Online submissions

well this thing has screwed me ! my file was too big (my fault) so i had to break it down and email it in in different parts, so now i think chapter's 1-5 have been submitted but my appendix i emailed to david downes might not be accepted and my title page, abstract and acknowledgements must just be lost forever !!

why couldn't we have handed in a bound piece of work along with this online submission ? i know about the Plagiarism thing, which i think is a good thing, but now the paper won't be read or marked as a whole piece as it was set out to be, surely ?

don't like the way i could be punished for a computer error, even if it was my responsibility for the file size, but because i've spent so long working on this piece of work i've got a feeling in the bottom of my stomach i could be fucked !

Power Cut !!

Student Living has decided we would benefit from a new kitchen put in half way through term time. I did not benefit from last week without a kitchen and eating take aways every night but this afternoon i started to really play about with the structure of my essay and made some significant changes to it. After a while moving chunks i thought 'i better save this as a new file' quite literally five seconds after i did save my changed the builder's cut off the electricity.

I would have cried......

Person

This evening i wrote a paragraph linking the work of Salvador Dali to James Joyce via Sigmund Freud.

Sometimes i surprise myself, i really do.......

Personal Research Project

Recently i have gone through and organised my research into specific areas ready to start my first draft of the paper. I'm behind my schedule at the moment but i've created a calendar that pops up every time i turn my computer on to keep me focused. All green, blue and red blocks telling me what to do and when.

Does the relationship between narrative and reality effect the audience's understanding of the arm form and how important is the value of narrativity in the representation of reality ?

My categories are as follows :

Television/Interactive Cinema :

Pop Idol
Interactive Cinema History
Tony Sherman's Dracula Unleashed
"Culture without Context" - American television consumption
Sex, Desire & Power - MTV Portrayal of women
Samuel Beckett Plot theory
"Blurred world of television"
MTV Influence in editing
Monty Python's dip in and out of character & audience interaction


Computer Games :

Writing interactive media using the rules of the english language
Designers use of the 'verb set'
Writing non-linear narrative
Ancient sources in relation to contemporary linear stories
Case study : Nancy Drew computer games
Storytelling in games
Full Control in computer games ie : Grand Theft Auto
Computer games to the silver screen

English literature :

Lawrence Stern, William Boroughs, Mark Z. Danielewski
James Joyce - Founder of the hypertext.
Hemmingway & Faulkner in relation to interactive text.
Aristole structure theory
Samuel Beckett - 'Dream state'
"Trappings of the novel" - Robbe-Gillet
Jean Baudrillard - Reality of the gulf war

Drama, Theatre & Arts :

Luigi Piranello - Six characters in search of an author
John Krizane - Tamara
Peter Brook - Experiments in reality
Herzog & Wenders - Influence on MTV
"Pulling film closer to theatre"
Vertov, Bunuel, Dali - Reaction against narrative

Film :

Rashomon
Memento
Dr. Linda Segar - Film & Narrative structure
Classical linear narrative
Cremaster Cycle
"In the digital age, what is real ?"
Jean Luc Goddard
Robert Altman - Nasville
Hyperdrama
Louis Lumiere & George Melies
Creating reality
Dardonne Brothers
Silent Period

Now all i've got to do is structure it into an essay......

EASY !

Moby

Well, well, i suppose it's never too late to change your mind on someone. I always thought Moby was a pretentious little idiot (Although i do like Play). But he's recently given away a lot of music for independent film makers to use free of copywrite ! i think that's a brilliant thing to do.....

so go here for free music for your videos

http://www.mobygratis.com/film-music.html

Personal Development Planner

Background :

