Finito!

After my 1st year in MPS at JMU I am more than excited at the prospect of next year. I have took alot on board in my 1st year and broadened my knowledge alot, learning various creativity techniques and using new softwares such as; Adobe Dreamweaver, Adobe Photoshop and AVID Media centre. I cant wait to see what the new media building has to offer and can only hope it has as much to offer me as the Screen School has. I am also very happy with my progress made grade-wise as well, getting a lot of 2.1's and 2.2's giving me a great starting point to advance next year.

My strong point throughout both semesters has been in within the Production practice module, getting only 2.1's and 2.2's. I have thoroughly enjoyed all the modules but this module in particular has allowed me to be most creative and give me the chance to make my own films or movies with the right equipment and softwares.

I have also worked in various groups over the semesters being put in with both friends and strangers and have learned alot about myself in the way that i work within a team, i gained an inner confidence when speaking expressivley with a group and enjoyed in particular a lecture in which we used De Bono's 6 thinking hats, this taught me a lot and shown me its not wrong to correct or dismiss peoples ideas, there is just a way to go about it so you dont knock someones confidence.

Overall this year in JMU has been a fantastic experience and a learning curve, it has opened  up so many new opportunities for me and helped me progress toward getting a job in the film/tv industry.

Museum Presented

After presenting our musuem exhibit i feel very happy with the progress made and content at the idea of our exhibit. we woorked brilliantly as a team and created what would make a convincing exhibit, we were also able to gather all the evidence needed to prove it was possible and presented clearly enough that when we asked if anyone had any questions at the end everybody seemed to know where we was.

Online Portfolio

When given the task to create my own website as an online portfolio I was excited by the prospect of having my own portfolio to showcase my work. I set out wanting to create a very simple website, with an almost “in your face” look to it, in order to grab the audience’s attention, as this was a website in which I had to boast my past and present pieces of work, such as video’s and other media pieces such as magazines, radio clips etc. Whilst giving a small insight into myself rather than be all about me.

I began researching other websites of celebrities and other Media related personnel; this gave me a good starting point, inspiring me to make decisions as simple as whether or not to use a drop down menu on the start page or whether there should be a picture of myself, getting a lot of good ideas from some website templates, I decided early on, I wanted the front page of my website to bet very simple changing my mind from bright colours to black and white, with 1 focal image with links into sections of my website e.g. About me, Links etc.

I found that out of all of the websites I had looked at, David Giles photography had the look I was going for and had a lot of detail in the writing and the circled images, however I thought maybe using the images as a background but with no colour would look a lot better.

I think choosing to continuously using this backdrop on the 4 links however takes away the effect that it has on the home page, if I were to do it again I think using a simple black background would have been a lot more effective as I had to use black text on some parts as the white text didn’t work on certain parts of the backdrop. I also think the experience of creating this website has taught me alot and is a very useful thing to know as a media student.

Museum Exhibit

For Semester 2 we had to make a museum exhibit totally from scratch, in our group (Me, Nick Deas and Michael Shiells) our chosen subject was Football Fans, as we mutually agreed this would be a good idea as we could put ourselves in the customers shoes, being football fans ourselves. We didnt really attend many museum exhibits though, so we decided as a group to go to; Musuem of Liverpool, the Maritime Museum and the Liverpool FC museum to do some research into what you might expect from a 'museum experience' whilst researching these musuems we came across an exhibit in the Museum of Liverpool called 'Kicking and Screaming'

"Kicking and Screaming is a short film which describes the unique rivalry and success of Everton and Liverpool football clubs. The film takes the visitor on an exciting and emotive journey through the dramatic history of football in Liverpool, a sport that represents the spirit, attitude and identity of the city. The film features two boys, Liverpool fan TJ and Everton fan Charlie, who discuss some of the momentous events that have shaped their teams."






This was good to see as it gave us a lot of new ideas as to what we could base our exhibit around eventually playing a huge part in our finished project.