A weekend of revelations

Well after I busted my gut to get all the stuff together for my final project, including being really late with the development and submission of my storyboard and concept brief to Cathie (sorry!) I have done my usual and come a complete 180 degree turn and am changing my entire project.

This must sound a little ridiculous, but the pressure it puts me under is quite frankly when I do my best work, and although I think my ideas and some of the execution of them are coming together (see my past 4 or so blog entries) I had really hit a bit of a wall in getting the desired affects and composits out of AE and quite frankly I was starting to feel like it was going to be a fizzer. I really needed a good green screen trick to pull off the Machinima stuff I was imagining and the screen capture software I trialled was expiring and bringing up a hideous TRIAL VERSION watermark and most of all I was losing enthusiasm fast.

Not to ditch the idea completely, as a friend suggested, shelve it and also write up some critical analysis of where the project had fell over and then come back to it for the next thing, or it may be something that I can develop further in Software Engineering later on. That makes me feel much better about it.

So, I hear all my fans asking, what are you doing now?

Well, a bit of background first. I have been very actively involved in my best mates band from a punters perspective, and also honing my skills as Guitar Tech and Stage Manager.

His band is called The Blow Waves, and they are a very camp Aussie act that play quite a lot and are really trying to break into mainstream commercial success.

They played on the main stage last year at the Mardi Gras in Sydney and this has landed them local government support to tour the world later on this year. They will be playing at Manchester Pride Festival in London, several gigs in Berlin, Amsterdam and Greece. I think they have what it takes to be the next 'Scissor Sisters.

On the weekend I was asked to come over to rehearsal and help out in a working bee for Bios, Artwork, Tour promo's and any professional CV writing that I could offer cause this is something I have been doing for years and feel like can really help with.

As a side I asked if it would be ok to film the session so that I could maybe compile a mini doco-vlog for YouTube. As you can imagine from there it wasnt far on that I started to turn my thoughts to developing the idea as a full blown Major Assignment.

I have so much background with these guys, I know their music intimately, I have the fully blown mastered EP and full permissions to use it, I have professional photography, hours of video performance footage and the intimate knowledge to know how they would most like to be represented.

To me this is a natural progression to completing my Major Prac with enthusiasm and passion and as I said earlier the pressure it puts me under to perform just makes me more enthusiastic on the whole to do a really good bloody job!

So, I will be posting some screen grabs of my work in progress over the next few nights and getting some early rough cuts together and loading them up for comment on here and my YouTube page and I think the over all synopsis will be to 'show the inner workings of a punk-trashy pop disco band as they make the hard decisions about profile and image as they head overseas.

I will do a stunning fast paced loud but intimate 2-3 minute documentary on the band.

I will do a title sequence.

And I will do some bumper type promo's with the intent of web broadcast.

Stay tuned. As big Kev would have said, 'I'm excited!'