Self Initiated project – It’s time to analyse

The moment when a term is over just arrived. And I guess that this is time to analyse our work.

I would like to say that it is was one of my favourite projects of this academic year. I always follow social media and keep looking at changes and popular, fashion things people use on the internet. I always try to understand the way followers love the product and what particular things they interested in. At the same time, I’m not a selfie person who taking images at every corner and this was a time to publish myself more often than usual.

It was hard to find a right idea which would be related to all three of us. Three completely different girls needed something special and unique. As soon as we came with our CRC project we were full of motivation. Whenever I’ve been I kept thinking of new ideas and all stereotypes people thinking of. I keep saying to girls let’s make fun, let’s make it silly and easy.

It’s important to say that this is a group project. I’m very glad that I’m in the group with these two girls. Jessicah always supports all ideas and gives suggestions that we probably didn’t think of at all. She also has the talent to calm me down when I’m too busy with work. Kayshan is the most serious person on CRC project. While Anya and Jess keep creating fantastic staff in our minds, Kayshan thinks of real things and issues we can meet with. She is our mum who says “Girls, it’s too much we need to rethink this stuff”. I’m a person who takes all remarks and comments very difficult because It’s hard to realise that you’are not right sometimes. That’s why I better to say thanks to girls who teach me in a way to be more patient.

I was more motivated than girls probably. As long as we found our concept I was jumping around them, I was pushing them a lot. For example, Kayshan doesn’t really enjoy our CRC thing and takes it as a university project. That’s why we had a few difficulties because she wasn’t motivated anymore at one moment. She is right but I take this project as something more than just a university unit. I saw feedback from tutors, emotions from other people and a smile on their faces. I want to keep going. I learn a lot with this project. It starts from editing and finishing to publishing it to social media. All these things such a logo, strategy, captions, sound and editing effects, the way we creating jokes are very interesting to me. I love to see feedback from people and put it in a future material. This is our first year and I feel that this is something I can improve my skills with. We gonna have huge projects in future and this is can be my first experience. Finally, we just making fun of it.

I would like to say that without the girls I can’t achieve and even create this kind of thing so it was cool to work together. I wish we can carry on and make more fun and cool stuff but will see. I’ve enjoyed it a lot and very looking forward to final feedback from tutors and final grades as well.

Oh yeah, by the way there is our summative presentation  with the last updates. Enjoy and thank you, everyone!

Self Initiated project -Suggestions

After a session with Vidsy.co and all suggestions were given to us, we understood that we’ve done a few mistakes. I would like to leave it here. It helps me to analyse our work.

• We shouldn’t post videos to Facebook with the link to YouTube. People see the post but no one can say for sure that they clicked on the link and watched the videos we’ve uploaded
• Shorter, shorter clips!
• We better ti change outfit.
• Less branding.
• Jumpcut.
• Post regularly.
• Be more professional. At the same time take it simple, don’t make it too complicated!

We also suddenly realised that we’ve done a very silly thing. We registered CRC in Facebook but didn’t create a page. So, we created a CRC page again and added people. We reposted all previous material. I would say it’s a bit annoying but we have to make it right. Will see how it’s gonna be. That’s the link to this new page.

In my opinion, it was very useful to talk to someone who works in the industry and that particular area we are working in now. This is our first steps and a feedback from Archie was very helpful. I don’t take all our mistakes into the bad way. I would say opposite – it’s encouraging me work harder and make result higher and better.

Deadline is coming, but let’s keep going..)

Self Initiated Project – Progression

That’s been a week since we firstly posted smth. We discuss all details before we make a new post in social media. While I try to work with Instagram and Youtube, Jess keep working with Facebook. Twitter is a bit step back. Let’s see the progression:

• We keep posting clips and images every day;
• We’re checking all grammar and spelling mistakes;
• We keep trying to find more followers;
• We keep asking people around of their feelings to our content. We keep looking at people’s emotions.

There are our progressions so far:

We don’t really have many likes and reposts, but still have motivation to have a good feedback.

Oh yeah! By the way, we’ve done a new video as well. Check our updates and you will find out soon;)

Keep going!

Self Initiated Project – First uploads

On Friday, we had a session with Ben. We showed him all clips I’ve edited and he was very glad about our progression. He was smiling and laughing a few times. As for me, this is a very good result and I very value it. We were discussing the way we can make CRC better. As a result, we decided to not use karaoke idea because this is a very inside joke that doesn’t relate to our stereotype concept at all. Looking at the rest of our work, we just keep carrying on.

So, this is a bit scary and exciting moment for us! Today we’ve uploaded our first clip into social media. I’m glad to share our social page with you (PLEASE FOLLOW US IF YOU READ IT!):

• Facebook – CRC trio
• YouTube – CRC trio
• Instagram – CRCtrio
• Twitter – CRCtrio

Now it’s time to post our visuals regularly and see the feedback. Crossing fingers!

Self Initiated Project – Editing

After a sooting process, we came back to edit clips. While Jessicah was making illustrations, Kayshan registered CRC in social media platforms. As for me, I was doing editing for the rest of the day. Kayshan gave me advice with sound effects, duration of videos, etc.

As a person who was doing all editing, I would like to write more information about my experience and feelings. Before everything, I used to work in Adobe Premier program before and I kind of knew basic elements. There are a few notes I was thinking of during the editing process.

