MEDIA ROLES - INTRODUCTION

In this session, we were introduced to our new research project, about media roles. This research task is a different to the last two, in that the deliverable this time around is a group presentation, not an essay.

This is a 6 week project, in which we research into media roles & practices. This can involve looking at certain studios, productions, practitioners and/or techniques. Our blogwork for this will be solo (we'll all be marked for our individual work). This project involves attempting contact with a practitioner in the industry, and in the end showing our group's findings.

The deliverables include:

• A 10-minute presentation showing our group's findings
• Includes visual aid (images / videos) and vocal aid (actual speaking)
• Research portfolio
• Contains information on what types of roles we'd be interested in when studying or as a career
• 500 word summary

Thankfully, there are no weekly summaries for this project!

The presentations have to be visually appealing; make them look pretty! They should be no more than 20 slides, containing an intro, quotes from practitioners, a conclusion and a bibliography. Spelling and grammar are also important to consider.

So what's the aim of this project? It's mostly to familiarise us with the roles that are out there, and to make us think more about our own employability. We should be considering what we want to go into after graduation, and researching the roles out there is a good way of learning the intricacies of potential jobs.

We got put into our groups after this presentation; I'm with 4 people I don't know at all; Jacob, Tom, Tanje and Gareth. The set date for the presentations is the 30th of April, so that's just about 5 or 6 weeks away.

We got another presentation after learning who we were with, this time looking at the different animation disciplines and production types we can look at.

It started with "traditional" animation productions, that being animated films and television shows. There are three types of these features; 3D animated (e.g. Toy Story 3, Star Wars: The Clone Wars), 2D animated (e.g. Aladdin, Gravity Falls) and stop motion (e.g. Wallace and Gromit, Robot Chicken). We then looked further into that looking at the different age groups that watch specific productions.

(The trailer for Pixar's Toy Story 3 - credit: Pixar Animation Studios)

Then we delved into more specific animation types and productions, including TV idents and adverts.

(Channel 4's 2018 idents, involving a giant made up of the blocks from the channel's logo - credit: Channel 4)

There was also a brief look at Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality, and how animated stories can be told with the viewer able to fully explore the world it's happening in. Related to this is video game animation, specifically in cutscenes.

(Cutscenes from Valve's Portal 2, pertaining to space - credit: Valve)

We finally looked at VFX, where animated characters and effects are applied on top of live action footage.

(Framestore's VFX reel for their work on Avengers: Infinity War - credit: Framestore, Marvel Studios)

For the final part of the presentation, we learnt more about the animation industry in the UK. The facts and figures are a lot more surprising than I expected; there are 10,000 people in the UK working in animation, with a 60:40 male to female ratio. 50% of animators are freelance, meaning they get a lot more freedom and choice in their work. But the most surprising thing to me was learning there's a skill shortage. Animators, storyboarders and production staff / management are in desperate need; shocking to me because I expected there to not be enough jobs.

We then split off into our groups, and decided what we'd look at for our presentations. To put it bluntly, our group's chemistry is non-existent at this point. None of us knew each other, so we didn't have any kind of reference point to go by in terms of what we know already. Eventually we settled on character design after deciding we all liked, and I quote, "character stuff".

We wrote down a list of potential subtopics from the character design angle we could look further into, as well as characters we'd want to look at.

Overall, I'm a little bit more enthusiastic about this research task than the other two, mostly because I hated doing the essays. This allows for a bit more creativity, even if it is just in a powerpoint form. But I'm not so sure about the group angle. I've known for a while I need to improve on working in a group, and I feel like I've achieved that for the most part in other animation tasks. But this group in particular has me a bit concerned. There doesn't seem to be anyone desperate to jump straight into the project, and it feels like we still need time to get to know each other. But only time will tell.