Last Friday, we took to the corridors of the Yorkshire Museum, armed with sixty-one paper surveys, six name badges, five notebooks, four boxes of bribing chocolates, two laptops, two dictaphones - and all the pens one could ever want! Our mission: Gain feedback from visitors to the 'After the Ice' exhibition at the Yorkshire Musuem. Weeks had gone into preparation for the opening of this exhibition, both on our end with the films and the museum's end with the exhibition itself, and now it was time to gauge the impact! We were excited and rushed bravely into the field of heritage studies research! Here, we encountered our first foe: Mr. Sun.
The Boss: Mr. Sun. He tried hard to win this battle, but we
came out with enough research to be statistically valid anyway.
Photograph taken by NASA/JPL-Caltech.
Found at: http://www.8planets.co.uk/facts-about-the-sun
Mr. Sun decided that last Friday would be a fine day to shine brightly upon the city of York, with the result that everyone was lounging around OUTSIDE the museum! Therefore, in the entirety of the day we only managed to collect twenty-six surveys, two interviews, and a few pages of observations. Despite our relative lack of respondents, we undertook analysis anyway. This morning, in two hours we created a full evaluative report on our survey, interview, and observational results. Doing this work taught us a great deal about the techniques for analyzing quantitative versus qualitative data and integrating both types into discussion. Our top-tier, definitely-publishable-as-is, strikingly awesome, field-changing report may be found below:
Our overall pageviews by country. We never
thought we'd have a global blog!
As we're drawing to the end of this process, we'd like to thank our blog followers and talk about what we've learned from blogging. Our blog reached a far wider audience than we'd ever expected, reaching people from the UK to Venezuela! Over the past six weeks, we've blogged ten times, with a total of 513 views and four highly appreciated comments, and one wonderful follower! This experience has really helped us in the process of producing different kinds of work, especially embarking as novice filmmakers on a very public project. Being so public about our filmmaking process and other heritage endeavours, along with receiving constant feedback via our blog and professionals during our classes, required us to express our ideas clearly and be much more creative and engaging. While we'd feared the public face of our work would be overwhelming, we actually found it to be really empowering to connect with the public and share our ideas. To all of our readers, and everyone who has helped us with this process, we offer a big THANK YOU!
Our Heritage Practice module has been an amazing experience, and we would definitely encourage future students to embark on Heritage Studies. If you don't believe us, check out this cool film! Gavin Repton, a filmmaker with the Yorkshire Museum, followed us through our filmmaking journey and has created a short film documenting our heroic journey through the land of the unknown heritage studies.
Thanks so much again for following our blog. It has been totally awesome. There's only one stop left on our journey now: the year-end exhibition on 19 June. Check out 'GroundBreaking' in King's Manor G/60 on 19 June at 4 PM! This is the archaeological event of the year - you won't want to miss this! THERE WILL BE GREAT POSTERS, PLUS FREE WINE AND FOOD!
Having finalised our plans for descending upon the Yorkshire Museum next Friday, we moved on to our next great adventure: designing the University of York Archaeology Department's Year-End Exhibition For First-Years Having Just Finished Their Excavation Module And Now Creating Interactive PowerPoint Slides On Their Work!
No, we didn't actually call it that. But it's a fairly good description of what's happening and what we're up to now!
K/G60, otherwise known as The King's Manor Cellars.
Photograph by us.
We divided into three teams of two each: Emma and Susan on publicity, Jenna and Olivia on design and logo, and Adam and me on technology. This meant us embarking on a dangerous mission to the dreaded K/G60 - 'The Cellars' - where we battled the monstrously slow and/or deathly unresponsive computers in a fight for PowerPoint supremacy. We lost... Actually, we discovered that eleven of the fourteen computers worked, although we will need to budget extra time to get them booted up before the exhibition. Because we need fourteen computers to display each of the seven groups' two posters/slides, we need to request three laptops to take the place of the broken computers. In addition, we will also have a central table with six laptops: two containing only the films we created in our Heritage Practice module, and four with a menu slide linking to all fourteen heritage slides. At either end of the room, we will have a SMART board (interactive large board) on which the fourteen slides will cycle. Visitors to the exhibition will be able to interact with each groups' slides on either one of the fourteen computers around the walls of the room, the four central laptops, or one of the two SMART boards. We hope this will reduce queueing time. Each station will also have headphones.
