My Website

I have had my website for a while now, but I have updated it and changed it a bit to match the design of my business cards and portfolio. I think a website is the best way for promoting my work and myself, as I work mainly digitally so it is easier to send people a website address than a pdf file or something.
Link: http://www.laurajanecollins.co.uk/

Film Editing

Here are some screen shots of my editing process. I used a basic film editor as it is perfectly efficient to use for the purpose of stop motion. If I had done a moving film I would have used more sophisticated software but for stop motion purposes this editing software was fine. The film took me quite a long time to edit as there were so many images to put together, and also to try and get it to run smoothly and not too quickly was difficult. I tried to vary the lengths of the shots to give a sense of pace throughout the film also adding a few effects to blend scenes better. As you can see from the images below, I have shown various sections to show how many images I was dealing with as well as changing the lengths of individual shots.



Business Card

Here are the designs for my business cards, I wanted them really really simple, with little information and straight to the point. I have decided to use one of the images from my film as the front because I really like the image and I think they reflect my work and my film and should hopefully remind people of my work. I have ordered these and I am also planning to do round business cards, which can be spun by string to create a moving image, I will be creating just a few of these to give out to the more important people as more of an eye catching way of presenting a business card.

Blurb Book

For hand in I am going to create a book and Blurb to form a flip book of the images from my film. It is quite a large book with 360 pages so hopefully wont be too tricky to flick. I have also had to put all the pictures in reverse as I found people mainly flip from back to front, so that was very time consuming going backwards.

This book is a cut down version of my final film, as if I have included all my images blurb wouldn't have been able to cater for that many pages, also in my film you wouldn't notice so much an odd smudge or zip or some other small error however in a book when you can spend time looking at each image if you wanted you may notice those small imperfections so I have just tried to include the best images.

The book is standard landscape and should hopefully look really good and be of high quality, I just hope it gets delivered in time!
Link to Blurb Book:
http://www.blurb.com/bookstore/invited/1654293/b393c30285e7828a448404d1788284f8

Whats in a name?

Trying to find a name for my film is something I have been struggling over for a while. Throughout this project I have been looking for words and quotes to try and give me ideas however nothing has really grabbed me, and now is the time when I am needing a name. I looked through thesaurus's, dictionary's, online, art and film names and finally I have found something I like. After going through names such as: Time, Subconscious, The Trials of Time, The nightmare of Time, etc etc, I found inspiration from the Dali painting The Persistence of Memory and have decided to call my film.... The Persistence of Time.

I feel this is an appropriate title, it reflects my theme of time, dreams and unconscious and also the connotation with Dali just adds to the fact that this is a film about the subconscious and Dali has been a great influence on my film. Hopefully Dali won't mind too much me borrowing his name and adapting it for myself.

Editing, Editing, Editing, Editing....

With so many pictures needed to make a reasonable length film I am having to edit 80% of them and its a nightmare. Mostly its removing spots but I am having to do some fiddling with lighting and tones to make the sequences more cohesive. Also the clock scene is proving the longest thing to edit as I am having to edit a lot. Below are some example of what I have been doing, so far its taken me 3 days and im nearly done so hopefully it wont take too much longer to finish.

Adding Shadow - Unedited

 Edited

Editing Lighting - Unedited

 Edited

Adding Shadow - Unedited

 Edited

Enhancing Colour - Unedited

 Edited

Adding Clock Face - Unedited

 Edited

Removing Features - Unedited

 Edited

Layering Images - Unedited

 Edited

Clock Scene

Today I have completed the last bit of filming I had to do, the clock scene. I did this myself as there was no point getting Jacqui to do it because it is something I can quite easily do myself. I only used 5 clocks however I will edit it in photoshop so there are more to make more of an impact. I left my tripod at my uni house so I have DIY a stand high enough to get the clocks in, which also meant trying to keep the camera still and not to move it when I took each picture. Also another difficulty was trying to get the clocks back in the same position after each move, I use a small pencil mark to try and keep the clocks in as much of the same place as possible. 



Pictures for Models (Sneak peak of final images!)

As I got my models from agencies I have to send the agency some images for the girls portfolios. Below are the images I have edited to send them.

Sophie (Gingersnap):

Johanna (Gingersnap):

Yasmin (Room3Agency):

Picture for all 3 girls:

Ross (Room3Agency):



Stage Review

My stage review on Thursday went as expected, pretty average. Points made were I need to find somewhere where my video would be placed, for example would my video be more commercial or with the videos on websites such as Showstudio and it was suggested I should write a marketing plan like EMPers so I can have a clearer idea, I might write a basic marketing plan, just outlining the things that aren't clear at the moment. Other than that I there wasn't much else, Tiffany kept asking is this what you expected it to turn out like... I'm assuming that is because it doesn't look like what she was imagining but I think with some editing to make the sequences more cohesive and link smoother I think the video will come together nicely.

I have really enjoyed doing this film and I love stop motion, thing were very stressful on the lead up to the shoot with so many people cancelling but I feel I organised an extremely well run team and minus a few small glitches everything went very smoothly, and hopefully this shows how good I am at organising not only myself but a large team of people successfully.

Shoot Day, Behind the scenes

Yesterday was the shoot and everything ran suprisingly smoothly. The shoot lasted for 11 hours and dispite everyone getting lost and the male model not bringing black trousers, there were very few hicups on the day and everything ran easily. I was particuarly glad that everyone showed up as I had so many people cancel on me that most people had agreed to come pretty last minute. The images below are some backstage pictures taken by my helper for the day Katie Tremlett. I was ready prepared with my storyboards, outfit line up, shooting order, make up sheet and poses sheet to help everyone with what they needed to do. From what I saw on Jacquelines camera the images look great and I'm really looking forward to getting my hands on them and start editing them.