This blog is maintained by Will Paterson and Ben Mercer and serves as a, hopefully enlightening, record of two people that are fresh out of University and are constantly learning new things as they work on this project with SCEPTrE. Comments welcome.

 

 

 

The catalyst

 

From: Norman.Jackson@surrey.ac.uk

Date: Wed, 20 Jun 2007 13:08:20 +0100

To: cbrooking@ucreative.ac.uk

Conversation: URGENT ENQUIRY

 

CAN YOU HELP?? The student who was going to assist us with the video editing next week has dropped out. Also we are short of one camera person for filming the sessions. Do you know of any local students from your film/media courses who might be prepared to help? norman

 

By Friday the above email had found it’s way to a lecturer of mine. When he called I was amidst the chaos of Waterloo station at about four in the afternoon. A job, he told me, at the University of Surrey covering a conference on learning. I had been fired from my prestigious position as Ben n’ Jerry’s ice cream attendant at the Odeon in Leicester Square (a job that, at 18 days, was a little more short term than even I had originally reckoned) the previous Wednesday, and it was an opportunity to work with Will (a classmate who had also been contacted and I had been working jobs with in the four weeks since we left university) on another CV worthy project. ‘Yes’ I said.

 
 
The conference
 
Three days later I was sat sleepily on the 6.43 Portsmouth to Guildford train unsure of what awaited. I met Will in Guildford and together we headed toward the campus, the AC building specifically. The university we have just come from is an art college in a small town called Farnham, not far out of Guildford, that is positively dwarfed by the campus here. On that first day we were not, in fact, entirely sure when we happened upon the campus, it just eventually kind of emerged around us. After meeting a large portion of the student body asking endless directions, we made it (pretty much on time) to what would reveal itself to be the beating heart of SCEPTrE, and our base for the next three days, Norman Jackson’s office.
 
At this point every job we take looms over us to some degree. Children of the education system, we are currently adapting to existing in the vaunted ‘professional workplace’ that has been our destination for as long as we can remember. Realistically, life is not that different an experience (we just pay tax now), but there I always feel a great stress moving into an environment I know very little about, which is a more common occurrence now. Along with that stress comes a sense of anticipation.
 
So we arrive and immediately attempt to figure out exactly what our goals our over the next three days. Will is to shoot, I am to edit what is shot. There are a few other guys shooting the workshops that go on as well. By around eleven I already have three hours of tapes to draw from. The day is one of soaking up what is around me, figuring out what I’m going to do and what I need to learn (including this wiki, which was a concept foreign to me besides browsing wikipedia). Usually, in all the books and lectures at university, you watch everything you have at least once before starting cutting, become familiar with the material. By the end of the first day there were twelve hours of footage. Day two around twenty five hours. Day three somewhere in the vicinity of thirty five hours.
 
The approach I eventually took was one that I am usually averse to, winging it. It became less effective to plan an entire day, even half a day, so I would take the day task by task. Upload photos, then see what had come in, browse through whatever caught my interest, and glean a short film (3-10 minutes) from the hours of footage. Over the three days I produced probably twelve shorts. I never became as fluid with the wiki programme as I would have liked during that time, so progress was staggered as far as uploading pictures and creating links goes.
 
 
Now
Now the real edit begins!!
 
Norman brought us on for a bit longer (a couple of days a week for about a month) with the goal being to make the best use of the footage online. What we had now was time, and so we set about cataloguing the footage. And now I can begin dating our progress.
 
Monday 2nd July
 
I met with Norman and we discussed goals. Cataloguing was my number one priority, otherwise we would just be overwhelmed. I also thought we needed structure, but not too much due to the nature of the project and the wiki, so once a week either me, Will, or both of us would come down to Guildford and have a chat with Norman, review what we had done and what ideas we wanted to employ next. I left the meeting with the goal being to have everything catalogued and maybe to have even got one of the keynote speakers online. I plan to edit at Will’s.
 
Sunday 8th of July
 
I finally make it to Will’s. Another project he was editing had run over and we put it off and put it off. Finally on Sunday we began cataloguing in earnest.
 