On to the more exciting part: The Bribe. Come to the exhibition and you get free wine and food! Our job is to guess how much of each we'll need. Adam took the task of seeing how many glasses of wine make up a bottle upon his "noble" (I responded, "foolish") self. I guess he'll report back with his Internet findings when we meet again. We also had to calculate how many bags of crisps to order. It was a fun game of 'Guess how many bags of individual crisps can you fit into a massive sharing-size bag?' This will also have to be tested. Adam nominated me. I nominate the Internet. Of course, not everybody likes crisps, so why not add something everyone does like: SUGAR!!! Adam suggested adding Pixie Stix, those big sticks of coloured sugar. I thought this might be a tad dangerous, so, after much debate and compromise, we decided on mini-cakes. This also means that we can buy fewer crisps. For the exhibition, anyway.
This afternoon was our Hollywood debut. After being behind the camera for so long, it was good to be the star. Simon Davis, E-Learning Advisor for the University of York, came to interview our class on our work in this module, specifically our filmmaking project. Fun!
After our fifteen minutes of fame, it was back to work. Next on our list: create a ballot for the competition between the excavation posters. Easy!
Now, as we wrap up this blog post, we have just one thing to say:
Come to 'GroundBreaking', the year-end archaeology exhibition, on 19 June at 4 PM in King's Manor, G/60! THERE WILL BE FREE FOOD AND WINE!!!
This is the image we are using on the promotional posters.
Photograph taken by Gavin Repton.
Today we focused on refining the logistics for our trip the Yorkshire Museum next Friday to collect visitor feedback on the 'After the Ice' exhibition with a focus on the site of Star Carr. This involved creating a list of every piece of equipment and signs we would need, writing out the interview questions we wish to ask and timetabling our planned activities for the day.
Poster advertising the year end exhibition we created
The rest of the day focused on preparations for the year end departmental exhibition. This will take place on Wednesday 19th June 2013, at 4pm in K/G60 of The King's Manor, York. This will be an opportunity for the excavation students working in collaberation with us Heritage Studies students to present a 'Heritage Panel' of interactive information about the site they were working on. Our videos will also be showcased at this event. Everyone that attends will have the chance to vote for the best panel for each site and the winners will recieve a £10 Amazon voucher each. There will also be wine and nibbles for all!
The six of us were divided into pairs and given specific tasks. Emma and Susan were tasked with the promotion of the exhibition, particularly through social media sites such as the departments facebook and twitter, and also to create a post for the departments newsletter and website home page. Kelly and Adam focused on the logistics of the running of the exhibition. This involved seeing how many screens would be needed for the exhibition room and also issues such as how much food and wine would be required depending on how many are likely to show! Our task (Jenna and Olivia) was visual presence and branding of the exhibition. For example we have produced a poster advertising the event with the main details which you can see above. We also created the ballot slips that will be used to decide the winners.
Lastly Simon Davis who works with the University joined us this afternoon to ask us for our feedback on the video projects in the form of a survey and a group video interview. Thats all for today, you'll hear from us again after our day of data collecting at the museum next Friday. Thanks for reading as always.
Today began with a visit to the Yorkshire Museum to get a feel of how
the exhibition preparation is coming along. It was frantic but it's
looking excellent and we're really excited to be a part of it! Our
videos may even be featured on tonight's 'Look North' local BBC news! We
got to handle the infamous Scarborough frontlet, heavily featured in
one of our videos. After speaking to the Curator of Archaeology at the
museum, Natalie McCaul, she said the museum would be greatly interested
in seeing any results from our surveys...
