Now these are the kind of traditional videos that i want to try and be slightly more interesting than. Whilst I have to be informative about the events for Evans i want to have a go at getting some more interesting shots and not just the same old shots in every other mountain bike video. These videos have obviously served their purpose well as they have had thousands of views but in my opinion feel very dated.

This is the Ride It! page from the Evans website and as you may agree i feel this could benefit greatly from the addition of video content, although the ‘rider comments’ section is nice and gets the point across that this is an event for, and enjoyed by the general public if you could see these people making these comments and also get a feel the atmosphere on the day i think the events could become a lot more popular.

I propose to produce a promotional video for ‘Evans Cycles’ documenting their ‘Ride It!’ events to be viewed on their website.
After viewing their website I felt it could benefit from the addition of video, so after speaking with their Marketing Executive – Stuart Mallarkey – he explained to me that this is something the marketing department had been discussing as they too had realised the website was lacking, and needed video in order to keep up with other bike companies, most of whom all already have video content on the websites.

Evans cycles employs over 850 staff and has a turnover of more than seventy three million pounds annually. The 150,000 square foot distribution facility services 35 stores and a rapidly expanding mail order business, as a result of this the Evans website receives hundreds of thousands of hits each year so I am extremely keen to get my work viewed on it in a mutually beneficial deal, for both me and the client.
I will attend the upcoming Ride It! Event on the 6th and 7th of March at the Chilterns in Oxfordshire and depending on availability (and the weather with these events) there is the option to film more of these events, the next one being on March the 20th and 21st in Harewood, Yorkshire.
Through discussions with the Marketing Department there are a small number of things I need to include in the video that the client have stipulated, such as certain sponsor information, but apart from that the client stated that after watching some of my other related work they are happy to give me free reign over the video(s). I will include a copy of the signed contract with Evans Cycles.

I suppose my aim would be to create a professional looking video documenting and promoting the Ride It! events that Evans Cycles put on.
I will achieve this through careful research into the content of web based videos and the conventions that need to be followed to make them successful and as requested produce a high definition video which will be handed over in a format that can be viewed through you tube. As well as the Website – www.evanscycles.com the client, as I mentioned, wants to view the videos through you tube as they also intend to set up a company account for this video, and future videos to be viewed on. I also suggested setting up a company ‘Vimeo’ page as this is an increasing trend in the cycle industry and in media also as the Vimeo High Definition not only shows content in very high quality but is seen as more exclusive than you tube as it has not been around as long and is generally acknowledged to have a more artistic content.

I will show my research through the blog so it will be clear how the final outcome of the video has been reached and this will also indicate the hours I have committed to this project.
Through approximate calculations, I am not one hundred percent certain that this project will add up to the 450 logged hours needed for this unit so I have also agreed to take control of the post-production on a documentary film produced by second year film students from the London College of Communication, this is also filmed in high definition.
Again, the research for this will be shown on my blog along with the final outcome of the film.

This assignment will give you valuable experience working with a client on a live project . Consider carefully what you have learned on the course so far, what your strengths and weaknesses are and try to identify the area of work you wish to develop. This should be helpful in considering possible career outcomes, future courses of study or articulation.
The Course Leader will discuss suitable projects with you, this may involve you bidding for a particular project. Efforts will be made wherever possible to find a project that suits your skills and career aspirations.
You will work with a client, liaising and researching the requirements of the brief. This process will be documented in the form of a Learning Agreement, this will outline the requirements of the Professional Project and will allow you to project plan and if necessary assemble a team to begin to interact professionally with the client. You will be required to meet the clients’ requirements within the resources available. You should provide evidence of opportunities where you have demonstrated your varying skills and abilities, including directing a development team and motivating others. This will involve tracking resources, competently managing a production schedule and interacting professionally with clients.
You should endeavour to meet the requirements of the client as closely as possible and develop your creative skills at the same time. Ideas and finished work should be presented in a professional manner and you should document the development process, client briefings and team meetings clearly with carefully recorded minutes of all meetings. Using appropriate project management software you should detail the planning and production processes carefully, with milestones production deadlines and testing schedules.
Present your finished project to the client and design a client feedback form. The feedback recorded from the client will allow you to write a completed evaluation of the project in the form of a critical reflection on the major project, with appraisal of learning outcomes.
You should present your project to the group during the final crit evidencing the planning and production process along with the completed project. The presentation should be in the form of a series of web pages evidencing all stages of the assignment along with your evaluation.
N.B. Failure to present work at the crit or meet deadlines will result in a maximum 40% grade, unless tutors are informed in ADVANCE of any mitigating circumstances.