Wednesday 11th July
 
It’s Wednesday and we’re pretty much done logging. We need to write everything up and get it in chronological order. Still have to get keynotes up. This blog enters the present tense, as I started it after our weekly meeting.
 
 
Wednesday 18th July
 

Today I (Ben) am working from the university for three days this week as Will, who possess the equipment we usually edit on, is away for the week. My main goal on this first day is to get at least one ten minute film that shows the highlights of Master classes held at the conference by either Fred Buining or Emilie Crapoulet, preferably both.

 

Thanks to Jo Tait for leaving some feedback, part of which concerned itself with obstacles we face and ways in which future projects may run smoother. I guess the most specific difficulty we face is that we are approaching this project as outsiders.

 

Our goal is to produce a variety of short films that capture the essence of various classes and lectures that took place over the conference, however we have no foreknowledge of the subjects tackled in many cases, so part of our job here is to understand as much as possible of exactly what is going on. Some cases are easier than others, but when we are not only logging what is being said but attempting to understand, digest and retain what has been said in twenty odd classes it can leave your head spinning a bit. This, however, is probably my preferred method of approaching the material, as the alternative is that we mechanically log the lectures and classes and then turn over the report sheets to Norman, who highlights what he wants, and then we cut that together, a process which very much eliminates any creativity or engagement with the material on our part. At the minute I’m trying to find a happy medium between the two approaches, one that allows us to still use our brains, but isn’t quite as time consuming.

 

Structure is a less specific difficulty I am facing. Initially I proposed that Will and I would spend three days a week working on the project. This would allow us to draw the process out, adapting our approach as we go, structuring from week to week. Now I am wondering if a more intensive two solid weeks, with the goal to be achieved set at the beginning, would have proved more effective. Engaging the project for three days then doing different things for the other four days is difficult, as when I’m coming back again its taking a while to get back in the groove. I am as of yet undecided whether I think that the way we have approached the edit is successful or not.

 

As far as how we could have gone about it differently from the beginning, and how we would like to approach a similar project again, as an editor I would rather just attend the conference as a participant, then review the footage briefly in the evening and log it when the conference is over, maybe having read some supporting literature before the event kicks off. However the environment SCEPTrE encourages is, I would think, unusual in how conferences are usually documented. A far quicker, more efficient method of churning out videos that document the event is for Will and I to simply not engage the material and take an approach far more akin to the alternative I discussed above. I’m interested in other opinions regarding the method we have chosen to approach the material and any ways in which our progress can be improved.

 

25th July

Today I (will) returned to the University to continue editing and logging the tapes. Due to working from home I have found it difficult to store and uplaod edited footage and agreed with ben that it would be a more sensible idea to comute to Guildford to work on the project in a more workable environment with the right tools, this also helps me to keep all the loose tapes and edited films in one Location. I have continued to edit the Key note speaches which when uploaded should be a key feature for the WIKI.

 


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    norman:Hi ben and will I too am enjoying your reflective blog..and I do take from it a sense of the importance of enquiry and the need to find out in your work process.. I also see the tension between getting thye job done and the desire for creative achievement. Given what you have said about different ways of working.. You know have the day long SEEDA event..agreed it is a different type of event it is the sort of assignment that is typical of professional development or teaching-related activity so developing an effecient/effective strategy is in your interest.. a chance to try out alternative approaches.. Also Jo's questions are taken from a critical stance.. I'd like to adopt a more appreciative stance.. is there anything we have done or are doing that helps you to produce the sorts of film products that give you a sense of professional satisfaction..have we given you opportunities to do things that you have never done before.. these sorts of comments might be useful if we are to tray and attract students or young professionals in future projects.. We value greately your professional contributions to our work. norman
    jo tait:Good to read your story so far and I look forward to the next exciting installment. Just want to prompt you to tell us some of the barriers to this work (apart from the geography of the University!) as well as what you're actually achieving. Are there things that we in SCEPTrE could have planned better to make your cataloguing job easier? If you had been involved from the beginning, what would you have advised? How could we do it better next time is the sort of question that interests me - it's one place where the learning happens for us. Jo
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