Week 11

This week we had Maria Brown the careers advisor in ITB.

Maria was in to give us a few tips to help prepare us for our upcoming mock interviews. The interviews were kind of a serious thing since we had to come in all fancied up and having our interview skills as good as we could get them as if were where going for a real job.

Maria told us that before an interview we should

• Research the company we are being interviewed by.
• Research the position we have applied for.
• Know our C.V. inside-out.
• Have preparation questions in your head with good answers to these hard questions.
• To have a phrase to help buy time if you get an unprepared question, so that you have time to think of an appropriate answer.
• Find out stats and other facts about the company.
• Ring the companies HR office to see if they can tell you anything that you couldn’t find out anywhere else.

Next Maria told us about how to act when you get to the interview stage-

• You should show up in a suit or else very nicly dressed or dressed for the job in the correct way.
• From the second you meet the interviewer you will be judged so try to stay in the best frame of mind and give off the correct personality.
• Shake the persons hand and keep eye contact and sit still.
• Keep the jewelry to a minimum and keep it plain so that your don’t have to many distractions for the interviewer to look at.
• Stay relaxed but not to relaxed.
• Speak slowly and confidently.

These are the tips that Maria gave us and I tried my best to stick to these when it came to going into my interview.

Hopefully it went well but i went in being quite nervous and got a little thrown off with a few questions but we cant expect everything to be easy now can we?

In the end it was a very helpful learning experience and I’m looking forward to getting my feedback.

Week 10

This week we had Robbie Ward come in to talk to us. He is from a company called BPM media, they do visual advertising in stores, banks, bars and other venues. They also do audio for stores and retails shops, they use music combinations that make people stay and spend more money.

Robbie talked to us about how content is everything but then he went on to his next slide and told us that its not the content that matters but the relevance of the content, because if the content is not related there’s no point in using it.
In order to get the right content you have to research your target audience. Also you have to show the right content at the right time, such as there’s no point in having a breakfast menu on screen when its dinner time or even if the venue has turned into a nightclub.
The content has to get its point across in a few seconds( most people only look for 7 seconds) because the audience get bored easily or else just don’t pay to much attention.
Robbie also told us how the advertising he does has to make an increase on sales for the venue to keep their system, so if the system is increasing sales then it will be kept.

BPM’s system is apparently very easy to use and if on a night when a bars sales are down in one area they can quickly make an advert for the screen giving cheaper prices for a limited time on what ever they choose. This idea is very good because it means the bar is increasing its sales as well as getting rid of unneeded stock.

I think that this idea is very good and that it uses advertising to its full potential. Robbie’s company put in the effort to do the research to make sure that their system is getting the best out of its audience and working the way it should, Its kind of forcing people to buy more but in the end it just comes down to how well people can handle their impulse buying.

Trip to the Dáil and Trinity Science gallery.

This week we went on an adventure to the Dáil followed by a tour around the science gallery in Trinity.

We got into the building and were taken up stairs to the bar and waited for our tour guide to take us around the whole building and give us some background information.
We were taken to the room where the politicians sit around and argue about how the government is run, its also where it is broadcasted to the nation. This room used to be the lecture room for the Royal Dublin Society.
Next we were taken to the Seanad but on the way we past through a gallery of portraits of past Taoiseachs. When we got to the room where the Seanad is held we came in through the press door. there was a small section of seats for where the press can take notes and watch what’s being said. The room where the Seanad is held used to be a ball room when the house was owned by Duke of Leinster.

After seeing the Seanad we headed back downstairs but on the way we stopped to look at a flag given to the Irish government from JFK, the flag was from the American Civil war and there was also a case of the old Irish Punt notes and coins.

Next it was lunch we all went our separate ways and had to meet up at the science museum in an hour. getting the the museum was a bit of a challenge since coming through Trinity is like going through a maze but with Kev leading the way we made it.
The museum was a bit strange, it was all about hyperbolic shapes made into a coral reef.

