Unit 2 Part E

I feel like my project went well. Our workshop turned out great as we managed to get people involved and learn about the animation. I developed new leadership skills that I had lacked before I started the course. I am now more confident; I can organise events, people and equipment. I have learnt from mistakes and feel like I can improve on things if I were to do them again.

There were a few aspects of this project that were challenging. One of them was to organise a group of people. When in a group, it is sometimes hard to all agree on certain things and to get everyone in the same place at the same time. This was only a small challenge as we realised early on that we needed to be efficient to get a good job done. Another challenge was to talk to the public. It was scary to talk to and to demonstrate animation to strangers. This was because there was fear that we'd mess up and get something wrong. Fortunately, nothing went wrong and this caused us to have more confidence in ourselves for future projects.

Our project ended up sticking to the original plan. This was because we thought in depth on how we wanted to present our workshop. We knew what we wanted to demonstrate and say to the audience. We also knew what equipment to take and who was doing certain roles within the group. Planing this before hand really helped as it gave us a bit more confidence in what we were doing. If I were to do another project, I would defiantly use a plan again.

I feel like I have developed as a leader. I have grown confidence in myself. I now know that I can organise events and people well and know that I'd be able to do it again.

Here is feedback from Courtney Gaffney. She was working with another group that we also displaying a workshop.

From this feedback I have learnt that although I need initial support in approaching strangers, I can do it with help from the rest of my group. Having the group support and reassure each other really helps in confidence when doing scary things. Once someone has helped you, you can develop the skills on your own. This is what I feel the project has helped me on. 

The participants seemed to enjoy the workshop I led. As one said, 'The animation workshop was nice to see as many people seemed intrigued by what was going on. I had a look myself and Katie showed me how the process of creating an animation works. I enjoyed talking part and I feel like I now know a lot more about animation than I did before.'

I have learnt that leadership is tricky at first, but with some practice you can be a great leader. It takes real confidence and will power. Communication is key when working in a group. You need to talk to each other, go through plans, have second opinions and someone to support you. Planning is a huge factor in running an event well. You need to know what you are doing and make sure everyone else knows what they are doing to have s good outcome. 

Next time, I would push myself more to develop my leadership skills. I now have a strong basis of skills from doing this event as I have learnt a lot about being a leader. I would have more confidence in myself, try to get more of the public to take part in the workshop and to not be nervous. 

Unit 2 Part C

When we started our workshop, the whole group felt a bit nervous. We had set everything up and had started our activities but were waiting for a member of the public to express an interest. No one was interested at first or if they were, they were too shy to approach us. As we realised this, we approached the public ourselves and managed to interest a few people to come and have a look.

Here are a couple of examples of people who had a go at our workshop.

Here was our first participant. She was a young girl who decided that she would like a go at creating stop motion animation. She brought her father and he supervised her while she was drawing. We all helped in the process of showing her what to do. At first, she seemed nervous but she soon understood the simple steps and went right into it. She wasn't sure what to draw but we gave her some suggestions and she chose something that she liked. After drawing on each piece of paper to create her sequence of images, with our guidance, she took photos of her drawings, using an iPad that we had set up, with an app called iStopMotion. After she had taken the photos, we showed her her finished product. The girl and the father seemed very pleased with the outcome and were interested to know more about animation.

Here is a picture of me showing someone how to create stop motion animation. She didn't feel like giving it a go as she was busy but she was interested to see how it all worked. She sent me feedback of the workshop.

"The animation workshop was nice to see as many people seemed intrigued by what was going on. I had a look myself and Katie showed me how the process of creating an animation works. I enjoyed talking part and I feel like I now know a lot more about animation than I did before."

From presenting this workshop, I feel like my leadership skills have developed. I feel more confident in approaching members of the public and leading a group to pull off a successful workshop. I dealt with the problems, such as getting people to join in, along the way and managed to sort them out quickly and efficiently. Next time I hold a workshop, I will feel more confident in myself, my team and communicating with the public. 

Unit 1 Part D

I interviewed Rose Horner (Manager of Wem Town Hall) and Sarah Zacharek (Assistant Manager of Wem Town Hall).

