Cyfle New Media Training

noreply@blogger.com (Alice Rothwell) — Sun, 08 Oct 2006 10:20:00 +0000

Final Cut Pro Editing

Sioned, Ian and me enjoyed a 3-day training coures in Final Cut Pro last week. Cyfle arranged the course and Richard Atherton was the trainer. Richard was fantastic, and I felt the course was extremely worthwhile. I now feel much more confident editing in genral and know my way around FCP really well. I particularly enjoyed learning about effects, color correction and compositing. I'm really looking forward to putting some of my new skills into practice.

noreply@blogger.com (Alice Rothwell) — Sat, 16 Sep 2006 18:51:00 +0000

Out into the big, wide world

My Cyfle training scheme in interactive media has come to an end. It has been a fantastic year, crammed full of new experiences, great tuition and guidance, and brilliant work placements.

I am so grateful that I had the opportunity to be on this scheme. It has given me the chance to develop my new media skills and gain invaluable training and experience. I've also had great opportunities to meet people working in the industry and formed a lot of new friendships over the year. It really couldn't have been more perfect. I just hope I manage to get a job doing this stuff that I love so much (any offers - please get in touch!)

Massive thanks to Cyfle - especially Gareth and Iona, The European Social Fund, S4C, Boomerang, Green Bay, Cube Interactive, BBC Wales New Media, Unique Media, Limkokwing University College of Creative Technology, MYGO, Steve Jones, Nick Butler, Sarah Goodey and everyone who funds Cyfle. Diolch o galon.

noreply@blogger.com (Alice Rothwell) — Sat, 16 Sep 2006 18:36:00 +0000

Geting Interactive at the BBC

I finished my work placement with the Interactive Team at the BBC in Cardiff last week. Both Jo Pearce (Senior Producer) and Claire Jones (Assistant Producer) have been fantastic; briefing me on their work, inviting me to meetings and giving me the chance to get involved in the research and development of new projects. Their work includes developing interactive applications for mobile, web and eTV (enhanced TV / red button) platforms.

Andy Davies kindly showed me round Flip Factory. It's video encoding software that allows you to set up 'watch folders' so that as soon as a new video is put into the folder, Flip Factory will automatically start encoding it for web/mobile devices. It seems to work really well and the encoding times are impressively quick.

I've also been in the edit suite, editing clips of adudicators at the BBC National Eisteddfod site and interviews with sports celebrities for the Raise Your Game site using Adobe Premiere Pro.

I've been offered some more work for the Raise Your Game site for the next two weeks which I'm really pleased about as I'll have the chance to get some more valuable experience with the New Media department.

noreply@blogger.com (Alice Rothwell) — Sat, 16 Sep 2006 18:23:00 +0000

End of my placement at Green Bay

My placement at Green Bay seems to have completely flown by and it was my last day there yesterday. With a lot of hard work I managed to finish the re-design of the Green Bay website and it is now live at www.green-bay.tv.

Although aesthetically it does not look that different from the old site, technically it is now far easier to update and expand in the future. Their previous site had been built using HTML tables. Now all the design for the site is CSS-based making it easy to make changes and adhering to W3C accessibility guidelines. All the content for the commissions and news sections now comes from a MySQL database using PHP so it is easier to manage and update.

I also finished editing some promo clips of Green Bay programmes for the UK Indies Pavilion at Mipcom 2006 next month.

I've really enjoyed my time at Green Bay and will miss all the lovely people there but hope to stay in touch with them in the future.

noreply@blogger.com (Alice Rothwell) — Sat, 16 Sep 2006 17:39:00 +0000

dConstruct06

Last weekend Ian, Mei, Sions and me enjoyed our last glimpse of summer by going down to the seaside in Brighton for the dConstruct Web 2.0 conference. It was a great excuse to catch up with each other before the end of our course and the conference was excellent.

Almost all the speakers were fantastic, delivering informative and entertaining presentations. 'Mashups' was definitely the running theme of the day, with plenty of examples on the web at the moment and advice on how to develop your own using APIs. A web 'mashup' is basically an online application that pulls in existing information from two or more other web services (e.g. Flickr and Google Maps info). Here are a couple of interesting examples:

Flickr/Yahoo Maps mashup - the link shows you all the photos that have been geotagged on Flickr as having been taken in Cardiff, not many so far but it was only launched a few weeks ago so is sure to gain popularity and gives you a different way of exploring photos.
Chicago Crime Map - Here a mashup of crime statistics and Google Maps allows you to identify the locations of criminals and reported crimes in Chicago!

What I found particularly interesting is how much the likes of Yahoo, Google and Amazon are now encouraging the development of mashups and other applications that use their APIs even for commercial use (although you usually still need to get permission).

