The Year My Voice Broke

Student in the Australian Film Television and Radio Schools inaugural Foundation Year

That’s me doing audio. Who would have thunk it!

Did some DVD mock-ups for a couple of the productions.

In the Family way

Notes on brief:
Tsubasa…
You certainly gave me lots to think about. With the DVD cover I’d like to keep it as simple as possible, just the title and maybe a tagline. I’ve attached a photo, which you might like to use as the reference for the tone of the cover. The photo itself might be utterly rubbish, but let me know what you think.

This film takes place in the 1950’s Sydney, but an alternate one where monster lumps on necks exist.

Personal Audio

Went out on a shoot for a game company who were testing a new audio product on some punters.
Learn some valuable lessons about taping interviews more then once. Ok, it’s a bit strange for the interviewee, but getting home and finding that I didn’t press the record button is a whole lot worst.
Lot’s of useful editing experience and am finally getting the hang of ’shooting coverage.’
Jes’s Shoot

Spent my weekends on Jes’s shoot up in Lane Cove National park.
Really impressed with the shots she’s getting. The kid’s she’s scored to stand in front of the camera are great little actors too.
We got rained out on Sunday.

Not spending alot of time on the game anymore cause I have to give the Mac back soon and not worth wasting time on it now.

This week I decided to ‘get official,’ so I bought a Domain and registered a business in Australia (though I hear the Delaware in the States is the go.)

Decided to go with registering the Domain before the business name, cause I’m competing with the whole world for Domain names.
I wanted dropbear.com but a squatter had parked their arse on that name.
So I went for droppedbear.com, which is growing on me. it’s got all that d-b-p action that’s going on.

Then the Fair trading office pointed out that Drop Bear is owned by a clothing chain, and Drop Bear Productions is a studio down in Tazzie, so it ended up with ‘droppedbear Media.’
All up, I’m pretty happy with the result.

Corporate identity
Started thinking bout my Corp. image and started sketching out a logo.
Thought I’d give this ‘crowd sourcing’ thing a go and open up the decision making process to the net.

Designed a series of logos, built a poll, and inserted the content into a web page on my new domain.

Got a great response to my first ‘call out.’
(74 people took the poll, from 327 views of the site.)

A selection of the comments…
careful with D… although I like it the most… is too confusing to read.
b works for me because of the literal use of “dropped”
the d and b as one works well (as in version A)
good luck
jd

sorry mate none of these – with a name like that i think you should be looking at something a little funkier – it is not my intention to offend – it is just that – if you were my client I would be looking into drop bear folk law and playing on imagery related to that. I wish you all the best with your new company
Thanks

A could be seen as cheeky
C emphasises ‘ped’ but the reason is unclear
D has the highest possibility of being misread
E like A, could be seen as cheeky
B seems to be safest option
Good luck with the new business
Omar Dabbagh

I would keep away from emphasising “ped” because “pedobear” is an internet meme, and emphasing “ped bear” would bring you unwanted attention.
Had no idea what this comment was referring too until I got this link from a mate http://www.wired.com/culture/culturereviews

None of the options have Dropped and Bear being clearly defined. I’d recommend The D in dropperd and the B in bear to be one colour ant the remaining characters the other. IMHO this would make the name stick more.

C & B were easiest to read.
C is the stronger of the two.
Good luck with your new business!

Thanks to everyone that commented. I really appreciate the time you gave.
It’s like a web based peer review.
Kinda hard work reading peoples very honest opinions, but it’s great for curbing some of my excess’s.

Then I designed a second set of logos
Taking into account comments and the polling from the first round…

(60 people took the poll, from 182 views of the site.)

A selection of the comments…
My fav is A and I also like E, D would be my third fav. Sorry to sound harsh, but I don’t like B or C at all, I don’t like the koala image and in B it looks like the koala has dropped to a bloody death, with the red splash on the right, looks a bit gorey for a logo. I think A stands out and is quite bold and clean cut, those splashes in most of the other logos look a bit dated. Hope this helps!
It’s all good.