What is Wem Town Hall? 

Sarah: We are a local community arts venue that hosts a variety of different events, meetings, conferences, celebratory events or just a place to meet up with friends.  We also keep on hand, information about local services and attractions be it, local walks, bus timetables, B&B’s to local societies contact details.

Who is the target market?

Sarah: Everyone!  From the primary school children coming to their annual panto, to students attending media lessons, to our senior visitors who enjoy Extend or Pilates classes, to local families coming to enjoy a family film, our music lovers who want to see a particular artist play, to local arts society to enable them to exhibit their works, to local businesses wanting to arrange a meeting.  We try to provide something for everyone.

How is the Town Hall run? (Trust, paid workers, volunteers...)  

Sarah: We are a small team of five paid staff members (Manager, Assistant Manager & Admin & Marketing assistant/support, Cleaner/Caretaker & Duty Manager – casual), 12 trustees and approximately 20-30 volunteers.  The day to day work is covered by the paid staff members who in turn oversee and have help from a variety of volunteers who cover such jobs as reception work, helping set up the venue for events, ushering events, providing support at events.  Trustees also help at events, but also provide a huge support behind the scenes on decision making with regard to finance, etc.  Some trustees also assist by duty managing and covering short falls in the diary.

Does it house any other related businesses? 

Sarah: Yes. Thomas Adams School lease the Town Rooms from us to hold Media Lessons in them.  We lease offices to Media Active, a creative agency.  We also have companies who regular hire spaces from us on a weekly basis, such as Hatchers Solicitors (Thursday mornings), People to People/Ageing well (Thursdays) and Wem into Work (Tuesdays).

How is the film programme organised? 

Rose: When WTH first re-opened we undertook customer surveys and worked out that the best night to programme film would be a Thursday night.  As such a Thursday evening is always held in our diary for film screenings.  We also generally add in an extra afternoon screening on a Mon/Tues or Wednesday but this changes as to the availability of the hall (we have to fit around other hirers of the building whether it be for meetings, schools events or exercise classes for example) If we think a film will be popular with our audience we try to programme it in a week where we have the option to fit in multiple screenings.  A good example of this would be for the likes of The kings Speech film or Best Exotic Marigold Hotel which were extremely popular.  During school holidays we also plan to hold more family orientated film screenings.  When choosing films to programme the first step is to look at what is being released when (www.launchingfilms.com.) As we are a part time cinema we can secure films from around 6-8 weeks from the release date.  From that list we go through and assess what films we could get when and what audience the films in question would appeal to.  Our core cinema audience is 30+ years and young families.  We don’t tend to show films aimed at teenagers as the [point at which we can show these films (6to8 weeks after it has come out) the audience in question has already been to see it at a multiplex cinema, they are not willing to wait to see it at their community venue and so it is not cost effective for us to put these screenings on.  We work with a film booker who also works for The ICO(Independent Cinema Office). He lets me know of films that would be of particular interest to our key audiences and will highlight to us any films that may be less well know but still great to show.  The film booker we work with attends lots of preview screenings in London so we are getting great advice from someone who’s actually sat and watched the films we are considering.  If we were programming completely on our own it would be much more difficult to make informed decisions.

What other sort of performances/events are held at the Town Hall  

Sarah: A vast array of different performances.  For example, in the last few months we had a Theatre Performance, a National Theatre Live Screening by Satellite, cinema screenings, a ballroom dance, weekly market, blood donor sessions, a 30^th Birthday Party, a musical performance and all topped off with the show featuring the comedian Mark Watson.  This month, we have the Winter Festival, Thomas Adams School Variety shows, Newtown School Panto, St Peter’s School Xmas film screening, Nativity 3 film screenings and a ballet screening of Nutcracker.

What sort of exhibitions does it hold and how are they organised? 

Sarah: The exhibitions are organised by the Manager.  We try to keep all our exhibitions locally based.  Be it through local groups (like the Civic Society for the World War I exhibition), display of Thomas Adams students material, local arts societies and pottery clubs.  We also do exhibitions of locally based artists.  The aim being that anyone local can display their work here. 

