Wedneday 19th May 2010

Today was another productive day (we seem to be having a lot of them lately). Ben was really good today, organising his group and getting them to do the work - Miss Hoad was really proud of him.

We started by reviewing our company names and logos and created our own headed paper, which was a fairly simple process, but Ryan seemed to spend most of the day on this task, creating his own version of it (which was crappier than the chosen version that we had been using all day). We then thought about some questions for our Theatre in Education project and started to answer those questions in an essay like thing.

Once we had completed our essay's we all completed a questionnaire on safe internet use, that Miss Hoad had found on the 'Think U Know' website. We then used Miss White's Year 7 class to complete the questionnaire too, as they are our target audience and we will be presenting our final Theatre in Education performance piece. We split the class in two and each company took one half and talked with each other about Cyber Safety. Once back in our diploma room E1 I analysed the results for our company and although we did it most of us were surprise to hear that most of them had a Facebook account since Year 5, even though you are supposed to be 13 years old to sign up. And a few of them had actually met up with people that they had met over the internet, which shocked us.

We briefly looked at the websites: www.thinkuknow.co.uk/

and http://clickcleverclicksafe.direct.gov.uk/index.html

and we also watched the video 'Matt Thought He Knew'.

We used the information from the year seven's and discussed as a group what cyber safety means to us. Using the information from both the year seven's and us we began planning our Theatre in Education performance pieces.

We filmed our discussions and planning and will use the footage in our documentaries for our RECORD unit, that we will begin creating after our performance on 30th June 2010.

Next week we have a visit from Annabel, from the Ashcroft Arts Centre to talk about Theatre in Education. Hopefully, she'll be of help (fingers crossed).

Wednesday 12th May 2010

Today we started the day with our FS Maths exam, that Miss Hoad had forgotten about so our day plans were in desperate need of change.

Once our exam was finished and we had calmed down we started of with our presentations on 'Documentary' that we had prepared last week. We then had a visit from Mr Stapleton from Brune Park who was checking up on us and Miss Hoad's teaching. Our presentations were coming along fairly well but I still need to slow down my voice and stop talking at 70mph. Miss Hoad has made us stop our flaws in presentations by making us more aware of our physical presence when doing it; the giggling, the hands-in-pockets, the eye contact, the rushing...

We then moved on to creating names and logos for our production companies. The other group is called 'Constellation' and ours is called 'Elastic Bandits'. Our logo is based around a superhero teddy bear who is flying with a cape on in front of the world, this is held together with elastic bands. We discussed the meanings behind our name with Miss Hoad and explained to her about the hidden meaning of our name, that it was funny and cheeky but with a serious undertone.

We then began to start thinking about our documentaries and began to give our roles to people within our group. I then had to leave at lunch to run a drama workshop at Wicor Primary School with some year 4 students for my Bronze Arts Award portfolio. It went really well, and there are some really good actors/actresses in that group.

At the end of the day Ryan apparently demonstrated to everyone else how to use the tripods and camcorders that we will be using a lot over the upcoming weeks.

Wednesday 5th May 2010

Today we started to research documentaries. We began the day mind mapping what we know about the conventions of the documentary genre. We watched and analysed some short documentaries on 4Docs. We looked at the website and all analysed one of the documentaries.

We all started to create our individual presentations about Documentary for the LO1/Investigation section for our RECORD Unit.

Here is a link for 4Docs website:

http://www.4docs.org.uk/films/tag/all

London Media Trip (25th - 27th March)

Thurs 25th March - 7am

At 7am on Thursday the media students attending the London Media Trip left Portchester Community School, made our way to Brune Park, then to Brookfield to pick up the other students, and teachers, that were attending the trip also. Once all were collected we headed off to London.

We arrived at our hotel on time and left our bags in an empty room, as our rooms were not ready yet. Once leaving our belongings, apart from our travel bags, in the room we got back on the coach and made our way around busy London to get to the BBFC. We a little bit late, due to our drivers not particularly knowing where they were going so we got a little lost.

When we finally arrived at the BBFC the man running the presentations was not the very happy, as they presentations had been set up for a certain time and the people he had assigned to run both rooms were not free when we got there, due to other work that had to be completed. When we got there we realised that not everyone would be able to fit into the presentation room so some had to head off to Covent Garden for some impromptu shopping.

Those of us that could get into the room were very interested to hear about the different things that influence the way that they classify certain films. We were shown various different clips from different films and, based on the information that we had been taught in the beginning of the workshop, we voted on the rating of the film... most of the time we disagreed with the actual rating of the film. For some reason the guy thought that we were 17 so some of the clips annoyed the teachers/supervisors, due to the content.