It was made from lots of different plastics and wool,  there were loads of different colours involved in each reef and it made them really cool looking as well as the shape the corals make when they unfold.

The coral was made up of hyperbolic shapes that are a huge thing in maths if your interested in maths.

The way the shape is makes a line drawn across it always be straight, it might look like its not but it is. Because of this it means that time travel is theoretically possible which would be pretty awesome.

looking  at the exhibition was good and it looked like a lot of effort went into making it especially since it was lots of different countries work all in one place but when it came to having it explained to us I couldn’t grasp the whole maths side of it and just wandered around looking at the different pieces.

Any way all in all it was a good day out we got to see different things that were going on in our city center and we had good craic as a group in general

Week 8

Yet another video lecture we had to watch, not found of it but it has to be done.
I decided to watch the video on Ron Crabb. Ron is a matte painter, his paintings are amazing and life like.

Ron paints the backdrops for films and TV. He started off with TV commercials and works free lance from his home, his clients could get his work through the internet.

Ron wanted to be an illustrator or fine art, but he dropped out of college and moved to California. While there Ron got a job doing designs on t-shirts and then got a job with KABC- this job was all hands on and done with out the aid of computers.

When the Quantel paint box came out Ron was let go, but got some free lance work at night for KABC as a free lance, this worked well for Ron because he didn’t have much work to do at night and just got to play around with the new computer software. This got Ron into motion graphics.

Ron showed talents at a very early age and was always drawing, getting his inspirations from nature he saw.

Matte painting is Ron’s main work, matte painting is a background or set piece that cant be built for a film so they are drawn in or painted in, the paintings combine with the live action elements of the film. A lot of films have the scenery drawn in for them because those backgrounds just don’t exist.

Now a days most matte paintings are done digitally with Photoshop and similar programmes. Ron worked on films like “The Last Samurai” and “X-men”,  Matte painting can be used for not just doing a whole background but just adding extra bits to a background so that it fits with the film.

From looking at Ron speak about the Taj Mahal scene from “The Bucket List” matte painting requires a lot of work, there were hundreds of layers to make the scene look as real as possible. The different cheats and tweaks used to make the picture perfect. There is an amazing amount of detail added to every picture that Ron paints and from seeing “The Bucket List” i would never of guessed that the backgrounds were just painted in.

Next Ron talks about the transition into the digital illustrator and how lots of new programmes are coming about that make digital art look more and more like its been really painted.

All in all I love the work that Ron does its just so cool and vibrant looking its hard to look at it and not feel a sense of awe and to show you that ill add some of Ron’s work. Looking at these pictures its hard to believe that they don’t exist and the ones that look out of this world you wish they did exist.

Week 7

This week our lecturer was Fiona Kelly. She has her own business called Glimmer Digital Design, she is also a part of FLK Studio.

Fiona came in to talk to us about where she gets her ideas for the work she does, a lot came from intelligent stealing and knowing what goes well with what. She told us to look around on sites like Twitter, Digg, istockphoto, Fffound and other sites, she also recommended buying piece we like because they will be used at some stage.

Scooter Island

This was a project for advertising for scooters, Fiona decided to use the Vespa/MOD/Ska design for the advert. Fiona did a lot of research and looked ta lots of different sites, such as retro websites and different bikes and different style elements. In the end she came down to 3 different ideas which she took down to just the one idea.

Fat Kitty Films

This was a project where Fiona was asked to create a logo, first she looked at different font types to try find one that would suit her idea and go well with the images and the colours.

Since the company had cat in it she found different pictures of cats that would go well with her idea, in the lecture Fiona had lots of different versions of the logo. She told us that we should be saving our ideas constantly because we might end up going back to one.

Dublin Gay Theater Festival

The original website was very dull and boring and didn’t give a lot of space to the adverts on the site, Fiona looked to other gay websites to develop a new design for the website and also a new brochure because the old one was boring.

