Ollie Tristram

Here is a really quick and amatuerish design idea for the DVD menu that will go on the BCS promotional DVD. It's simplistic and in keeping with the company's colours, much like their website.

For the final version I would want to use much more professional looking fonts and buttons and possibly motion graphics in the background.

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Fantastic use of a pitch-shifter such as Melodyne. I never thought to put recorded speech through one of those to make a melody.

After research came thought into what I wanted to do with mine.

I came to the conclusion that the best way to stop people pirating is to scare them into thinking they will be caught, this is why the message of my advert will be that your IP address can be tracked.

It will start off with a student (as they are probably the biggest culprits of file-sharing) entering his dorm room, sitting down, turning on his computer and clicking to continue a download amongst a lit of other downloads. Then his screen will go black and a message that fills the whole screen will display text saying that sharing copyrighted material is illegal, it will then go on to say that the IP address can and will be tracked. The students happy face turns to a sad one and he looks out his window to hear police sirens.

The audio will be a fast-paced electronic song until the warning message comes up, where the fast-song will fade out and some dissonant audio will start playing.

Here are some pictures that give an idea of what it will look like:

Comments and ideas welcomed.

I have visited the website www.visit4info.com as well as YouTube to have a look at a multitude of different ads that I can draw inspiration from for my Simulated Client Project on file-sharing.

Here are a few that caught my attention and why:

The reason I like an advert in this style is that not only is it shot professionally, but it surprises you. It adds humour to the situation by showing the audience something out of the ordinary and they can relate to what they would feel like being at a funeral and then having a rugby streaker ruin it. Even after the streaker is seen we still don't know what the advert is about, and when the text confirms its for rugby everything falls to place in the audience's heads.



This is a very effective message making the audience feel guilty for breaking the law. It's hard to watch due to having a dead child on screen the through the whole advert which really shocks the audience into remembering it. With this message it is very personal as it only focuses on 2 people. File-sharing affects industries so something so direct would be much harder to pull off.



From the Hong Kong government comes a direct message that puts the audience into the crime world itself. Seedy clubs and sleazy people are seen thanking the audience for their contributions. It's intended to make the audience feel seedy and sleazy themselves. I feel it works in a way, because it does remind you that you are doing something illegal, but still you know you're not as low as the criminals seen in the ad, therefore wouldn't stop you.



Here is an example of a pretty poor student-produced advert on anti-piracy. It uses the same repeated message of comparing stealing other things, like shoplifting, is the same as stealing media content. However one way I think the message is affective is that it says it affects individuals rather than big corporations.

Related links worth visiting:

http://www.mredkj.com/other/sharing.html - A list of pros and cons for music file-sharing.

http://l3rady.com/2008/11/29/top-tips-on-how-not-to-get-caught-file-sharing/

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/08/19/file_sharing_gamer_fined/

http://www.ghacks.net/2007/04/15/how-logistep-catches-file-sharers/ - A short bit of info on how anti-piracy firm Logistep can catch you.

Taken from Wikipedia:

The Pirate Bay is a Swedish website that indexes and tracks BitTorrent files. It bills itself as "the world's largest BitTorrent tracker" and is ranked as the 104th most popular website by Alexa Internet. The website is funded primarily with advertisements shown next to torrent listings. Initially established in November 2003 by the Swedish anti-copyright organization Piratbyrån ("The Piracy Bureau") it has been operating as a separate organisation since October 2004.

The Pirate Bay trial was a joint criminal and civil prosecution in Sweden of four individuals charged for promoting the copyright infringement of others with the torrent tracking website The Pirate Bay. The criminal charges were supported by a consortium of intellectual rights holders led by the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI), who filed individual civil compensation claims against the owners of The Pirate Bay.

Swedish prosecutors filed charges on 31 January 2008 against Fredrik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm, and Peter Sunde, who ran the site; and Carl Lundström, a Swedish businessman who through his businesses sold services to the site. The prosecutor claimed the four worked together to administer, host, and develop the site and thereby facilitated other people's breach of copyright law. Some 34 cases of copyright infringements were originally listed, of which 21 were related to music files, 9 to movies, and 4 to games. One case involving music files was later dropped by the copyright holder who made the file available again on the website of The Pirate Bay. In addition, claims for damages of 117 million kronor (US$13 million) were filed. The case was decided jointly by a judge who was a member of several pro-copyright organisations and three appointed laymen.

