My Arts Award Leadership Project

Silver Arts Award - Assignment 2

Introduction

This assignment I have decided to create another video with my team mates Kieren and Courtney, for this assignment we will be creating a episodic series. This series is going to be based around zombies and where a group of people would be faced by them. We have some class mates that are going to involved in this series, we will be trying to make more than one episode which will probably happen if it all goes to plan. We all decided that we would call our series 'Dead Zone' and that it is going to have some dark comedy in it and some heart braking moments.

My own Leadership Skills for this project:
My own responsibility for this project is in charge of operating the cameras. This will mean taking charge of making all shots and scenes for the movie, under the guidance of our director who will be Courtney - and of course following the script from our scriptwriter, Kieren, with sound from Ryan and editing from Josh Garrens.

This means that I will need to get to grips with the cameras and tripods at college so I will comfortable with using camera movement, focus and zoom.

As well as the technical and creative skills, I will also need to develop a whole series of extra leadership skills:

I will need to follow instructions from the Director - which should not be too difficult as Courtney is one of my best mates. However, we will have to make sure that we all work well together as a team, that everyone knows what is needed, and to let people know what they need to do if they miss a lesson. I will need to get myself more organised, and make sure my planning and preparation is in on order. The hardest part for me will be not the creative part of using the camera, but to keep my blog up to date, make sure it can be understood, and to develop better reflection and evaluation skills so I can keep checking in as to how the project has been coming along and how I think my leadership skills have been developing.

Action Planning

This is the evidence of what Courtney had made for the action planning, this is basically everything that we need to do and what mainly helped.
We produced this a part of a group discussion. I have also included this little mind map that Made to help get our ideas together:

Production Crew

• Courtney Fleming - Director
• Gemma Connor - Camera Woman
• Kieren Dixon - Screen Writer
• Nicole Swainston - Zombie 
• Liam Mathis Jamison - Zombie Killer (Nolan)
• Ryan Allerton - Sound Man
• Shannon McLean - Zombie 
• Jack Brooks - Zombie

Review of how my leadership project has been going so far:

Good to have a group discussion so that everyone knows what they are working and need to be doing. Feel confident that this project is going to go well!

Locations

Clock Tower - This is near the college and we will be using this location so that we can have the gang fighting the zombies. 

The Street - This is going to be in the colleges main entrance, we will be using the street because there will be students in the college with the zombies.

Classrooms - This will be some classrooms in the college, we will be using the classrooms for different shoots for the series.

Corridors - This will also be any corridors in the college and again for different shots so it doesn't get boring in the same places.

Plan

Our plan is to start recording our series on Tuesday (19th May 2015)! Our series is about a young lad who is on his own wondering the hills as he comes closer to the clock tower one of our locations and spots a group of people who are struggling to face the zombies so he gets more scared and paranoid. He then goes and helps the other people as they ask them for his help. They face deady situations and do as much as they can to try to survive the zombie apocalypse. There is some scenes that are upsetting/emotional but most important its going to be epic and have some really exciting parts in it!.

I will also need to get some experience with using the college video cameras, and I will show this in a future post.

Different Sets
Sets that I want to have are going to be different, for the first bit I want to have Liam walking toward the clock tower but because he sees the zombies heading towards him he starts running the fastest that he can. I then want him to fall and sit next to the clock tower and find some kit in a bag that will help him against the zombies. I want a scene where a zombie comes over to him and he has to attack the zombie otherwise he will get bitten and turn into a zombie as well. I then want him see a group of people near Middlesbrough College that he goes to help and then I want a cliffhanger to what happens next. I think that if these work then it will make it a good video, but I also want some clips of Jack who is a zombie so that Liam and the zombies are actually involved too.

Review of how my leadership project has been going so far:

So far the protect has been working really well, I have developed my skills much more on the Sony HD camera that I have been using to record the different scenes in the trailer. I have also been helping others in my team if they have ever got stuck for example if Courtney (Director) didn't know what to do for a different scene then I would help her and then we would all think of what we could actually do. 

The project plan worked really well, every idea that we thought of actually got put into the trailer and that's what I didn't really expect but it worked. Really the only problem that we had was that if Courtney didn't know what to do for the certain scene then we would have to think of something that we could do but overall it made our trailer a lot better and made me enjoy it even more.

The overall achievements and the successes that I got is that it mainly worked, all the group conversations that we had putting all the idea together and action plan really helped us by being successful in the end of it and that it all payed off in the end. I enjoyed working with everyone and I enjoyed the experience with working with them in as team and enjoyed all the achievements that we got while working together. In the end everything was successful. 

After this I have learnt so much more about different roles in movies/trailers etc. I have found out how to properly use a Sony HD hxr-mc2000e which has actually really helped me for the future as I now have the experience with them. I have also learnt that it is a lot different to a normal group conversation because in serious jobs like this you have a couple of weeks to do the pre-production and actually plan what you are going to do. I have learnt lots during this year and I have really enjoyed it. 

From the feedback that I got off everyone I learnt that in this type of position I am quiet good as I got good feedback off everyone and that's what I'm really happy with and I hope to carry on with stuff like this for example with Level 3 Creative Media. 

I don't really know what I would do differently in the future because I want to carry on with doing this because I really like being involved with cameras and making mine own videos etc so I'm hoping to carry on with maybe finding something to do to try and get in the media industry.