As you are aware of we have offically finished our films, however, we still have lots to do, and we will continue to keep you updated for a while longer. These days we are mainly busy with planning the year-end exhibition, and preparing for the evaluation we will be doing in the Yorkshire Museum. If everything goes according to plan our films will be part of the museum exhibit next week, and we are excited to hear what the museum visitors think of them.
Today has been all about planning and preparing, as we have started thinking of how to do evaluations in the museum. As none of us had any particular experience with surveys and interviews, it was very helpful to get some help from Sophie Norton and Tom Smith, who taught us about data collecting and Google docs. We spent quite a lot of time deciding on what methods we wanted to use for our evaluation, as they needed to reflect the research aims we decided on. We chose to focus on surveys and observation, in addition to giving
the visitors the chance to comment on our films. We wanted to get as extensive results as possible, but as there are only four of us, we had to focus on a couple of methods, and hope they will give us enough results.
In the surveys we want to ask the visitors if they have an interest in archaeology, and whether the museum visit has contributed to this interest in any way. In the observation we are going to spend time both in the Star Carr exhibit and the Roman exhibit, to see how people interact with these exhibits, and if there is any difference in the amount of time they spend in the different exhibits. We are also interested in seeing whether they are watching our films, especially as they are located in an area of the museum that is easy to miss.
While Katrina and Lizze were working on creating the survey, Lexie and Astrid were planning the logistics of our evaluation day. We will spend all of Thursday in the museum, and hopefully get all the results we need to write a great final report.
Now the videos are finished and ready to be installed we
have all moved on to a new, and equally difficult task, of curating the end of
year exhibition.
In order to finish this on time we are now all working on
separate tasks which will come together on the 19th June when the
exhibition opens for one night only.
I’m working on the logistics of the event. This is
everything from working out how to display all the slides at their best (of
which there will be 14 in all) to making sure that everyone is fed and watered.
It may only last for a few hours but there is a surprising amount that needs
organising!
Astrid is working on the media publicity for the exhibition.
So all Twitter and Facebook posts that will be appearing are beautifully
written by her. There should be a few turning up on your walls and feeds in the
not too distant future. Make sure you read them!
Katrina is working on the official press release for the
exhibition. Being the most formal and precise of the tasks it’s proving not to
be an easy task. However, I’m sure it won’t be long before Katrina has it
polished to her normal high standards. Make sure you look out for the official
press release which will be heading out soon.
Lizzie is once again utilising her amazing artistic eye and
creating the posters to advertise the event. I expect you’ll see one or two of
those around by the time the exhibition comes around.
Overall, it won’t be long before you’ll be able to see what
we’ve been working on and we hope to see you at the end of year exhibition on
the 19th June starting at 4pm.
The wait is over! You'll all be very excited to hear that we've finished our videos. Yay! We're very excited about it too and are really pleased with the result. It's been a roller-coaster ride learning lots of new IT skills and how to actually operate a camera/ dictaphone as well as developing lots of new people skills. Happily, we feel like we're more knowledgeable people and, although there's still a long way to go until we launch our careers, we feel more confident 'heading into heritage' now...!
So here it is! We hope you like it and please feel free to comment and let us know what you think. It should be installed in the Yorkshire Museum by next week so make sure you pop along and see it in situ too.
It's just a short one today as we're busy preparing for the year-end exhibition - more on this to follow very soon - but we'd just like to say a quick THANK YOU to everybody who helped us produce our video, especially the staff and students at Star Carr, everybody who came in to give us talks and IT advice (you know who you are!), the Yorkshire Museum and also to the Heritage module gang - you're critiques were invaluable!
For a more extensive list watch the video all the way to the end (as if you need encouragement though?!)
That's all for now and you'll be hearing more from us very soon...
Hello folks! So much has happened in the past few days that we'd thought we'd better update you all.
So we left you in suspense on Friday afternoon with a "will they/won't they get their first draft in?". Well we did! After taking some work home and doing some small tweaks we managed to release our video to those who had been waiting patiently to see what we've been up to, so they could critique it over the weekend. We then rolled into Kings Manor on Monday morning, after a weekend of relaxing in the sun, all ready to hear some feedback. We got some really lovely comments; we even got told that it 'happily would go out on TV' which was a nice surprise! Some thing which were said we already knew we had to improve, like the white balance, the 'stripey lines' and the sound (one of the interviews was too quiet compared to the others).
