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Hi all and welcome back to another Working In Digital Media Blog. This weeks guest speaker is Maria Brown. Maria is a Careers Development Manager here at ITB  and is talking to us about interview skills as we have our Interview assignment coming up. Maria was really really nice and gave us a short talk on how best to prepare for your interview. She was extremely helpful and took the time to answers everybody’s  questions. She first told us how important our C.V is and to watch out for grammar mistakes. Also that we should list ALL of our achievements as we need to let the interviewer know what we have achieved.  Maria also stressed that we should NEVER paint a negative picture of ourselves and to also have examples of what we are good at/achieved.  In our preparation for the job Maria said that we should:

• 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.

Maria then gave us some examples of what we could be asked in our interviews such as:

• 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?

All in all I enjoyed this talk that Maria gave and found it ti be very helpful especially with our mock interviews coming up.

Now for the news you have all been waiting for!!! We finished our stop-motion photo story!!!!! And here’s the final result:

I really hope you enjoy it as much as we enjoyed making it. So that’s it for another week. Next week will be my last entry for this semester

I hope to see you back here for that one.

As always thanks for taking the time to read this.

Take Care.

Hey. Welcome back to my blog. We had no guest speaker this week in Working In Digital Media so again I would like to take the time to tell you about our assignments. We uploaded our story boards for a stop-motion photo story. We have decided to go for a very rough look and as I was saying in an earlier blog everything will be hand drawn. The idea is that “Aaron” is walking through a city, enters a park, sees “Ella” for the first time and they fall madly in love!!!!! Ahhhhh!!! Kev is handling all the drawing and is underway with it so stay tuned for the finished product. Also this week we had to upload our  tri-fold brochure. I did mine on a fictitious web design company that I own!! I really enjoyed doing this as we had to use Illustrator and I really enjoy using it. Though it wasn’t always like that!!Because of all the college I missed i fell RIGHT behind in Illustrator and found myself getting peed off as I was so far behind everyone. But Clodagh was great and she sat down with me and gave me a crash course. So here’s the finished brochure:

Don’t mind the bits of stripes that are running off the side, this picture is a screen shot from Illustrator. I’m really happy with this and quite proud of myself too!!

So that’s it for another week. Thanks again for taking the time to read this and I hope to see you back here next week.

Take Care.

Hey all. Welcome back to my blog. There was no guest speaker this week so I thought I’d take the time to speak about the assignments we have had so far in Working In Digital and also to tell you about the really cool assignment we have coming up. So far in this module we have been asked to create our C.V which should have an element of design in it. I went for a very minimal design (two colours) as I feel that too much would distract the person who is viewing it.

We then had to create a “Book Cover” which will basically house our C.V. The book cover was to be a visual representation of yourself. I made a collage of photos of all the things that are important to me which included THE most important element of my life my son Shane.

We were then asked to make a power point presentation to talk about our C.V and our book cover and to also give a little more insight into ourselves and to show what we hope to achieve when we finish college. Our next assignment is to make a tri-fold brochure advertising a company in Digital Media. This can be fictitious so I am going to create one for “Gary Cunningham Web Design”. The really big assignment that is coming up and is one i can’t wait for is we have been asked to make a stop-motion photo story. There are examples of this on my first entry of this blog. We will be split into groups of three/four. Our group is four so it’s Me, Kevin Donnelly, Shaunna Brennan and David Smith. I am really looking forward to this. Our idea is going to be a modern take on Adam and Eve (we’re calling it Arron and Ella) set in modern day suburbia. Kev is going to draw all our scenes and characters so stay tuned for the final product. We will also have to sit mock interviews whic I think is a really good idea as it will prepare us for what a interview will be like if we’re lucky enough to sit some after college!! So that’s it for another week. Thanks for taking the time to read this. Hope to see you back next week.

Take Care.

Hi all. Here we go with another week of Working In Digital Media. Again I have been kept out of college so this entry is thanks to my very good class mates, especially Kevin Donnelly and Derek Joyce.

