i really enjoyed this year, it has been really educationaly and i feel i have developed my skills in many areas, hats off to you heather, chris and mike.

for the course to be more productive, i think there has to be more feedback to the students, a weekly crit sesh or something, you can show your work to the other students or lack of it and they can give you advice or a much needed (especially on my part) boot up the arse. it doesnt have to involve the lecturers, in fact i think it could be good to talk to people who dont hold your future in the palm of their hands haha. the 2nd and 3rd years could get involved if they have time and give a few pointers, that sort of thing.

a key issue for a lot of people was lack of experience with 3DSmax. i had used it before but nowhere near to the complexity of the stuff we are doing now, i knew what everything dud but i was still lost. and i can see it getting harder and harder, faster and faster over the next two years. so my input is that perhaps the level at which we start could be a little lower and the speed at which we advance starts of a little slower but gets quicker, later on. it could be helpful to have another day dedicated to it but thats not fair on heather.

another thing that could be useful is to perhaps have a longer year, it seems silly to have us finishing so early when everyone else is still at it. not necessarily more hours for the lecturers, unless they want them, but longer holidays and longer due dates, maybe thats just wishful thinking haha. maybe a bit more scaremongering is all that is required lol.

the main factor has to be with the faculty. we simply dont get the funding we need, its quite a popular course now and i would have thought that as a result, the course would be better funded and more prepared. the first few weeks were a joke and i suppose thats why we had to learn so quickly with 3DSmax. a good idea would be to do any work that is needed during the F*ing holidays when no one is there and perhaps the funding each course gets for the year is proportional to the amount of students attending.

ooooh field trips would be fun, go to a game developer see how they work, could be useful. i'd quite like to go to america you guys! haha.

i hope none of you take any of this the wrong way...and mark me down because of it lol thanx again guys, it was great :)

I think by writing the blog we are opening our minds and recapping on what we know and by doing this, we reinstate the key factors of that topic. personally for me, i prefer to write essays and evaluations. i dont really know why, i just dont really feel comfortable yapping away about things in this manner, i prefer to be more formal when it comes to education. but saying that after reading about how a reflective person is more likely to be creative and as a result more successful, i realized that i really need to do this more, especially after my recent creative block which i think i am still suffering from :/

im not really sure what i want to do after uni to be honest. in a perfect world i would go straight from uni to work in a well respected game company and work my way up from there but nowadays its not that simple especially with the state the economy is in. i think i will be glad to get through it and go from there, i just want to get my degree, show it to my dad and say "HA told you i could do it" haha. i suppose i will probably end up working in Tesco or something for a year or two and use that time to develop a portfolio of work that is of a reasonable standard and then go to as many interviews as possible and get as much relevant experience as possible. its all good on paper but how it will turn out is another story. i might not even get through uni successfully and i think that thought scares me the most. it should inspire me to do more work but it kind of has the opposite effect and i just get more scared and then do less work and so on. these past few weeks i have just been thinking to myself that even if i dont pass, its not the end of the world although my dad probably would end up killing me haha there you go Michael you now have a legal obligation to pass me *JOKES*. i still remember that talk at the beginning of the year. I think mike said the word FAIL at least 30 times in the space of 20 minutes. i have been getting better and the past few weeks, with that who cares type of thinking, i actually got a fair bit done so i just need to keep it that way.

sound is one of the most important things in games and even more so as technology advances. i think sound plays an important role of setting the mood for what is happening at that present moment in the game. it has to emphasize the feelings intended whether they are fear, amazement, happiness, sadness etc. sounds can also help to emphasize environmental effects. high pitched instruments such as wind chimes or a piano help to create a cold environment where as low bellowing percussion instruments such as bass drums can help to create a fitting atmosphere for a hot or industrial environment.