• Sound effects: I found and download all music. I’ve tried to find all music without any singing as a sort of karaoke versions. The reason I’ve done it is obvious – it’s not gonna distract a viewer from a clip. I was looking for energetic music to show people CRC mood and style. Also, I was working with sound level very carefully as well.
• Logo: I put our logo at every single clip we have. The reason is copywriting and recognising us. I was trying so many options with transitions but chose a simple one at the end. To show you what I mean, I put this logo option at the end for our introduction video
• Slow/fast motion: Some of our clips needed these motions for sure. Sometimes it’s too long, sometimes it’s too short. A few clips has to have a few videos at one so each of them use to be like a second or two seconds duration. Well, this special effect make clips funny.

I always keep in my mind: make it simple, don’t make it too complicated. Think of the reason why follower will watching this clip instead of skipping it.

To not make our project too predictable, I will post all my work (clips) straight to social media. So, let’s see how it’s gonna be!

Self Initiated Project – More, more images!

After a formative session, we’ve picked another day for shooting and making more images. That day was today. Before CRC girls met, they had a task to think of the way to improve all pictures and videos to make it more funny.

During the day, we’ve done a few more images which were karate girl,  restaurant food, fashion Russian, Caribbean cola, etc. Jess done some more illustrations and I’m gonna put it below. She also made some changes in our main illustrations and now we have a final version for project.

 

Self Initiated Project – Formative

Today we had a formative. In my view, at this stage, we have enough material to show but probably it has not that high quality that we expected. Before the presentation, we had a look at our clips and understood that we can get the meaning of our jokes as a project group but there is no confidence that all other people will catch it. So, we have to make these visuals stronger. In my point of you, this is a good experience to look at your images and see what improvements you actually can make. Anyways, our presentation was fine and we saw a smile on people’s faces. But we want more, we want people to laugh.

One more important moment was when Ben said that we should keep and post material we have done. But we should take all suggestions and put it to our next steps. I completely agree with our tutor and think that it’s a good thing to analyse all mistakes and make your project better at the next stage. So, let’s keep going. There is not that much time left.
Here I attach our CRC formative presentation.

Self Initiated Project -Inexperienced comedians

Last Wednesday we’ve done some shooting.

First and foremost, I made a list of all necessary props we needed to have on the day and a list of connected locations to not make our trip too complicated. We also needed someone who can help us to take some shots where all three of us have to be in a clip/image. So, thanks a lot to Mae who found a time to see how we’ve tried to became a cool comedians.

We were not very lucky with the weather because it was very rainy. Because of that reason, we had to cut and transform some ideas on another day. We’ve done around 10-13 scenarios and there were 7 clips which is a good result for the first day. We’ve tried our best in the way of acting and shooting. So, we spent first part of the day by making visuals and the rest of the day by editing. We edit at least 7 clips. While me and Kayshan were doing editing, Jess done our illustration which we would like to use as a cover for social media platforms. Kay have done logo as well.

Below I put links to our first videos, illustration and a logo. Please note that all of this materials are not final and we just made some trying versions.

• Agressive russian
• Made in China
• Kayshan walks

Self Initiated Project -Ideas

Inspiring by our idea, we met the other day and continued our work. We made a list of possible scenarios we can make and a sketches as well. So far we got around 35 ideas. Basically, we have a few categories we are working with and it is connecting with every clip/image. There are:

• Russian Mafia
• Russian vodka
• Chinese karate girl
• Chinese food
• Kayshan loves Rihanna and Pirates of Caribbean
• Karaoke with accents

To make it easier for us, I’ve put all ideas in a few location places to not have a difficulties on shooting day. I splinted it on:

• Insides (apartments, lifts, kitchen, bedroom, etc)
• Outsides (Parks)
• Food (restaurants, take away, etc)
• Shopping
• Others (museums, clubs, cinema, market, etc)

To be honest, I think that about 20 ideas are really good and the rest is just an options to make some extra posts. But still, all our ideas are funny and unique because we are creating it in our own way. For visual understanding we’ve done some sketches. It helps us a lot to have an understanding what we want to see and how we gonna make it.

I have a lot of notes for this particular project but I’m not going to upload it because it’s hard to get our handwriting. I will put our sketches instead of this.

Self Initiated Project – Let’s begin

About a week ago we had a brief issue for Self Initiated Project. The task is make something different, attractive and creative. Create some work where we are our own clients.

Exciting. A bit scary. Veery interesting.

I work in a group with Jessicah and Kayshan. We decided to have a meeting on Monday and bring all our ideas and thought to discuss. In my opinion, the most difficult stage to find something interesting and creative and then sort it out. We all were a bit worried and confused, but apparently our meeting was very productive.

So basically, at first we started to think from the audience/follower’s point of view. What are we interested in? What is attractive for us and what is not? Why? We’ve checked some projects, accounts and analysed why they are successful and popular. Kayshan had an idea to make an Instagram profile about a short and funny overview of London’s exhibition. There is kind of feedback but from the student point of view. That was one of few interesting ideas that we discussed.

Then we suddenly realised that there is tree of us, etc Asian, black and white. Or, to be more wider, we are Chinese, Caribbean and Russian. We thought that there are a lot of stereotypes and jokes people making on these nations, so why wouldn’t we be risky and try to make something funny?

Our idea: International trio explore London in their own cultural way.
Why followers would find this project attractive: everyone can find themselves in our posts and have fun.

This is a very beginning and just a briefly overview of our first meeting. We already thought of our schedule and all things we need to do. BUT! First and foremost, we need to talk to Ben and see what is he thinking about it. For now, I can say that this is a very exciting project and I’m very looking forward to seeing our result.