Reflection 8

Creativity, Communication and Collaborative Practice
UoS Intensive Workshop · Fouth Week

Fourth week, final week, submission week!

By Malaysia time 4:30pm, our works must reach UoS lecturers and tutors' hands.

So this is the week where we meet up quite often to discuss and amend and compile everything.
Video, digital assets including designs of posters, flyers and banners, personal case book.
That is the reason I am staying up the night to write for this now.

Seriously, I didn't get enough sleep for few weeks already to rush for every assignment.
We are not only having UOS module but also a tone of TARUC assignments.
Unfortunately, all the submission deadlines are almost at the same timing. Urgh.

Basically, what I do for this module in this week is keep urging and urging Graphic Design mates to complete sketching.
Unquestionable, I have created the Facebook page as well as Instagram account but I have nothing to post up.
I seriously understand how busy everyone's life is but this doesn't mean that people understand mine as well.
I admit that I was a little bit angry yet disappointed when Graphic Design mates asked us to help them in searching for images.
I am always willing to help out but not be totally relied on. This is the task which is supposed to be done earlier but not a last minute request for help.
Anyway, I did it, the research about UOS.
However, I don't see any appreciation. Aiks.

Kay come back to the progress.
Yes, we have finalised everything just now in the evening and we are all trying our best to beautify the outcomes.
The comments of the works I will leave it to the professors.
What is passed is a past while what has been done, is already done,
At least I know I try my best.
Remember the process is a GAGGING FOR ADVENTURE of Team 321 (Three To One). :)
Enjoy it!

Research: Swimming Pool, Gym & Spa

Research: Think Lab

Research: Chapman Building (6th Large Lecture Theatres, Cafeteria, Study Area)

Research: Lady Hale Building (Law School; Study Area)

Research: Centre for Rehabilitation & Human Performance Research Gait Lab

Research: Digital Performance Lab

Research: Media City UK Studio Space

Research: News Room

Research: Radio Room Journalism TV Studio

Research: Salfood at Allerton Restaurant 

Research: Crescent House Cafe

Research: Salfood Hospitality Cake Platter

Research: Salfood Hospitality Sandwiches

Research: Salford Fashion Week

Research: Salford Fashion Week

Preview.

Discussion on final editing.

Double confirm.

Facebook Page: www.facebook.com/GaggingForAdventure 

Instagram: https://instagram.com/gaggingforadventure/ 

Sneak Peak of Gagging For Adventure promo video.

Full Video (Youtube): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gy0ezN8MSzo&feature=youtu.be

Reflection 7

Creativity, Communication and Collaborative Practice
UoS Intensive Workshop · Third Week

Third week, productive week!

So on Monday itself, the shooting started punctually at 2pm.
Weng Sheng has more knowledge and experience in doing lighting thus he would be controlling lighting while I would take the photos.
However, things did not go well. What went bad was the lighting console. We were unable to pre-set the console so in the end, I needed to step in control floor all the way to keep pressing on the lighting button. Weng Sheng was the one left in studio floor to direct both talent and me so that we can shoot high quality photos.
The talent that we found is our classmate and he is really experienced and talented in acting.
I appreciate both Weng Sheng's and talent's efforts very much and I like their professional attitude during working time.

After done the photography shooting, Weng Sheng passed the files to the Multimedia Design mates so that they could start editing the files earlier.
Our group kept updating each other about the progress, especially Weng Sheng and I, we were like urging them to show up their works.

Besides that, we both also planned to finish the life action shooting by this week.
After discussed with each other, we made decision to have shooting on Friday.
Since we could not book extra time for using mini studio, hence, on Thurday, Weng Sheng has confirmed with our classmate who is also taking this module, to use his house for our shooting.

On Thursday, we had a Skype session with Mr Mark and Mr Johny and that was the time we got our last feedbacks on our works.

On Friday morning, Weng Sheng and I together with our talent again, reached the shooting location around 7:45am.
We needed to make sure we could finish shooting within 2 hours because we all had class on 10am.
Again, Weng Sheng was the important role because he was the director and cameraman whereas I was the production assistant.
There was one thing I learnt from Weng Sheng which is his creativity.
In order to create a beautiful foreground and background, he randomly used a water bottle to create the effect.
This is what I never tried before and never seen before.
Meanwhile, thanks very much to the friend who lent us his house and he tried so hard to help us in setting up the shots.

It was glad that we finished shooting in time. After that, Weng Sheng took the task to edit the videos before passing them to Multimedia mates to do final editing while I in charge to create social media sites for our campaign.

Last practising while Weng Sheng did his last checking.

I was concentrating. xD

Short demonstration session before we started Skype meeting.

Skype meeting.

Skype meeting.

Video shooting: Thanks to our talent, Ivan Tai and our helpful friend, Daniel Geng Geng.