i think one of the most iconic 'sonic moments' of my gaming history has to be whilst playing survival horror genre games such as resident evil or silent hill. it wasn't really the sound that did it, it was the lack of it. i remember playing resident evil 1 (the remake on the gamecube) and i simply couldn't play the game when it was noisy. i had to be able to hear the zombies coming round the corner and the most frightening feeling was cast into my soul when i could hear the hasty footsteps and panting of a crimson head running along a corridor towards me. another scary moment i had was when i first came across a regenerator in resi 4. i could hear the gargling and panting and the slow lumbering footsteps which literally nearly made me shriek like a school girl. as far as soundtracks go, i would have to first of all say screw halo. it was a good game and the soundtrack was good but it had nothing on metroid prime or the ocarina of time. i remember the chilling piano solos when getting to the glacier type levels of metroid and thinking WOW because it made the experience much more worth while. i also remember the sheer marvel inspired in me when hearing the soundtrack to hyrule field. i never played the original zelda games much but when i heard that music for the first time it was amazing and it made looking over that vast plain seem like it went on forever. when i was in college, for our final major projects, we were allowed to write our own brief. mine was something like begin to develop the basic outline of a game including plot, character descriptions, visuals and present them in the form of a presentation piece that could be used as a pitch for a future game production. i ended up developing a survival horror sandbox type game set in my local district; the wyre forrest. the games was a play on words of the word wyre which i changed to wire as in barbed wire. anyway, i developed a story board of the intro cutscene which i intended to put onto i movie and create a slideshow to the song ghostship part 1 by a band called the fall of troy. the slideshow on its own seemed a bit wooden and boring but as soon as i put it to music, it really came alive. its a really creepy piece of music and i think it is what made the final outcome stand out.

im not so sure that good times is the most influential piece of the 20th century and my one reason for saying so is this: Music is created to inspire certain emotions in people but depending on what people you ask, different music creates different emotions and although good times is a brilliant song, its not everyones cup of tea. if i had to put a label on it i think the most influential song of the 20th century is either wot get fooled again by the who, or free bird by lynard skynard. many members of the band lynard skynard met with an unfortunate fate after their plain crashed killing three members of the band and their road manager (which resulted in their current album at the time being recalled as it ironically featured the band standing behind some flames). the remaining members of the band stayed together and grew back to full strength with new members. the thing that always puts a smile on my face is that once the band started to tour again, they performed a gig in Dallas, Texas, and at the end of the gig, the lead vocalist said this " there is only one man who can sing this song on stage and thats ronnie van zant. so i wont be singing this one although its been a pleasure singing all the rest of them for you tonight...so i want all of you to sing it for me. this song goes out to ronnie van zant, Steve Gaines, Cassie Gaines and the man who helped compose this song along with ronnie van zant, Dean Kilpatrick. what song is it that you want to hear tonight Dallas?" and the whole crowd shouts "FREE BIRD!" litterally everyone in the stadium starts to sing and its one of the most amazing things i have ever listened to.

these past few weeks, i have found myself doing far less work than i should be, i felt demotivated and uncreative. i went out more becausse i thought it would help me relax but it pretty much did the opposite. the one thing i found really helped was sticking all of the work that i felt was the strongest, onto my wall. at first, i only did it so it would be easier to take photos of but it actually gave me a bit more drive and i started to become more creative again. i just hope its not too late to pull my act together :/

The Watchmen

I suppose my opinion of this film isn’t fully valid as I never read the graphic novel but from where I was sitting, the first 20-30 minuets seemed a bit redundant and the flashbacks got a bit irritating after a while. None of it seemed to have much to do with the main plotline and other than the scenes with Rorschach, I found them fairly boring. don’t get me wrong though. A fair few of them had significant relevance but for the most part I was thinking to myself “when is something interesting going to happen” once the film started to get going however, I was on the edge of my seat. The landscapes and set designs were fantastic and the visual effects even more so. Plot twists kept people who hadn’t read the novel guessing and I think that’s what often sets apart a brilliant film from a mediocre film. I just think that if the film was edited down a bit by about 20 to 30 minutes or so, it would have been a much better film but then again, I have a feeling that the majority of the footage at the start of the film was put there to keep those who had read the novel happy so I think that’s what I‘ll do.