Rose: The gallery programme is planned around 6-12months in advance and holds a mixture of community and professional artist exhibitions.  Each exhibition generally runs for 2-3 months though occasionally we fit in smaller exhibitions for a month.  We approach artists to display work here but also respond to enquiries that come in which leads to a varied programme.

Does the Town Hall work with other arts organisations? 

Sarah: Yes we do.  We have a long running partnership with Arts Alive, Borderline Film Festival and Flicks in the Sticks.  We have also worked with Media Active (who are based at Wem Town Hall) on projects such as the BFI Academy and the film ambassadors.

Rose: Yes we work with many organisations in particular is Arts Alive who we work with to programme 4-6 live events per year at WTH.  We work very closely with Media Active, Flicks in the Sticks and Kinokulture Cinema on a number of film projects. 

How is the programme of events promoted? 

Sarah: All events are promoted with Posters in the venue and at some external sources.  We also have tv screens in both the venue and in the window with a slide show of all events coming up.  We have listing leaflets that are distributed locally both direct to those on our mailing list (or have Friends Membership) and also amongst local businesses.  We also have a brochure that comes out twice a year that is distributed in the same way.  We have a website that is always updated with show / event information and we utilise Facebook and Twitter as our social media outlets.  We have a mailing out email as well with updates about upcoming events.  We advertise in local pamphlets such as the Wemian & 31 Days.  If we need to, we utilise the local press and radio to push high profile events. Finally through word of mouth.  Our volunteers are an instrumental part of discussing and getting our events out there to the public. 

Rose: The programme of events is mainly promoted through our events brochure (3 per year) and our website.  Occasionally we may advertise in 31 days, folk monthly and local newspapers (Shropshire star/north Shropshire chronicle)  We write a number of press release promoting events which are sent to Radio Shropshire, Shropshire Star, North Shropshire Chronicle and The Whitchurch Herald.  We also write articles about upcoming events for communities newsletters such as The Wemian and Coton news.

What professional experience did the management team have before running the town hall (just so the participants can get a sense of career pathways!) 

Sarah: Assistant Manager – started in the pub trade, so have a experience in hospitality & customer service.  Moved into commercial business and marketing, given experience in products & promotions and being highly organised.  Moved into Live Music, running venues in York, Liverpool, Glasgow, Cardiff & Birmingham.  Overseeing the booking of artists, the hospitality side of the business, responsible for profit & loss, nightclub events, room hires and providing good customer service and great gig experiences to the general public.  Started as the Café Bar Manager at Wem Town Hall, with the start up of the café and have now moved over to the Venue fully, looking after finance, maintenance, event management and working on the project Wem into Work.

Rose: I undertook a BA honours degree in Theatre Studies with the University of Hull and gained a job straight out of University with the National Student Drama Festival helping to organise their annual festival.  I gained great experience in events and volunteer management which aided me in gaining a post with Birmingham Arts fest which at that time was the largest free arts festival in the UK.  I moved up to Edinburgh for a number of years to work firstly in FoH then moving into a management role of an Edinburgh Fringe venue.  That kind of job really does teach you hard work.  To really run a successful venue we had to work 7 weeks without a single day off and long days.  It was worth it for the experience and the contacts I have made in my career but it’s not for the faint hearted!  I moved back to Shropshire in 2009 to work for WTH and I use my work experience every day! It’s also worth noting that I draw upon work experience gained from part time jobs as a student.  I worked for a hotel as a waitress and picked up lots of knowledge about how to set up for events – conferences and weddings in particular which is especially useful for my work at WTH as we often cater for these type of events.

From interviewing Sarah and Rose, I have learnt a lot about their careers and work. This has made me think more about how I will go about my future education, training and careers opportunities. I want to take every opportunity I can and will start looking into universities for future education into the subject of work that I would like to focus on. I am also looking forward to take part in media based trips and workshops. 

Here are some photographs of Wem Town Hall, where the interview took place. 

Unit 1 Part B

My plan for the project is to try animation techniques that I have not tried before. I am going to develop my skills so that I can use them in the future. I want to do a good quality animation piece for this project.

