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.