Dmahady's Blog

Working in Digital Media – Maria Brown

dmahady — Wed, 05 May 2010 21:50:24 +0000

This weeks guest speaker was Maria Brown. Maria is a Careers Development Manager and spoke to us about interview skills

The following are a few key things to keep in mind when preparing an interview:

Research the company – websites, word-of-mouth etc

Look for job descriptions(Position) and specifications(Person)

Work out a strategy

Know everything that is on your C.V.

Questions that may be asked:

Tell me about yourself? – Talk about college, hobbies or interets

What do you know about the company? – Research

Tell us about your work experience to date.

Can you tell us your strong points? – Driven etc…give 200%

Weak points? – Yes man, leading to too much work

Tell us about your third level studies?

What type of people do you find difficult to work with? – turn the answer round to be positive.

Why do you want to work for this company?

Where do you hope to be in 5 years?

Can you tell us about any difficult situations that you have encountered?

Can you give an example of when you have worked under pressure? – College

Why should we hire you?

What is the achievement that you possess that you are most proud of?

I found the lecture to be very helplful for my own interview this week.

Working in Digital Media – Robbie Ward

dmahady — Wed, 05 May 2010 21:44:22 +0000

This week Robbie Ward from BPM (Beats Per Minute) media company came in to speak to us. BPM is a company that specialises in advertising in pubs, clubs, shops, banks etc.

BPN Media add the name’s of the artists’ and the song titles’ and have them appearing on the screen for the viewers to see. This videos are placed in venues such as Copper Face Jacks, Fitzsimons and The Barge. For restaurants, they have in-house music channels for that help encourage people to re-visit the business. In-store music is designed to keep the customers in the store as long as possible. All of the music in this case is specifically chosen.

Robbie told us that the saying “Content is King” is no longer relevant, and in fact “Relevance is King” is the new rule. The content is unimportant if the relevance is not there.

Adverts can change depending on the day, and even the time of day. For example, in a café – the screen could advertise a breakfast deal in the morning, and then change to a lunch deal later that day.

I found Robbie Ward’s lecture really intresting, and I also found the way BPM advertise to be really intresting and something I would like to look into.

Working in Digital Media – Fiona Kelly

dmahady — Wed, 05 May 2010 21:36:04 +0000

This week, Fiona Kelly came to speak to us about “Seeking Inspiration”.

She said there are many places that you can draw your inspiration from, all you have to do is know where it is and how to take certain parts and make it your own. Fiona works as an illustrator, designing logos and illustrative advertisements for clients. Some of the projects she worked on include:

Scooter Island: Company Banner Logo

Fat Kitty Films: Company Logo

Dublin Gay Theatre Festival: RedesignWebsite Interface

My Home: Flash Banner Advert

Púca: Redesign the Website

Fiona recommended that as first year students we take on as much experience as we can because it can all go towards a portfolio.

Working in Digital Media – Emma Wade

dmahady — Wed, 05 May 2010 21:25:57 +0000

This weeks guest speaker was Emma Wade. She is a visual arist working in the field of Digital Meida.

She spoke to us about how she became a professional at what she does. She told about how she worked in New York as an intern before returning to work in dublin, where she is now based. Emma also has a Master Degree from the Fine Art Department of NCAD. Here, she learned about new technologies.

At the end of first year, she created the ‘Cheer Up’ sound installation. This was designed to life people’s spirits. Emma’s work also includes “Rexotrek”. An art project which aims to allow the user see the world through a dogs perspective; and her most recent project – “H.U.G.S” The peice is made up of a machine that the user puts on. the machine then applies a certain amount of pressure onto the body which mimics that of a hug.

Emma aims to investigate “the physiological effects of deep pressure and cellular memory in a fine art context”.

Working in Digital Media – Ian Cudmore

dmahady — Wed, 05 May 2010 21:13:45 +0000

This week, Ian Cudmore came in to talk about his career as a freelance editor.

Ian Cudmore worked for Chutney Films Ireland, and worked as a freelance editor on a large number of projects. He spoke to us about working with RTÉ on projects such as “The School” and a number of other shows. Ian described working as a freelance editor as both rewarding but difficult. He also said it was difficult as he could go weeks without getting any work, and then there were times when he would get 2-3 projects at once.

Ian showed us some of the work he has done, including stills from editing software he used when editing “The School” for RTÉ, which looked very complicated. He also showed us a clip from his current project “We Own The Streets”, which is part of RTÉ’s Storyland Competition.

I really enjoyed Ian’s lecture this week. He gave us a great insight into working freelance. Ian’s lecture also made me consider doing editing after the course.