It was also suggested that the music we used, which is Lexis own composition, was too 'lulling' and we should try something a bit more upbeat. We were very grateful for the suggestion (as we were for all of them!) however, we don't find the 'lulling' effect too much of a problem and we like having a piece of original music as part of our masterpiece so we think we'll keep it.
"I'm sure this will be fine with Health & Safety?"
Another suggestion which was really helpful was about the structure of the video. It was said that the 'what is special about Star Carr for you?' section seemed like it was a separate video to the first 'drawing' section and, on watching it back, we agreed. They didn't really flow and the concept of 'drawing what you see' was a bit lost at the end. We've therefore taken it out and added one more archaeologist to the mix! We've also changed our introduction and ending... again (told you a lot had happened!). It was suggested that the final question we were going to originally use - 'What does Star Carr mean to you?' - was also a bit lost and didn't really tie the video, or our overall concept, together so we've changed it. I'm afraid you'll have to wait and see what it is though... we want it to be a surprise! We have got a sneaky shot of us filming it though, just to tease you further (it was a bit of a logistical nightmare!)
Moving on to the introduction... that's different too now. It was suggested that the text we originally had (see our last blog post to remind yourselves...) shouldn't move to make less distracting and this, combined with other reasons, has led us to scrap the idea of having text overlaying the landscape. Instead we've decided to write the introduction over some simple (but beautiful... according to Lexi) watercolour drawings completed by Katrina. This looks quite good, we think, and also ties in nicely with the hand-drawn theme of the video. We filmed it this morning (talk about last minute...) and luckily for you we've thrown together a sneak preview which you can view at your leisure - minus the music. It would be great if you could let us know what you think in the comments below.
So we're on the home straight and, despite having some technical difficulties - our thanks goes to Simon for trying to fix it... again! - we can see the finishing line. So hopefully, the next time you hear from us we'll have the final thing ready to reveal and you won't have to sit there in suspense any longer. Okay, maybe we're being a tad over-dramatic.. but still, we can't wait to show you what we've been making!
Back off to editing we go then, and until next time...!
So you'll be happy to hear that we've been really busy the past few days; collecting our footage, playing around with editing and composing music. It's been a bit hectic but we've had so many laughs! As we posted on Tuesday, we had already collected a lot of the footage that we're going to use in the final film but we felt after going over the footage that we needed some slightly better panning shots of the landscape, along with some better shots of our interviewee's excavating.
The whole heritage team looking happy in the sun
and trying to ignore the flies!
Katrina filming our lovely volunteer Johanna.
So, yesterday morning we took the long trek back to get some more footage. The day dawned with blue skies and glorious sunshine which made for very high spirits, despite the early start! Happily, the sunshine also meant that the quality of light which we managed to capture was really lovely; much better than on Monday. Unfortunately, Monday's video footage was very 'blue' (which apparently wasn't to do with the rain!). We've figured since then that it had something to do with the white balance on the cameras so we're therefore having to find a way to alter this, which doesn't seem impossible. But that's not all.. oh no. Unfortunately, when we reviewed the footage we had a problem with what we like to call "stripey lines" (imaginative, we know) whenever there was any movement on screen. Apparently the proper term for it is 'interlacing' and there is a way to fix it but... it's going to take time. Luckily, we have the expertise of Simon Davis who's been our hero and worked out the best and quickest way to solve this problem. Thanks Simon! Our plan this afternoon then, is to play around with this and correct our footage to make our video the best archaeological video ever made in the history of archaeological video's! We clearly like to be modest...
Another exciting thing which we'd like to share with you is our new test video! After we got the footage back to Kings Manor we started to discuss the best way to put it together and structure the video in order to make it engaging and stop people from getting bored. We therefore decided that we would try to split the video into the archaeologists discussing their drawings in the first half, followed by them talking about what is special about Star Carr to them in the second half. After piloting our test video to the class we had some really lovely feedback and we've concluded that we're going to stick with that format; it keeps the audience better engaged and on their toes. Take a look below and let us know what you think.
We also played around with the form the that introduction is going to take. This only took us ten minutes to mock up so it's a bit rusty but feel free to have a look anyway!