Another hot topic of the day was 'microformats' with Jeremy Keith very passionately encouraging their use.

It was a really great day and I left with a greater insight into the current trends in the web industry and some new ideas for future projects.

noreply@blogger.com (Alice Rothwell) — Sat, 16 Sep 2006 17:37:00 +0000

Where Did The Summer Go?

Everything has been so hectic over the past few weeks that I haven't had a chance to blog at all. So here's my attempt to catch up on the last month of my Cyfle course.

noreply@blogger.com (Alice Rothwell) — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 10:20:00 +0000

BBC Placement

I had a meeting this morning with Jo Pearce, Luke Surrey and Claire Jones from the BBC New Media Department in Llandaff, Cardiff. It was great to meet them and I am looking forward to my work placement there which starts next Monday. I'll be splitting my time between the BBC and Green Bay for the last month of my course. They are working on a wide variety of interactive projects at the moment, and I am looking forward to getting some experience working with video for mobile and web platforms as well as red-button television.

noreply@blogger.com (Alice Rothwell) — Tue, 25 Jul 2006 21:51:00 +0000

Kuala Lumpur Documentary

Here's the short video we shot of our trip to Kuala Lumpur...

Sioned - I didn't choose the screenshot, Vimeo seemed to like you!

Cyfle in Kuala Lumpur on Vimeo

noreply@blogger.com (Alice Rothwell) — Tue, 18 Jul 2006 15:27:00 +0000

Green Bay Board Meeting

I was invited to give a short presentation at the Green Bay board meeting today. Attending the meeting was Green Bay's Creative Directors John Geraint and Phil George as well as Finance Wales Investment Executive Bethan Cousins, Corporate Development Expert Elizabeth Coffey, Business Manager Gareth Fisher and Gary Stone.

I spoke about the recent agreements between PACT and the major broadcasters that gives independent producers greater freedom to exploit new media rights. I also discussed the various new media technologies available at the moment and different methods by which production companies could think about developing alternative revenue streams through these new platforms.

noreply@blogger.com (Alice Rothwell) — Tue, 18 Jul 2006 10:01:00 +0000

d.construct
September 8th - Brighton Corn Exchange

Just managed to get a ticket for the d.construct web conference in Brighton. The line up of speakers looks great and it coincides with the last week of our course, so will be a good way to finish off our training.

noreply@blogger.com (Alice Rothwell) — Mon, 17 Jul 2006 13:59:00 +0000

Last Monday we had a chance to show the dvd of our trip to Kuala Lumpur to S4C's Chief Executive and Chair of Skillset Wales, Iona Jones. It was a great opportunity to chat to her about our experiences in Malaysia, as well as our work since then in Wales - particularly for the Urdd Eisteddfod.

Later that evening we attended a graduation ceremony for previous Dimension 10 students in the Millenium Centre. There was a really great turnout with over 60 guests from the industry, so it proved to be a great chance to meet people and discuss what we have been doing on our course.

On Tuesday we had an Exit Strategy careers day organised by Cyfle. It was a really valuable day with some useful advice on working as a freelancer, tax issues and CVs from speakers from the industry. Our course finishes on September 15th so it was helpful to get some career advice as the time for searching for employment is fast approaching.

Back at Green Bay I have been working hard on a new CSS-based database-driven version of the website using php and MySQL. I also had the opportunity to brief the staff on new media issues today and am presenting a short paper at the board meeting tomorrow morning. It was great to have the chance to share my knowledge with the other members of staff here and hopefully it will lead to Green Bay developing ideas for interactive content in the near future.

noreply@blogger.com (Alice Rothwell) — Thu, 06 Jul 2006 14:50:00 +0000

Le Webcast à Paris

Caernarfon...
London...
Kuala Lumpur...
Ruthin...
Llandovery...

Paris...

This course has been great for travelling so far, and I was lucky enough to get the opportunity to travel to Paris this week with Unique Media.

Jon Stethridge kindly invited me to help with a live webcast for Hewlett-Packard. It was a long journey each way by car due to all the kit that we needed to take along, but well worth the effort. The crew was Simon, Chris (both pictured), Jon and myself. We set up all the kit on the Monday evening, ready for the live webcast on Tuesday.

The webcast was broadcast to hp staff in dealerships across France and lasted about an hour. It was a two-camera shoot and was streamed in Windows Media Format. There was also a back-up phone number staff could call to listen to the audio if they had any problems with the webcast.

