An Introduction

I wish I was good at writing introductions

My name is Jack, I plan to use this WordPress to post my college work and the occasional rant about whatever nonsense pops into my brain. I’m doing this course to help me learn more about media subjects to help me move forward in my music and art related ambitions.

Outside of college I’m mainly interested in music (Hip-Hop and Alternative Rock), film (Science Fiction, Horror and art films), video games, comic books, literature, philosophy and history. I aspire to do music, art, comedy and random acts of writing professionally.

Of you’re interested, here’s a link to my soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/mythosmc.

I’ll post content for everyone soon.

– Jack Caleb Day

Level 2 Updates and the interviews that never happened

I couldn’t get much more done for the level 2 and I’m doing the write down here about the two interviews that didn’t happen

Imogen Hall (formerly Jason Hall) who I went to school with was to discuss her experiances with transphobia from both staff and pupils and how the popularity culture of the school worsened her problems

Ben Smith, another Laleham Gap pupil (one of the least differently abled pupils there) discuss’s his experiances

Both students were on the Boarding Wing (which I was not) and were also to discuss that heavily; mainly the problems with bullying, poor living space and the way it sexualised otherwise non-sexuel or romantic relationships

I was also hoping to interview a teacher or support staff memeber of a special school or a female student because special schools nearly all have predominantly male student bases but I couldn’t get in contact with anyone fitting in time.

I wish I could’ve done more but I sadly couldn’t

level-2

My Documentary (very rough version)

While I could not finish the documentary, I was able to edit together the pieces I had filmed into something rudimentary. It’s not good but it’s watchable, have another interview and some text stuff I’ll hopefully be able to add on Wednesday

Also here is an update of the planning file level-2

An apology

This documentary is not finished and probably won’t be, I lack the time resources or mental strength. This isn’t a justification as to why I’ll probably fail this module but it is an explanation

For our final project we chose our own thing and that lead me to decide to do a documentary on my experiences in the Special Education system and my thoughts on it.

I wasn’t prepared for so much to go wrong; only one person from my school was willing to do a full interview, I couldn’t find people from many other schools and basically everyone from Laleham (my school) I’m still on speaking terms with would give the same view on it.

Not only was I low on time and resources but it was messing with my head; I kept having to revisit bad experiences and be reminded of the worst period of my life over and over.

So I stopped coming in, because flat out there was nothing I could do and it was depressing me, I should’ve told my tutor and asked for help but I was ashamed. So I just stopped show up and the days piled up.

So this is my apology; for not being upfront about my problems and letting them overpower me

Thankfully I managed to find three other people to interview, a family friend, a classmate and myself

https://studentcantcolac-my.sharepoint.com/personal/20094328_student_cant-col_ac_uk/_layouts/15/guestaccess.aspx?docid=101ca82293d574d3a8666460f3879d611&authkey=AXpPWQVaYF1kq81ECmOlynY

https://studentcantcolac-my.sharepoint.com/personal/20094328_student_cant-col_ac_uk/_layouts/15/guestaccess.aspx?docid=1c6ec4c88a4324f42983172d5acc2af5e&authkey=AcGDlN6s-xR5zhfnA3-kXC8

Interview with Ben Smart

On Monday I did an interview with another former pupil of Laleham Gap Secondary, David-Benjamin Smart.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B_ZTOpjczrZRUWpobFBXOUVPR1E

I like how this interview turned out even though I stuttered at a couple points, I think I got some honest answers and a pretty decent look at Laleham’s flaws, Ben told me some stuff after the interview that isn’t really suitable for mention in a college project.

I’m doing 2-4 more interviews depending on who hits me back before the deadline but this interview’s discussion of the sexual assault allegation will probably be the centerpiece. Because Laleham Gap kept him out of school for about four months straight which is illegal based off unproven sexual assualt allegations, the perfect example of Laleham’s corruption.

Weekly Reflection for week 3 of the last

In all honestly I’m slightly behind but that’s not totally my fault since some of the people I’m meant to be interviewing haven’t hit me back yet. Despite that I’ve been doing my experiment plan while trying to sort the interviews out, I’ve managed to get two interviews locked down. I’ve also filled out more of the schedule to best of my ability right now.

When we get into the actual production I think I’ll do alot better because this a subject I feel passionate about and with the interview content and my personal stories I think I could make an extremely good project that can make up for some of my lackluster pre-production and blog posts.

If I could redo this week I would work more on the experiment and contextual research and get a more concise schedule and pre-production document done. Next week I start actual production and this will help me go back and finish the pre-production documents.

Updated level-2

Work Reflection 28/04/2017

This week I’ve been doing the week one table of contents for my personal project, a documentary on the special education system and writing the interview questions and a mind map for the aforementioned table of contents.

Documentry Questionslevel-2mind map

I finished the documentary questions and mind map fairly quickly (though the later was admittedly rather basic) but I couldn’t finish the schedule this week because I haven’t fully worked out the interview times and I need to finish the research plan because I found this question difficult to answer. 0

If I had to redo this week I would have made a better mind map and put more effort into finishing up the research plan because next week I have to write contextual research and the experiment for the level 2 document I posted here.

Blog 17/03/17

This week I faced a minor set-back in that I realised that I no longer have the toy castle I was planning to use. Because of that I spent the week making my new set out of cardboard to use.

I’ve finished all the other written work so I just have to rescript and film my stop-motion. If I could go back and re-do it I would’ve done the cardboard set creation last week so I could’ve filmed today.

Stop Motion Storyboard

Yesterday we had to finish doing our storyboards for new stop motion piece, because I drew mine in for the visual parts here are photos of the print outs. Excuse the poor drawings

I think that despite my primitive drawing skills I did this well enough but in the future I would benefit from using my ruler when using buildings. I also attempted to draw digitally before printing them out and doing it by hand which was I then decided against that basically wasted some time.

Green Screen Experiment

Today we were given several short videos that were shot in-front of a green screen. We then had to search for a suitable background image and project that as the background aswell as add a musical soundtrack.

It took me a little bit of time to figure out how to operate the green-screen properly but once I did I finished this quickly, I really don’t have a deep reflection here.

Stop Motion Experiment

While I was slightly late to arrive that day, when I came in I joined a work group who were making a stop motion story using clay facsimiles of a bear and a human.

While I wasn’t there to come up with the story I did try and lend a hand as much as possible in concluding it, my idea that the human fall of a ledge and die midway through made it in (though sadly my insistence the bear have a jetpack did not).

After it was filmed I transferred the photos to my computer and inserted them into adobe premier. We then put each image into a file twice, once with a lasting time of 4 seconds then with a lasting time of two seconds to see the difference.

In reflection I wish I’d arrived to the session on time and I could’ve been a bit more serious and coperative over the story instead of nearly starting an argument over jokey suggestions.