The trial started on 16 February 2009 in the district court (tingsrätt) of Stockholm, Sweden. The hearings ended on 3 March 2009 and the verdict was announced at 11:00 AM on Friday 17 April 2009: Peter Sunde, Fredrik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm and Carl Lundström were all found guilty and sentenced to serve one year in prison and pay a fine of 30 million SEK (app. €2.7 million or USD 3.5 million). All the defendants have appealed the verdict and the appeal court trial is due to begin in November 2009.

The Brief
The Copyright Protection Society is starting a public information campaign that illustrates and explains what file sharing is, when and why it is illegal and also the consequences of being involved with this illegal activity. They want you to produce a piece of multimedia that will address the points above. You have six weeks to complete the task and you are required to produce a short proposal of your designs and ideas then you will produce the multimedia product.

Produce a 20 second advert for broadcast on television that answers the brief above. Hand in a data disk with the digital file and also a DVD that will auto play on a PC.

Schedule
30.10.09 - Submit a short proposal that justifies your decisions and shows your multimedia designs and project schedule AND you will give a formal aural presentation of this proposal to your tutor in the following week (time and day TBC).

27.11.09 – Submit an agreed multimedia product presented with user instructions.

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No Matrix in there but nevertheless a nice little video.

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Just brilliant. And excellent music too!

Today I started work experience in the PR department of BCS, the company of whom I have produced a few previous pieces of work for (see below). This time instead though it is in PR as opposed to broadcasting, so no cameras in sight yet.

My main hope for doing this work experience is that I can build a stronger bond with the company and it's staff to help me further when I work with them for any third year projects.

Yesterday I was asked by BCS to film as video evidence, the world record of the tallest stack of poppadoms at the Curry Lounge restaurant in Nottingham.

Other press were there including ITV and Trent FM and the record was beaten, standing at 151cm tall.

As well as including a full length video of the attempt from start to finish that was sent off to ITV, I have also done a bite-size version that could be included on the Curry Lounge website:

Tensator are one of BCS's clients that design and manufacture tensabarriers, those barriers you see for queuing in cinemas, at airports, etc.

They have come to BCS for a new demonstration to be produced to show how their barriers are safer than the cheaper alternative.

There are two animations one showing the Tensator barrier and one showing the competitor barrier and how the Tensator one is much safer. My job is to work out how we can improve on these two animations in making the product look better.

During a meeting at BCS on Wednesday we discussed how filming the 2 barriers would give a better realistic impression of how they work, but the problem was that we can't really show it hitting a child. We could create 2 new animations from scratch but that could be time consuming and again not be as realistic.

What we do know is that we would like both the competitor product and the Tensator product to be in one horizontal split-screen so the viewer can see how both products are working simultaneously, and to include a timer showing how the quicker one is more more dangerous.

**UPDATE** Tensator opted to edit their existing animation for a quick turn-around, therefore I was not needed in the end.

Deadline: Cool Stop-Motion Post-It Art - Watch more Funny Videos

The things you can create with Post-It notes!

Ok so my plans for doing Multimedia work over summer are not all finalised yet but this is what my intentions are:

1) Filming a music video for a friend of a friend called Sam Bennet who is a singer/songwriter and has just released his HUMMINGBIRD EP. I already have a first draft of the script and it aims to be a narrative-based video in a guy-meets-girl scenario.

2) Some friends and I plan on making a comedy sketch when the 'beach' is created in the city square. My friend Andrew has a wet-suit, flippers and a body board so getting him to walk down in that attire will make for some funny scenes we think.

3) I have asked BCS, who I have worked with for work experience in the past (see earlier blog posts), for some work experience. They are a PR company so it is not directly related to my direction, but they are a well established company with a good reputation so experience with them will look good on my CV. Also, if they have any work at the time I'm there involving broadcasting/filming then I'll be put in too help out with that. Next year, Tom, Jason and I plan on using BCS to create our client project, so this work experience will certainly boost relationships before then.

Admist this work I plan on going camping with friends (although would prefer to be going abroad but nevermind) and... that's it.