Jon was very helpful in answering all my questions and I learnt a lot about how the webcast was set up. I also helped change the slides on the webpage in sync with the webcast. It all went according to plan and appeared to be a success with around 170 unique log-ins from hp dealerships across France. I gained a lot of knowledge from the experience and getting the chance to do the job abroad was a definite bonus.

I'm back in Cardiff at Green Bay now and working on a new CSS based template for their website.

In other news, three staff from Lim Kok Wing in Kuala Lumpur are arriving in Cardiff this Saturday. Amongst them is Eugene Foo who taught us After Effects while we were in Malaysia. It will be great to get the chance to catch up with them again and show them around the sites of Cardiff.

noreply@blogger.com (Alice Rothwell) — Wed, 21 Jun 2006 13:10:00 +0000

All Change

I'm now in my second week of my placement with Green Bay Media. So far I've been looking into getting video clips up on their website and doing some general research on interactive technologies.

I also got the chance to go out on production yesterday in Llandovery. I was helping out as a runner for a period drama production for S4C. My main task was to try to stop members of the public from walking into shot. This proved quite difficult though as filming was taking place in the main town square, so trying to stop people from going to the post office or using the cash point was quite a challenge. It was good fun though and a great opportunity to get an insight into drama production.

More good news on the website for The Urdd Eisteddfod, 37 000 videos have been watched online and over 200 000 webpages viewed.

noreply@blogger.com (Alice Rothwell) — Sat, 10 Jun 2006 11:23:00 +0000

Urdd Eisteddfod - My Role

In the weeks leading up to the Urdd Eisteddfod, my task was to research technical logistics of the best ways of encoding and uploading such a massive amount of video to the web. I phoned up companies and used the Internet to find get advice on the different options available to us. I was also responsible for building the site design using CSS. The site went through a variety of different designs before the final layout was chosen. I worked closely with the web department at S4C on the final design, as it was important to keep the site looking consistent with their Summer Events branding.

As well as designing the site, I developed a custom flash video player control bar, incorporating the green colour of the design for the Urdd Eistedddfod site. I also developed an email form using flash and php that allowed people to send an email video link to their friends and family. For the home page I designed a flash RSS ticker that I connected to an xml file that displayed the most recent competition results.

During the week Wil Stephens of Cube Interactive, Mei and me worked as a team to produce the website and mobile text service. We also had a dedicated interactive editor and producer to help with the content for the website. My role was make alterations to the design layouts for the site and to help encoding and uploading video. After a very hectic Monday, the workload became a bit more relaxed in the middle of the week. This gave me a great opportunity to get out of the office and do some filming on the maes. Using a Sony Z1 camera and with help from the interactive producer and Mei we filmed some short features exclusively for the website. It was great fun and also enabled us to raise the profile of the website amongst visitors to the Eisteddfod. One of the director’s liked one of the features so much, it was broadcast on television as well which I was really pleased about.

The event was a fantastic experience for me, not only in terms of my own role and responsibilities, but also invaluable in gaining all round experience of working on a live tv production. It was also a great opportunity to get to know people from other production companies across Wales. All the feedback we received for the website was overwhelmingly positive, and I was amazed by how many video clips we managed to put up in such a short space of time. To date the site has had over 100 000 hits and 24 000 videos have been watched online. I think the site set a precedent for video-on-demand web coverage of live events and I’m really pleased that I had the opportunity to be involved in such an exciting project.

noreply@blogger.com (Alice Rothwell) — Thu, 01 Jun 2006 13:03:00 +0000

Eisteddfod yr Urdd 2006

I'm in the middle of working hard on the website for the Urdd Eisteddfod at the moment. After working on the design for the site, I'm now very busy putting loads of videos up each day. I've also been out filming features for the web. Two of them are up so far. Welsh Jokes and International Greetings from the maes. Hopefully two more will be up tomorrow. It's all going really well at the moment... but must go for now as lots of work still to do!

noreply@blogger.com (Alice Rothwell) — Tue, 09 May 2006 18:27:00 +0000

Getting Ready for the Urdd Eisteddfod

It's not long now until the Urdd Eisteddfod (29th May - 3rd June) which will be my first experience working on live video production for the web. I'm really looking forward to it, but there is a lot of hard work to do first. At the moment I'm focusing on researching the technical logistics of encoding and broadcasting the video content for the S4C Urdd website. There will be a combination of live streamed webcasts and as well as prepared highlights and feature clips that will be available on demand. I'm hoping they'll all be available to be viewed via a nice, simple video player that will sit in the main page of the site.

I'm also still working on the Bandit website. I customized the Flash Photo Gallery to enable it to display more than 1 page of photos and added captions for the photos that can be updated in the XML file. I've also put all of the videos of this series up in the Archive section.