My Home

This was a flash banner ad Fiona made. She had to make a story board with her idea for the client to see if they liked and wanted her idea.

Puca

This was a project Fiona didn’t really like working on because of awkward clients. The client wanted Fiona to redesign their website but using things the client wanted and not much else.

Fiona told us how she had to keep putting little characters(PUCA’S) into the website because she really liked them and thought they looked good with the site but the client didn’t like them.

I liked this lecture because it showed how well intelligent stealing can be and how the end product is nothing like that which was started out with making something much better with bits of other pieces.

week 6

No lecture this week so instead we have to watch a video and write up about that

The video i took was Simone Legno.

I chose to watch the video about Simone Legno, the man in charge of Tokidoki.

Simone is a designer from Rome who has unique characters and colour combination’s that he has turned into a brand.

The video was to show us some of Simone’s techniques and styles hoping to inspire us.

Simone started off with Illustrater and then flash to create his designs, he didn’t want to do the normal advertising and instead started off with a website which he used as a portfolio. From this he hoped to get jobs and some more artist friends.

He did bits of free lance and eventually got a call saying a company wanted to turn his designs in a brand.

His influences are of design come from Japan and bits from Italy. Simone says that his inspiration is always flowing and hes always looking trying to find new ones.

Simone’s advice for design is that you never arrive ta the end you always have to work for every little bit of it and constantly improve.

All of Simone’s work starts off as a sketch which he then develops in illustrator. He draws constantly everywhere he goes, eh even leaves a sketch books around his house so if he gets and idea he can just draw it down.

He comments on how his designs have changed over  the years and how if he looks back a few months ago at skecth books that they are very different from what he draws now.

These are different Tokidoki posters I found online

I liked this video because i always saw the Tokidoki characters around and loved them now i know where they come from. And that they all came from one guys head.

Week 5

This week our guest speaker was Emma Wade. Emma is a visual artist she works with installation, Digital Media and Performance arts.

She got her degree from the Institute of Art and Design and Dun Laoghaire, then worked for 2 years in a design company. After this she went to a print company in Dublin while in Dublin she went to the museum of modern art and this made her want to become an artist. Shes not the type of artist that  you first think of she builds pieces and has different projects they are not drawn or made but interacted with.

Emma also has a master degree from the Fine Art Department of NCAD, this is where she learned about technologies for creating interactive art.

Her end of year project for first year was called “Cheer up”, people walked on a mat between two speakers and when pressure was applied clapping would come from the speakers, it was designed to cheer people up by having people cheer for them just for being them.

For her masters project Emma created an exhibition, it wasn’t really interactive but to get to it you had to crawl like a dog to get into the room to view it.

She attached mike’s and camera’s to her dog and took him on walks so she could see what it was like to see the world from a dogs point of view since they always seem to be so happy. She called the project “Rexotrek”.

Next Emma went on an internship in the states at the Guggenheim museum for 3 months.And after this she went to Limerick to do an artist residency for a month.

Emma’s next big project was the “Human Utopian Generation System” aka H.U.G.S.

Its a coat that when you put it on it inflates or applies pressure to the body as if you were getting a hug, she got the idea from the free hugs movement that started off a fee years back.

While creating the project Emma found it hard to get the design right as in how to fill the jacket to make it feel like a hug so she ended up having 4 different versions of the jacket each with a different  intensity.

I really liked the work that Emma did and wouldn’t mind doing some of it myself but I don’t think i would be able to handle the artist ideas of how to come up with what to do. I found this lecture to be quite interesting and payed attention to every bit of it.

Week 4

This week we had a guest speaker called Ian Cudmore from Chutney films come in to talk to us about free lance work in editing and video.

Ian started off by telling us what he did when he finished college. HE graduated in 2006 from NCAD and went on to get a Master in Trinity studying Music and Media technology for two years.

