Media Event - The Big Draw

The big draw is an idea Brad suggested, and one which my group, and myself are going to be the most responsible for. The idea is to get a big piece of paper hung up on the wall, and then have the students draw on it bit by bit, and take a picture in between each time they draw, so when edited you get a nice stop motion animation. We will also set up another camera off centre behind the other camera that will capture them stepping in and out of the frame, and doing there drawings. it was suggested that we filmed the students from behind the camera, but after myself and james spoke about it we agreed that it would be best to use still image, as 40 mins of video would have to capture in real time, which would mean 2 hours of capturing overall for the 3 groups.

However there are some potential risks with this activity:

1) In the days schedule it has only been given 40 mins, which may or not be long enough. i personally didn't think it would be if the kids were going to have to all come up with individual drawings, practice them, and then get started on the big draw. So some alternatives are to give them a theme, therefore its easier to come up with something. One picture for them all to draw, for example a tree, simple and straight forward. Although the only thing with doing one big picture is people will want to draw it differently and, there might be points where not everyones involved. And finally, chloe said they might ask the kids to come up with something in advance when they go to see them next tuesday, at the college, which i think would be best, if the kids are up for it. however if they don't seem keen then a set picture or theme will probably work out better.

2) Scale is another issue, but is something i think we will be able to figure out during the run through. and it'll be better to shoot from far back because if the drawings don't fill out the frame ( leave margin for error) we can always zoom in in the edit to best frame the animation.

3) Turnaround is probably the biggest potential risk, and something we need to be well practised at before the day, as we will have 3 groups worth of photos, (2 Cameras for each) which means a lot of photos, and a lot of things that could go wrong. We are going to try different methods of importing/exporting the files to find out the quickest way of dealing with it. One method we've been looking in too is hooking the camera up directly to final cut so the photos go directly on to the time line. I also need to find out whether we are burning to disk, or transferring to USB, to try and get an idea of what time the edits need to be done by to start burning, and how many computers/people i will need to help.

We have scheduled a run through for friday this week (1st April), so from that we will be able to gather important information about the issues above, and finalise our plan for the actual event.