A is boring, B & C look like a kid designed them, D violent, E best of them (perhaps bring the media back into the logo or drop media altogether).
I was trying for naive or primitive. Have to keep working at it

the blood splatter looks cool, but only if it was a movie or something.  As a company logo, i don’t think it’s a smart move.
My flat mate suggested paw prints in the blood just in case people didn’t get the message

not a fan of the bear’s green eyes, clashes with the red. Also probably too detailed for a logo…ie won’t work small or in black & white.
Cheers!
Good point, I have some other ideas to try in a future re-working.

E is clearly the best, however the “r” at the end is barely readable, re-work that and you have a winner!

I think A is very clever. I didn’t like the joined db before, but this is a great solution. I do like the idea of including a bear though, cause it’s nice to have some context for the name.  I would include a teddy bear lying upside down on the left side of the logo like it’s been dropped there from above, but that’s without knowing anything about the company other than the name.
or B, but I’d move the bear from the right and combine it with the splat. B has a much more informal feel to it A is more serious and corporate. So which is better depends on how you align yourself.
-stib
You’re getting a Christmas present (ha ha)

i think you could try B without a bear? and/or a combo between B and D. i really like the bear sketch but it’s pretty literal….how about using sketchy elements eg maybe for the word “dropbear”?  I think E also works but would love to have see that one in red instead of the brown. Hope that helps
Whoops. so much for de-emphasising the blood

Actually Dave i like D without the splat.., but i dont know what the site is for. A blood splat suggests ‘youth’..??
Great point. Who is the potential audience?

Though all I can see is the phallic db combo after the other DLF posts.
I’d lose the green eyes on the bear and make them bigger perhaps?
I go with the B. For more formal, I guess A is. Go with sideways MEDIA. It’s cool.
That would be my skewed sense of humour raising it’s head, from the first round.

Hey Dave, I’m voting for B again.  I might have to vote several more times until B is winning.  Ignore the comments about the goriness of the logo, they should be glad they don’t have to see the dropbear tearing the koala to pieces !
BTW much improved the Round One candidates.
Chris
Thank Christ a few people get me! As my flatmate pointed out. there is a lot of different types of taste out there.

I like the koala form, not entirely convinced by the blue behind it though.  Maybe extend the main background? Also, the word ‘media’ looks much more professional in this design. I think the blood splatter could put off prospective clients.
Cheers,
Daniel

Thanks again for everyone’s input. Much appreciated.

I posted invitations on Facebook, and on an industry mailing list.
Facebook visits were much lower then from the industry mailing list.
Also cut my family from the second round to see what it did to the results.

I thought that this was a good way to get my biz name out there, got a few visits to the site, and some really helpful opinions.

I’ve decided that ambiguity in logo design is the go (Commonwealth bank for instance.)
Will go with E for now and return to this exersize at a later date.

http://www.johntemple.net/2009/09/lessons-from-rocky-mountain-news-text.html

This article isn’t about the end of journalism, it’s about the death of a distribution network.
Much like the death of the music industry isn’t about the end of artists producing music, or the death of TV means that no one will be making serials or soap operas any more.
It’s about the death of distrabution networks that have names like ‘film industry’ or ‘book publishing.’

• Game Salad
• Moving On
• Droppedbear Media

Game Salad
Got stuff done this week.
This bi-polar type mindset is pretty typical with touchy software like this Game Salad editor.
One day things are just not working. So you check to see if you have the latest version of the software, and then start the project from scratch. Suddenly your flying, until it all comes crashing down again.

What I’m appreciating about Game Salad (and it’s not the really dumb name) is the really good idea of building a game dev system around a physics engine.
One can get useful fun results really quickly.

Tips on getting the most from game salad
* Experiment and play
* Get a programmer as a flat mate
* Save often and increment the file names cause this app is still really buggy.

Finished off the week with a first level that was fun to play

Moving on
Spent the afternoon and evening helping out on the Moving On shoot during the week.

Picked up and delivered the ‘rat wrangler,’ did a bit of boom work, and got a crash coarse in managing the audio capture.

