Week 4 - workin on stuff and junk

So winding down to the first assignment's due date. and I'm filled with much more confidence then I was last week.  I have a fairly solid concept and I've practiced the skills that I'll need to complete it and do a good job. I'm doing an action movie poster, and although i wont describe whats in the poster so i can use it in next weeks post, I'm going to give you the information about the movie.

Its gonna be called Assassins. It opens with a young woman named Chloe getting ready for her night out, going to the club. Before she leaves she gets a call from a cop telling her that her witness protection will pick her up tomorrow and advises her to stay home. She refuses (wanting to enjoy the last night of her life before she leaves her life behind). At the club, she meets a guy named Oz. He's nice and charming until some burly looking guys come after them. Oz fights both men beats the crap out of them and then escapes with Chloe. when they're safe he tells her he's an assassin sent to kill her because she witnessed some sort of crime, but he turned the job down after observing her for a while. The rest of the movie is just crazy action with hit men trying to kill him and her, and the police trying to catch him thinking that he abducted her.

The tag line for the Movie is going to be "THE ONLY THING THAT MATTERS IS THE TARGET" or something like that. I'll have more on the actual project for next post when the project is finished.

week 3 photoshop 2

So this week was the last photoshop lesson.

I'm really getting worried because the stuff we've been taught hasnt helped me enough. I still dont feel like I know enough about photoshop to complete any sort of decent looking poster. Let me just go over what I've been taught so far: I know how to edit hue and colour saturation, I know how to make different objects on different layers (sort of), I can select different things on a page with the same colours, and I can make things blurry.

But these things are not enough to create, what I feel, is the expected quality of the poster. I feel that We should also be taught about things. Things like what all of the buttons on the sides and top of the window do, or how to create certain elements that can be used in our posters. While I understand that class time is limmited, having access to written tutorials that explain what the buttons do, or explain various common elements and techniques on the university website would be useful. We were given links to a site full of tutorials for making posters. But all of those tutorials require a functioning knowledge of photoshop techniques and terminology.

So its really worrying me that I dont know how to make my vision for my poster come alive. what I want to do is a poster for the book Neon Court. One of the key things in the book is messages left in graffiti.
A key message left is "It's waiting for you at the end of the alley". And I want to take a picture of a dark alleyway. With graffiti saying that photoshopped in. also adding a filter to give the poster an ominous creepy effect. And I havent been given the knowledge I need to do that.

Another option is an album cover but I cant think of a photoshop job complex enough to deserve a good mark in the project.

Week 2 - Digital Footprints

This week was all about digital footprints.
Basically whatever you do on the Internet is recorded. If you're not careful, those records can come back to bite you on the ass. but either that's untrue, or I'm some sort of super spy because there's nothing on me. when I'm looked up on Google, Yahoo, Bing, Spezify, the only thing that comes up is this blog on google. I can be found on Facebook but you cant learn much about me or what I'm like.

I don't spend a lot of time trying to erase my tracks but if i did, here's what I would be doing.
1 - LIE
its the most under used technique to hide yourself online. websites that require membership are the ones that keep a record of your activity. they all ask for a name so give them one. just not your real name, or not your full name. I have four online Identities: one which I use for facebook, and another which I use for online Gaming, and one more for twitter. I also have just recently made a new one that I use for Ryerson activities.
What I'm trying to communicate here is that staying on one identity isn't a good idea. you don't need a thousand names but you should have more than one.
2 - Check Yourself
Keep on top of your image. Google yourself to see what comes up. look yourself up on facebook to see what others see. the goal is to stay on top of perception. if you see something you don't like then change it. while you might not be able to retake what you wrote or did, you can certainly overshadow it. if you made a dumb statement on twitter and cant take it back, tweet more till your old stuff cant be seen anymore.
3 - Keep Groups in Mind
When I made this blog it was an assignment for my media tech class. For the same class I made a twitter account rather than just using the one that I already had. I consider myself to have three groups. I have my social group for just my friends which contains my email and Facebook. I have my school/professional groups which has a separate email and twitter and this blog, and i have a third group which involves my chat rooms, gaming and other things where I interact with strangers.

I haven't ever intentionally covered up my steps, but I have done these three things and I think that they really help me to keep some of the worse things about myself out of view. and while I don't have many things in view, maybe keeping up this blog will change things. 

Viva las Vegas

I made this postcard! Admittedly it was a tutorial with very few ways to get something wrong but still, this was all me (at least 75 percent me)! in terms of the stuff weve been learned this lab its that Photoshop is very intuitive if you know where to look for your tools. This took me like thirty minutes and Ive never used the program before. My friend Maija is taking a class on Las Vegas at the moment, so this will probably seem super trivial for her.

My Thursday update this week will be about our digital footprints.

Section 1 - The Theory

In hindsight, I realize my expectations for the digital media course were entirely too limited. I was expecting to only be learning video editing and learning about online enertainment media (mainly youtube videos and music online). What I missed in my prediction was the aspect of social media online. I wasn't anticipating writing a blog, nor was I anticipating being graded on my twitter feeds; and while I'm excited by the ideas and implications of those things it does make me slightly cautious of these social medias .

I think that coming into the course I was most looking forward to learning the tools of the editing trade.
In my initial understandings of the course I was expecting to be creating and editing videos. Photoshopping things that nature hadn't made quite pretty enough, and while I knew that there would be more; I hadn't considered the seemingly large role of social media in the course. I have never been one to use social medias to a great extent. Only using Facebook to show my support for things, organize with friends, and send less than heartfelt birthday wishes to the 500 people who are less than my friends.
 
There are many reasons that one would take up this course. A small reason is because its mandatory. But a much larger reason is for the knowledge that you will be getting. If youre like me and haven't the faintest ideahow to use photoshop or edit videos/music, it's a really important course to take. Its also a great course if you're a fan of social networks like twitter and facebook and blogger because I get the feeling from being in the course for a day that its a very focused on aspect of the couse.

So to sum it up: while i'm cautious of the social media aspect of the course, there also seems to be alot to look forward to. In class we discussed what tools we'd be using and I'm unfamilliar with all of them. And while that's kind of scary its also expanding my abilities.