Taking a fresh look

I been taking a look at what work I have produced so far in context with all the material I have gathered. I want the book to flow and have a narrative. My initial idea was to have part of the story in the introduction. This has always troubled me. I felt I would be repeating my self if I used elements later in the book. I had already thought of using a voice over for parts of the text to give a flavor of James for those who never meet him. I would like to carry this theme in a new introduction. I have some historical records about James early life other than his writings, census records from 1901 and 1911 and with those and his writings I want to construct a script of James introducing himself.

1911 Census

 

I have written a new intro part and have asked Mike McCrory to kindly re do the voice over for me. This will be the third set of recordings he has done. The original complete readings, a new set of reading plus alternative lines for the old introduction and now the text below.

 

My name is James Hunt I was born in Chorlton Manchester in 1892. We are now living in Rotherham with my mother Emma and my father George, Flow, Nellie, Elsie and my brother Walter. My dad comes from a mining family they all worked down the mine, not him he's a bricklayer and finds work where he can. I left school at thirteen and started work at the pit head I had to walk six miles every day, I worked there for six month, then my dad got me a job closer to home working with him. I aways found work where ever I could And have work as a bricklayer all my working life.

 

I am now creating a story board to populate the new text. It will still include a young James in front of the mirror with the addition of a picture of his father George.

 The above video is a workout in After Effects to help with the generation of ideas.

More Recordings

Having got home I have listened to the recordings of my mothers interview. I am not very happy with the initial results and wish to repeat the process again. I have edited some of the recordings to help me with the process of creating the video.

Using Audacity

 

After opening Audacity I open a sound file in the program. The best thing to do is to listen to it and work out what part are best from the interview.

 

I then create a second track under the first. This track is to receive a copy of a section of the recording I wish to use.

 

I highlight the section I wish to keep in the finished sound track, copy and paste it into the track below.

 

I have built up a collection of snippets of the interview. I do all the post production work on the snippets. As part of the process I save the two set of tracks as a project this allows me to revisit the project in the future. Collectively I readjust the levels and add any effect if need to all the selection in the lower track. If I don't need to use the original track I close it. Once all the section are ready to use I save them as snippets by highlighting each section one by one and export as .aiff file to a folder of assets that I am going to use in After Effect. I name them after the first line that is spoken making it easier to identify later when importing into After Effects.

I have found by using the sound snippets this allows me to move section of the sound track back wards and forwards in time to help it fit better with the images used and change the pace of the finished video.

I could kick myself.

I have listen back to the recording from the previous week, I now know that I have to do the whole process again. The sound levels are low the microphone is picking up my hand moving. I have now set up another date to re-record the interview again. It is lucky I can do it again, a better understanding of the equipment would have helped.

Audacity® is free, open source, cross-platform software for recording and editing sounds.

Recording the interview

I have set a side this week to record the interviews for the bio part of my book. In discussion within the class the BBC programme The Listening Project has been high lighted as a model for the type of interview / sound track, we should employ for our illustrated interview.

The BBC inform us on their web site “ The Listening Project is a Radio 4 initiative that offers a snapshot of contemporary Britain in which people across the UK volunteer to have a conversation with someone close to them about a subject they've never discussed intimately before. Every conversation - they're not BBC interviews, and that's an important difference - lasts up to an hour, and is then edited to extract the key moment of connection between the participants.” Many of these interview are going to be held by the British library in longer forms.

BBC Listening Project

 The Listening Project

Research for interview

Looking at all of the archive materiel I have on my Great-grandfather James Hunt I have draw up a list of topics I hope my mother will cover in conversation.

Where did James Hunt come from. What was his families background. What kind of person was he, physically and personality. We have a copy of article from the News of the world 1952 how did that come about. In family folk law James like to gamble on the horses. The other major family story of a bomb dropping in the middle of the street during the war.

Many of these things I all ready know about, what is important is its my mother has to tell the story.

I am going to my mother house, and in quite room conduct the interview without notes in a cam a relaxed atmosphere.

Equipment

 

For the recording process I will be using a “Zoom H1” to record the interview and to edit the recording I will use the program “Audacity”. The Zoom is a hand held stereo mini recorder with built in microphone. It can be mounted on a tripod and has a removable micro card or it can be connected to your computer by cable to down load files. Its saves as mp3 or a wav file. Levels can be set manually or set in an auto level mode. There is one simple record button to record or stop the recording. It comes with a build in speaker to hear the play back.

Zoom H1 Recorder

 The day of the recording

I went to my mothers house late morning and we used her dinning room and sat near each other near the table. I sat at a distance which was comfortable but not to close, almost side on and at arms distance from my mother. I set up the recorder and held it close to her face. Before we started I set out what I hoped would happen during the interview. I asked if my mother could repeat the question if I ask one tell her this would help with editing. I started by making sure the recorder was on and recording. I first asked who was James Hunt. My mother started by saying that James was her grandfather and continued the story of his life. She spoke for 8 to 10 mins with a few interruptions from me to steer the interview when needed. I pressed the stop / record button only to discover it had been on pause. After we both laughed about it we went through the process again. The second interview did not flow as well as the first, we took a short break and went through the process for a third time. After that I returned home to work on the recordings.

 

 

Pitich

My e-book will be based on the writings of my great grandfather James Hunt. He was born in Manchester in 1892. His father George was a bricklayer and he followed him into the same profession. From the writing James has left I want to tell the story of the young James. He left school at 13 and the story is set in 1909 when he was 17. While looking for work he meet a friend with 4 children who tells him the are sinking a shaft at 'Thurcroft' to create a new mine and need bricklayer to line the shaft.