Another year is nearly done and as I imagine a lot of other students from the class have written it has gone amazingly quickly.
Before writing this I read through my P.P.R.D report from last year to compare my views of this year to last year and see what expectations I had for this year.
I had expressed how excited I had been, knowing that this year would be more focussed and specialised on areas of interest and although this has been true in comparison to a very broad but engaging first year it has not been entirely what I was expecting.

I shall split this in to the different projects we have covered in order to express my views and experiences on each one.

The first project was Future Cinema.

Unusually for me I actually found the initial theory and research for this project very interesting and engaging through bob’s lectures.
It was really exciting to see where cinema had started and what had been achievable in those early days before motion graphics and other modern processes and really got me thinking about the possibilities of where cinema could go to in the future.

We created a project called elements which was designed to be a very immersive, thought provoking experience realised through back projecting on to four large screens that the viewer would stand in the centre of.
This was the first project of the year and was initially made pretty tricky as a result of the constant base room changes and upheaval caused by the extensive building work the Arts Institute has going on at the moment. Although this is obviously no ones fault it was fairly annoying to begin with, however we finally settled in a new base room and were promised we would also have a gallery within which we could show our finished projects for this module and also the next module (Performance Video) and every one seemed to be looking forward to showing our work in a public space.
Our idea for this project was to immerse the viewer by placing him or her in a space with 4 screens creating a wall around them showing carefully filmed videos, with accompanying audio, of the four elements.
Earth – Wind – Water – Fire.
These are obviously fairly simple images but that is the point, there were two or three different images for each element designed to change as you follow the audio around the screens as it circles around the surround sound speakers positioned at the base of the screens. These simple images are ones hopefully everyone can relate to and as such we wanted the experience to trigger the viewers own memories instead of simply watching the screens so by the end of the five minute loop the viewer will not actually be watching the piece at all but thinking of their own previous experiences.
I am very pleased with the outcome of this project as all the video looked great as it was filmed on our new sony z-5 1080 high definition cameras and the timing of the audio worked perfectly to draw the viewer’s attention to where we wanted it. We built the four large projection screens in the work shop and had numerous practice runs with them and the four projectors to make sure we had the correct projection size onto the screens and then just waited to hear the date and location of the galley space we were going to use, and waited, and waited.
It seems the initial gallery space we were going to use became unavailable and was then never replaced. So there was now nowhere to show this project, or the next Performance Video unit, which was a massive shame as everyone had worked really hard ad I was really looking forward to seeing this project come to life.
It also seems to me that as the majority of the class had done installation based pieces for this project and that the next unit was Performance Video then these projects were pretty much made redundant without access to a galley space to show them in. This really made me question what the point of putting all this work in to something that will never be seen is?
If we did have a space, we had planned to film the piece and conduct interviews on camera with people coming out of it all of which could have been used for future show reel footage but this was not to be.
I did really enjoy this project, right up until the end where I basically lost a lot of faith in the course.

The next project was ‘Performance Video’

If you look at this unit on our FDA blog the very first thing you come across is a heading from Bob for the unit.