Last week I started working on a showreel Flash video player for the Boomerang site, which is coming on nicely but has had to be put to one side for the moment as I focus on the Urdd.

The DVD of our trip to Kuala Lumpur is finally finished too and looks great. Thanks to Manon and Norman at Derwen for editing it for us. We're hoping to get it on the web too soon.

Alongside work, I've been learning more about integrating PHP, MySQL and Flash and managed to set up the Apache server on my iMac so I can test files without having to upload them.

noreply@blogger.com (Alice Rothwell) — Wed, 19 Apr 2006 19:20:00 +0000

Flickr's now even more fun...

Thanks to the people at Airtight Interactive you can now explore Flickr in style. Take a look at their Flickr Related Tag Browser. Type in "Cyfle" and all our photos of our trip in Kuala Lumpur come up. With more popular tags a circle of related tags also comes up - nice way to explore Flickr.

I've been working on customising the Bandit Photo Gallery this week and have got captions for the photos working now. I've also been trying to enable the user to switch between different photo galleries, by switching the XML file that is called into Flash. I've got it working, but needs a couple of tweaks before it goes live.

noreply@blogger.com (Alice Rothwell) — Thu, 13 Apr 2006 18:09:00 +0000

Bandit Photo Gallery

The Bandit Photo Gallery is now live. I'm pleased with how it's looking, although can't take all the credit. Thank you to the people of Airtight Interactive for all their hard work developing the Postcard Viewer flash gallery. I am hoping to do some Actionscripting as well though to customise the viewer further. I'd like to add captions to the photos in a similar way to Airtight's Autoviewer. I also want to extend the gallery to allow people to browse multiple pages of photos - hopefully arranged into albums.

The second Bandit 247 live webchat happens tonight! Huw Stephens will be logging in at 10pm to take questions from Bandit viewers to fill the 1h 7min gap in the transmission of Bandit - S4C have even managed to squeeze in the weather after Ralio. Unfortunately there won't be a video webcast as well, but hopefully we'll sort it out in the near future.

noreply@blogger.com (Alice Rothwell) — Wed, 12 Apr 2006 10:33:00 +0000

Almost Easter Already?

My work placement at Boomerang seems to be going far too quickly, I can't believe I've been here over a month already. I'm still busy with the Bandit website at the moment. The new, slightly larger layout went live last week to enable more space for the new widescreen videos. There's also new gigs and news sections, and I've almost finished a flash photo gallery which should be live shortly. You can view a sneak preview of it here. I also put up some exclusive web-only live performances last week.

A couple of weeks ago, we experimented with a live Bandit chat to fill the 1 hour gap between the first and second parts of Bandit being transmitted on S4C (due to Ralio). We used Campfire to host the chat and it worked pretty well. At it's peak there were 35 'simultaneous chatters' - not huge figures but not bad for the first attempt. There is another gap in the broadcast tomorrow as well so we're hoping to try the chat out again - this time with Huw Stephens taking questions and hopefully a video webcast of him too.

I've also started work on the Boomerang site. Very early stages at the moment, but trying to get some ideas together about the design.

Alongside work at Boomerang, we've been working on a short documentary of our time spent in Kuala Lumpur. Derwen have kindly helped us by editing it for us. It's looking like it will be pretty short and sweet - about 5 minutes - and put onto DVD so that it can be used by Cyfle as a kind of showreel.

noreply@blogger.com (Alice Rothwell) — Fri, 24 Mar 2006 18:34:00 +0000

Bandit Website

I've been at Boomerang for two weeks now and am really enjoying working here. Everybody's been really friendly and I've had some exciting projects to work on. At the moment I'm mainly working on the Bandit website www.bandit247.com. The new series started last Thursday, so I've been busy editing and encoding video clips from the programme for the site. It's been hard work getting them all finished in time, but I'm really pleased with the results. For this week's videos I exported the video straight from Avid Xpress to Flash Video Format (FLV). This worked well and the quality looks really good for the web. Previously I'd been exporting to Quick Time Format and then FLV so the video had been compressed twice and was a bit more pixelated.

I've also been working on updating other areas of the bandit site. I'm currently working on a new, larger layout and some brand new site areas which should be ready soon.

noreply@blogger.com (Alice Rothwell) — Tue, 14 Mar 2006 18:00:00 +0000

Working at Boomerang

I started my three month work placement with Boomerang on Monday. The timing was great as I was lucky enough to spend the first two days on a camera course, learning how to use the Sony Z1. It was a great to refresh my knowledge on how to operate a DV camera, and also an opportunity to learn about HDV; high definition footage captured on a standard DV format cassette. It also shoots in true 16x9 widescreen, unlike the Sony PD150 I had used previously.