Working in Digital Media – Week 3

dmahady — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 20:56:35 +0000

This week were supposed to be visited by Edward Melvin, but instead we watched a video recording of a lecture he gave last year. He works with an agency called ‘ICAN’ and he spoke about his and his colleagues’ roles in the company. Their purpose is to design websites and interfaces for various advertising organisations. We saw what working in the digital media industry was actually like.

Working in Digital Media – Learning Types

dmahady — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 20:49:29 +0000

We were visited by Geraldine Gray, who works at the college. She gave an interesting lecture on learning styles, what they mean, and the relevance of learning styles to Digital Media. She gave aexplanation of the three channels and other categorisations of learners.

There are different ways of categorising how people learn:

1. Channel or mode of learning.

2. Cognitive strengths in learning.

3. Manner or style of learning.

4. Personality type influences.

5. Types of learning behaviour.

There are three channels of of learning; Visual, Auditory and Kinaesthetic.

Auditory learners learn best by hearing information. They can usually remember information more accurately when it has been explained to them orally. They are good at speaking on their feet, noticing sounds in the environment, remembering names of people they meet. They are usually not good at reading quickly/silently, seeing significant detail, living with enforced silence.

Visual Learners learn best from seeing information, and can remember information best if they see it written down. There are two types of visual learners: visual linguistic and visual spatial
Visual linguistic : Love written word. Can remember what has been written down even if they only see it once.
Visual spatial: Learn best from diagrams, charts, demonstrations, videos, and other visual material.

Visual learners are good at remembering details and colours, reading, spelling and proof reading, remembering faces of people they meet. They are not good at working in an environment with noise or movement, listening to lectures without visual pictures or graphics to illustrate, working in classrooms with drab colours.

Kinaesthetic Learners learn best while touching or moving. They are good at sports, dance, adventure, competition, physical challenges. They are not good at handwriting, sitting still, listening to lectures more than four minutes, spelling, sticking with one activity for long periods of time.

There are three cognitive strengths in learning:

Linguistic: verbal communication, reading, watching.
Non linguistic: mental pictures, smell, kinaesthetic, tactile, auditory, and taste.
Affective: feeling, emotions, and mood.

The best known model for personality type influence on learning is the Myers Briggs model (MBTI)

The person is to choose four of a possible eight personality types that best describes themselves and end up with a letter combination that describes them. Mine was INFJ.

Learning styles analyse an individual’s approach to a learning activity. The best known model is Kolb’s model. It uses four of the personality types from the Myers Briggs model and is used to find out a person’s learning style.

Types of Learner Behaviour expands the conventional view of intelligence (language and mathematical skills) to other types of intelligence:

Verbal Linguistic
Logical-Mathematical
Musical
Visual-Spatial
Bodily-Kinaesthetic
Interpersonal
Intrapersonal
Naturalistic

Working in Digital Media – Week 1

dmahady — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 20:40:25 +0000

We were introduced to the course and were shown the various areas we will cover over the semester. We looked at some of last year’s projects such as book cover collages and stop motion videos. Overall, the module seems interesting.

Visual Language – Typography

dmahady — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 16:01:03 +0000

We were given an assignment based on what we learned about typography in which we had do sketch ourselves using letters and glyphs. Here is my sketch without typography (note I sketched it on the computer using a paint tool):

And here is my typographical portrait:

Semiotics Assignment

dmahady — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 21:14:09 +0000

This week’s assigment was based on the principles of semiotics. My chosen celebrity for the semiotics collage was Thierry Henry. I used Photoshop CS4 for the project.

This was the image I worked with.

My first heading was ‘I am evil’. I started by darkening the image in certain areas of the face to give a dark effect. I then yellowed the teeth, added a redness to the eyes and created a small streak of blood using the paint tool to give a sinister effect. I then inserted an image depicting hell for the background.

The next heading I chose was ‘I am feminine’. I created a seperate image to copy the mouth alone, then painted it pink and reinserted it into the original. I painted pink over his eyes using a low opacity on the brush tool to give the effect of eye-shadow. I also reddened the cheeks in a similar way. I saved an image from the web of a woman and used the hair in the image as a wig for my image. Finally, I used a pink-ish cloud design for the background.

The last heading I chose was ‘I am wealthy’. This required the most work. I started by placing an image of a top-hat on the image and scaled it to fit Henry’s head. I then used the paint tool to draw a monacle. I also used this tool to draw a mustache and beard that signified wealth. Then, I used an image of a tuxedo jacket and scaled it to fit the image. Finally, I used a picture of stacked money for the background.