Well its friday. 9:05am. The weather isn't great for November but its certianly not too bad as it is still mild out there. Friday's always begin with my sessions at the college with the moving image second year group. Today 5 out of 8 students have bothered to turn up and they have an assignment deadline to meet by the end of the day. My sound production sessions normally a enjoy to teach but today the joy is all gone. The group seem un motivated and show now consern for meeting the deadlines. One student has written an essay on the sound production of 'Blade Runner'. (Which version, I don't know). The essay is to be a word count of 1000 - 1500 words but this student has only written 600 words and asks,
"What can I do as I think I've written everything I can about it and the sound?"
"What research have you done?" I ask.
"Its all my own from watching the DVD."
Puzzled I ask, "Didn't you go to the LRC to research from some books?"
"No" she replies in a way that I find annoying because she has written something with no real effort to conduct primary research.
"I think it might help if you get some books out on the subject"
and I preceed to give her a list of books, downloadable podcasts and journals which she might find useful. You know the usual 'Film Art', 'The Oxford Guild to Film Studies', 'Sight and Sound magazine'.
Another student arrives late as always. As usual it 20 past 9 in the morning and as usual he opens up his laptop and loads his latest after effects animation. He doesn't notice that on the white board in my bad handwriting that it says: "DEADLINE FOR ASSIGNMENT 2 - TODAY!"
He plays an animation with bad fractal noise trying to look like cloud and skies and I watch this animation aimed for children depicting a bird (of no description) laying an egg and flying away. The egg hatches with a bad spray of shatter particles and then that bird flies away. A 3d camera pans down to the ground and a snake crawls in. Its blank face fails to show its own frustration that it can't open its mouth, yet some how in its own need for food it eats a pea on the floor. I wonder why there was this one single pea on the ground and for some reason choose not to bother asking him why snakes are eating peas. In the wild do snakes go round eating digitised solitry processed peas? In some freak act of after effect nature I then witness the snake digest the pea and it appears again from behind its tail brown.
I'm amazed at the time, effort and dedication (and the mass amount of key framing) he has done to work on this, but it subject fails to excite me. I tell him well done and he finally informs me to expect the next chapter in this epic saga, next week or so. The student finally settles his laptop down and weather worn carrier bag down next to another student and like the rest of the group they all continue they're education in front of a computer screen. I'm sure in they're best efforts to work towards today's dealine.
9:40am and nothing happens now till class finishes.
Haven't been on this in a while.
Well,
Where do I begin here. I had this blog set up such a long time ago and i've been so busy with loads of other things at Mindriot HQ that I forgot to use this.
Well, I think thisis about to change here.
Just to get started Mindriot have a new office and a new web site on line which you can read an alternative blog as well as this one. We have been and still very busy with a number of productions and projects.
Our most recent has been working on the Juice Aleem Music video for Antidote Productions.
The shoot went very well and now is currently in post production. Also last week saw the screening of our film 'Mid-table Mediocrity' being shown at the Falstaff International Film Festival, In Stratford. Sadly though I did get the chance to make it over to the screening but Hugh the writer did and as I heard that the film went down well with the audiences there.
Well, so far so good. I will make effort to keep the blog upand running and improve on the page's look. So please follow and keep reading.
Where do I begin here. I had this blog set up such a long time ago and i've been so busy with loads of other things at Mindriot HQ that I forgot to use this.
Well, I think thisis about to change here.
Just to get started Mindriot have a new office and a new web site on line which you can read an alternative blog as well as this one. We have been and still very busy with a number of productions and projects.
Our most recent has been working on the Juice Aleem Music video for Antidote Productions.
The shoot went very well and now is currently in post production. Also last week saw the screening of our film 'Mid-table Mediocrity' being shown at the Falstaff International Film Festival, In Stratford. Sadly though I did get the chance to make it over to the screening but Hugh the writer did and as I heard that the film went down well with the audiences there.
Well, so far so good. I will make effort to keep the blog upand running and improve on the page's look. So please follow and keep reading.
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