Creating A Game

So for our next task in 'Contemporary Media Issues', we have to come up with an idea of a game, that is based in the screen school.

Me and Josie decided to base our game around the theme of whales and underwater life. The game will be played inside a giant lifelike killer whale (Sebastian Charles II), and players will enter through the whales mouth, immediatley immersing them into the marine theme.

There are 6 levels and 6 players at the start, each with their own colour. The game is a 3D game with players aiming to burst as many of their coloured balls as possible in a minute. The loser is the person who burst the least amount of their colour and has to leave the game, with the rest of the players going on to the next level. As the game progresses, the levels get harder, with distractions such as fish swimming out at them in 3D to make it more difficult to concentrate. At level 6, the hardest level, there are just 2 players left and after the winner is found, the room becomes an anti-gravity chamber and the winner gets 1 minute floating round. Our game is an exercise and mind game, with players having to focus and run around the room.


I love our idea and wish it could be made in real life. If I win the lottery, I know what I'm spending it on...


Here's the link to our prezi pitching our game. Unfortunately due to pesky house viewings we were not able to attend uni on the day to present it but hope you enjoy it here anyway!
http://prezi.com/c9pelk8kwzsc/bubbly-whale-game/

Playing with Lego...best course ever!!!

Last week in "Creativity & Concepts" the class was divided, not by war or arguments, but for, and I quote, "an intense lego serious play workshop". Hardcore, I know...

The lesson was based in my favourite room in the entire world, The Automatic. For those who've never been to this room, it's a place that's meant to inspire ideas and encourage teamwork. It has lots of random things in it, such as lego, drums, a variety of different seats, a massive screen with keyboards that are all connected up to it where you can anonymously type and lots more! So after the longest walk up the longest corridor, I arrived at the workshop.

The first thing we had to do was create a lego tower. I decided to honour my inner child and build the tallest tower I could with a load of random bits coming off it. Here it is:

Impressive I know...

The next task was to change the tower in some way to represent an attribute that you bring to a team. I found this a really confusing and difficult task but in the end I chose to balance out the tower a bit more because in a team I like to have balance with no leaders so that everyone is equal.

We then had to make a completely new model representing an important thing to have in a team. I decided to take my idea of balance before and elaborate on it, making all the lego men be on equal platforms with a range of different bricks making up their levels to show diversity.

The final task was to arrange our group's models and towers in a shape on the table, showing how they all were connected to eachother. I didn't really understand what this was so am going to research into it more for my essay.

Overall the workshop was alright, it wasn't my favourite Thursday lesson we've had but it definitely wasn't the worst. I'm still unsure of what the whole technique was meant to do, so as I said before, will look into it furthur.

Scene Analysis

Over Reading Week we had to do a scene analysis for 'Film Language' so that the lecturers can see what our skills in analysis are like. As I have no skills in this field, it was a rather daunting prospect. The analysis was done in a grid, which was apparantly unusual but I wouldn't know as it was my first attempt. The table had different columns for each aspect of the film: shot description and edit, cinematography, sound, dialogue, music and meaning/dramatic effect.

Choosing a film was one of the hardest parts of this task. Being the uncultured person I am, I haven't really seen many of the supposedly "good" films such as Pulp Fiction, The Shining, The Godfather etc. The only films I have are comedies and crap films, such as "The Hannah Montana Movie" - I probably shouldn't admit to that one, but I'm not gonna lie, it is actually a good film, trust me! I was going to do "Donnie Darko" but the rabbit in the film scares me, there's no need for a massive rabbit. So instead I chose "E.T.". Odd choice I know but I found that in the opening scene of the film, there was a lot that I could say.

Here's the clip that I analysed:

I found the task quite challenging but not too hard because it was my first time analysing a film so was unsure on what to say. It was extremely time consuming too, even though I only had 9 shot sequences to do.

This Friday we have a written test, to write an essay in an hour analysing a 10 minute clip of a film of their choice so will spend tomorrow revising in some way. Wish me luck!

People On The Move

The next project for 'Production Practice' is called "People on The Move". We have to plan and produce a short film based around a journey, the character going from one place to another. The film will have no sound so will just have a backing track dubbed onto it.

I found trying to think of an idea for this project really hard as I've had no experience in creating films at all. We eventually came up with the idea of a hunt for a missing jigsaw piece. I won't say any more as I don't want to give away the ending!

To begin with the planning, we developed a list of tourist spots that we would have the character (played by me) walk past, on their hunt. We then transferred these onto a storyboard to decide the exact order of the destinations and to plan what else happens in the film. Soon it was time to get to the actual filming process which I was very excited about because I felt like a proper media student then.

Filming started on Monday morning, and it was a lovely grey day with freezing temperatures - just what you want when you're filming by the sea, or river, or lake...(i think the Mersey is a river though, worst scouser ever). We shot approximately half the film and it went really well. Unfortunately I didn't get to use the camera much because I was being filmed, but the bits that I got to use it for I loved. We used a range of different types of shots, from establishment shots to extreme close ups, and moved the camera around in interesting ways at times. I also had to publicly humiliate myself by going on the Liverpool One carousel alone, just me on it with a load of little kids...major awk. Hopefully we will be finishing the filming soon (well we don't really have a choice) and I'm waiting in anticipation to start the edit...

I'll keep you updated, although the way this blog is going, you'll probably hear about it in 2020

I may or may not have forgotton I had a blog...

Like many others, I have slacked a bit, well a lot, on this blog so I've decided I'm spending my day off catching up on EVERYTHING I haven't blogged about. So look forward to the next 50 million posts...

Futuretainment Wiki

We've just finished the wiki we did as a group for the book, 'Futuretainment'. I thought we had struck lucky out of our choice of book as I found it really interesting to read and agreed with many of the theories and predictions put across by the author, Mike Walsh. 
In our group we produced a prezi and each wrote a few threads on our chosen chapters. My 2 chapters were Shift & Platform. Here it is: http://contemporarymediaissues.wetpaint.com/page/%27Futuretainment%27+M.Walsh+%282010%29
I found the whole experience of using wetpaint tiresome and boring. I don't find the format as fascinating as a method of putting across your ideas as other programmes such as prezi or even Powerpoint. I would say I never want to use it again but I know we have another project to do later in the year using it unfortunately. 


Here's the link to the prezi we did too: http://prezi.com/xfmn6zp8flcy/futuretainment/