This leads us
to the afternoon when we continued the development of our surveys and
interview questions that we will conduct next week. As a group we
created and also finalised the information we wanted to gain from the
visitors concerning the new 'After the Ice' exhibition and in particular
the Star Carr features and our videos. We are devising a plan of action
for the day, including allocated roles and where we should be stationed
within the museum, so as not to get in the way and reach the maximum
amount of people. We are also planning to do observational studies
within the exhibition and we're trying to think of the best way to go
about this without being invasive or looking weird and creepy. So we're
thinking of just having two people handing out surveys, two doing
interviews and two mingling with the visitors and wandering around the
exhibition taking mental notes of things like what attracts the most
attention and how people engage with the interactive elements. We are
really intrigued to find out how people perceive the exhibition
including the films that we have created. What will people think of the
exhibition? What will people think of our films? Will people be willing
to take part in the surveys and interviews?
So four weeks later and our video has finally hit the internet after much toil in the editing room! We are very proud to present to you the final product of our Heritage Practice module. You can view this clip through YouTube using the link below or come to the Yorkshire Museum to see it, and the rest of the fascinating 'After the Ice' exhibition which opens tomorrow (Friday 24th May). This is only a short post to give you all access to the video, however, we will be back soon to give more detail on our final processes and what is next in store for the remainder of the module - four weeks left guys!
Just three weeks ago, we were assigned a project: to create a three-minute film about Star Carr for the Yorkshire Museum exhibit "After the Ice". We're nearing completion of our video - just a few tweaks to do this afternoon! Thank you to those of you who have followed us through our first filmmaking experience! Here it is: the story of our filming, editing, and overall film-creating process - and how our (nearly!) final product compares to our original vision.
Our lovely model, Jenna, helping Kelly and Emma
set up the indoor shot. Photograph by us.
We began filming on Friday. As we were meeting our interviewees in a natural location, we were able to take some nature photographs and landscape panning shots, which we planned to incorporate with the existing Star Carr archive footage. For silent scenes and images, the weather was not a problem; for outdoor interviews, the wind was a nightmare. We resigned ourselves to indoor shooting in a nearby cabin. Although we were disappointed that we couldn't have the natural surroundings in our shot, and we were afraid the brown background would be boring, we quickly realised that our sound quality was really good in our indoor location, and with a little bit of "doctoring up" the background it looked quite archaeological. After our initial sound-checks and preparing the camera's precarious positioning, we were ready to shoot!
We practised interviewing Tom Ratcliffe outside. Kelly
did the camera, Emma took care of the dictaphone, and
Adam asked the questions. Photograph by us.
Within three hours, we had interviewed four important people on the Star Carr Project - Dr. Chantal Conneller, Professor Nicky Milner, Chris Evans, and Becky Knight. Everyone was really open to being interviewed and quite relaxed, which made our first interviewing experiences much easier. Filming continued on Monday, when we had the amazing experience of interviewing David Lamplough, a self-described amateur archaeologist who had worked with John Moore (discoverer of Star Carr) when he was eight and Grahame Clark. Natalie McCaul (of the Yorkshire Museum) had told us about him, and Dr. Milner introduced us. We were thrilled to interview him for thirteen minutes, plus plenty of outside conversation before and after the official interview! We had loads of footage that we could have used - nearly 25 minutes of interviews alone for a three minute film! It was a shame to cut it down; we had so much footage that we really wanted to use - which is why we're sharing just a few outtakes with you below! (Note: These are outtakes; they were never edited for use in our film.)
Things changed quite a bit from our original vision. We didn't expect to get the fantastic personal experience and amazing interview from David, and of course we had to include that! We also had wanted to bookend our film with a reconstruction image of Star Carr, but due to copyright issues we couldn't use it at all. But we found much better footage for those gaps in our film: Gavin had some time-lapse footage of an excavation, which he kindly gave to us. It kept our pace up in what could have been a very slow, boring, typical historical film. To end our film, we reworked our original plans just to include a fantastic quote David had given us.