 

Element in my e-book

 

There will be front cover which will have an image of James. As the book opens an introductory video will play showing a brief introduction to the story. It will will include a little background information provide by a voice over in a accent similar to that of James.

 

Animations of introduction

 

I have created an animation from my story broad to give a feeling of the flow of the introduction video.

Image research

I have a found a web site which contain many images of old Rotherham, the town in which James was living at the time. I will use images of Rotherham as background images for the video laying over the top a stylised image of James. I not trying to recreate the past, I want to give a feeling of a different world.

From the old Black and White images I created a graffic image as a background.

 

Through out the book I want to include image and small cameo videos relating to the story and James.

                                                     Animation of pump with sound effects

At the end of the book I want to have a section that is a kind of bio His granddaughter will tell us some things about James these interviews will be illustrated buy animated videos of images of James, one of which will be a newspaper cutting of James building a 2 houses on his own.

News of the World 1952

Understanding content for our e-book project.

We had the chance to see a few examples of e-books and interactive media to engage us in the process of making our e-book using i-book author. After looking at the workings of the i-Author program. Our design for the e-book has to include a cover and title, an introductory video which we have generated the animation ourselves, Text content, Still image and Audio. As the i-Author allows us to include video and links I hope to include those. 

 

Research

Interactive media

During our class time we were lucky to see an interactive project called Storming Juno a film documentary and interactive website. The website has a introductory video and then has a interactive menu page made up of a 360 degrees panoramic image, with key areas to open links. For example the tank link takes you to a series of interviews and other media related to the tank and the men of operated them.

 

I have included a video of the 360 degrees panoramic as example of what is possible.

Storming Juno website

E-Book 

 

While looking specifically at e-book I have found two example of the same book. Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carol the much loved classic. The two example are very different. The first is Just a straight example of the book that you can read on any platform. It is text with example of the original illustration by Sir John Tenniel from the website of the University of Adelaide. It performs as a book that it can be read on a digital device. There is no interactivity and pressing the next button takes you to the next page.

Alice in wonderland edition by the University of Adelaide.

University of Adelaide

The second version of the book is specifically for the I-pad it has a rich interactive content and certainly play with the imagery form the original Lewis Carol book. The Sir John Tenniel illustrations are in colour and the style has created an all encompassing world.  It can best be described as playful and there are many thing that exploit the potential of the I-pad as a media device. One section has jam tarts moving around the screen like a cheap children’s toy which you tilt to move the tarts to any part of the screen as if they suspended in water. This version has been created by Atomic Antelope and is available from I-tunes at $8.99.

Alice in Wonderland by Atomic Antelope

Itunes for Alice in Wonderland 

Style and Inspiration

I have chosen to illustrate the story of my great grand father and his writing. I have been looking at different style. I want to get a way from the stereo type images of northern working men, images that are dark show lots of heavy industries. My initial thoughts of the opening sequence for my animation was a chair and a hat and boots waiting to start the day. I looked at the many pictures of chairs and fount this by Van Gogh.

Van Gogh

Having given more thought about the animated story. James get up at 4 o'clock in the morning to get to the pit for 6 am. He will be walking in the dark and perhaps the rising sun. I have come across Alexander Millar and his paintings of working men.

Alexander Millar

 Alexander Millar

 

I have found a collection of old photographs of Rotherham and I want to use these as a back drop of my introduction animation. I have converted them to look more like an illustration in Photoshop. 

Rotherham

Rotherham then and now

Family History Reseach

I have a large and wide spread family and along with most people I have many family stories to tell.

I have thought long and hard about the stories that could adapt themselves to this project and have laid out three possibility.

1. I thought about my father who in 1956 boarded a ship in bombay to come to England for the first time having been born and raised in India. His father was originally from Islington  North London and had gone to india in 1921 with the army. My grandfather felt that it was time for the family to move to England and had sent his youngest son ahead to find some were for them to live. I wanted to plot his journey from Bombay via the Suez cannel to England and the streets of 1950's Brighton, highlighting the different world he was about to discover.

   

   My Grand Father William Barrett and the ship my father traveled to England in.

   
   
2. My grandmother on my mothers side always told us stories from WW2.  One of the most vivid was, after working late one night at 'The Regent' a cinema and dance hall in Brighton. Where she ran the Bar with her sister.  She returned home to find my aunt and my mother where a sleep in their beds,  she and my great grandmother carried them down stairs and put them to sleep in the air raid shelter my great grandfather had build in the basement. In the early hours of the morning a bomb dropped in the middle of the street. The force of the explosion blew out all of the windows in the front of the house. If my aunt and mother had remained in their beds they would have been killed by the flying glass and debris.

   

   News paper article about the bomb. My Great grandparents with my mother and aunt after the windows had been repaired.

   
   
3. I have just spent the last summer moving out of my grandparent house and during this process I have unearth some writing from my great grandfather on my mothers side. As a child I lived in a house with my mother and my brother and both my great grandparents I remember him well but never got on with him so I knew nothing of his back ground. Reading through his writing opened a window on a world I never knew. His name was James Hunt, he was born in Manchester and work all his life in the building trade as a brick layer. He talks about his early life and how he would do any thing to get work. The strongest story is of him walking 8 miles to a new mine to try and get work as a brick layer building the shaft and the working conditions he found.

   

   Walter and James Hunt and Jame's writing.