This weeks speaker was Ian Cudmore from Chutney Films.

Ian started off by telling us  about what he accomplished when he finished college. He graduated from “NACD” in 2006 from Industrial Design and Product Design. He completed a Masters Degree in Trinity College Dublin studying Music and Media Technology. Ian did this course mainly so as that he could learn more about music technology and also wanted to keep an open mind. This is where Ian started to play with video.  Ian thinks that we are in a better position than other people who have graduated and work in the sector because we are being taught more tools so will have a broader range of knowledge. After this, he had a three month internship at One Productions,mainly working with Flash ads. He then moved onto Hyper Production Company. Unfortunately, the company closed. This resulted in him being forced into freelance work, which was something he had never thought about doing. Ian made a number of music videos both as projects and on his own time. He created a video for a Scottish artist called James Yorkston. He sent the video that he had made through Myspace and expected nothing back, but,  he contacted Ian and told him that he liked what he had created and if he would be interested in doing a documentary for him. Ian agreed and one thing then led to another. He also created a music video for him. He created an EPK, which is an Electronic Press Kit. This is a short documentary for the press so that you can make a good impression. Ian met a guy called Donal Dineen through James. Donal does photography and creates loops from his photographs and projects them at concerts. Ian followed Donal around with a friend with basic equipment.  Donal done the background for Lisa Hannigan’s first gig which led to her getting in touch with Donal and Ian to create an EPK for her. They had a small crew, but with better cameras. They spent the weekend in Kerry recording concerts and interviews.  The particular song that they had done for Lisa  was viewed by a talkshow host in America and invited her on to the show. Maeve Higgins met Liam McGrath from Scratch Films. He asked Ian to do the pilate of Maeve’s show. They got commission to create a four part series.  This was his first proper production job. The production of the show took 3 -4 months with editing, filming and any archive footage. The stop-motion of the fish took 12 hours to do. After this, Ian started to tell people he was an editor. Ian got great experience with Liam and with RTÉ. He did a Christmas episode for Maeve which took about three weeks to cut. In the first week, the director sees the rough cut. Then there is a 40 minute rough cut which the RTÉ commissions editor gives notes to the director who in turn gives them notes to the editor on what to cut out. The hardest part of editing is trying to cut 28 minutes down to 24 minutes. The most important is leaving time at the end to make the last minute changes to the details which will make or break a project. Ian then showed up eight tips for writing a short story from the writer Kurt Vonnegut.

1. Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.
2. Give the reader at least on character he or she can root for.
3. Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.
4. Every sentence must do one of two things; reveal character or advance the action.
5. Start as close to the end as possible.
6. Be a sadist.
7. Write to please just one person.
8. Give your readers as much information as possible, as soon as possible.

At the moment, Ian is ‘officially directing’ a three episode mock documentary called ‘We Own The Streets’ for Storyland, which is a quick way to get into RTÉ. The ‘show’ is about a guy called Tom Walsh, who is a friend of Ian’s, that created a character called ‘XL.

All in all this sounded like a really good Lecture and I have enjoyed listening to everyone talk about Ian and what they took out of it. Again thanks to all Group A and also to Derek Joyce who is in Group B. I am playing catch up with these blogs as this has been a tough year and I have missed out on a lot so all my entries will be more or less back to back and will ALL be created thanks to the help of my very good friends at ITB especially Kevin Donnelly and Derek Joyce.

Hope to see you back here for the next installment.

