Over the past couple of weeks we’ve been putting together the latter features of our documentary, as well as continuing to gather content relevant for the website. We still have a couple of interviews to go (including a text-based interview) and i still need to get a few more photographs of local buskers as well as map-out busking hotspots as part of that. Most of the foundations for the documentary and website have been laid, we just need to finish producing the content we promised to deliver. We should be ready to present a rough cut at the very least by the end of next, and feel as though we’re on track for the presentation in week 12 and the subsequent critique.
Week 9 & 10 – Rose
The past few weeks have been a bit hectic with our group, due to busy uni & work schedules and sickness. Yet we haven’t let that us stop us and have been continually updating our project, and it’s really great to see it coming together.
Harry sent me some wonderful information about street musicians (aka buskers) that was really informative and I actually learned a few things I didn’t know before! I uploaded that to the site immediately.
Annie provided some video footage of the Dan Webb interview which looks really good. I especially love how we have taken some of the interview where Dan talks about his accomplishments and other personal tidbits into his profile page. I figured it’d be more interesting having our viewers watch our participants talking about their careers, rather than reading about it.
Over the weekend, Melbourne lucked out and we scored a ridiculously sunny day. I happened to be in the cbd that afternoon and boy was I glad I was as I was able to listen to some great acts on Bourke Street Mall. One of them was the band The Pierce Brothers, a fantastic duo who really generated a crowd.
(video courtesy of The Pierce Brother’s YouTube channel)
Grateful for obtaining some excellent video footage for our instagram account (link on sidebar), I picked up a copy of their cd (which is really good!!) and gave them a donation. I would’ve liked to give more, but I just couldn’t.
I’m really proud of the work my group has done so far.
Week 8 – Harry
Last week the group was busy continuing the compilation of content for the documentary as well as the website. Rosie just about finished the site but required content to fill it. I sent her a bit of information about busking in Melbourne from recent research to put in as some text content; however I’ll look to send her some more in the coming days. I also took a few photos of buskers in the city to put either on the site, or as a montage in the documentary or both.
Annie and Rosie have been working hard to complete the larger aspects of the project so far so I’ll need to get as much content as possible in the next 1-4 weeks to catch up.
Week 7 – Harry
During this week I continued research primarily on busking in Melbourne, finding an informative fact sheet on the cities’ website which I compiled and put on the website. I’ll look to do some similar work within the next week or so to continue filling the site with content; given Rosie has done well to lay the foundations it’s now up to me to find some material.
I’ve also continued taking photos of buskers throughout this and next week. I’ll aim to have about 12-20 photos by the end of week 9.
Week 8 – Anna
This week was our consultations with our tutors. The feedback was helpful in that, now we know we’re on the right track. We’ve also made some more decisions about our presentation on the website – i.e. using flickr for our photos instead of just on the website. It was agreed it presents them in a more professional and attractive way. Not only are we gonna have our behind the scenes and extra photographs from our interviews etc, but also some photographs of musician buskers if we see them about during our day to day activities. We would most likely point out where these buskers were at the time, to maybe try and figure out where they prefer to be.
We’re currently waiting on David Lambie (our busker) to respond to the questions given to him via text. He’s updated us that he’s about half way through. We still need to decide upon questions to ask Marcus Hernan (lecturer at JMC) who will answer them via audio recording. We also need to arrange a time to interviews some members of Trash Palace (there has been a decision made that getting all of them together at one time is difficult, as the drummer lives quite far away from them all and works a lot). It might be there, they we only interview the singer, guitarist and bassist.
Week 8 – Rose
After some consultation with Dean and Jonathan during Week 8’s tutorial, we came up with some alternatives for a photo gallery that will be better suited for our project.
As we have quite large photographs (even after compressing them slightly) and so many, I am going to set up a photostream using Flickr to house our photographs. Flickr’s setup is extremely simple and also gives the viewer the opportunity to view the photographs with a full screen view without any distractions from the tab it’s open in.
