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.

Reflection 2

Creativity, Communication and Collaborative Practice
UoS Intensive Workshop · Day 2

At first, we were informed about the student groups which we have to stick with for the rest of three weeks. I would say this news actually affected the beautiful morning of ours because... we actually have our ideal group members and comfortable to work with.
Well, in fact we accepted the truth because we all understand that this is part of lives, it is a good process for us to grow and learn how to deal with life.


What did I do:
Today I have learnt quite a lot from Mr Mark, the knowledge is about the Graphic Design typography. This was really new to me as I did not really analyse and read about the type fonts which I've been using in computer typing for yearssssssssss (it's a must to emphasize =P) Once I saw the type font of "Helvetica" on screen, I felt so exciting because it is my favourite type font to use in blogger! *Can you see that now I'm using typography to express myself?*

Typography as expression and narrative or image.

The second session was Mr Johny's time, he has taught us about storyboarding. Storyboard ain't something new to me because I've learnt this during Diploma in TARUC. Anyway, Mr Johny's sharing was not the same as what I have learnt. I enjoyed his humorous way of teaching especially when he demonstrated how he actually got the idea to start storyboarding. It seemed like he is always having the creative mind, every small matter seemed can be an inspiration for him. I've never seen anyone who is able to come out a storyline and then finish a five-frames storyboard, just within few minutes time. That was really amazing! At the end of the session, my sub-group which had three members, we completed our five-frames storyboard as well. I swear this was my fastest progress to draw a storyboard compared to my past experiences.

We don't tell you, we show you.

Next we had Mr Robin with us, teaching us about story telling. Controlling idea (theme) of the story was fresh to me even though I knew about generating idea and theme but I did not learn how to control them.

Tried our best to finish in time...

What was good:
The humorous way and two-way communication (interaction between tutors and students) was the thing I like the most. To learn and study in a relaxing environment never bored me out. And seriously thanks for the chance that our storyboard had the time to be checked by Mr Johny and he gave his feedbacks so that we know how to improve among ourselves.
Aside from that, I felt glad to have learning session with Mr Robin. It's like FINALLY!!!!! I admitted that I'm more into broadcasting field and always eager to learn more about the industry, although the time to learn more from Mr Robin was really short.

What was bad:
There was nothing went bad actually. What I would say was the incident that made me a little bit down. First thing is about the student group, what I expected was group-up with different people so that I can deal and learn different things from different people. However, my group members are the same as yesterday's. No worry, it's still good to be with them, they are really talented. Secondly, we had not much time to learn and reflect ourselves, what I mean is we both tutors and students have to be hurry in sharing our ideas. That was bad because as a student we did not really have time to ask for more information and to gain more knowledge from the professional tutors.

What would I do differently if I had the time over:
I would probably improve our storyboard in term of producing a good storyline. I found that I easily got lose on half-way thinking about the story, I easily complicate simple thing. The storyline that we worked on together was satisfying but I think I could amend a little bit to make the story impact stronger, as I always wanted to produce something meaningful and convey the moral values to audience.

Reflection 1

Creativity, Communication and Collaborative Practice
UoS Intensive Workshop · Day 1

It has been awhile we met Mr Johny Byrne and we do miss Mr Roy, Mr Danny as well as Mr Peter.
We are actually excited to welcome Mr Johny for visiting us again and of course we open our arms for the other lecturers too.


Describe what I did:
At first, Mr Mark has asked my group to draw a simple graphic in defining Graphic Design. The first thought that came in my mind is creativity, thus I drew a light bulb with the quote of "creation of creativity" to represent what Graphic Design means to me.
After that, we were given task to design a poster about five interesting things in Salford of Manchester based on the research that we have done.
There were four members in my sub-group including myself.
The five key words that we have chosen are Food, Sports, Entertainment, Manufacture and Architecture.
At the end of today's workshop, all of us have presented our posters in front of the hall.

The messy poster.

What went well:
That was really glad to meet foreign lecturers because the teaching and learning styles of UoS are really different from what I experienced in TARUC. I enjoy learning from people who are encouraging.
Besides that, I feel happy to meet new friends again. Even though we might have met each other before but we did not really interact with each other. Meanwhile, I felt even happier to gather with the "old-friends".

Sub-group members.

What went less well:
At first we have been told to divide among ourselves into four different groups and after that we were divided again into sub-groups. It is quite upsetting because we have grouped ourselves before the workshop started since we thought this is necessary for our final presentation.
On the other hand, I was disappointed at myself because I didn't do any research in the given two weeks time. I believed that this was the reason causing my bad performance during presentation.

What would I do differently:
I would squeeze my time to do research for more detailed information about Salford of Manchester. I believed that by obtaining more materials, I would present the poster better and more confidently as the quote says "Proper Preparation Prevents Poor Performance".