Oi! Don't read the stuff below...
{\rtf1\ansi\ansicpg1252\deff0\deflang1033{\fonttbl{\f0\fnil\fcharset0 Times New Roman;}} \viewkind4\uc1\pard\lang2057\f0\fs20 Dave Brain\par \par Production Log\par \par \pard Monday 17th Feb - Module Start\par Tuesday 18th Feb - Introduction to module. We get grouped up, given the brief, and decided to meet up as soon as possible to discuss ideas. We thought about meeting up this evening but thanks to me we have to move our meeting to tomorrow as I wouldn't have been able to have made it.\par Wednesday 19th Feb - We all met up outside of University to discuss possible ideas for our animation. One possible idea we come up with includes a child growing up in to an adult in the space of 10 seconds. It sounds good and would surely be a right laugh when it came to the filming stages. Lots of costume changes and make-up! Great fun.\par Thursday 20th Feb - We met up once again at University to discuss our ideas further. We decide to completely scrap all of our previous ideas from yesterday in favour of a new idea, "Theories of Relativity". The film will show a child playing with toys. The more they play, the more animated the toys become (as if the child's imagination is running wild), and the more enjoyment the child gets from the toys the faster time progresses. It sounds fun.\par Monday 24th Feb - Storytelling Workshop\par Tuesday 25th Feb - We all meet up in the library to roughly plan out our film. We all bring in toys to see which ones we can use (and gave us a great excuse to relive our childhoods by playing with the toys), and then act out the story roughly to see if it will last less than a minute. When we were all happy with our story plan, we worked out the timing of every single movement. This also gave Daisy all the information she needed to draw up the storyboard. This was also the day that I somehow managed to get talked in to dressing up as a little girl and star in the film. The day ended with a Lighting Workshop.\par Monday 3rd Mar - EOS Workshop. Today we got to test out the EOS equipment, something I'd only used once before in my life when I was about five or six years old! I also had a stab at being animated myself, where I realised that it wasn't as hard work as I thought it might have been, although it hits me that looking at myself on TV is pure torture. Imagine what it's going to be like seeing myself on the big screen in the cross media presentation in full drag! The thought makes me shudder. We also presented our polished film idea to the rest of the group and handed in our storyboard which went down really well. Daisy had obviously put a lot of time and effort in to creating them.\par Tuesday 4th Mar - Cool Edit Workshop. Today we had a short meeting to tidy up a few loose ends in our production plan. We also got the toys out again, yay! We have fun filling the Boglin up with water, which you can then squirt it back out like a water pistol, something we plan on doing in the film. It then hits us, how are we going to animate water? After much discussion we decide cling film would proably do the trick.\par Thursday 6th Mar - We all met outside of University mainly to plan our presentation on David Byrne's 'Road to Nowhere' video, but we also got a bit more animation planning done in this time.\par Monday 10th Mar - Day of the presentation and paper hand-in. We also found time in this busy day to run over our planned sound effects. We also got to listen to Dee's rough music track she'd performed on her guitar especially for our animation. Imagining all the actions in our film in time with the music creates a great mental image. If the finished product is anything like what I imagine then the sound will be absolutely fantastic.s\par Wednesday 12th Mar - Some of our group came to the TV Studio to set up the lighting in preperation of Friday, our scheduled filming day. Unfortunately I couldn't make it as I had a minor bus accident on the way to Uni, but aparrently the poor guys that did make it had a worse time than me as they spent many hours in to the night setting up those stupid lights.\par Thursday 13th Mar - I popped over to Daisy's flat to try on that dredded dress, and she also tried on all the make-up. It's now I realise why women spend so long getting ready for everthing, the mascara alone seemed to take several hours! To make things more embarrising she got me to parade around the student halls to show off her handywork to all her friends. Nightmare.\par Friday 14th Mar - The big day! We filmed pretty much 95% of our film today. It all went very well, apart from all the hours we wasted on setting up the lights (and we also ended up completely changing the lighting arrangements that we had set up on Wednesday). Daisy and Dee thought it'd be a good idea to apply my make-up in the busiest corridor in the University, and they loved every minute of it. Soon enough at around 12'o'clock we start filming and it all moves very quickly. It was actually great fun! At around 2:30pm we all took a break and probably came back worse off from it. We were tired and sluggish, but luckily we didn't have much more to film. Soon enough the main shot is finally completed. The group ask if they can film a few cut-aways quickly before we got chucked out of the TV studio. I realise we have half an hour left and I was desperate to get out of the dress, I gave them 15 minutes. When I took the dress off I realisde how hard today's been. It was so cold having nothing to cover your legs! And it was so tight that I could only take short breaths. Hopefully this'll be the last day I'll wear a dress in my whole entire life. To add to the embarrisment of today, everybody I nagged to bring in make-up remover forgot to bring it, which meant I had to go home on the bus with pretty much all the make-up still on! It was made worse by all the washing and rubbing off of the mascara, which just smudged it and made my eyes go red so I looked like I had two black eyes.\par Monday 17th Mar - Seminar + Tutorials. We also got to review Friday's footage with Kari. We all panic over the fact that it all moves so fast that nobody will make out what's going on, especially the relationship between fun and time. We comfort ourselves after discussing about slowing down the footage at certain points to make things clearer, and adding the sound effeects should help the viewer to distinguish between all the movements on the busy TV screen.\par Wednesday 19th Mar - Me and Dee made our way to the sound recording booths to record the vocal sound track. We had originally planned for me to record the voices, but after a few takes we decided to let Dee have a go, and it turned out a lot better.\par Monday 24th Mar - Contingency Day. We seemed to be the only people to make huge plans for our contingency day! We made good use of the day, we filmed the titles (which consisted on animating 6 packets worth of Skittles sweets, and then eating them all which made us feel ill for the rest of the day) and we filmed several cut-aways to make the editing and pacing process easier for us to play around with. I was supposed to dress back up again, but after the last filming day I really REALLY couldn't face doing it all again! Luckily Daisy voluntered to wear the costume which was very good of her as I really couldn't have stood another day of sitting dead still in a dress! The rest of the day was spent editing the whole film roughly. It took a lot less time than I thought it would, just a couple of hours at the very most!\par Tuesday 25th Mar - Me and Rich spent the morning tidying up the editing and adding the credits. The afternoon was spend adding some simple sounds. Everyone else sorted out their sound effects on Cool Edit while I sat on the AVID (which I really grew to hate today) adding the sounds. Thanks to AVID's lack of sound tools (which any other digital editing system has) I had quite a hard time and was very limited with what I could do. Thankfully Chetanya and Dee know a lot about sound recording and editing, so they've given us Wednesday off so they can crack on adding all the sounds which had been treated in Cool Edit.\par Friday 28th Mar - We spent the morning finishing the sound editing. We take a look at Dee and Chetanyas sound efforts and it's all sounding great. And I'm well impressed by everyone elses films! They all look extremely glossy. I just hurried up to the computer room to finish the diary, and I plan on handing it in ASAP! If you're actually reading this then that means the University printers were actually working for once.\par \pard\par And I'm spent!}