Most impressed with Pat May and Jamie’s little bro, who were probably the most professional bodies on the shoot.
No tantie’s from these guys, and no reason to go ‘over time’ when Pat is giving continuous time checks throughout the day.

Not that everyone on the shoot wasn’t chipping in and making a herculean effort, but seriously, a time check should be taken seriously. And so should OH&S.
Droppedbear Media
Bought a web domain and registered a business name for next year.

Roughed out some logo’s and posted them, along with a poll on my new site.
Inviting anyone who is interested to visit this link and express an opinion on what my corporate presence could be.

http://www.droppedbear.com/home/what-logo

This isn’t the first biz I’ve been a part of
Just out of school I started the Silicon Quill desktop publishing Co. with a couple o mates. We had a Mac+ and the original laser printer and worked out of a garage.

Later I was doing video graphics and 3D freelancing under the moniker of Dave TV.

I-Play sent out a request for people to try out their new game Mahjong Memoirs.

I-play invites you to test the new game – Mahjong Memoirs!

A beautiful mahjong adventure through the poignant memories of an old woman. Relive a heartbreaking romance, 70 years in the making. Mahjong Memoirs brings the classic mahjong game play into the next generation. Experience a tragic story of love, betrayal, and mahjong. Play more than 230 levels in both story mode and endless mode!

I remember when Shanghi came out for the Amiga. It was the closest thing to addictive gameplay since Solitaire.

This is a version for a new generation of Casual gamers, and a story has been bolted onto the game play. Something for the Memoirs of a Geisha fans I reckon.

The game starts really slowly, and it’s not hard to advance through the levels. Removal of the tiles reveals letters written by two lovers which can be collected and read.

• Game Salad is getting on my tits.
• Film shoot excitement

This is a summary of the week just past.

Game Salad is getting on my tits.
Part of my major work is to build a video game version of my bee animation that I did for  rhythm and Juxtaposition.

exercise-for-juxtaposition-and-rhythm

I’m building it in a beta app called Game Salad.

http://gamesalad.com/

Unfortunately it’s eater buggy, or the people who built this haven’t put much thought into non-programmers using it.

The other prob is that it’s just different enough from proper coding that programmers get lost too.

Woke up Wednesday morning and the world was red. Not just the sky, like when there is a sunset. The air was solid with red.
Not much sound about, as most of the birds were keeping shtum. The odd car and bus driving past.

Phone went off. It was Jamie from school. Good weather for a bit of time-lapse she reckons. Got the camera out and snapped a few shots, but the red was thick and featureless. Not much moving around in there.

Facebook conversation Wednesday morning…

Her: Hey Dave! Did you take this photo this morning (around 7am) ? I woke up very early and the colors coming through my window were absolutely amazing! I took a photo of my window at 6:30am. The sky was pink!

Me: OH crap, the end of the world is coloured PINK!!! (ha ha)
The sky was blood red when I woke up round six’ish so I rolled over and went back to sleep.
The apocalypse does not start without me.

The dust storm did weird things to ones colour perception. Normal colour indoors if the lights were on, but outside everything was tinted red. The only contrast being blue light from the sun, or from buildings, or car head lights.

The world outside the windows gradually lightened. The Martian red fading till there was just a white fog floating around. The air was clear by the afternoon.

Rhythm and observation .
Or research and juxtaposition???
This is a chance to put into practise stuff I’ve been learning at film school.

I went down to the Bondi kite fest, to shoot some ‘observational’ footage, and cut it up into two videos.
One focus’s on the kite professionals who cordoned off a section of beach, and filled the air with an amazing variety of land tethered flying machines.

The second video is all about the amateurs. those folks who filled the grassy area behind the beach and throwing caution and canvas into the air.

Decided after extracting a series of short narratives (peoples kite flying adventures) to try interleaving a lot of the action.

Bondi Wind Festival 09: The Pro’s

Bondi Wind festival 09: The Amateurs

We produced mock-ups of the logo placed onto potential products.

Logo roughs

Was trying to get a smile into the logo

Smile is less obviouse

Tom Rohr

What follows are the posters for the music festaval created by Tom…

Lewis Johns

And Lewis created some web pages…