My background is based around the lens. My secondary school was fortunate enough to have it's own photography department with fully working darkroom. Both photography and media studies were offered at GCSE level and i have been involved in the creative process ever since. After passing GCSE level i continued both courses into A-Level and achieved what i still think is the best piece of work i have ever done in the 'creative problem solving' module of my photography course, starting with a standard pin-hole camera and transforming it over many months into a pin-hole lens projecting onto slide film in the back of a camera. I did not drop one mark in the examiner's marking and would love to achieve the same at a higher level. In the summer after my first year in multimedia production i applied for work experience at the photography studios Venture in Coventry. As my sister working at the studios i was granted a few months work experience sitting in with clients on the shoots, taking the occasional picture and learning the techniques in photoshop to make everybody look beautiful. It was in this summer a handful of my friends in coventry set up a mixed media arts group called Dialectic. This group was started by a few friends as a way to showcase all of our work. It has been active for four years now and i have always used it as a way to show my work to the public. Both university work and other extracurricular activities. Being involved with creative people has allowed me to work on other projects including a road safety video for coventry city council and countless university projects for my friends. I feel my strengths are photography, cinematography and video editing. However, part of video editing is audio which is one of my weak points. My knowledge of audio has hindered some of my previous work and it has not been as well as it could have with the correct audio.

Transferable Skills :

I have completed the VLP skills record which can be found here

Learning Style :

My learning style record can be found here

Goals :

As i have stated in the previous post, last year i set myself the very basic goal of completely a piece of coursework i would be proud of in months to come. So far, i have discredited 90% of my university work. I feel that as i improve in the area, i am embarrassed by the standard of the previous work. I realise that this is the nature of improvement and as i improve i should see the previous work as a stepping stone to the standard i am at now. I always think that you are not learning 100% until you are actually doing it yourself. First hand. Most of my knowledge has come from 'learning as i go'. Of course, i have done tutorials of the software....etc.... but nothing can prepare you for the first time you are attempting a piece of work without the aid of an american voice guiding you with his mouse to which buttons to click. Going back to the 'learning styles' section, i sometimes wish i could re-shoot entire projects when i'm looking at them in the edit. I think once you start to edit together the piece of work you really see all the pros and cons . This may be a goal in the future, to do full run through, dress rehearsal shoot and film it. So i know exactly what to improve or add in on the actual shoot. Once again, i come back to these two words. 'Time Management'. Another goal is to really do my research on audio. Maybe really get to grips with audacity or soundforge. As mentioned in the post below i also plan to master 'Motion'. The possibilities are endless with this program and could really be the difference between marking classifications at the end of the piece of work. Also, i have recently acquired 'Apple Colour', a colour grading program. I rushed through a few scenes on my client project correcting the colours but if i knew the program better i could have done the whole film. This is another goal i am setting myself before 2008.

Your Insect's Worst Nightmare

That's that then. Just handed in the 6 week client project. I think it's my favourite piece of work i've done so far. I'll start at the very beginning.....

I had agreed with the costume shop at the top of alferton road to hold the spider costume as i would be coming in to collect it on Wednesday morning. Wednesday morning arrived but upon collecting the costume i was told that my card had been declined. After a short venture into town i found out that my landlord had cashed a cheque for the whole term's rent she said she wouldn't until my loan came in. Making my bank balance look.... well rather undesirable to say the least. Any penny of money i had was out of the window and £50 is a lot of cash to ask to borrow. (£25 deposit. £25 Hire) So it was time to get my thinking cap on. Many phone calls later i had the equipment to make a fly costume, albeit a crude one.

1 x Tennis Ball
1 x Black spray paint
1 x pair of tights
1 x black hat
2 x straws
1 x band of black tape
1 x black gloves
1 x set of bat wings !!

Crude as it is, we done it in two hours. I think it looks alright, but i can't even imagine what it would have looked like if my cash situation had have been better.





Jack was only too happy to don the tights and buzz around the set and for that i thank you Jack Brown.....



The filming went quite well. I had to slow things down a little bit as Tom and Jack were getting pretty aggressive. "Slower, Slower". Once again, i kept thinking about Matt Damon describing his Bourne fights as like "a dance". As i said in previous posts, my knowledge of lighting is not the best so i made sure i read though a few of the old hand outs of lighting a scene before we started shooting and i am quite pleased with the way the scene is lit.

I made a rough edit of the film and this is where the panic hit me ! it looked awful ! because the film is one continuous fight/dance, it was impossible to cut parts of it without compromising the film's continuity. There is a technique used to hurry scenes along where the editor chops out large portions of the take leaving in small, important frames and the audience's brain fills in the rest. One example of this is in 28 days later where a character gets into a car and it jumps from his arm on the door, to the slam of the door, to him with his arms above his head looking for the keys then to him hitting the wheel in flustration the audience does not need to see him reach, only see his arms in the air searching. Inspired by this i began chopping up the edit, concentrating much more on the pace of the advert instead of the continuity.