Full metal jacket.

First thing I would have to say about this film is that it is PURE GENIUS! and that if you haven’t already seen it, you should! And even if you have, you should watch it again! The film follows the lives of some US marines (primarily a man nicknamed Joker) during their days training in boot camp and fighting the Vietnam war. I think the sheer brutality shown in the boot camp by the drill instructor as well as the other soldiers is brilliant to watch and focuses mainly on the physical and psychological aspect of their training. The drill instructor takes particular interest in a trainee that he nicknames Gomer Pyle due to his large stature. Because this trainee is obviously less able than the others in the physical aspect of the training, he continuously makes mistakes causing the drill instructor to punish the other trainees instead of Pyle. It is Jokers responsibility to keep Pyle out of trouble but it is only when he begins to receive beatings from the other trainees (including a reluctant joker) that he starts to improve. The training continues and Pyle begins to become obsessive about his training causing him to excel as well as lose his mind. the deterioration of his mind is what fascinated me most, especially when it becomes apparent that not even the drill instructor can control him. A few weeks later the film rejoins Joker, who is now a combat reporter who prefers to tell the truth rather than tell everyone what they want to hear. He rejoins one of his comrades from boot camp (cowboy) to accompany him on a mission that soon takes a turn for the worse when they lose their way and become pinned down by a sniper. Cowboy gets shot and this causes the men to go into a frenzie, once the sniper is incapacitated, the rest of the men decided to test Joker to prove his worth by making him kill the sniper who turns out to be a young Vietnamese girl. There are some quality combat scenes as well as a few funny moments and I definitely recommend seeing this film.

Cloverfield

I read a few reviews before i decided to write this post and i have to say that the majority of them are all bad which came as a huge shock to me because i felt that the film was original and innovative and extremely well done. one of the most brutal reviews i read was one from the New York times. It slated the film for having bland characters, an unrealistic plot and the most annoyingly critisism was that a lot of the scenes mimicd footage from the 911 tragedy. all these points made me laugh and i felt the need to write this.
firstly, the characters are supposed to be bland. the idea is that they are supposed to resemble ordinary, down to earth people. Im not sure if this is true but i heard that the Director hired almost completely unknown actors just so that we didn't associate them with other films and think of them as actors which to me seems like a genius idea and it worked extremely well. the characters all seem like normal people who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time and you can tell that the dialogue was well written, giving an extremely intense sense of horror. i admit that if i was in that situation that i wouldnt lug around a big video camera but if you think about it, it is probably a good idea because it would be an extremely valuable and important piece of footage. the development of the relationship between the characters and the audience grows at an increadible rate and i know people who said they felt truly sorry for all the characters and a few even cried at the end which is what cinema is all about.

secondly, the plot is unrealistic because it isn't true! how many monsters do you see waltzing around New York. There aren't many people out there who would give thier life for the one they love but the film is about one of the few people that would. and its fairly obvious that the reason that the others follow him is that they are scared and dont know what to do themselves. surely thats the whole point of disaster movies. there is always someone who needs rescuing and thats what we go there to see. it wouldn't be a very exciting film if they heard a bang, ran into the streets and got rescued now would it. Im just glad its not another Rambo type film where the hero runs in with a inconceivably large gun and shoots the creature dead despite the whole US military failing. and im also glad it wasnt one of those films where almost everyone dies but then at the last minute, a miracle weapon or cure is developed and the day is saved. it was refreshing to see a film where the bad guy wins. now that is more realistic.

the third point about the 911 towers was ludicrous. its blatantly obvious that that wasn't the directors intention and when i read that i just kept thinking "if this movie critic had his way, there wouldnt be any more disaster movies located in new york ever again which is a scary thought. i cant imagine godzilla causing chaos in downtown kidderminster. it just wouldnt have the same appeal.

in conclusion, if you like sci fi disaster movies, Clover Field is a must see.