Timed answer (30 minutes)

Discuss how far digital technology has enhanced the creative process in your media production work.

The ultimate aim of any piece of media technology is to help a person to better realise their creative vision for a project. Whilst better technology will not make a poor idea successful, it can help a project with potential to achieve as highly as possible.

Throughout my production work at AS, I felt I was held back by the quality of our cameras. My work was highly visual and I found that the low quality DV tape cameras hindered the appeal of images I had spent a great deal of time composing. During my A2 course, I feel that using a high quality HD camera will provide better clarity in my footage and result in a aesthetically successful piece of work, giving my ideas better representation in film format.

Editing software during the AS course was sufficient. Whilst the software package, iMovie, was fairly basic, this did enable me to fully understand the software and use it in a dynamic and creative way. With updated editing software facilities in the form of Adobe Premier Pro, I understand that I will be able to achieve more in terms of advanced functions. Useful and interesting as this is, the program is also highly complex. I do not yet completely understand how to use it to its full potential which may have a negative effect on my creative output simply by being unable to perform rudimentary tasks. Whilst I could potentially achieve more on Adobe Premier Pro, I still do not yet have the knowledge I need to do so.

Post production during the AS course was neglected. I did not posses the facilities or the understanding. Through the addition of the Adobe After Effects package to our system, this is an area that can be developed greatly over the A2 course. It will allow me to be creative in a completely new way, utilising processes like computer generated images and effects, having been trained in the software's capabilities.

Reflecting on the comparatively basic facilities available at AS, I can now appreciate the true nature of creativity in media. Having better facilities will, in theory, allow me to better replicate my ideas, but during AS, our equipment in itself encouraged creative thinking. Working on my production task taught me to embrace the facility's weaknesses, as well as its strengths, working around problems and often producing positive effects for my finished product as a whole.

Creativity and availability of suitable technology may well be two separate issues. To be creative, one must have a strong idea. It has to be clear in the creator's mind exactly what they want to achieve. Production of a successful piece of media hinges on its founding principles, and then using technology to best replicate them.

Media technology is important within production tasks. As I have discussed, not only does it allow you to represent your ideas better, it also can effect the character of your piece and force creative thought. That said, the key factor in any production, in regards to creativity, is the core idea that lies at its centre. Without an idea, you simply don't have a production.

Hello there!

I've been busy and made my first character. I tried out animating him just doing a simple wave.

Stop motion wave from Sam Paterson on Vimeo.

Making the models!

My stop motion cast is coming together! I created a few models this weekend. Here follows a step by step guide to how I made my actors.

1. I  chose red plastacine for my models and bought it fairly cheaply from a craft shop. I used some regular household metal wire for the model's 'skeleton.'

2. I then cut several lengths of wire to form a basic skeleton including limbs, joints and supports for the head.

3. I then twisted the separate sections together at the various joints to form the complete skeleton.

4. Once the skeleton was complete, I could start applying the plastacine to flesh out the figure.

When all the wire is covered, the figure is complete. The first model I made, I realised, was far too large. So I made another attempt at making a smaller one which came out much better.

A quick coffee break on a busy day of shooting.

The stop-motion masterpiece

So, this is the film we created during the workshop. See previous post for learning curves and comments.

Stop Animation Workshop 3.12.10

Last Friday we had a stop-animation workshop in school. We had a chance to use a slightly more professional set-up than that which we will use for our own work. By the end of the day we had produced about 25 seconds of animation.

The workshop itself was fairly useful. The people who delivered it pushed us into using things like story boards and into a way of working we weren't used to which, in a way, was both good and bad.

More than anything, the experience taught me a lot about how to move the characters between shots, and the kind of size of movements I would need to use. It also made me realise that making the animation is going to be an incredibly slow process. We worked literally for the whole day, a team of three of us only managed to make 25 seconds of video. We were, however, working at 25 frames per second. This makes fairly high resolution footage but is really time consuming. I hope to work at 12fps in my piece so I can produce work quicker. Although the animation won't be as smooth, that kind of feel may work well.

Hopefully I'll be able to upload the film we made once the file is emailed to me.

Video Treatment from Sam Paterson on Vimeo.

This is a short video treatment I recorded to summarise my idea. Enjoy!