DAY 1 - The group and I have started on the animation project. We have been commissioned by a company called Eye Witness to create a short film about World War 1. As a group we discussed ideas and assigned each other key roles, considering each other's skills and abilities. My role is to create a piece of rotor scope animation. I found an online clip of two people dancing during the war time. I decided that this would be a good clip to use as it was clear enough and the dancing was elegant. I was shown how to import a piece of film into Photoshop by my tutors. I had a go myself but clicked on a wrong option at one point of the process. I had to redo it and thankfully, I got it right the second time. By the time I had it imported, it was the end of the day's session.

DAY 2 - Today has felt long. The moment I entered the room, I got my equipment out and started up Photoshop. I have spent all day creating the rotor scope animation. It took me some time to set up which brushes, bush sizes and colours to use but after some experimenting I started on the animation. First, I painted in the base colours. This included the skin tone, the hair colour and the colour of the clothing. After that, I'd go over the base colours with highlights and shadows. The purpose of this was to give them life. They'd never look realistic but giving the characters some depth, gave them life in their movements. I completed 12 frames of rotor scope animation today. That's 1 second of animation.

DAY 3 - The third day has been pretty much the same as the second. I went straight to the computer and onto Photoshop. I realised that 1 second of animation wasn't a lot. I wanted to improve on this so I set myself a goal of completing 2 seconds of animation through out the day. I didn't quite achieve this. I managed to create another 1 second clip of animation. Although it takes a lot of time to create, I enjoy it.

DAY 4 - After talking to the group and tutors, we decided on a length for the rotor scope animation clip. It would be three seconds long but would repeat itself so that the dancers looked like they were dancing for longer. I carried on with the animation to create the last second. By the end of the day, I had finished the 3 second animation. I am pleased with the finished piece and I've now learnt new skills to use in Photoshop.

DAY 5 - To take a break from rotor scoping, I joined in with some drawings. We drew buildings and backgrounds for various parts of the animation. This was very fun as the whole group were joining in and trying something different from what they were previously working on. After this, I created a short rotor scope sequence on Photoshop where the man dancing turns into smoke and disappears. This took the rest of the day but turned out really well.

Most of what I have been working on over the past few days has gone really well. The couple dancing turned out to run smoothly and drawing them in Photoshop came out more successfully than I expected.

Creating the original Photoshop document was tricky. I managed to make a few mistakes and get confused but when I received guidance, it turned out ok.

I didn't expect it to take so long to create the animation clip. Next time, to improve, I would try to speed up in the creation process. Now that I know how to create rotor scope, I think that next time I will be able to improve on using the time effectively.

Here are some screenshots of the finished piece of animation that I created.

Here is Spencer's review on my work for the animation.

Here is the finished animation.

Unit 1C

reviewing an arts event

On Thursday 30th of October I attended a live screening of 'NT Live Encore: Frankenstein'. I saw this at Wem Town Hall with the rest of the animation group.

Jonny Lee Miller played Frankenstein and Benedict Cumberbatch played Frankenstein's monster.

At the beginning of the play we see Frankenstein's monster experience his first moments of being alive. He takes his time to adapt to his surroundings and we see how vulnerable he is. He learns to use his muscles, to stand and to move around. The length of time that had been dedicated to display this moment was longer than I expected it to be. It give the play a realistic feeling and introduced the character in a way that we wouldn't be shown in a film.

We follow Frankenstein's monster on his search for his creator. He encounters members of the public and he learns that he will never be accepted into society because of the way he looks. Finally, he comes across a man who is blind. The blind man takes him in and teaches him to read and write but as soon as he is introduced to the man's family, the monster is thrown out of the house. To get revenge, Frankenstein's monster burns the blind man's house down with the family inside. The rage of the monster is displayed with flashes of lights, loud noises and bold movement from the actors. I like how these techniques were used to portray emotion. It was over-the-top but this worked well because it was a stage play that's seen from a distance.