“Your task is to produce a short performance combining video and audio to be shown as part of an evening extravaganza”

Well, as previously discussed there was to be no evening extravaganza, so, what then really is the point of a ‘performance’ video unit. Now I’m not someone who particularly craves the spotlight or is even really that comfortable in front of a crowd, but I am happy for work I’ve created to be shown in front of people and that surely is the point of this unit otherwise what are we going to gain by just showing the rest of the class a ‘performance’ piece?
I had intended to get a road bike to create it’s own visuals projected on to a screen in front of you when sat on the bike that change as you speed up or slow down and possibly create different audio as you flick through the gears. Instead we just blogged about what I would do at a performance if there was one. Perhaps I could have been more focussed on this project but I genuinely didn’t care about the unit as knowing from the first step that there is no space and to be no evening event to show these pieces is really quite demoralising.
I don’t know if this was such an issue for other members of the class but for me if we are paying over £3000 a year to be here you would think that something like this should be organised. So, in summary this project was not one I enjoyed as how can we really be expected to put so many hours of work in to a project when the whole time we know it isn’t going to go anywhere, again, we could have filmed people using our installations and possibly had more potential show reel footage.
As I said before this was very demoralising and was a huge factor in me deciding to not continue to stay on for the B.A and a third year here.

The last project to discuss is our Professional Project.

I am very happy with how my professional project is going. I have chosen to produce a couple of promotional videos for the company I work for, which is Evans cycles. They run a number of weekend events and larger events over the summer months, after looking at the website I noticed that video of these events would really improve the site so got in touch with the marketing department at head office to discuss this with them. Luckily for me they told me that getting someone to produce videos for the website was actually a roll they had been thinking of creating as although there are many testimonials on the web site about how much members of the public have enjoyed the events we discussed that they would like to have videos accompanying these quotes and also showing future participants how the events work.

After looking at some of the projects that were offered through the class I decided that none of the options were something that I wanted to use and I also wanted to work by myself in order to get the right project for me.
I am very glad that I took this approach, this is the same approach I took to finding my own placement at the end of last year and that worked out brilliantly and thus far I am very happy with how the same approach is working for this professional project.
Through discussion with the marketing department they have told me that this is an opportunity for future employment within their media department producing video content for the website and although I am not certain that I will take this job it might be something interesting to do for a while to gain some working experience creating video content for a reputable company.

Overall I have still enjoyed this year despite some of the comments in here but have found it more rewarding for projects like this one and as I mentioned our placement module to take my own path and through just getting out there and discussing and meeting with people have found my own choices more rewarding than those provided through the course, which is the major contributing factor for me wanting to leave and try and make my own way.

Although it is relatively simplistic compared to the audio driven ideas Phil seemed keen on I am going to film from a car a number of roads all spiking off from an initial junction so that the piece becomes interactive in that the cyclist chooses their own pace and will then have a number of choices of different routes they can cycle along, obviously this will mean filming alot of different routes to be followed but i plan to get the camera out within the first week or two of term in January depending on how our other projects are coming along and spend a day getting all these different choices of route filmed.

This may seem – technologically at least – like a bit of a cop out compared to what i had previously discussed with Phil but at least this way i am not going to be stressing out using technology i just dont understand and can have a completed outcome that i will be happy with and i think could be enjoyable to use on the evening of the show.

Here is a short youtube video of the kind of thing i mean,here just achieved through a hemet cam-which is also an option -this is the kind of video that will be projected in front of you on the bike in the stand but you will be able to dictate how fast you go through your pedalling and also when you get to those junctions i you move the handlebars in the direction you want to go that will then trigger video to send you down that route

I was initially very keen on this idea as i thouht it would be very interesting to try and achieve these kind of results and be able to make a music track through the use of just a bicycle,and of course some max/msp type programmes.

However towards the end of last term i lost my drive somewhat and realised i had basically jus got caught up in Phils idea as it sounded interesting at the time but held no real desire to try and create anything musically with this project as it is just simply not something im that interested in or wish to continue with in the future so i pretty much put this project on hold for a while until i could get my head round continuing with it and achieving what i wanted to with it.

the second is a turbo trainer which i have also purchased through the bike shop i work in for this project, here is the model i have bought

I have also bought a heart rate monitor and ‘PC Pod’ kit which the participant can wear and this will actually relay real time statistics such as heart rate,speed,calories burned and distance travelled etc straight into a laptop whilst the bike is being ridden

and although im still not exactley sure of what it is i want the bike to achieve through this real time response at least i know now i have a few options i can draw from.