Visiting the Automatic

On Thursday morning, we had our lecture for Creativity and Concept moved to a different building at the Innovation Park, which is about half an hour away from where Redmond's building is. Different businesses such as the BBC have previously payed to visit the Automatic, to help team building and to solve any problems in the businesses. We were split off into groups and were given pieces of Lego.

We were given three different tasks, the first was to design a new snow mobile which was descriptive and had certain boundaries we had to stick to, the second was to design a new product for the snow which gave a bit more freedom however there were still certain boundaries. The third was to make a new product for the company Snow Inc, which had nothing to do with snow, which meant we had more of an option to be creative. These tasks were set, to make us think about which tasks we each individually felt most comfortable with, to show us what type of team of person we are. I felt I liked having some freedom into being creative, however I felt I needed some boundaries and guidelines to work with. Knowing this will help me in the future, when being creative, as I will know what I personally best at working with.

Personal Profile

This week we finished our production practice film, which is Personal Profile, which my group chose to focus on a 19 year old guy called Jack, and his band JC and the Two Steps. I found this the most enjoyable film we have produced in the year we have had so far, as it was interesting finding out about Jack and his passion in the band. Also as I enjoy listening to music myself and my brother is in a similar genre of band, I found I really liked the music JC and the Two Steps played.

We went down to the Wirral to film some footage of the band practising their setlist for the gig they had the next day. JC and the Two Steps practice at Jack's house every week, so we felt this was something which needed to be included in the footage. We got different shots of each of the bandmates, and some short shots of objects and photos of Jack around the house, to see if there was anything relevant. We then recorded Jack being interviewed, asking questions about his inspirations, how passionate he is about music and what he wants to do in the future. Considering the film only needed to be at the maximum 5 minutes long, we ended up getting nearly ten minutes of audio to put over the film, making it difficult in the editing sessions to pick out what bits we wanted in our film.

The next day, we went back to the Wirrall, in Hoylake to a club/bar named 'Jack Rabbit Slims' where the band play every Friday night, to film more footage of the band performing. I found it fun and also was nice doing something with the rest of the group, and being somewhere different.

Teamworking Skills

I completed a questionnaire about teamwork skills. I answered 28 questions about myself, which would show me in my results, what type of role I play in the teams I work in. As teamwork is an important factor to be good at, especially in the media industry, it is definitely something I needed to look at and analyse what role I play in teams. From my results, I was shown to be an ‘encourager’. Out of the seven roles I could have been, this was my strongest role. As it is described on Kent University’s website, an encourager is someone who tries to energise the group when there is little motivation and to do this they use humour and enthusiasm. I feel it is someone in the group who tries to keep everybody in the group feeling positive and happy, by trying to make them feel good about themselves and their ideas. I do agree that this is one of my strongest roles, as I am kind to everyone in the group, and try to encourage others to suggest their ideas, if they have any they want to share.

 

Google Maps

On this task, we had to develop a narrative using Google Maps, influenced by 'The 21 Steps' by Charles Cumming which similarly tells a story using a map of the world. We were told to use Liverpool or an area we have/are visiting to make the task much easier for us. The story had to contain at least one of these things; images, link to audio, text or video assets from the map. I personally found this task difficult to do, as I couldn't think of a story that would work effectively using a google map. I decided to locate the story in my hometown Morecambe as I was visiting there, and I feel I know it a lot better and felt more comfortable collecting images, audio and videos. As I kept changing my mind on the idea, I feel my idea didn't work as well and only managed to gain images for my map. I did a simple story of someone being late for a party and having to simply deal with ways of getting there as quickly as possible. I feel next time, I should plan my idea more and stick to it, giving me more time to make it professional and interesting, and being able to collect more media.