Finished drums!

Also got my drums finished today, they took me ages because the glue was being lame. (actually had to mix two differnet glues to get some thick enough that dried quick enough to allow me to stick the framework together) Anyway here is the finished article (again crappy phone pics, sorry folks.)

Top View

birds eye kinda view

Front View :P

So tomorrow is going to be spent making the other two guitars, and farting about doing stuff for the Degree show. I'll get some better pics of things up tomorrow :)

More mini Instruments.

Today I got stuck into making one of my guitars, it's a little on the big side (compared to the drums) but its looking good, need to get some card or something to mimick the wood on the neck and I also need to gets some wire to make the strings. but otherwise this baby is done.

Before I let you see the pictures I should appologise for the crap quality, the battery ran out on my camera today so I reverted to using the aweful camera on my phone. I'll try and get some better pictures tomorrow once I've bought batteries for my cam :)

Template

Foam layer

Preparing to give it "paint"

Woooo thats starting to look like a guitar.

yep. thats a guitar.

Ooooo and a stand too. :P

close up.

Guitar on its stand :)

Another close up.

Moving Forward.

OK so I said in my last post that I had a plan for my project. I spent all of last week fleshing out the storyline and drawing out some plans, And without further Ado here's the treatment for my new Music video plot.

Treatment
A group of friends mysteriously turn into sock puppet alter egos of themselves and have to fight to keep their individuality as real life hands try to control them, eventually persuading them to perform as a mini tribute band (despite the fact they have no idea how to play any of the instruments).

At the weekend My Dad and I got set about making the the stage for the puppets (which is now taking up a considerable amount of space in my living room :P) I'll stick a picture of it up in the next couple of days once its had a lick of paint.

Yesterday I went into Primark and bought the socks that would make up my little group, and last night I gave them some eyes. The video is going to start in real life and with my five friends sitting bored in someones living room, so since the sock puppets are meant to be to represent these people, I will be trying to give them some visual similarities (e.g. hair colour and cut and clothes).

Last night I got as far as sticking eyes on them, will need to buy wool tomorrow :S Here's what they look like.

Five Brightly coloured buddies

They are watching you :P

I also went and bought lots of shiny materials for building my props at the weekend, below are just some of them :) Sadly it looks like I'll be buying a lot more.... My poor wallet.

Pretty, pretty, pretty.


Closer up pretty XD

Today I used some of the above sexy materials to begin making my miniature drum kit. The pics below show today's progress :)

Very basic bases.


starting to look a bit more drum like, no?


How about now?


More cymbals :)


close up XD



Now THAT looks kinda drum like to me! :P


Close up.

So I still need to finish them off, but I'm confident I'll get that done tomorrow easily, and then I can get cracking on the guitars, Amps and mic. I'll also get working on the backdrops for my set this week. Anyway I'm exhausted so I'm off to relax and possibly do a bit of reading.

Any comments or advice would be fantastic :) And thanks for all the support last week, can't tell you how much it helped :)

Karma Strikes again.

Well... I'm not to sure how to start this blog. I was looking forward to being free of filming and focusing my energies on my dissertation and editing, but sadly life had other plans for me.

After spending the last two months working hard contacting various people to book and get permissions in place for filming at all the locations last weekend, and trying everything under the sun to keep the band informed of where and when things would be happening, spending a small fortune on props and tapes (and locations), Saturday came and two of the Band members didn't turn up (one of them the crucial singer who was meant to be getting kidnapped by sydney) I was forced on the spot to completely revamp my script (with terrible results) and come Sunday for day two of filming I was so tired and disheartened that when the band member who we where meant to be working with on that day didn't turn up I just called of the rest of the days filming and set my crew home.

To put it bluntly the rest of that morning was a pretty bad one for me, For the last few months I have been solely dedicated to this project, I had put a lot of passion and energy into it and despite trying to be as organised as possible everything had fallen apart, not because of anything I had done wrong but because of people letting me down.

However. Come the afternoon, and knowing that my crit was coming up, I made a decision. I was not going to let this take me down! And so I began to consider options to move forward. I made a strong choice to ensure that my new plans would involve less people management and would mean I only (for most of the time anyway) had myself to rely on.

That in mind I knew I needed a fresh idea and storyline that would give me more control over my project. I knew that while shit happens to everyone, the people that stand out are the ones that can take that shit and turn it into gold. So with that I spoke to Paul for guidance and went into my crit yesterday ready not say how terrible things had gone, but instead to present a positive plan of how I was going to move ahead despite the stream of black fluff that had been sent my way at the weekend.

I don't want to give to much away about the new script until I have some stuff to show you guys, but hopefully by next week I'll have the script fleshed out and some cool images to put up...so watch this space. :)

Stress Levels == HIGH

I am so close to having filming done and dusted I can almost taste the relief. Yes, TASTE!

Spent the last two days chasing people up about locations, booking equipment, writing up call sheets and a schedule for each day, and annoying all available friends to take on crew duties for me (Thanks You Guys)

So I now have full permission for:
The Discovery
The Dudhope Skatepark
and S2K

Still waiting to hear about the city square :S

Jamie the Ex-Bassist from the band has manged to rally round three of the other band members and is chasing up the Ex-lead Singer for me (hopefully we'll get him in time! or Sydneys plans for kidnap will be a little bit redundant)

Also my sneaky-uni-wide email plea dragged me back a couple of interested Skaters for the scene up at the skate park, so I just need to let them know what time I'll be up at the park on Sunday and hopefully they'll meet me there. :)

AND the weather forecast is promising me it'll be sunny spells on both Saturday and Sunday (Death to the BBC if they are wrong!)

So all I need to do now is find a way to shift three ridiculously heavy (well one of them is the other two are manageable but not when combined with the first :S) metal storage boxes full of camera and lighting equipment back to my flat. Hmmm...

Oh and Sydney still needs his hair fixed. YEY

More Location Pictures Woot!

Went up to the Dudhope skate park about 2 hours ago and got some pictures while the weather was good. The pictures came out a bit bright what with the sun and all, but I'm pretty chuffed with them. There was a whole bunch of skateboarders watching me take the pictures so I couldn't be as adventurous as I would have liked. Anyways here they are enjoy.

Walkway leading to the Skatepark.

Tell me that's not pretty!

Cant get over how nice the light was up there earlier.

Sneaky mid trick pic :P


You cant see him to well, but this guy was pretty good.


Epic View huh?

The graffiti up there was pretty bad ass too. ^_^

Another sneaky mid trick pic

I really should have asked these guys if they'd have minded appearing in the music video, but ah well maybe they'll be there again over the weekend and I can bug them then (If my sneaky uni-wide-email-plea doesn't work)

Things are coming together...Slowly.

So far its been a long week, filled with faaaaaar to much project management for my liking.

I'm almost prepared for filming next weekend though...
Just got to sort out the props,
Write up a schedual/call sheet,
Have a meeting with the Band,
Get all the equipment fully booked,
and plan my audio for the introduction skit.

(Man that actually sounds like a lot now I think about it)

All day tomorrow is going to be dedicated to making up my presentation for Profesional practice which has been moved from wednesday next week to monday, grrrr. Still I've just about done all the work for my case studies so I really just need to think about what I want to say and put the slides together.

Anyway the weather is quite nice today so I may head up to Dudhope park and get the location pictures for my fourth location (FINALLY) So hopefully I'll have them up for you guys to see tomorrow.