Frankenstein is introduced as a scientist who finds out a way to bring the dead back to life. He meets the monster for the first time and is amazed that it functions properly. The monster pleads with him to create a female companion. At first, Frankenstein refuses to create another monster but he soon is persuaded to do as the monster wants. When he tells his family that he will be leaving for a while, they are angry and his fiancé wants to go with him. Frankenstein bargains with her and promises to marry her as soon as he returns. The strain on their relationship is shown really well here because you realise that he doesn't love her. It's shown in a subtle way and I find this more effective than if it were stated obvious. It makes the audience think about the relationship in more depth. You soon realise that he loves science more than he loves his fiancé.

Frankenstein travels to a quiet Scottish island where he plans to bring back a female from the dead. Here, the lighting and sound are made so that it gives the impression of lightning and rain. It creates a spooky and gloomy atmosphere and you know that something bad is going to happen. Frankenstein pays two locals to go grave digging to find him a fresh female corpse. He brings the body back to life. Frankenstein's monster reappears and praises Frankenstein for his creation. Frankenstein realises that he shouldn't have brought the woman back to life because the monster doesn't know how to live in society. Two of the monsters would be chaos. He destroys the woman's body and leaves the monster to mourn.

When Frankenstein returns home, he marries his fiancé. She waits in her bedroom for him. When he arrives, he announces that he must leave again to attend to another matter. He wants to find and kill the monster. When he leaves the room, the monster jumps out from under her bedsheets and restrains her. He explains his situation. The lady agrees not to alarm the guards of his presence and befriends him, scared that he'll hurt her. The monster rapes and kills the woman. Frankenstein returns to the room, after hearing the screams and watches the monster escape out of the window. Frankenstein pleads to his father, stating that he can bring his wife back to life. His father dismisses the option. We can see that Frankenstein's actions have torn the family apart.

Frankenstein and his monster travel to the arctic to live in solitude. Frankenstein is out of energy but the monster wants to go on. He suspects that Frankenstein has died, so he try's to bring him back to life and apologises for all the bad that he has done. This is a sad moment because you remember that the monster only wanted love and acceptance into society. Frankenstein regains consciousness and carries on pulling his sledge.

In conclusion, the acting, miss-en-scene and plot were phenomenal. I really enjoyed this live screening and would like to see similar productions in the future.

Unit 2A

For my arts project I have worked with a group of people, planning what activity we will demonstrate. We decided on doing a one-off practical animation workshop. I took charge of organising the workshop. I wrote out an equipment list, made questionnaires and decided on important details for the workshop. I will also demonstrate a simple animation to the workshop attendees. The other members of the group will do tasks such as setting up equipment, teaching and using the iPad to show the attendees what their finished animation looks like. 

We have chosen to teach attendees how to create hand drawn animation. This will involve them drawing a set amount of images that will change slightly in every picture so that the animation will work. Once pictures are taken of every image, they will be turned into a small animation by an app called iMotion. This is used so that the person can easily see what they have made when we play the animation back to them. The aim of this task is to show people how simple and enjoyable creating this type of animation is. 

A Leader is someone that takes charge of a group of people. They organise the group when involved in various tasks. 'Leadership' is when someone puts various qualities and skills into taking charge of a group. A leader can benefit everyone because they create a feeling of guidance and wisdom within the group.

Qualities and skills that are useful to make a leader include: effective communication, ability to hold interest, reliability, intelligence, confidence and enthusiasm. I would like to be leader that can lead a group using these qualities and skills. 

During this project, I would like to work on my confidence. I think that to be a good leader you need a good amount of confidence so that everyone else in the group can feel confident in what they are doing. I feel like I need to work on this because I am not very confident. 

I know and have known many good leaders. Teachers are a great example of good leaders because they use their authority, enthusiasm and all of the other qualities of a good leader into teaching a class of students. They manage to hold the student's attention for an hour and have the ability to explain tasks effectively. They are always there to talk to and are reliable when students are faced with a problem. Teachers also have a huge amount of enthusiasm for their subjects that they teach. You can tell that they love what they teach and therefore they teach it well. Teachers are good leaders.  

I have experienced holding the role of a group leader in a few situations. Some of which include class projects, sports activities and events. I have also seen other people take the position of a leader. I have seen good examples of this in sports activities, friendship groups and in work environments.