I’m going to have a look to see if I can use flickr to house the main documentary or whether YouTube or a Lightbox might be better suited. Lightbox or Flickr would just make the presentation of the documentary more professional than a YouTube channel would.
To keep in line with the photography topic, we are going to attempt to regularly update our Instagram feed with photos of performers and venues we happen to stumble upon as we have realised that Instagram is the best social media tool for us and our topic.
Week 7 – Anna
This week personally has been all about editing. As the forerunner for editing our videos, I’ve concentrated on getting them done so we can have more content up on the website. I focused on Dan Webb’s interview first & managed to condense it down to 6 and a half minutes. After speaking to Dean in class, we’ve decided to split the video into two parts – condensing it further. We are going to have the parts where Dan speaks about his personal experience with music in the musician profile section on the website, and the parts where he speaks more about the melbourne music scene and breaking through as an artist in the informative content pages. The second video I’ve been editing is the sit down with Trash Palace and their manager which has turned into a 9 minute video. I’m toying with idea of taking some of the ideas and issues they speak about and putting it into text, so the video isn’t as long and dry, and there can be a little more analysis on what they’re saying.
Due to these decisions, I’m unable to upload anything today, but I hope to have these done by the end of the week so Rosemary can add them to the website. The next step after this week is getting a couple more interviews done, with Marcus Hernan (JMC Lecturer) and David Lambie (Busker Musician). We want to have them do other forms of interviews, in other words, a text based interview and an audio one, but we’re gonna leave it up to them on which one they’re comfortable with. As both of them are busy with work, this kind of interview might be more ideal for them anyways.
Week 7 – Rose
My focus for this weeks production development was adding content to our main portal (the website).
A mini profile of our first interview with Dan Webb was uploaded and it contained links to his social media accounts.
A behind-the-scenes feature was uploaded with a music video (produced by Annie) of Trash Palace. This behind-the-scenes feature also included some wonderful photographs of the band during this gig and in the interview after it (which is still being edited as we speak).
Another talented musician that wanted to be part of our production has a SoundCloud account with dance tracks he has produced. Links to his account (and will for other SC accounts) will be placed on the main page next to our blog updates.
Week 6 – Anna
This week saw the separation of each group member to attempt their own parts of the assignment as well as other assignments that were due before and during the mid-semester break.
For myself, I started editing the footage of our interview with musician Dan Webb. Unfortunately I came into some issues with sound due to the location of our interview – Alley Tunes right next to the train station, thus the interruption of passing trains was the issue. Another issue that I’m still dealing with is the fact that a there is a woman sitting in the cafe in the background of the interview. I have three options, try blur out her face (although that seems to be tedious and difficult with the editing software I have), crop her out (which lowers the quality of the whole video), or just leave her in (which might lead to a legal issue as we didn’t get permission to film her and you can see her face very clearly. This will remain an issue to tackle, but it also helps in preventing this from happening in the further interviews we have to conduct.
The website is coming along (thanks to Rosemary). The next step is giving her more content to add to it.
Here are some still shots of the band Trash Palace. We have recorded their casual sit-down with their manager Sebastian Jansen, we are interviewing them in the next two weeks and have already recorded them live, playing at The Tote with another gig coming up on the 8th at the Brunswick Hotel – time for more footage of behind-the-scenes, pre and post show.
TRASH PALACE LIVE AT THE TOTE. VOCALIST KIRAN MAYS & DRUMMER DAVID STAGG.
BASSIST DAVID RICHARD SMITH (LEFT) DURING CASUAL SIT-DOWN WITH MANAGER SEBASTIAN JANSEN (RIGHT)
Week 6: Rose
During the mid semester break, I managed to make a jump start on the website and I must say, it’s looking pretty good. Once the content (video footage etc) is in suitable formats to be uploaded, it’ll be looking even better.
Content I’ll be adding this week will be hyperlinks to SoundClouds and Updates on the main page, just so the site doesn’t look so empty. I’m also going to be getting started on the profile pages for our participants.
I also created a Pinterest page to help keep us inspired and motivated during this project.
~Rosemary
digitalmelbmusic.wordpress.com 