It was the first time I had shot anything in high definition before, and it made me realise how critical it is that you get the focus spot on. Often what looked sharp on the camera's LCD, was out of focus on screen. I really enjoyed the training and am hoping I'll get an opportunity to put the knowledge to the test by shooting some footage for the Bandit website.

noreply@blogger.com (Alice Rothwell) — Mon, 06 Mar 2006 15:47:00 +0000

Ffi Ffi a'i Ffindiau

S4C have put the Ffi Ffi game Mei and me developed up on their website. It's a delivery game designed to introduce the characters of the tv programme whilst developing children's keyboard and memory skills. We had a lot of fun designing the game and I'm really pleased S4C have used it on their site.

noreply@blogger.com (Alice Rothwell) — Wed, 01 Mar 2006 04:14:00 +0000

Last Post from KL

I can't believe we have to go home tomorrow. Our time here has passed all too quickly and I feel like there is still so much I would like to see and do, we haven't even had a chance to go up the Petronas Towers.

I have managed to pack a lot into our short time here though. Last weekend we went to Penang, an island off the north-west coast of Malaysia. We stayed at the Holiday Inn at Batu Ferringhi. It was great to get some fresh air by the sea and the beach was lovely although the sea was full of jellyfish so I didn't venture in. After a relaxing Saturday we visited some Buddhist Temples on Sunday in Georgetown and went up the train to the top of Penang Hill for a view of the island.

Yesterday was our last day at Lim Kok Wing and we managed to get the motion graphics for our documentary finished. I'm really pleased with them. I designed some 3D goggles using 3D studio max and integrated them with photos of our characters in Photoshop. Mei designed and animated a 3D biplane for the characatures of us to travel on. Ian and Sioned worked on the motion graphics using After Effects using some great celtic and batik textures for titles and transitions. I sat in on an After Effects class yesterday and produced a kaleidoscopic motion graphic sequence. Eugene was a great teacher and I was really happy with what I managed to achieve in such a short space of time.

Today is our last day with MYGO. We haven't had enough time to completely finish our SMS-TV Flash game, but MYGO are keen to complete the project themselves so it can be taken live. It would be fantastic if it does get broadcast on Malaysian TV. We had altered the game a bit last week. Originally we were going to have an animated host presenting the game, but decided to integrate video instead. I spent Friday filming Sioned and edited the footage on Monday into small clips of stock phrases used in the game. It was great fun and looked good integrated with the Flash game graphics.

I have had an incredible experience here in Malaysia. Everyone we have met has been friendly and welcoming, especially Eugene Foo who has taken us out for some great meals and helped us finish our motion graphic sequence on time. I'm going to miss the hot climate, lovely food and shopping at the chinese markets. I've learnt a lot from my experience here, both culturally and about the creative industries over here and I'm looking forward to bringing some new ideas back to Wales. It would be great if the contacts I have made here lead to future collaborations, especially if it involves another trip over here sometime soon.

noreply@blogger.com (Alice Rothwell) — Thu, 23 Feb 2006 03:20:00 +0000

KL Update

Last weekend we decided to get away from KL for a while and took a train to Klang. There are some more photos of the Hindu Temple there on my flickr site. We went to a really good curry house there and Sioned sampled the banana leaf curry.

This week has continued at a hectic pace, we have been working hard both at MYGO and LKW on our projects. We also went out for dinner with some people who work for Bangor University who have an office here in KL - probably the biggest buffet I have ever seen. It's hard not to eat well out here.

noreply@blogger.com (Alice Rothwell) — Fri, 17 Feb 2006 04:48:00 +0000

Working in KL

Our second week in KL is almost over - our time here seems to be going far too quickly. It's all been quite hectic, but a lot of fun. Yesterday I had a lesson in 3D Studio Max at Lim Kok Wing. I've never done any 3D work before so it was great to get a quick crash course. Mei and me have been set the task of modelling an airoplane. Ian and Sioned are working on motion graphics using After Effects. Hopefully, we'll combine the plane and the motion graphics to create an opening title sequence to introduce our documentary of our time spent here in KL. I just hope we have enough time to finish it all.

We're all working hard on our project for MYGO. The graphics for the SMS-TV game are coming on well now and we hope to start animating the characters next week.

We went to visit the Multimedia Super Corridor (MSC) headquarters yesterday for a tour of their production facilities and later attended a workshop organized by them to promote the creative industries in Malaysia. Their is a huge amount of support for new start creative companies here, as having MSC status entitles you to a 10 year tax break. The facilites were impressive with a range of high spec hardware and industry standard software available for students to use free of charge.