Week 4 - Completed Toy Theatre

The link below is to our complete Toy Theatre. Bethany, Emily and I worked well together and communicated a lot. It was an enjoyable task as we got to study the history of the Toy Theatre and it was interesting to try it ourselves.

 We filmed this one in the sound room so it would sound better and cleaner and the we went onto premier pro and put the background song in and raised the volume of our talking.

Toy Theatre

Week 4 - Silent Movie Completed

Completed Silent Movie

I like the final version of our silent film. I feel as a group we worked well together and it was a lot of fun to do.

Although we did encounter some issues with the sound when we were trying to export it. We managed to sort it after changing certain things and it came out pretty well. There are certain things i would change like parts of the editing need to made more cleaner.

Below is one of the first versions we did before we added music or the black and white effect.

first version

Week 4 - Sound room and Comparing animations

In this lesson we firstly had to compare animations. Instead of comparing just the sound like we had other times,we had to listen to the soundtrack of the film and see if we could piece together the story. It was interesting to see whether or not you knew what was going on. You might hear something one way and think it is a certain object or action and someone else could think it is something else. It was very hard to listen without the image. What image you associated with the sound might not be true.

We then watched an animation without the sound and again we had to say what was happening. We then watched it with the sound and discussed the effect it had. Watching the animation without the sound was difficult as it was hard to follow because although i could see what was happening, sound helps the emotion and atmosphere. You could be watching an animation without sound thinking it was happy but the sound tell us differently that actually it was supposed to be dark and creepy.

During the lesson in groups we were taken to the sound room to test it out. We looked around and then had ago at recording our own sound. It was fun and interesting to learn how to record sounds as we can now use it to record sounds for our final projects (Cecil the Cat) if we wanted to.

Week 3 - Rehearsing the Toy Theartre

This week we drew and coloured the characters and props we are going to use in our Toy Theatre. Emily, Bethany and i also finished the script and started rehearing for presenting it next week.

Below is the pictures of our props:

Below is the script:

Below is the song we used we wanted something that sounded Arabian to fit with the Aladdin theme.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ujLDDWorHow

Week 3 - Silent Movie

This week we were given a task of creating a silent movie based on a bag. We had to film and edit it as a group.
My team was: Bethany, Emily and Raphael

The idea:
Our idea was to have a thief (Raph) steal a pass-card to let him into the building from me. He then looks around the building stealing other people's stuff, until he has a collection of stolen items. Next he hides them and draws a map to where the 'treasure' is. After losing the map and years pass Bethany and Emily find it and follow it to the 'treasure'. It finishes with the looking at the stolen items.

This was a fun task to do as i enjoy making short films. I especially like the editing part as you can see the film coming to life. It was also nice to work as part of the team, as i feel we worked well together.

Week 2 - The Toy Theatre

First of all we finished of talking about the Victorian Era. We then moved onto the entertainment of the time and what kinds of media they had and used.
One we looked at was the Toy Theatre. It was based on an actual theatre with a stage and how it looked, and people would cut out little figures to use for the story. It would then be played live in front of people, which were usually women who acted the voices.

An example of a Toy Theatre.

We were then given a task creating our own Toy Theatre and creating our own story and characters, i groups of 3 ( Emily, Bethany and I).
We looked at folk tales/ stories, and found Aladdin. We dicussed how we would change it from the original story because we didn't want to copy it and we decided to base it on the 7 deadly sins. 

The genie lives in a cave, and traveller’s may pass by and wish for 1 thing. However, when Aladdin comes, he wishes to have 7 more wishes. As there are no rules, the genie allows him, but warns him that everything has a consequence. Aladdin does not care. The wishes are below (smoke will appear as every wish appears and backgrounds will change).

Lust: He wishes for a harem of women. Gluttony: He wishes for mountains of gold, so that he will never be hungry and can eat as much as he wants, whenever he wants.

Pride: He wishes for an amazing camel,  unlike any other, so that he will be superior to others.

Envy and Anger : He wishes for the kings palace and country, as he is jealous and is angry that they have such good lives.

Gluttony : He wishes for mountains of food and clothes, which he does not need.

Sloth: He wishes for slaves so that he will never have to do anything himself again. 

Greed: He wishes for the genies powers so that he will have everything he wants, whenever he wants it.

As Aladdin makes the last wish, in a sudden flash, Aladdin and the Genie swap places. Because of his greed, the genie says, Aladdin will be trapped in the cave, unable to leave. He will have the power but no freedom to use it, forced to live granting other people wishes. It is assumed that this is what happened to the genie too, and that this is a cycle of people being greedy and doing these sins, and then getting stuck there.

Week 1 - Introduction to Art and Design in Context

During this lesson we went and explored the history of Wolverhampton. We were asked to meet Steve (our lecturer) at the oldest building in Wolverhampton, which turned out to be St Peter's church.

At St Peter's we learned a lot about how the church became how it is today and the history behind it. We also looked at different objects and parts of the church, such as the tombs which held the bodies of "John and Joyce Leveson" and "Thomas and Katherine Lane of Bentley". Also learning about the monarchy of England and how religion mainly Christianity has played a big part in history.

We also explored other historical parts of Wolverhampton. For instance where the old market place used to be which also used to be where the famous circuses used to come. We looked at the history of the Mayors in Wolverhampton and the famous family names that are recognised still today in Wolverhampton. These include: Lady Wulfrun, and the Mander's.

It was a very interesting day and i learned a lot about Wolverhampton which i hadn't known before.

Image and Sound - Week 1

In our first lesson we discussed the relationship between image and sound. Image and sound are important together. If one is used by itself it is less effective then when both are used together.

Firstly we looked at some of the first films/ cartoons made with sound. Before people could make films with sound, like talking, they would use live music. This shows important they are together as for many years sound and image have been used together.


The Jazz Singer (1927) - The first sound film




First talking Character


Prince Achmed - Lotte Reininger (1926) - First animated feature

We next looked at Pogo, this showed us how older things can be brought up to date using editing and different sounds.

note: i do not own these videos
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qs1bG6BIYlo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t_htoSaQFf4

I found these very interesting as it shows how you can turn something old into something new by editing the image differently and changing the sound. Again showing that image and sound are important together.

Th