Kelly is quite proud of herself for snapping this excavation-
themed photograph of shovelling dirt into a wheelbarrow!
Photograph by us.
Technology was also a bit different from what we expected. While we found the camera easier to work with than expected, the battery life was terrible. We had to work quickly. Then, getting onto the computers for editing, we discovered the wonders (read: user-hostile and non-intuitive) of Windows Movie Maker. It's really good for what it was designed to be: a basic, introductory film-editing program that allows the creation of simple personal movies. But we had bigger and better plans in mind. We wanted to do all sorts of stuff we'd seen in professional productions - overlaying sounds on each other, controlling zooming on pictures, overlaying images from the archives on our interview footage, using complicated computer graphics - these all proved impossible for our level and technology. However, we adjusted and worked around the "Stupid Movie Maker!" moments, and we were thrilled with how well our very first production turned out. You want to see it?
Better come to the Yorkshire Museum exhibition "After the Ice" then! But if you can't make it, it will be on the museum's website. Here's a short teaser clip from our introduction:
Thanks again for following us on this journey and for all your support and advice. NOW COME SEE OUR FILM! :-D
Timeline illustration, Storyboard draft, and Dictaphone.
Photograph by Kelly Guerreri.
We're pressing onward with our plans for filming our short documentaries. On Monday, we faced menacing blank storyboards, challenged to fill them with notes on the visuals, commentary, and sounds of our film. The time for organization had arrived. We filled twelve frames in our storyboard - a lot to fit in for a three minute film! After we finished our designs, we presented them to our instructors and classmates for feedback. With their feedback, we modified our plans.
Tuesday was the real thing: we pitched our film idea to the Yorkshire Museum. Their response? - "Go ahead!" Natalie McCaul suggested we consider adding music and special effects to our film to liven up the historical approach. She also expressed some concern over its length. We realized that where we had planned for interviews we would have to search for soundbites. Now we knew that, in our interview debriefing, we would have to emphasise our time constraints and make it clear we needed compact information. We're still trying to think of how to say, "Please give us soundbites and not your full career experience" without unintentionally sounding insulting...
Our voiceover script and a draft of pawprints
on our timeline. Photograph by Kelly Guerrieri.
One of the ideas Claire Price (one of our instructors) had was to focus on "John Moore's dog", a quirky bit of history we used to liven up our timeline. On her suggestion, we included an illustration of a dog in each of Jenna's timeline pictures. We found that the inclusion of the illustrated dog adds a relatable element as well as something that holds the attention of the viewer during the explanation of the timeline. Whilst playing with the timeline pictures and the camera today we developed further ways of how to utlise the theme of the dog throughout the timeline:
* Instead of arrows to link the events of the timeline together, we will use drawings of paw prints which we will film being drawn and then speed up during the editing process.
* We will also film Jenna's hand adding colour and dates to the timeline drawings as we focus on each one.
* Sound effects will bring each illustration to life; today, we found a website that allows us to access and use sound effects without copyright infringement.
* The dog will guide us through the timeline, and we will introduce each illustration by first focusing on the dog and hearing a dog bark.
Emma Carr recording the timeline voiceovers, and Jenna
Tinning sorting the audio files on the computer. Photograph
by Kelly Guerrieri.
Today, we finalised our plans for filming our interviews, shots and pictures. We also set our timeline voiceover script and recorded it using a dictaphone. Emma's lovely Yorkshire vocals will narrate our finished film. Kelly is in charge of technology, and she had a lot of fun experimenting with the video camera and dictaphone!
Since filming begins tomorrow, we assigned specific roles to our team. Emma will interview our experts and perform sound checks; Jenna will direct the film and draw the timeline pictures, and Kelly will be the cameragirl and technology figure-out-er. Everyone is very happy with their roles, and we're looking forward to the creative process!
