then posted on here with a little bit about why I chose that particular photo for the category of the day.

There will be no Instagram, but maybe a bit of Photoshop here and there.

So here's the challenge! Keep checking back throughout December to see how it's going.

Multi-platform in Action

Last night my flatmate and her friend stayed up to watch American election on TV, both of them being politics students. I stayed with them for a while watching it and it suddenly occurred to me that I was witnessing multi-platform viewing in action! The TV was on in the living, my flatmate was sitting on the sofa on her iPad and her friend was on the same sofa on her iPhone. Both checking Twitter and various other websites linked to the election.

It was quite a strange sight in ways as, in the Digital Media Cultures lecture especially, we often touch on second screen experiences when watching TV but to actually be able to watch it happen was quite funny in a way.

Britain in a Day - LJMU Playlist goes LIVE

The LJMU Britain in a Day playlist has now gone live on the site! Check out our selection for the playlist here.

To see what our involvement with Britain in a Day was all about, see the blog post from the time.

TV Studio - Recording

We've now had a shot at recording live in the TV studio! For our first group recording session we had to film a short piece for a children's TV show demonstrating how to make a paper aeroplane.

It was interesting to find that, once we got into doing our rehearsal, the whole camera script pretty much went straight out the window - but that's what happens in a professional studio sometimes.

For our time in the TV studio I will be acting as the Floor Manager and will also be operating a camera for parts of the shoot.

The first recording went down really well so that's given us all confidence for the big project and now it's time to crack on with the work for the real thing now we've had our practise run!



Image Composition

For the first assignment of year 2 in the module Beyond the Camera, we had to create an image composition using Photoshop.

I took my inspiration from the Liverpool Biennial art installation in Keys Court, Oded Hirsch's 'The Unexpected Guest'. Using a photo of this piece of artwork as the main feature of my composition, I wanted it to look as if someone had been in the lift when it had crashed through the floor.

I used 3 different photos in order to create my composition.

Cutting out the lift doors from my main photo I was able to layer this with the other 2 photos in order to create a realistic composition.

New Year...

...New modules, new building and so much more to learn. We're into year 2 of Media Professional Studies and the brand new Redmonds' Building - been waiting a whole year to get in here! Plus we get to play with the newest industry standard TV studio in Britain - £1.1 million worth of kit and I can't wait to get to grips with it.

I think this could be an interesting year so let's see how it goes!

Another Strange Ambition

This time it's more of an urge than an ambition - designing business cards. I've already designed my own so what I could really do with is a commission.

Graphic design is something which I've had an interest in since I had to do it as part of my A-level coursework and having done more of it in my first year at LJMU, it's something that I really want to get my teeth into and just do.

All I need now is a Photoshop license thrown in...or I could just get my colouring pencils out.

Quote

"What's certainly true, though, is that a film has a life of it's own, and that's what wins Oscars. You can get together the best director, cast, crew and script money can buy, and still come up with a bummer. No-one can forecast the organic growth of a movie in its shooting. And occasionally you get one that starts as a carrot and ends as an orchid." - Taken from Reginald Hill's 'Auteur Theory', a short story in the book 'There are no Ghosts in the Soviet Union'.

Liverpool SoundCity! Expo 2012

For Liverpool's SoundCity! festival this year I spent 2 days working as a Runner for the Expo down in the Echo Arena. This was the first year that the Expo had taken place and was an exhibition of lots of DJ, Music and Digital companies.

I know it's taken me a little while to write this post but I think that's because I'm not really sure what to write. This was my first chance to gain experience as a Runner and it's definitely a job that I want to do again.

I learnt a lot from this whole experience and I realised that I was capable of doing things that I didn't know I could. Even though I'm a media student the Expo was a great opportunity to get to know and network with people who work with sound, as that's the one of the areas that I tend to shy away from - I'm sure those contacts will come in useful one day!

I'd love to have the chance to be involved with more Expos like Sound City and really want to do this again next year - it's as much about the people you meet as it is the experience you gain and building up your CV.

Expos are also a great way to expand your wardrobe for free if you're lucky - thanks to Vestax and Denon DJ.

If I decide one day that the media industry isn't working out for me (or even between contracts) at least I now have a plan B - I'll become a professional van packer - I'm sure Prism and PMC would have me!

Britain in a Day

'Britain in a Day' is a BBC Learning project which aims at creating a film and a video archive using footage which has been shot by the British public on one specific day - that day being 12th November 2011. The project was inspired by Ridley Scott's film, 'Life in a Day'. LJMU, along with many other universities around the country, were invited to get involved with the project.

By getting involved with the project it gave us an opportunity to see what the BBC has to go through when checking crowd-sourced videos for compliance. This involved us each watching a series of videos on YouTube and going through a check-list of things that all the videos had to adhere to.

Whilst we were checking our videos for compliance we had to pick out a few which we wanted to put forward for our 'uni playlist'. This playlist is a selection of 10 entries which we liked as a group and will go live on the 'Britain in a Day' website over the coming months. It wasn't easy trying to decide what order we all wanted to videos to go in on the playlist but we got there in the end.