Intro to the Making of semester 2: week 4: 20/2/18: Statement of intent and structures to essays:

This week in Intro to the Making of, we would be doing some final touches to our statement of intent for our video essays and introduced to possible structures for us to do our essays in and some tricks in Premier Pro that could be of help to us in the future. We went around the class hearing others ideas and some of them were rather innovative whilst mine was a huge research project. Annabeth then drew our attention to general guidance in a making of essay the essay in the brief would be approximately 10 minutes in length and there were different structures we could follow. They are as follows:

Structure 1:

• Intro

What was produced and in

what context. 1min

• Background

Examples-history- practitioners .

1-3 mins

• Prototyping

Behind the scenes, testing and

learning new processes. 1-3 mins

• Final Outcome

Show and tell. 30 seconds-3 mins

show prototype in full/clip.

• Conclusion

Show and tell reflection, evaluation

using Gibbs reflective cycle 1-2 mins

Structure 2: Research essay based:

• Intro

What it is about.

• Methodology

What sense are you looking through?

• Technology

Process explainer 

• Technology/process

Explain the process used.

• Case study 1
• Case study 2
• Additional case study or our own response
• Conclusion

These structures were designed to teach others about the topic much like our magazine articles or this essay. We were advised to leave the intro to the last element. There were several different ways to document our essays such as time-lapse/pixelation videos, screen capture: real time/ time-lapse quick time x, fly on the wall (filming on location), scan sketchbook or photos for rostrum animation idea generation, talk to the camera,utalising premier pro, Maya 3D play blasts.

Annabeth showed us some examples of work she did utilising a feature in Maya called Bifrost creating a liquid effect in the object. Whilst doing our statements we were shown a trick in Premier pro for using videos of others work in our essays. The trick being in the code on the share option in Youtube then, opening the network stream, then accessing the tools and media information to open the video in the VLC player. We could then open it in Premier as we saw fit to add our edits in the time code to alter the speed. Annabeth

cautioned that this didn't work for all Youtube videos. 

In premier we learned a trick about creating a pause in the video by finding the frame we wanted to pause and using the razorblade tool to split it into clips and then by adding a frame hold in the frame hold options it creates a pause. This was an interesting element to take away from this session along with the knowledge of a youtube video called The Origins and evolution of stop-motion. 

Feelings:

From the start of the session going through our plans, I was getting a little uneasy and wasn't certain that I'd chosen the right topic for my work. When showing us the structures I was still in doubt over my topic and was thinking of changing to something else such as creative thinking for animation. I asked a second opinion from Annabeth and she said that I had chosen a good topic and that I should use the structure for research. I began to feel ideas in my head even the idea of using green screen and time travel themes in my work. Looking at some of these tricks and elements of Maya and Premier I didn't know that some of these features even existed and made me want to do some experiments over the week. 

Evaluation:

I would think that many good things happened in this session, such as asking for a second opinion on my essay topic issue before I decided to switch as I needed a professional opinion on the matter. However in retrospect I should've checked my other idea options before I decided on one, this would've made things easier.  

Analysis:

In hindsight Annabeths subject on the research structures did seem to make sense but at the same time were awfully complicated to follow. I would possibly have to ask for further details on the subject, so that I would have a clear idea of how to better structure my essay. I already had a few ideas for both sets and use of the maker space for building a possible time machine device, which Annabeth found to be very creative. In terms of the methods in Premier I would need to conduct further research to see if they could be of any use to me.

Conclusion:

In conclusion I found today to be very insightful and it has given me a clear steer in my research essay to educate people in the history of animation. I possibly would've asked in more detail about the structure to see what would be included in terms of what I intended to research and what the case studies would need to include. Otherwise I believe I now had a clear steer on the essay and have a few ideas for a approach.

Action Plan:

Looking on what I've learned from this session I would think I have a lot of work and reviews to do. I will look over the presentation if placed into blackboard to review and see what details will be required before I start anything. I will also look into some of the tricks with Premier and see if it could be of use in either Uni or my own projects. In terms of the presentation I will consider drawing out some ideas for the backgrounds and what to discuss in my research.