So what's new?

So it's been a little while since I made a post so I'm going to keep this sweet and simple and just update you a bit on my personal life, my college activities and my work status.

First off I'm not very well, I don't think I've ever felt this ill before. I won't fill you in on my symptoms, all I know is I woke up Sunday with the worst stomach-ache and headache I have probably ever felt and I still have it now. I'm sure I'l survive though. (I bet a load of you people are going "Darn" right now)

As for College, me and my work partner Zoayee are doing great with our assignment as far as I know (even though she has also been a bit under the weather). We are both currently working on pre-production which is all the paper work that has to be handed in before we make the final product. As I said in one of my previous posts we are planning on including stop motion with our TV Ident. Our current idea was to have toys create the E4 logo however this is only one of a few ideas and all of them are still on the drawing board.

And finally I had a rather successful (in my opinion) job interview last Friday for a shop which is opening in town at the end of this month. 'Bastions' will be selling all sorts but its main focus is gift cards, however around the year it will also sell the occasional holiday items e.g costumes at Halloween and tree ornaments at Christmas. They said they should hopefully get back to me soon so wish me luck.

That's more or less what's new. Thanks for reading and please subscribe.       

What got me into media?

I have always been interested in how films are made. I can remember when I was around 11 or 12 every Sunday morning on BBC2 there was a programme presented by Jonathan Ross called 'Film' and I would always get up to watch it to see behind the scenes of the latest films. 


Later on when I was around 15 I started watching alot of horror films and there was one horror film that caught my eye more than the others. George A. Romero's 'Night of the Living Dead' was in my opinion the first real zombie film, it had gore, it had proper zombies that eat flesh not brains and it was later followed by 5 sequels which were all as good as the first. Romero's zombie films are more or less what gave me the idea of making my own films. I love zombies and I love films so I thought I could possibly make my own zombie series later on in my life.

But what finally made me want to take the course was a guy on Youtube called Freddie Wong. He creates his own VFX videos and teaches his viewers how to do it all on his second channel. This is what really made me want to go for it. Learning how to create your own explosions, gun shots, Sci-Fi stuff, backgrounds and a whole other load of cool stuff all on a computer. Definitely the sort of thing I want to do. So here I am, doing media at college and one day hopefully I'l make my own movie.

Thanks for reading.    

A bit about me....

Well as you saw from my first post my name is Joe. I live in the South West of the UK and I am currently studying A BTEC National Diploma in Media Film and Television. But what I was really going to talk about was more of my social life. Most of my time I enjoy either listening to music, playing video games, watching films, going out with friends, model making, fishing and cooking. 


Music I listen to is mostly all mixed, I like a bit of everything. My favourite bands are Daft Punk, AC/DC, Linkin Park, The Beatles and The Prodigy. Everyone has at least one song that they will always listen to and I would have to say mine is 'Mad World' by Gary Jules, I have loved since the first time I heard it.


Video Games, I've honestly been playing them since I was about 5 years old so yes my mind probably has been melted by now. To be honest thats what I would hopefully want to be when I finish my education, its either go into making films or video game production. Games I play are the Gears of War Trilogy, Halo series, Battlefield Series, Dead Space series, Skate 2, Aliens vs Predator. My favourite game out of all of them is probably going to have to be Gears of War, its fast paced, its got action, a bit of gore and great story line, I honestly cannot wait to play the third one.


I haven't really done fishing or model making for a while. I think the last time I went fishing was last year out on my uncles boat and out of everyone fishing I caught the most mackerel. As for model making I don't think I got in to it as much as I wanted to, I really enjoyed it but I could never find the time nor the money to carry on with it but it was alot of fun when I was able to go down to the shop, buy myself a small set of Space Marines, go home and just make my own small figurine army. Great fun.    


Going out with friends is something I do as often as I can. Usually we would either hang out at the beach, wander around town, go for a tea or coffee, window shopping. Our activities aren't exactly always brilliant but its always fun to meet up with someone and just sit-down and talk.  


Movies is a big thing for me. My favourite genre of movie is horror, I absolutely love George A. Romero's Zombie films. However I will admit I do like a bit of Sci-Fi and out of all the films that I've seen 'TRON: Legacy' is my favourite. It combined 3 of my favourite things; Computers, Video Games and my favourite band Daft Punk.


