Things I learnt on Black Box.

Hi,

long time no see... Actually a very long time, anyway here's six things I learnt during the time I work on Black Box. Black box is a series of episodes set on, the most unlike of places, a plane. Each episode tells an original story written by students. Oh! and just to add I wrote episode four, which was name "Worst episode", so yeah.

Number 6 - Timing & planing;
Yeah, working on Black Box we only had half a day (9am - 12pm) to come up with an idea, write a 'finished' script before we had to start planing the actual shoot. Planing wouldn't go to deep, planing wouldn't get much farther after the story boarding stage, and by that stage when would have our Actors, and props but that it. Then on the day of the shoot we only had the room for two hours. So in the end we started to cut less important shoots and scenes just to able to the footage we need.

We will always run into time constants and I know in that situation that we have to start drop what isn't absolutely necessary to the film.

Number 5 - Giving up your control;
During Black Box we shared the roles out each week to mimic a real production, which I have done before. In the past I've work on independent films, and group projects so I have worked in these conditions before but I've never written a script then never been apart of production at all.

I know that in real video productions that once the writer has written the script then that's his job done. But I can't stand giving up my creative control over to someone else and hoping for the best I would much prefer to be in control every step of the way but again this is something I'm going to have to get uses too.

Number 4 - Working in a small space;
Since the plane set wasn't all that big, and even with all the equipment there was less room, we had to adapt to the space quickly. We started to dump the tripod if we were in small spaces for hand held, we also tried to fold some on the chairs so that we could have the camera on a tripod.

Number 3 - Lighting;
Since the plane set only really had two light sources so most shoots look natural because we didn't (well for most of them) use the Redhead. The mean reason the we didn't use the Redhead because most of the group haven't use them, and those who have knew that by the time we set up the lights we would of wasted precious time while we teaching the others individually. Although when we did use the lights, Black Box's production values went through the roof.

Number 2 - Sound Mixing;
Throughout the entire series of Black Box most of the first edits had problems with the sound levels when viewed through the projector. In some the dialog was drowned out by the music or the dialog was to quiet. All this was easy fixed by copying the audio into the other channels and then normalizing them.

And...(Side note this ISN'T a countdown. It's the final countdown.)

Number 1 - Editing;
One of the biggest problems we had on the first few episodes where there wasn't a storyboard or a time-code sheet, so we captured everything and throughout editing we had to manually go though all the clips until we found the usable clips. This was only a small set back but I would of made sure that there was a sheet.

And if YOU want to watch Black Box below is a link to its You Tube channel. So enjoy.

Thank you,
Simon.

Link Dump
Black Box's You Tube

TV Idents.

Virgin 1’s rebrand introduced RED was created by Paul Jomain. His other work included PG Tips Monkey, & Marvin, from ‘The Hitchhiker’s Guides to the Galaxy’. RED is a red cotton puppet, operated by the crew. After BSkyB brought out Virgin 1 and rebrand it Channel one in September 2010. Channel One new, Red Thread, indent was designed by RED BEE media. The ident was animated by Trunk Animated .LTD. Animators at Trunk animated a detailed 2D animatic, which after was approved by RED BEE the animators at Trunk Darragh Mason and Steven Lall created a 3D thread model of a thread in Maya, a 3D modelling program, which they then animated.

The brief Trunk Animated. LTD received was to create a ‘fluid and dynamic with the red thread travelling through and creating four different environments, each environment representing a strand of programmes broadcast on the channel, medical drama, sci-fi etc. ‘

Trunk Animated. LTD hit the target with the brief. The thread interacts with channel’s genres and themes. The thread tries to be a spiritual successor to RED but doesn’t create or give the personality that RED gave Virgin 1.

Link Dump;

http://worldofidents.blogspot.com/2010/09/virgin-1-becomes-channel-1-with-red-bee.html

http://www.pauljomain.biz/PJ/Paul_Jomain_Studios_Home.html

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/jun/01/virgin-media-red

http://www.trunk.me.uk/

The History of Printing Stamps.