When we commence with our workshop, I will take the role of group leader and apply what I have learn't and observed to be the best leader I can be.

Unit 1A

I am going to be taking part in a British Film Industry animation course at Wem Town Hall. I already have a few art and technology skills through doing Art, Graphics and Media lessons at college and Art, Media and ICT at GCSE. I would like to develop my skills and learn something new when creating the animation.

I would like to try out and learn how to use computer software that allows you to create animation. In the past, I have tried out hand drawn animation and a small amount of stop motion animation. 

For the course, I have considered all of the animating techniques. There are positive and negative points to each technique. 

Hand drawn - They can look better than if they were drawn on the computer. You can add as much detail as you want to. They take a longer time make than if they were made on a computer. They would take a long time for you to redraw each image on each frame. You have to take a photograph of each frame and then import them onto the computer and into a particular piece of software to create the animation. 

Cut outs - You can use different kinds of textures, patterns, shades, colours, materials, surfaces and backgrounds within the animation. You can cut out anything and add it easily to the animation. The downsides to this technique are that the animation will always be in 2D and there may be health and safety issues when using scissors to cut the material. 

Rotorscope - This technique can be simple because you draw over the top of a piece of video. It can end up having a hand drawn feel. It can be very time consuming because you would have to draw an image multiple times but with small differences on each frame. 

Drawing straight into animation software - The movements of the character and objects are smooth. The software may be difficult to use at first and you would have to learn how to use it effectively to gain a good outcome. 

Plasticine or clay - You can change the shape and size of the model however or whenever you want to. You can morph objects and/or characters together easily. You get a good 3D effect because they are actual objects opposed to creating a fake 3D object on the computer. However, the process is long and time consuming because you have to add all the detail to the clay and move the object for every frame.

After considering the different animation techniques, I have come to the conclusion that I would like to try rotor scoping. This is because I have never tried this technique before and it will develop my skills in using Photoshop. I will need to use photoshop, a piece of film to draw over and a graphics tablet to create a piece of rotor scope animation. I am expecting this work to take a few days or more to complete.

Unit 2B

Here I will talk about the practical issues that me and my group have planned for the hand drawn animation workshop. 

I plan to share arts activities and skills with other people by setting up a workshop for hand drawn animation in Wem Town Hall. 

Resources and equipment I will need to carry out the hand drawn animation workshop: 
- two light boxes to be used to trace the previous image when drawing the animation
- pens and pencils for drawing the different images for the animation
- two iPads to record the animation
- a stack of paper with hole punches so that they can be put onto the lightbox
- questionnaires that I will make and print out myself
- a tripod for the iPad to stand on
- chairs
- two tables for the light boxes 
- a laptop to show an example of an animation that we made earlier on

There are not any health and safety conditions for this workshop. All we will have to do is check that the light boxes are secure on the tables and that there is no food and drink near the electronic equipment. We will ask for permission before taking photographs of the people in the workshop. 

We will promote the project to others by talking to members of the public about the workshop. We will explain what animation is, how to create it and invite them to have a look at our set up. We will also set the workshop up in view of the public so that they can approach us when ever they want to. Hopefully, people will become interested and want to have a closer look at what we are doing or actually want to take part and have a go at creating their own short animation. 

If we need advice and support on the workshop or have a problem, we can always go to our supervisors who will be Sam and Donna. 

Our back up plan includes us switching roles if we need to. This means that if a problem occurs in a certain role, another member of the group can step in and help out. Also, when we are running the workshop, we may realise that a role isn't working out for a group member and we will swap roles if we decide that it will work better that way. However, we will try to stick to the plan as closely as we can and stay in our roles if everything works out well.

We will know if the project has worked well if the workshop attendees have enjoyed themselves and learnt something new. We will know if they have because we will ask them to fill out a feedback survey. I made this questionnaire before hand and chose the questions carefully so that we can gain as much useful feedback as possible.

I will know if my leadership skills are developing if the workshop turns out being successful and that everything goes to plan.

Unit 2D

Photos from the workshop