Here is the rough/bad edit......



At one point, i toyed with the idea of having the fly's point of view as an actual insect eye when finding the effect on Motion. I decided against it in the end for the following reasons :

the shot is too short and would throw the audience
it looked a bit tacky
didn't fit in with the feel of the advert

have a look.....



I am not happy with the audio at all. Audio is NOT my strong point nor my friend. I need to improve on it drastically. Although all of the sound you hear on this was done afterwards. I've tried to make it quite light hearted (think TV Series 'bottom' when the fly gets hit) but i'm not happy with it. Using 'Apple Colour' i tweeked a few off the scenes from really golden colour to match the same as the other scenes. Given more time i would have done them all but am only getting used to apple colour at the moment.... Maybe something to learn over christmas.

Aims over christmas :

Get to grips with Apple Colour
Master Motion
Improve my audio knowledge
Get some good footage for my live client project in New York !!


With the advert beinng semi-graphic in places ofcom could rule a possible water-shed or ban. Throughout my research i discovered that due to today's readily accessable internet and the way the public use video sharing sites, it is near impossible to keep 'banned' material away from the public eye. Take these 'banned adverts' for example. The first being for x-box :



I like this advert a lot, although it is quite graphic in places and could see how some people could be offended before the watershed.

This banned mastercard advert however, was soley made to be banned and gain notoriety and publicity.



If successful, the advert could grow into different fight scenes with different insects. Each getting more and more elaborate as the audience's familiarity grows.

Overall though, i am happy with my video. I've been very keen to get my housemates in to view it and give me feedback with i have been somewhat reluctant to do in previous years. Maybe my confidence is growing. Maybe i'm getting better. Or maybe i've done it completely wrong and am barking up the wrong tree..... All i know is this, if you look back on my older posts you will find one written on Monday 18th Decemeber 2006 and it reads,

"Once again, within a few views of my own coursework i don't like it anymore. I don't know if it was seeing everyone else's in the presentations or if i just over-analyse my work too much, But everyone's their own worst crictic aren't they..... Maybe 2007's new years resoultion will be to make a piece of work i actually like one month later...... we'll see what i can do."

I think i have accomplished that.....

I HOPE i have accomplished that......



You can see the difference in the 'golden scenes' from the rough edit to the final edit. I know what you're thinking, the WHOLE thing is golden David !! well, I mean the colouring in the shots not the quality of it.....

Client Shoot.....

I have put my client shoot off til Monday...... i think it's for the best now but will i come back to bite me in the arse when i want those three days back at the end ?

Stupidly Clever !

This was created with 987 polaroids and no computer compositing.

Brilliant !

SPP Setting Goals Presentation.....

My aim is to create a final year piece of work where the style and cinematography is instantly impressive. If this is achieved i hope to go on to work as a cinematographer hopefully working my way up become a director of photography. I feel that my knowledge of the lighting equipment is stopping me from achieving this goal. My past work has suffered due to my inability with the lighting. In The Holding Pattern, a piece of work from last year, a few scenes did not look as good as they could have been due this.

In order to gain more experience in this field i could try and lend my help to as many of my peer's projects this year, helping out on friend's work and offering to set up the shot. Without overloading my own work load, obviously......

People in the industry could help me achieve this goal and gain experience.

If i reach my goal i could be able to create work that is synonymous with David Sexton. One person who i feel have achieved this goal is Edgar Wright. Director of the television series Spaced and films Shaun of the Dead & Hot Fuzz. Below are some examples of his work. There is a consistent feel to all of his work no matter what style.







In order to achieve this goal i must continue with my reading into cinematography and continue to get as much experience as possible between now and the end of the year.

Costumes......

I've found myself a spider costume to rent for my shoot. It was looking more and more likely that i would have had to go with the bee costume after all the theatres i contacted couldn't help...... But now i think, hopefully, i should have a spider costume this week. Possibly filming on Wednesday...... The spider costume looks really good and i think a human fighting an eight legged spider will be quite funny. Although i mayb have to change my script to 'An Arachnid's Worst Nightmare' ?

I'll be in touch.....