We left the BBFC and made our way to Covent Garden to meet up with the others who, unfortunately, couldn't join us for the presentation. We had a little bit of time to do some shopping and hang out with our new friends. We then made our way to Pizza Hut (which was underground), but they didn't have any disabled access so George had to go somewhere else, but Pizza Hut was very nice for us.

We then made our way to the Lyceum Theatre to see The Lion King, which was absolutely amazing! The performance included puppetry, shadow puppets, fantastic musical numbers that everyone knew the words to and sung along to and slight audience involvement, when the actors would come into the audience and fly their awesome puppets around in the air.

Friday 26th March

After last nights mishaps Miss Hoad phoned ahead to the London Film Academy to see if they had disabled access. On the way there they phoned back and informed her that they didn't so George went to Ascent 142, who are involved in film and TV post production.

To begin with we split into two groups and went to two different workshops, that later on we would also experience. We went to the cinematography and lighting workshop, whilst the other group had a workshop about airbrush make up. In the cinematography and lighting workshop we were able to sit under different lighting and see the difference on the camera. The man that led this workshop had worked with such greats as Bruce Willis, Milla Jovovich and Johnny Depp. I really enjoyed talking with him as I am a huge fan of all of these actors.

In the airbrush make up workshop, that we did after lunch, some of us were able to get it done on us using stencils, eyeshadow, pieces of lace and the airbrush tool.

Planet Hollywood

Dinner was very noisy at Planet Hollywood, with people shouting and screaming when the camera went across them and their image appeared on the large flat screens that were scattered around the restaurant. Despite the craziness the food was fairly nice, but didn't sit well in most of our stomachs, making a few of us ill that night.

London Eye

Due to eating at Planet Hollywood only minutes before I felt too ill to go on the London Eye, so Miss Hoad and I stayed on the ground as the rest of the group went on the tall structure.

Saturday 27th March

Movieum - London Film Museum

We went to the Movieum, that was right next to the London Eye this morning after Olivia (my room mate) and I had woken up late and rushed around to pack our bags to put on the coach. It was a pretty hectic morning but it all calmed down as the day went on on our last day in London. They had a great selection of props from many famous films, such as The Borrowers and Alice in Wonderland, that we all got to take lots of pictures of. Here are some pictures of things that we saw at the museum:

BFi IMAX - Alice in Wonderland

Alice in Wonderland was completely amazing! It was a really good choice of film to see at Britain's Largest Largest Screen. The screen itself was immense and the film was even better. I was sat in Row N and the view was very good, compared to those sat in the first few rows, where the 3D made them feel slightly sick.

We then got back on the coach after the film and made our way back home (:

Wednesday 9th June 2010

Today we had more freedom than most days... which was bad, but good in the end result. We're at the point where we need to organise and rehearse our Theatre in Education performance piece and we also need to film for our documentary that we are going to attempt to put together in three weeks time (PANIC!).

Our company, Elastic Bandits, divided up the work and got on with our individual tasks. Nikki and Ryan managed to work together (shock horror) and set up the dummy facebook pages we need for our performance, but to do this they had to stay away from the rest of the class, to avoid getting distracted and off task. Nikki also managed to design costumes for the three actors in our group, which will be taken into account for next week when we show Annabel, from Ashcroft Arts Centre, what we have done so far. Hannah, Nathan and Jacob worked well together by creating and rehearsing the first two scenes of our play and they all wrote their character profiles for the performance to help them go into depth of their characters and to add it to their blogs. Whilst they were doing this I completed all of the paperwork that needed to be done, such as the permission form to allow us to use the Dance Studio on 30th June during Period 5 and the day plan sheet that we would follow for the rest of the day. I also recorded Nikki drawing, Hannah, Jacob and Nathan acting and our group discussion at the beginning of the day. Although we all worked pretty good separately we need to come together and plan everything as a group!

Towards the end of the day we all came together as a whole class and assessed what we had achieved today, and it showed that we hadn't really done much, despite us thinking that we had.

Next week Annabel is coming in at 10am to see our Theatre in Education performances so far... hopefully it will be better than the jumbled mess that it was this week.

We've decided on what tasks we still have to do and they are:

• Ask Mrs Ball about using her class on 30th June during period 5
• Check that we can use the Dance Studio at that time
• Talk to the Site Management team about the seating in the Dance Studio
• Organise props and costumes that are needed
• Rehearse both performance pieces, including technology that is needed, that works