A creepy, short Teaser Trailer for my film. Be sure to look below for the 'Making of' and the film itself.

Whilst we were filming, my friend Andrew, who was cast in the original version of the film to play Martyn, documented the process using another handheld camera. Including interviews with the actors and a couple of outtakes, this is the edited 'Making of...' documentary - Narrated by Josh Parker.

My final version!

After a few drafts and a bit of tweaking here and there, I can present to you the final version of my 6 minute fictional film to be submitted on May 22.

I would love to hear your thoughts on the film so if you visit the YouTube page you can post a comment there.

Thanks, and enjoy! :)

From Wednesday to Saturday I have been working as the sound assistant for an indie short called "Coffee".

The film is about an underground betting organisation that bets on when volunteering insomniacs will fall asleep. It follows the main character Jeff as he suffers from sleep deprivation and his relationship with his friend Jack who is betting on him to stay awake also.

As for the experience as working as part of a film crew, I enjoyed it so much. To watch professionals at work, such as Felix Weidemann, the Director of Photography and to be using all the proper equipment it was a brilliant insight into how it all runs. I think the most interesting thing I found was how they light all the sets and the different techniques they use to do this.

The days were all at least 12 hours and there was lots of hanging around between shots, but I expected that to be honest, and it was at these times where I got to have conversations with some of the crew. Not only that, but I made friends with some girls from the Design for Film and TV course at Uni, whose roles it was to keep continuity notes as well as props.

I worked with Ian Currie on sound who has been working freelance for over 20 years. He has done a lot of TV work for shows like Derren Brown: Trick of the Mind and Grand Designs, but also worked on film sets with actors like James McAvoy. He gave me a lot of help in knowing how sound recording for the screen works and couldn't really have asked for any one more patient. I will also be working with him on the post-production of the film's audio so there is still some more exciting to work to be looking forward to.

Here are some of the best pictures taken from the 4 days shooting in the various locations.

I reshot my film on Tuesday 28th April with a modified script and losing two of the five characters. There was just too many characters and too much going on for a 6 minute film and I'm very glad I did reshoot it because it looks a lot better and will therefore hopefully get me a higher mark :)

Anyway, here are the production stills from that day.

Last week we had a lecture on Copyright and it is a good idea that I post some info on copyright from http://www.ipo.gov.uk/types/copy.htm which is the UK Intellectual Property Office government website.

Copyright can protect:

• literary works, including novels, instruction manuals, computer programs, song lyrics, newspaper articles and some types of database
• dramatic works, including dance or mime
• musical works
• artistic works, including paintings, engravings, photographs, sculptures, collages, architecture, technical drawings, diagrams, maps and logos
• layouts or typographical arrangements used to publish a work, for a book for instance
• recordings of a work, including sound and film
• broadcasts of a work

The term of protection or duration of copyright varies depending on the type of copyright work. The term of protection in the UK for an original written (literary), theatrical (dramatic) musical or artistic work lasts for the life of the creator plus 70 years from the end of the year in which he/she died.

Similarly, copyright in a film runs out 70 years after the end of the year in which the death occurs of the last to survive of the principal director, the authors of the screenplay and dialogue, or the composer of any music specially created for the film.

TV and Film

For TV productions and films, copyright may exist on a number of its components, for example, the original screenplay, the music score and so on. If you produced the TV show or film then you would normally obtain the rights to, or gain permission to use, the works required to make the production. Films do not have to be original but they will not be new copyright works if they have been copied from existing films.

Music

Copyright applies to a musical composition when it is set down in permanent form, either by writing it down or in any other manner. With a song there will usually be more than one copyright associated with it. If you are the composer of the music you will be the author of the musical work and will have copyright in that music. The lyrics of a song are protected separately by copyright as a literary work. The person who writes the lyrics will own the copyright in the words. If your work is subsequently recorded the sound recording will also have copyright protection. The producer of the recording will own the copyright in the sound recording.

Work created for an employer

In the case of a written, theatrical, musical or artistic work, the author or creator of the work is also the first owner of any copyright in it. The only exception to this is where the work is made by an employee in the course of his or her employment. Where a written, theatrical, musical or artistic work, or a film, is made by an employee in the course of his employment, his employer is the first owner of any copyright in the work.