The first feed paid stamps were first introduced in 1840 after the postal reform. The concept was design by James Chalmers & Sir. Rowland Hill, the idea was to be able to send mail through the Kings Mail service. The Penny Black was world's first adhesive postage stamp, before all stamps used glue. The Penny Black was an Intaglio print, the stamp was printed using 11 plates.

There where two adhesive in 1840 the Penny Black & Two penny Blue, the Penny Black could post a letter weighting up to half an ounce while the Two penny Blue could deliver a letter weighting a full ounce. The Penny Black ran from May 1^st 1840 & wasn’t official until the 6^th of that month, the Black penny stopped a year later.

Stamps have been known to use such printing techniques like Intaglio, Lillo, Offset, & Lithograph. The most common used today print stamp is Offset. Offset printing is where a picture or design is first made chemically on to aluminium or copper plate. Once attached to the printing press the plate is placed into ink and water. While the non-image parts are placed within water, this acts as a “repellent” to the ink so the design will only transferred onto the paper.

The most common print method in the 1850 was Intaglio, this is method is the most time consuming but gives out more detail. This method was later scarped for a less expensive & time consuming method which is the one we used today.

Some of the earlier stamps weren’t multi-coloured until 1854, the world’s first multi-coloured was printed in India by the East India Company. The stamp was of a portrait of Queen Victoria. It was lithograph print; the stamp was printed in two colours blue and red.

The penny black and most other early stamps needed to be separated with a scissors. In 1854 with the invention of perforated stamps that could be rip off each other. They only appeared in England at 1854, it wasn’t until 1857 that the United States started to print them perforated.

There have been many types of stamps designs for different events, the first stamp design to be design for an commemorate propose was issued in 1888 by New South Wales to mark its 100th anniversary. Commemorative stamps today are usually photo base & done digitally.

Stamps in the future look like they’re going to be replaced by a Postage Meter. A Postage Meter is a device that can be used to create evidence of post, this meter can be followed online. Postage Meters act as proof of payment just like an adhesive stamp. The meters have only appeared in Austria, Belgium, France & the USA.

By, Simon Burdall.

DreamWeaver Lesson on the 30/11/09, 7, & 14/12/09.

DreamWeaver Lesson on the 30/11/09.

For the last two weeks I've been working on my index page, & designing & preparing all the images I'll will need for the rest of the project. At the end of the lesson there was something wrong with the code, it won't keep an image in the right position but Alex & me decided to leave it until next week.

DreamWeaver Lesson on the 7/12/09.

After last week problem with the code I couldn't move on until I fix it but because Alex wasn't in on that day I decided to move on knowing that all the pages share the same code & would have to share the same problem.

So I started to build up the Store, Gallery, F.A.Q, Contact, & The Terms & Use pages. At the end of the lesson I had one more look at the code to see if I could spot anything but I couldn't spot anything that shouldn't be there or anything that would cause this.

DreamWeaver Lesson on the 14/12/09.

This week I started to finish off all the pages, there where some problems but most where simple fixes. Since Alex was back this week I ask him about the problem from two weeks ago, sadly I was to far into the project to be able to fix it with out starting again.

I start to linking up all the pages & tested the site to see if I could spot any mistakes or anything else, the site work well & had only a few mistakes but the positioning problem still made the site look unprofessional but there wasn't anything I could do in the one day time frame to hand this in.

DreamWeaver Lesson on the 27/10/09, 2/11/09, & 9/11/09.

DreamWeaver Lesson on the 27/10/09.

In the lesson we found out what our website had to be based on. Our websites have to be base on Vinyl toys, so for most of the lesson we had to search around for a set of toys to build the site around I choose a set of Mars Vinyl as some below, This toys where designed by San Francisco artist MARS-1.

After choosing a set of toys, I started to sketch out a basic design of the homepage & annotated it.



DreamWeaver Lesson on the 2/11/09.

In the lesson I recap on what I drew in my sketch book last lesson & then made some changes to the design. After then planed out what I would do this lesson, then started to make the banner for my website using the set of Vinyl toys I choose. After I finshed the I change the design according to the changes I made on the banner.

DreamWeaver Lesson on the 9/11/09.

Stated to work on a site map from my website. A site map is like a storyborad showing what happens when you click on a link.