The music part went on its head and Ian had kept an open mind and started to experience with video. Ian says that we are very lucky to be doing the course we are doing because it is very open to any kind of digital media since we are learning a wide range of tools.

When Ian finished his Masters he had a 3 month internship in One Productions. Here he worked mainly with flash ads, after this internship he went into work in Hyper Production Company, he worked on flash ads, banners, telephone texts and sound. But unfortunately the company hit the wall and both clients and employees where left in the air.

This forced Ian into working freelance, he never planned to work freelance but seems to like it now. Ian says that freelance is all down to luck and perseverance.

As part of his freelance Ian made some music videos, but he also made some in his free time as small projects, one of his free time projects was a music video for a Scottish musician named James Yorkston. Ian sent the video to James not looking for anything in return but to just show him what he made. James liked what he saw and asked Ian to come to Scotland and make a documentary for him. This lead to more work for Ian, he ended up making another music video and an EPK for James as well.

Ian met a guy through James called Donal Dineen, Donal is a photographer who makes loops and projects them on screens at concerts. Ian and a friend followed Donal around his gigs and using basic film equipment recorded what he was doing for a small documentary.

Through Donal, Ian met Lisa Hannigan.

Doanl did recordings for Lisa’s first gig, she is a Dublin singer and has recently released an album.

Ian and Donal made an EPK for Lisa, the spent 2 weeks making it, they went to Kerry for a weekend of filming, they recored concerts and interviews with her.

They had better cameras for this project, they used a clip on mike on the beach and got lucky with the sound.For the two week project 1 week was filming and the other was editing, the pay wasnt great but everyone benefited from the project….Lisa benefited when the lads put her video on Youtube and it got huge views leading Lisa to a talk show in the states.

Next Ian with Scratch films helped make a pilot for Meave Higgins show on RTÉ, it was a commission job for 4 part series.

The equipment was much better then what Ian normally worked with and the time scale was 3-4 months, Ian’s job was to film, edit and archive. They also made a stop motion of a fish being cooked for dinner which took 12 hours and looks amazing.

Through the archiving Ian got to go into the RTÉ archive bank.

Now Ian considers him self an editor.

He gave us a tip to always keep ourselves organised especially when it comes to editing, because you never know when you will want a piece of video from years back and if its organised you can find it no bother.

According to Ian the recording ratio of usable footage to over all footage is 20:1 so for every 20 frames you film only 1 frame will be usable.

Ian’s next project was a series for RTÉ called “the School”, it was a year long project he started last January, Ian got great experience from the projects he did with Scratch films and RTÉ, another tip Ian told us was the when it comes to the last bit of cutting its very hard to decide what piece you want more.

Next Ian gave us 8 tips from a writer called Kurt Vonnegut.

1. Use the time of total strangers so they don’t feel like their time is being wasted.
2. Always have a character that the viewer can connect to and root for.
3. Every character should want something, because of they don’t they are boring.
4. Every sentence should has to do something: advance the action or reveal  character.
5. Start as close to the end as possible.
6. Be a sadist.
7. Write to please just one person.
8. Give as much information as soon as possible to the viewer/reader.

Ian showed us graphs of fairy tales and how they compare to real life, fairy tales spike where real life is pretty flat and plain.

At this moment in time Ian is working on a project for the RTÉ storyland competition, The series is called “We own the streets” its mockumentary of a guy called XL so far 3 episodes have been released, each episode is 7 minutes long and very funny.

Ian aslo left us with a good word of advice that some of the best things come from what seems like the worst idea.

Week 3- ICAN

This week we watched a video from last year when a guest speaker came in from Ican.

The guest speaker was Edward Melvin, a project manager form ICAN.

He got into the media business through an ARTS degree and has been managing projects  for ican for 8 years.

Ican is an advertising and communications company, they help create and design visions that their clients want. Or else they help to define a vision of what the client wants.

