Very quickly, I want to say thank you to everyone in the Media Department for making my time here very interesting, but easy to make it through. Especially to Pete, for helping me fit in so well, Steve for being there when I needed help, and most of all Ricky and Ryd, who have been great people to work with, and althought they take everything so seriously (well...near enough...!) they've always been a great laugh, and always willing to help me if I've needed it. Ricky will be a great media technician here next year, and I want to say good luck to Ryd at Stafford Uni, hope you enjoy it!

Thanks everybody, it's been great meeting you all and I've really enjoyed every minute here!
~Sam~

Day 9

As my penultimate day at Long Road comes to an end, I've realised that I feel like I belong here now, having been here for almost two weeks. When I go back to school next week, I'm going to have to re-adjust myself yet again!

Today was mainly a tidy-up day, during which I checked some headsets to see if they worked, blacked a few more tapes and put some sleeves in some DV tape cases. In about half an hour, I'm going to be taking the last tapes of the day out of the cameras, which will leave just one set to finish off tomorrow.

I also copied the LipSync Sport Relief DVD multiple times, as it goes on sale for the Long Road students to purchase if they wish.

Other than than, it has been a relatively uneventful second last day, with occasional busy periods. I find it hard to believe that this time tomorrow, I'm going to be coming to the end of my last day on Work Experience at Long Road.

Day 8

Finally. The 8th day. The day the Showreel was to be shown to the students. We just hoped everything would go to plan. Walking down to the Picture House, I ran into Steve and Ryd, and once we got there, Steve showed me to the projector room, from which evrything would be controlled. It was unbeliveable how much technical equipment you could fit into one room!

Pete very carefully made the point to all the students that we were using an £80,000 projector, and as the presentation began, we noticed that the £80,000 projector was cutting bits off the top of the scenes!

However, other than that, the entire thing went pretty much to plan, and the Staff Music Video was received very well by everyone. There was a surpise for Ryd though - the other Media staff had compiled a montage of his 'best bits' Big Brother style! So Ryd went up to the front to receive his surprise prize, and I laughed with everyone else, before Pete decided that he hadn't embarrassed enough people, so he called me and Josh, the other work experience student, to the front to receive a bag of sweets aswell!

As you can see, from the fact that a half-day entry has been longer than ALL the rest, it was a seriously eventful day!

Day 7

The final day before the show at the picture house and it was jst a case of putting the finishing touches on the Showreel, and the staff music video. This involved me doing some more filming, for the ending of the music video, which I enjoyed quite a lot.

However, the majority of the day was just checking through the finished video and Showreel, and when that was finished, there wwas little else for me to do, so I began helping Ricky and Ryd seach for myspace tracks for the Long Road Media blog.

So, the seventh day wasn't the most eventful, but I enjoyed it all the same.

Day 6

My second week started at Long Road today, and I couldn't believe I was already half way through my time here. However, much of the sixth day was taken up by checking through and recording the Showreel onto a DV tape, and then checking it again. This wasn't exactly the most fun I'd had so far, but it was something that had to be done.

Anyway, at about 2 o'clock, everything got a bit better anyway, as Steve, Ricky, Ryd and I went out to shoot Steve's part of the staff music video - which happened to be him showing off his football skills! After that, we went inside to shoot him actually singing the song, which I won't name until it has been shown on Wednesday!

I finished off the day just by recording the second part of the Showreel, which should have been relatively simple, except for the fact that somewhere around the middle of it, the video and the audio managed to somehow come out of sync with each other, meaning we had to record the hole of the scond half again! However, once that was done, it meant that everything was almost finished, with just the montages and staff music video to put onto a tape!

Day 5

Day 5 was, to be honest, one of the days which I have enjoyed most. Firstly, I began the day by looking in some classrooms and taking some pictures of what was going on, then uploading them to this blog. After that, and after eating some scones(!), I had to watch through the first part of the Showreel 2006, which displays the Year 12s Media work. When I had looked through, I told Ricky what I thought could have been improved, and he applied fades or what was needed to sort it out.

After lunch, I had to then view the second half of the Showreel, just to check that everything was in order there. However, coming to the end of the day, this was getting quite tedious, so it was a welcome interruption when Ryd asked me to do some filming of him and Ricky for the staff music video.

Anyway, after my week at Long Road, I have to say it's been brilliant!

The office where I've been working this week.




Ricky working on the Awards Ceremony for the end of year presentation...



Ryd - "Don't mess with me!"



The iBook which I'm uploading these pictures from...

Here are some photos of what goes on in some of the Media lessons here.

Day 4

I began my fourth day at Long Road writing my blog of my third day, oddly enough. But now I'm on track so I should be able to write each entry at the end of the correct day now, therefore keeping up-to-date.

My main task for today was just to try out a Final Cut session that Steve was planning to use for one of his lessons with a Year 12 Media group. All I really had to do was to have a go at the session (which involves mainly lipsynching, but also a bit of cutting), follow the instructions ad see if there were problems with the session.

As a matter of fact, there were no problems with the session itself, which was very good, but although I managed to synchronise the video with the audio pretty easily, somehow around the end of the first chorus they somehow seemed to drift apart, so by the end of the video, the video was about 2 lines behind the audio!

After quite a while though, Steve fixed this problem, and the session appears to be pretty much going to plan at the moment. Anyway, I am just finishing my blog for the day - so I'll wirte more tomorrow.

Day 3

On my third day here at Long Road, after the first few minutes adding a soundtrack to the introductory sequence when I started yesterday, there was little for me to do on a computer, so I began my most tedious job yet. I had to replace old tapes with new ones, and also black some used tapes. However, after a couple of hours this was done, and I got started on creating and writing this blog.

I realised however, that I could not view my blog, so after checking what the problem could be, I discovered that the template was blank, so after fixing that, my blog is finally up and running, and as I begin my fourth day here, I will post a report on it towards the end of today.

I'm writing this blog as part of my work experience here at Long Road Sixth Form College.

From the 3rd of July to the 14th of July 2006, I'm going to be spending every week-day here from 9.00 am to 4.00pm getting some experience in the media studies area.

Day 1

When I arrived here for my first day, I was given a brief tour of the Long Road site, and then shown to the Media Department where I will be working for the next two weeks, with help from Steve, Ricky and Ryd.

The main purpose of my first day was for me to learn to use the Final Cut program, in order to edit movies, add soundtracks to them, put clips in order, fade clips and music in and out, synchronising video with audio and some other such functions. This is because over the next few days I was going to be helping to make a presentation showing the work of Year 12 from their Media Studies Course.

Day 2

When I arrived for my second day here, I felt much more at ease as everything was less alien, and so I was able to settle down to work quickly. I began by cutting down of the Year 12 movie clips, so that any parts that were left over on the end just showing a black screen were removed to save valuable time we would need for the Introductions and Award ceremonies.

After this, I began making opening sequences for the 3 different types of movies; Kids TV, 1 minute films/ documentaries, and Thrillers. I selected short clips from each and joined them together to make a small opening sequence for each genre of movie. When I had finished this, I moved all of the sequences onto the same screen, so that they all played at once, giving a short preview of what to come. I then added a moving background to all but finish off the 'Welcome Back' introduction, which was to be played at the end of the mid-performance interval, and this concluded my second day at Long Road.