Take Care

Hello again. Back for another installment of information on what we are doing in Working In Digital Media. This week we had a Guest Speaker come in to us in our lecture. Her name is Geraldine Gray & she is a Lecturer in the Dept. of Informantics in ITB. Geraldine came in to speak to us today about Learning Styles & their relevance to Digital Media. There are five different types of  Learning Styles which we looked at in detail:

• Channel or mode of Learning
• Cognitive strengths in Learning
• Manner or style of Learning
• Personality type influences
• Types of Learning Behaviour

So the first one we looked at was “Channel or mode of learning”. This is how we take in information & there are three ways:

1. Visual
2. Kinaesthetic
3. Auditory

First off Geraldine spoke about Auditory Learners. Auditory Learners learn best by “HEARING” the information & can usually remember information more that has been spoken to them. These types of Learners are usually good at speaking on their feet, remembering names of people, &, working with words & languages. They can have difficulty with reading quickly, reading silently, &, being distracted by sounds.

Next Geraldine spoke about Visual Learners. These type of Learners learn best by “SEEING” information & can remember this information if they see it written down. There are two types of Visual Learners:

1. Visual Linguistic (Prefer written word)
2. Visual Spatial (Learns better from charts, diagrams, videos etc)

Here are two examples of a Visual Learners mind map & colour arranging technique

Visual Learners are good at reading spelling & proof reading, remembering faces, &, creating mental photos. They have difficulty with working in an environment with noise, listening to lectures without visual aids, &, workingin a classroom with dull colours. Next up we looked at Kinaesthetic Learners. These Learners do best by “TOUCHING/MOVING” (e.g. hands-on approach) Kinaesthetic Learners are usually great sports people but can have difficulty with bad hand writing& sitting still. We did a small test to find which type we were & i discovered I’m a Visual Learner.

The second learning style we looked at was Cognitive Learning. There are three modes to this type of learning:

1. Linguistic (Verbal, reading, watching)
2. Non Linguistic (Mental pictures, smell, auditory)
3. Affective (Feelings, emotion, mood)

Here is an example of non linguistic

The next Learning style discussed was Personality type  influence on learning. The best known model for this is “MYERS BRIGGS MBTI”.

This is where you are asked what type of learner you are & then it is determined what type of learner you are. Here are the types:

• Extraversion (E) or Introversion (I)
• Sensing (S) or Intuition (N)
• Judging (J) or Perceptive (P)
• Thinking (T) or Feeling (F)

The idea was to pick the one from each group that suited you & just use the corresponding letter. I got E N J T which Geraldine then looked up on  http://www.myersbriggs.org/my-mbti-personality-type/mbti-basics/ & this is what i was told about Myself:

Frank, decisive, assume leadership readily. Quickly see illogical and inefficient procedures and policies, develop and implement comprehensive systems to solve organizational problems. Enjoy long-term planning and goal setting. Usually well informed, well read, enjoy expanding their knowledge and passing it on to others. Forceful in presenting their ideas. I think this sums me up alright!!!!! We then had a look at the next part which was Learning Styles. These analyse a persons approach to a learning activity. This can be broke down to the “Pragmatist” (planning), the “Activist” (doing), the “Reflectors” (reviewing), &, the “Theorist” (concluding). Last we looked at the Types of Learner Behavior. Geraldine gave us eight types with examples:

1. Verbal Linguistic T.S Elliot
2. Logical-Mathematical Albert Einstein
3. Musical Igor Stravinsky
4. Visual-Spatial Pablo Picasso
5. Bodily-Kinaesthetic Roy Keane
6. Interpersonal Sigmund Freud
7. Intrapersonal Mahatma Gandhi
8. Naturalistic Charles Darwin

This brought to an end Geraldine’s Lecture. I found it very interesting & thought Geraldine was an excellent Guest Speaker. Next we moved onto our practical with Ronan. We have been given a new assignment in which we have to create a creative book cover that you could maybe wrap your C.V in. It should express us in every way (music, sport etc) So in Ronan’s lab he gave us time to work on this & again was on hand if we needed his assistance. Then it was off to Cloadgh’s lab where again she showed us more Illustrator. It’s a tough program to get used to but I’m looking forward to getting to grips with it & Cloadgh is excellent at showing us around it. So that was this weeks “Working In Digital Media”. I hope you enjoyed this entry & i hope to see you back here next week for more. Take care.