Reflection 6

Creativity, Communication and Collaborative Practice
UoS Intensive Workshop · Second Week

Second week, it was going smooth.

After having a short discussion among the group members and also by referring to the posts from UoS lecturers and tutors as well, we got a clearer notion on what we have to do for this module. Then, we had distributed our works based on the timeline set by last week.

In the first three days, Weng Sheng and I were struggling to think of a complete storyline, as in we needed to know the exact number of scene and shot that we are going to shoot. This process was good to me because I got the chance to understand Weng Sheng better (although we are classmates in TARUC but we seldom interact with each other). I like the exercise of people exchanging and sharing thoughts, ideas,and creativity together with one another.

We had combined the techniques of video shooting and photo shooting, as what we were trying to imply were live action and still photography. We decided to use live action concept to show the beginning and ending for our promo video and still photography with chroma keys because there are the parts where we need buildings of University of Salford as our backgrounds. It is impossible that all of us fly over Salford and take the photos right.

After last decision is made, I was in charging to book the mini studio for shooting and the date is next Monday from 2pm-4pm. Furthermore, we have discussed about the talent and ended up, we decided to contact our classmate who has quite a lot of acting experiences to help us in this project. We first thought would be rejected since the talent is also taking this module thus he will be very busy soon, but finger crossed, he managed to be our talent.

The only photo I've taken within the week: So that I can call up the lab assistants whenever I need help.

My Value

Easily feel down recently.
I feel that I mean nothing to everyone.

My hard works do not seem paid off.
My efforts do not seem appreciated.

Especially when my close one does not support me.
Especially when my close one laughs at me.

Maybe they think compliment could be fake.
Maybe they think encouragement could be pointless.

Or actually I do not deserve it?

There are people who always stand by my side no matter what.
Just one or two, more than enough.
However, people are not often free to cheer me up, maybe that's what makes me lonely.

I should start appreciating myself.
I should start seeing my own value.

I am unique.
I am straight-forward.
I am masculine.
I am real.

I admit that sometimes I am perfectionist.
There are problems of being a perfectionist.
But I have to clarify that all the expectations are on myself.
I am not putting stress and pressure on others.

I understand people do not like human likes me.
I understand people who stand by my side are trying hard to accept such a me.

I thanks for everyone who sees me as human being.
I bow for everyone who treats me as human being.

My value is very high, too high.
Sometimes it causes people who are not at my level hate me.
I am not lanci, I'm just trying to be confident.
My poor little confidence is hiding somewhere black hole deep in my heart.

I have strong ability.
I am busy to motivate others so I forget about myself.

So here is the time to share my positive energy with myself.
I believe I can heal myself!

I am like the air.
You don't see me, you don't feel me, you don't think that I am meaningful and important.
But once you lose me, you will find out how much you need me, my importance, my value.
You will regret but sorry, it is too late.

Stay positive.
Stay strong.
Love life.
Peace life.
=)

Reflection 5

Creativity, Communication and Collaborative Practice
UoS Intensive Workshop · Day 5

It's the day to harvest what we have planted in this whole week!
Meanwhile, it was sad because it meant to say goodbye to all the professors soon...

Here goes my group with Mr Johny, Mr Mark and Ms Gemma. 321, cheese!

Broadcasting Level 6 students with Mr Robin. Opsss he said he is camera shy but wait...

... Dinosaur?! We are in Jurassic World!

Describe what I did:
Presentation!!!
Since the early morning, I could see every friend of mine felt stress because we seldom do presentation in front of a big crowd, I meant in a big space like lecture hall full with people.
It was even worse when all the people in the lecture hall were not as close as our classmates in TARUC, we all just had one week of interaction with each other.
Yes, lots of butterflies in our stomachs.
Anyway, every group has done the best!
So proud to see us finished all the missions in a week!
#Missions_Complete

The process we have gone through within the week.

What went well:
No matter how tension we were, we yet successfully presented what we purposed to the audience.
This process is like an adventure for us since we have learnt, explored, and exposed to something new.
#Gagging_for_Adventure

Ready to present.

What went less well:
Of course it was my presentation performance.
I was first confidence after chilled myself up before presentation but however, once I started to speak something wrong, I felt tension and ended up I was not satisfied with my performance.
I actually prepared quite a lot of thing to be presented but once I made mistake, I forgot what I should have said.
#Not_Steady_Enough

The me under low light condition.

What would I do differently:
Make sure I was well prepared! Practice more and more to get myself ready for all kind of possible situation.
#Practice_Makes_Perfect

Reflection 4

Creativity, Communication and Collaborative Practice
UoS Intensive Workshop · Day 4

A productive day for all of us! What a tiring and exhausting day!