I think thats more or less it, if you ever want to know a bit more about me just leave a comment and hopefully I'l get back to you. Now I leave you with a song by Daft Punk.

More Videos

Thanks to my fellow student Chris, I am now able to provide you with a video that he and I created. Our first week back in college this year we re-created a scene from 'The Dark Knight'. It was an idea that came to us at the last moment as we were struggling to think of films that we had watched recently or that we just liked. I came to the conclusion that this would be a rather easy scene to create and would be quite a bit of fun.


'Joker's Pencil Trick' Scene


Cast:
The Joker- Myself
Gambol and his Henchman- George Cain
Sal Maroni- Arran Green
The Chechen- Sam Baker
Lau- Chris Cole


Please go and check out Chris' youtube page and media blog, there is great stuff on both sites thanks for watching.


Chris' Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/user/ChrisJMCole
Chris' Blog: http://chriscolemedia.blogspot.com/      

Oh I forgot.....

Also last year we did a scene re-creation. Andrew Raines is a fellow student on our course and is a big Clint Eastwood fan so he decided it would be a good idea to re-create the 'Do you feel lucky punk' scene from 'Dirty Harry'. This here is the final cut.

Cast:

Dirty Harry- Andrew Raines 

Crook- Myself

Crew:

Research- Andrew Raines, Myself

Cover Art- George Cain

Sound Recordist- Jess Badger

Editing- Andrew Raines, Myself

Flashbacks

I thought it would be nice if I filled you in on exactly what me and my media group did on our first year at college. For the first week we were set a minor task of creating a short film which had a subject of 'Lost in Time' (also the title for each film).


After this we began our first assignment which was to create a TV advert for either a toiletry or an item of clothing, mine was for children's school clothes, others were for LYNX spray, CAT shoes, Levi Jeans, Nike Shoes and Garnier hair gel. For our second assignment we were asked to make a demonstration video on a subject of our choice. I chose to do 'How to set-up an XBOX 360 console', as it was nearing Christmas time one group decided to do 'How to wrap a Christmas present' in which I unfortunately had to be Santa Claus, it was all rather fun in the end though.


Our third assignment was also quite fun even if it was rather stressful which was to create a 'Music Video', it was stressful because we could not find a local band. Luckily though our Sound studies teacher had a piece of work he had recently done that we were able to use called '$50 Story'. Our fourth assignment was probably my favourite even if most of it was spent out in the wind and rain. We were tasked with Creating a Documentary, me and my work partner Chris (http://chriscolemedia.blogspot.com/) decided to go with the idea of creating a documentary in search of a local myth that big cats roam the country side in our area. We didn't find anything however thanks to Chris' skill with editing I believed we were both very pleased with the final video.


Our last assignment of the year however was certainly my least favourite. We had to LIVE broadcast a 25 minute television show that we designed and created. I finished my first year at college with a Pass which I was very pleased with and I aim to do better in my Second year. Thanks for reading and I Hope you found this interesting.

          

New Plan

Myself and my work partner Zoayee have now decided that we will only research the Sky Idents. Our main idea to now create a TV Ident will be for the UK channel 'E4'. We have decided to go with this plan as it will be more of an area of television we are both familiar with as E4 is more of a teenage channel. We also believe that we may be able to incorporate this into our stop-motion assignment because most of E4's Idents use stop motion. 

My First Project

My first assignment was set on tuesday. For the next four months we have to research, plan and create a TV Ident. We also have to write a minimum 1000 word essay on the subject. Each member of the class is watching and analysing a different TV Ident. For example I am watching the Sky Channel Idents on Youtube. Once we have all written roughly a page on each Ident we will bring all our findings together to provide everyone with a large ammount of information to each write the essay.


What a TV Ident is a short clip to advertise the channel that it has been created for. Most Idents usually involve the logo for the channel like how Channel 4 here in the UK has buildings everywhere that all come into the shot at once to create the number 4 for the channel as shown below.

As Sky has over 600 channels I am only researching the basic channels such as Sky 1, 2, 3 and Sky Movies. The Idents are rather simple as the main style is a program that is shown on Sky with the channels number somewhere in the clip. Each number is a state of matter, 1 is a solid and shatters like glass, 2 is a liquid which splatters and 3 is a gas which evaporates.

Sky 1




Sky 2



Sky 3

Welcome :)

Hi I'm Joe and I study Media Film and Television. This blog will show you my current and future projects throughout my second year at college.