Carousel Week

Media Day

a part of my college course in photography is called the carousel, this means that we have the opportunity to have a go at the other creative subjects they offer. The 27th of september was Media, fortunately we got to use the film studio! My college is very lucky to have all of the equipment needed to create whatever we want from short films to adverts.
Our brief was to create an advert for a Bic pen! I came up with a pitch to create a parody of a lynx advert using the pen as a way to attract the love intrest. Surprisingly, my team won!

Because my team one I was assigned the role of director over the whole production. This really gave a me a feel of how it would be like in the industry!with only an hour to create a full one minute advert I can confirm the stress levels where high.
Here’s a rough run down of how we created the ad!

• First we roughly wrote down the script and how we wanted the whole add to look
• we where then assigned roles:
• director and floor manager
• the 4 cameramen
• boom mic, sound and script
• lighting 
• actors
• camera control

secondly, we began to test everything together to se how they would all look together. for example we tested what the establishing shots would be like and moved the lights to suit the shot. after doing this for each shot we did a test run of the whole ad, everytime one thing didnt work we would stop and talk over headsets about how we can improve it. because of the amount of run throughs we did we sadly ran pout of time to actually film the full ad, so we did the nbest half that everyone knew!

this day showed me how much work goes into one production and how much time is spent on one second of film! it also showed me how much pressure is put on the director and how one wrong move from ANY of the crew can drastically change a final production.

Designer For A Day

For the last week of the carousel we visited the graphic design.
These lessons gave me a further understanding of the programs we use in photography and how some quick and easy cheats on a keyboard can really help and improve my work, it can also improve the speed in which you work.

• On the first day of graphics we did typography. Typography is arranging type to make it legible and easy to draw, from this i learned how much thought goes into one word and how many different types of typography there is. 
• firstly we took photos of objects inside and outside that look like letters and we made the alphabet, heres some examples:

• secondly we tried to do our own versions of typography with rulers and pencils, its harder than you think! heres my version:
• we also leant how to analyse a proper magazine cover, this would be helpful for someone who wants to be a photographer and editor for a magazine. we learnt the different ways in which a photographer or editor can layout the page to look visually pleasing. for example, rule of three, golden spiral, golden ratio and diagonal ratio.
  
  
  
  
• after creating this we went upstairs to the computer lab where we learnt new tricks with keyboard cheats and we created posters with our photos we took earlier.
• on the second day we learnt more advanced ways of illustrating on the computer. we used in design and adobe illustrator! we traced over our original ideas for typography and we used many different tools. we learnt how to fill, line and trace over the typography in adobe illustrator.
  
  
  
  
  

Art For A Day

• on the second half of the first day we learnt how to make prints with a printing press. we took inspiration from the collages we made in the lesson before and chose various fabrics with different patterns on them.
• with these fabrics we cut them into shapes and placed them how we wanted on a piece of paper. we then learned how to use ink and cober the paper correctly and then put it through the press to then come out as a whole new piece from just some fabric and paper.
• to make things more interesting we re printed over the already pressed paper with the same fabric and printing over it again too make new patterns over the older ones. like the collages it was inspired by.
• i found this helped my understanding of prinmaking and at, maybe i can add some to my photos?

• on the second day we where bak in a normal art rom and we where given our collages again however this time it want for inspiration.... this time we where told to cut up our collages into abstract shapes and photograph them. 
• we could use sharp edges and different patterns to create a new way of looking at the paper.
• fortunatley for us the room next door had a projector so i used the light and rainbows it created to make my photos really pop.
• this lesson taught me that i dont have to find something that already exists to photograph, i can ake it!