Ican provides people with Web design, Search marketing, Online PR, Email advertising, Search engine optimization, and Project & Campaign management.

Ican’s main business is advertising, the did a site for WRC which allows you to put a oicture of you and your friend in a wrc car,to help promote parts of Ireland. And they did a site for Sonya dn 53 Degrees North.

In Ican they have

• 1 Managing direct
• 7 Creative
• 7 Production
• 5 Client services
• 3 Media
• 2 Search marketing
• 1 Accountant

Edward asked why do people advertise online?

And his answer was because there is a clear return on investment. Online campaigns are more flex-able and more people use the internet to communicate.

Next Edward goes on to talk about a good brief,

Aa good brief provides clarity. Clear objectives and and metrics. Definition of who is involved. A defined audience. Mandatory inclusions.Constraints and assumptions.

A bad or unclear brief can provide opportunity. The brief is very open and means the client needs help deciding on what they want.

A concept is an idea of how the project will work, it is communicated through core presentation, storyboard, visual design, mechanic, rationale and justification.

The most important part of any stage is the plan, this is because it is easiest to make any changes at this stage instead of later down the line.

The role of a project manager is to deliver a profitable project for the agency on time within budget and that suites the clients needs. This is done by

• realistic estimation,
• detailed planning,
• client involvement,
• good communication and
• identifying risks and assumptions.

Edward says that working at an agency is very stressful, hectic, fast-paced, pressurised and frenetic. But it is also very rewarding,exciting, fun and creative.

With out having the video of Edward his notes would be hard to understand since he explains alot of them himself so he was very well prepared for the presentation.

I found the talk very informative of the type of work in an agency and the possibilities there. I think it would be fun to work on a team with people doing this kind of work but not as a project manager.

Week 2

This week we had our first guest speaker. it was Geraldine Gray from the department of informatics in ITB.

She came in to talk to us about different Learning Styles and its relevance to Creative Digital Media.

Basically everyone is different in the way they take in information, there are 60 different ways of categorizing how people learn.

5 different learns styles

1. Learning Channels – how we take in information
2. Cognitive Strengths – how we commit information to memory
3. Manner and Style of Learning – how people process information to understand it
4. Personality Type Difference – how your personality effects the way you learn
5. Types of leaning difference – different types of intelligence

Learning channels

There are 3 different learning channels Visual, Auditory and Kinaesthetic.

Visual learners learn best by seeing the information, there are two types of visual learners visual linguistic(learn best from written words) and visual spatial(learn best from diagrams and other visual material).

Auditory learners learn best by hearing information, and when its explained to them orally. best way for an auditory person to learn is talking aloud, forming small discussion groups and hearing music when they study.

Kinaesthetic learners learn best when touching or moving.they tend to lose interest when theres not much going on in the environment, they learn best by making things and going on field trips.

Cognitive Strengths

There are 3 modes that information passes through before its used.

1. linguistic- note taking, model and diagrams active learning activities.
2. Non-linguistic- use mental images,metaphors and touch.
3. Affective- uses the power of feelings and emotions.

Personality type

Best known model is Myers Briggs MBTI personality test, we each worked out what what type we were I was ISTP, which means I’m a crafter. It says I am tollerent and flexible, a quite observer and quick to find solutions to problems.

Learning styles

A circle divided into four sections best know as KOLB, its a four step learning cycle. The steps are Activist:doing new experiences, Reflectors: reviewing considering all angels, Theorist: concluding converting into concepts, Pragmatist: planning seeing link to real world.

Types of learning behaviour

Expands the conventional view of intelligence  (language and mathematical skills) to other types of intelligence:

Verbal Linguistic T.S Elliot

Logical-Mathematical Albert Einstein

Musical Igor Stravinsky

Visual-Spatial Pablo Picasso

Bodily-Kinaesthetic Roy Keane

Interpersonal Sigmund Freud

Intrapersonal Mahatma Gandhi

Naturalistic Charles Darwin