Social Identity Through Weavr & Twitter..

So today we began a new topic in which we learnt about social identity and what it is. Collectively as a group we discussed what is meant by identity and came up with ideas such as how we are percieved, how we represent ourselves and our appearance etc.
Once our tutors finished talking to us about how we use social networking sites and the internet in general to portray our identity, we were set the task of creating a fictional identity through a website called Weavr. Within this program I was able to create my own avatar named Georgio Lopez, an Italian-American student living in New York.
Through Weavr i was able to build his profile, give him an age, show his interests and activities, what he likes to do on weekends and much more.
I actually really enjoyed creating an avatar as it enabled me to create a totally different life of a fictional character that only exists on the internet and took me away from focusing on my own profile on social networking sites such as Facebook. As my avatar is now on Twitter, I look forward to reading his tweets and seeing how many followers he gets by next week.. luckily it's enough to win me that kit-kat! (just kidding) :)

Take a look at Georgio's Twitter account ---> https://twitter.com/#!/Georgio1Lopez

Sharing ideas and why Creativity is important...

So today when we got to the creativity and concept lecture, Sarah and Alex informed us that we will be sharing our ideas for the Liverpool Museum to the class and letting them know where we have come so far in terms of development. As you may already know my group has been given the target audience of an Angler and so far we have thought of around 5-6 vague ideas of what we want the museum to involve to attract this audience. Me and Hayley collectively fed our ideas back to the class such as an interactive pond where the fisherman feels in his element but is fishing through a slightly different experience. To attract a younger, more modern audience however, we thought of an idea that would involve DJ'ing or music in general to liven up the fishing experience but still keeping in mind that fishing is a calming experience for many of those that are involved. I'll be sure to keep you posted on how we get along!
Shortly after the break, Alex explained to us why the module is important for us when it comes to looking for employment in a few years and gave us each an application form from the BBC and talked us through each question, breaking down why being creative is key in the industry. I found this talk very useful in fact as it opened my eyes as to why we do a lot of the things we do in lectures and made me realise that being creative isn't just about making a good film for uni.

It's Liverpool Feedback and Final Brief...

Today me and my group met a little earlier than usual to put the final touches on our Personal Profile film and ended up adding the backing track by MGMT and tweeked the film until we thought it was ready to burn to CD and ready to hand into our tutors at 2pm. After this we were given the brief on our final production assignment for the semester which will be a factual film with a duration of 3-5 minutes on any topic based outside of Uni. To help us kick start our ideas, our tutors told each one of us to come back to next week's session with a treatment, which is basically a detailed explanation of why our idea would be good to use as the topic of our next assignment. I decided to choose boxing as i thought this would attract the interest of fellow coursemates, especially the guys, but we will have to wait and see what ideas the rest of my group come up with!

Personal Profile - Final Footage and Editing...

Yesterday me and one of my production group members went in to edit the final footage we captured of Miles, our subject for the personal profile film that we filmed on Tuesday during his slot on Looprevil Radio. We managed to get a fair share of editing done in terms of putting together the main clips we were going to use and re-arranging the audio clips into the timeline so we would find it easier to do the final edit in next Monday's session before the deadline.

Wiki #2.. Welfare Reform...

Today I managed to complete my part of the second Wiki assignment which was based on how social networking sites and democracy are being used in the Welfare Reform process. Although i don't really enjoy creating Wiki's, i am becoming more used to the idea of creating them and actually didn't mind discussing my views on the topic using 300 words. At first i found it a little difficult to collate my research and opinions into the Wiki but once i got started i managed to complete it within a matter of minutes and now feel relieved that it's done and ready to show to my tutors in next week's session.


A link to the completed Wiki >> http://contemporarymediaissues.wetpaint.com/page/Welfare+Reform

Personal Profile of a Radio DJ...

As part of our personal profile assignment, me and my production group chose to use a student radio DJ as the subject of the profile. Luckily we found this guy through one of the members of the production group who managed to get us to film the DJ while he was on air on a early Tuesday evening. When we got to the studio, Miles (the DJ) and his friend were just waiting for another student to finish his show so they could set up and begin. My first impressions of Miles was an approachable, friendly guy who seemed enthusiastic for us to listen in on the show and film him whilst doing so, which made us as the production group seem a lot more comfortable.
Setting up our cameras and mics deemed to be a little difficult at first but we soon managed to get our heads around it and began to film Miles shortly after while he was on air. I found this the most enjoyable of filming sessions as i would love to be able to interview, create a profile of someone in early stages of my future career and this experience pushed me to that desire even more as i was made to feel comfortable.


 

The Development of an Idea - Creativity & Concept

In today's creativity and concept session, we spent our time in The Automatic in which we got into our groups and began to develop the idea for the new Museum based in Liverpool. Each group had already been given an audience to aim their idea at; our group was given the Angler. At first i thought this was going to be slightly boring as i had seen other groups were given audiences that we could relate to more, such as bands and teenagers. However, through concept extraction, we managed to create a couple profiles for the target audience on big sheets of brown paper and soon our ideas began to flow smoothly. In between sessions me and my group intend on using other creativity techniques to help us gradually build a solid idea by the end of the term.

It's Liverpool Final Footage, Editing and Hand-In...

Today me and my group went out to the Docks to film the last part of footage for the 'It's Liverpool' competition. Luckily the weather was amazing this time round, even though it was cold, there were blue skies and very few clouds about, which permitted us to get more attractive shots of Liverpool and mainly the big wheel which we were all very pleased about. Unfortunately, by the time we had finished filming a few time lapse shots, it had gone darker and we weren't able to film the 'Welcome to the Albert Docks' sign that we were going to put in the beginning sequence. However, when it came to editing, the footage we did have looked fit for the competition, especially since we had the Paradise instrumental by Coldplay on top of the whole sequence which gave it an overall calming feel.