Describe what I did:
We spent our whole day to prepare for the next day presentation. Every group looked pretty tension because we might run out of time.
After helping out in designing team logo as our branding, I was doing what I'm familiar with. To be honest, I would say my strength is more on admin and organising stuffs. Thus, I voluntary took the responsibility of arranging timeline for our future three weeks progress. Besides that, I tried to help in developing the complete storyline. Also, Weng Sheng and I tried our best to complete the presentation slide. It really took our time and efforts to finalise all the needed elements. All of us caught up each and gave a hand to each other.

Arranging sequence for presentation.

Storyboard part 1.

Storyboard part 2.

What went well:
Team spirit, that was the thing I was looking for. After three days of being a team, we finally worked as a team. At the end of today, everyone has accomplished their mission in time.

Group discussing.

Poster draft 1.

Poster draft 2.

What went less well:
The preparation of slide show went bad at first. Mr Mark tried his best to help and guide us in doing a good presentation slide. He explained the concept of good presentation slide supposed to be in an organised structure, it focuses on visual effect. A clean and clear visual aid would definitely help us during presentation time. Eventually, I understood that a good presentation slide should include the points which are represented by shape, image, figure and so on and placed in an order structured by invisible lines.

Mr Mark's sharing and trying to pull us on track.

Mr Marks' drawing on board.

Mr Mark's drawing on my notebook.

Style Sheet shared by Mr Mark which helped us a lot.

What would I do differently:
I would lend my hand as much as possible to my team members.

Reflection 3

Creativity, Communication and Collaborative Practice
UoS Intensive Workshop · Day 3

Here it started the busy and tiring process, it was where we lost and it's all about brain-storming and kept amending our ideas.


Describe what I did:
We began the day with an one hour briefing session. Mr Johny and Mr Mark briefed us what should we do for our group presentation on Friday, they gave us the hints with examples provided. Then we were given around four hours to discuss about our ideas and transformed the ideas into visual materials. We were asked to pitch our ideas at later afternoon, it was actually more like a consultation hours. After having a discussion, my group has decided to distribute the tasks based on our strengths. We came out with the idea of producing a promo video by using still photography film. The concept was actually to fully utilize the knowledge of three courses in our group, which are Broadcasting, Multimedia Design and Graphic Design. My group leader, Weng Sheng and I who are Broadcasting students, we were in charging of taking sample chroma key photos while Graphic Design group-mates were doing vectors sketches to be used in video. Multimedia Design group-mates were responsible to combine the photos and vectors images and animated it to become a sneak peak of our final promo video. Aside from thinking about the presentation content, we have also chosen our team name which is Team 321.

Presentation guidelines.

Presentation contents.

Brainstorming draft.

What went well:
First of all, I felt very happy because Mr Mark actually asked either me or Weng Sheng to become the group leader. Yes, I was quite proud to be asked so because I felt recognised. However, I voted Weng Sheng to be the group leader because I know he is good enough (he is my current class rep in TARUC) and I think I'm better in supporting him.
Secondly, it's like finally again to learn something I am interested in! Today I stepped in mini studio and learnt how to take photo with green matte. Over the past three years in TARUC, we haven't gotten any opportunity to learn and to use green matte even though the equipments were provided. Talking about this, I would want to thank Mr Robin for his sharing, our TARUC lab assistant, Mr Kamarul in teaching us practically and also thanks to Weng Sheng in helping me patiently. I learnt the knowledge of controlling lighting to avoid shadow for chroma key shooting.
Thirdly, it was my pleasure when my idea of team name was being accepted by everyone. So what does Team 321 mean?
Indeed,
3 = There are students of three courses in our group.
2 = There are two members from each course; and it is a homo-phonic word for "to".
1 = Unity; we are one, one we are.
321 = Students from three courses into one team.

Bad example of chroma key shooting because of the lighting and shadow.

Set up and get ready.

Possible shapes for team logo, by Mr Mark.

What went less well:
Before the presentation a.k.a consultation, I thought that we would get a "green light" for our overall idea. However, after our presentation, we got the feedbacks from all the tutors saying that we need to amend our storyboard. The original storyline showed a little negativity since we tried to imply the life in Salford is better than London. According to Mr Robin, he thinks that the idea of portraying the adventure sense in an unexpected journey was cool but the comparison of two regions might mislead the audience. Oh what a mistake I've made. I was not considering and careful enough to think that this idea might cause misunderstanding and conflict. Anyway, I learnt from mistake. Hence, we quickly spent some time to correct and redraw our storyboard.
By the way, my heart broke a little bit when we got only "amber red light" from the tutors. It was like getting 2/5 mark, how disappointing was the result.

Redrew storyboard in progress.

What would I do differently:
I would think twice and put more effort on storyboarding. As a broadcasting student I think it was my responsibility to help the team in developing a good storyline but I did not do it well. I should be out of box and be more considerate so my team member would not suffer in thinking the idea together.