1st production post.

Today I was in charge of managing my own project, i had to assign roles to my peers so they could help me with my stop motion animation using skittles.

Ellen was my assistant helping me move the skittles into place and Antony was the camera assistant taking the pictures of the animation.

First of all the camera was not charged so this was not a good start, once the camera had charged i was able to start production, the pace of the production began to pick up as the process went along, I was in charge so I decided when and what was happening for the whole day.

I decided that I would try an easy going approach to my peers so they did not feel under pressure or stressed. I made sure i asked how they was feeling and that they was getting regular breaks as Antony had to stand up for the majority of the animation because he was taking the pictures, also Ellen and I were sat on the floor for a long length of time.

I made sure I asked for any opinions or extra ideas to be added to the animation, I think this is a good process to go through as it gives the assistants a chance to be an influence on the animation making them feel part of a team and that their opinion matters.

Some problems that occurred were that the settings on the camera had been changed before we used it, meaning my images were slightly out and of less quality. They were also in the wrong format when I tried to upload them to the computer they would not open in Photoshop properly for them to be batch processed, this meant I had to change them which became a long process leaving me less time to edit and process them to a higher standard.

Being in charge of the group while I was in production was good for me, I think having to communicate with them and having to put myself in a different mind frame but also remember how it feels to be on the receiving end helped me to realise that being strict and nasty would only make my peers feel uncomfortable and under pressure with bad responses.
I tried to be a good leader for the day and I hope that I was.

Overall, the production went really good with minor issues, my peers worked well and effectively and the animation was finished within the first day meaning that the other peers could bring their animations a week forward, saving everybody a little more time for post production of their animations.

Antony's Production

Today was Antony's production, I was set down to be helping him do the animation as his assistant but due to previous weeks we had to come to an agreement where Ellen was the assistant and I was the camera person.

Being apart of Antony's group was good it was laid back and he was not telling us to do things he asked us for our opinions and made sure we was happy with what was happening within the production.

Towards the end of the production when Antony had nearly finished he asked if we had any other ideas that we could put into the animation, I think this was a really good thing to do because it allowed me to connect with the animation more and because its a suggestion you can all expand and come up with a better idea. we ended up doing two more scenes to the animation that had a really good ending.

Some problems that occurred were ones such as the camera, when we first started shooting the camera took only 3 images then stopped working, after looking at it we realized it was full and this meant we had to delete all the images of the camera before we could start production again, I think this was a simple mistake and we will all learn from it next time.

Some other problems were when the characters moved out of shot the camera always needed changing from different focusing settings.

I think I worked well within the team I tried to be helpful and come up with good ideas to make the animation better, I think i achieved a lot by being on the camera because I have not used one properly before and I learnt the basics in the experience of the production.

Ellens Production

Today was Ellen’s production day, because I finished my project up last week, Ellen was doing a similar idea to me by using sweets, to help her out in the morning session I dished out her sweets into different bowls so that this would be easier for us both while in production to be able to get the sweets that we needed to work with without having to root around for different sweets at different stages in the production.
I was on hand to help Ellen whenever she needed me to help, originally I was supposed to be operating the camera but as another situation arose I was asked to help out as an assistant instead.
My role included helping Ellen place the sweets into different patterns that replicated her storyboard plan, I operated on one side of the paper making sure I did things to Ellen’s satisfaction, and that they was equally distributed throughout the production. I also helped with setting up the set for her production by gathering chairs and sorting out the light for the set.
Being a part of Ellen’s team was simple, there was no ordering about and she would ask me to do things in a respectable manner, I think this is the best way to work with people they have positive responses.
I think the day went really well an we got ourselves into a routine of communication to help each other through the long process of the day which resulted in us getting the production finished within that day much earlier than scheduled.
I think my performance over the day was very good I was able to adapt to realising what Ellen wanted out of her animation and I think this helped me a lot, communicating all the time with Ellen helped us to get the work done at a fast pace and with ease.