Following on from that - this morning we've started on our first draft of the final film which hopefully will be finished by the end of the day so we can pilot it to the museum. We think, at this stage, whilst we're still full and happy from lunch, that it's definitely manageable. Time will tell! We've had a lot of suggestions from Gavin and a particularly nice one which we're thinking about doing is drawing the questions we're asking in the video and hence, continuing the hand-drawn theme. We're going to drag the benches outside around Kings Manor a bit more this afternoon and attempt this whilst tanning ourselves!
So, onwards we go... and we'll have an update for your lovely selves early next week. Until then, enjoy the sunshine whilst it lasts!
Yesterday we spent much of the day getting the footage that we will be using in our final video (which is getting ever nearer). It was a good day with lots of enthusiastic volunteers and not too many problems bar the weather but, you can't have it all.
Getting the footage back today the main problem that we have encountered is how much footage we've managed to capture (much more than we ever had for the test footage). In a way it is a wonderful problem to have but a difficult one all the same.
After lots of advice from the professionals, including Don Henson (PHD student at the University of York) and Tara-Jane Sutcliffe (Council of British Archaeology), we have been given a few ideas to consider how to put together all the shots. So, our task now is to discover which ideas work well and achieve our main goal for our video; to make the archaeologists seem human...
So we promised you a teaser video, right? Well here it is! (Katrina's first time using Movie Maker so please don't judge...)
So yesterday, we pitched our ideas and concepts to Natalie at the Yorkshire Museum (including our video above) and we got some really positive feedback. She also gave us some suggestions which we've been mulling over today...
These were things like; possibly changing the introduction shot from people standing awkwardly and smiling to shots of them digging or site directing... of them in their natural habitats! We really like this idea and we (at this stage) think we're going to go with it. Another suggestion which we really liked was asking the interviewee's to explain Star Carr as if they were talking to someone who knew nothing about the site. This was the only thing Natalie was slightly concerned with, as we found the video seemed to presume that the viewer had knowledge of the artefacts and findings from the site. Another way round this which we might consider would be to have a link to any extra information, possibly on our blog or the Yorkshire Museum's website - some more scrummy information for all you knowledge-thirsty readers out there!
One thing which we've found from making the video is that we can comfortably fit five or six people within three minutes of film. We're therefore thinking that we're going to aim to have one site director, one volunteer (hopefully David Lamplaugh who's been on site since the beginning, he's so fantastically entertaining!) and three to four students. Ideally we want them to be the stars of the show.
The only problem with this is that we may have so many willing volunteers that a lot of people may miss out on their chance to be in the limelight. It was therefore suggested by Claire that we could do a montage of shots at the end of the film with lots of people summing up Star Carr in one word. We thought this was such an interesting idea that we thought we'd have a go...
These are our two films which we've been crafting today using the idea of 'Kings Manor is...', and asking people to say one word which they would use to describe Kings Manor. This also gave us the opportunity to have another go with Movie Maker and Audacity which Simon Davis kindly came in to show us how to use this morning. After some 'aaaargh!' moments, we finally got ourselves together and produced these fabulous (we wish...) short videos. We found it quite a struggle to fit the audio to the video and as a result we've only come out of the process with five seconds of film after an hours worth of work! With this in mind, we're thinking at this point that we might have to, sadly, leave the one-word montage out of the final film. Hey, you never know, it could be a potential future project?!
A final thing you might like to know is that we've been being super duper organised today and have been preparing ourselves for our first day filming on Monday... watch out everyone! We've literally picked apart every tiny little thing which could go wrong and tried to prepare ourselves. Our lovely plans of the day will be going along with us... whether we stick to those will be another matter but we'll try our best. So we're crossing our fingers and hoping it will all go well (and won't rain too much...).
So wish us luck dear reader and until next time...!
We're messing with your heads a little bit today because we've changed groups. But don't worry, this was only for today! Our heritage challenge today was to curate a display cabinet at the Yorkshire Museum - so much fun! We, Katrina and Astrid, were given artefacts from the Neolithic... exciting and scary! It was amazing to be able to handle such incredibly old objects, especially when you hear the stories behind them. We had the chance to work with objects from the York Hoard, found near the railway station, which for a long time was considered to be the oldest evidence of human occupation in York. Another artefact we got to handle was a Langdale Axe from Cumbria (Katrina's a little bit obsessed!); it was amazing to see how well made it was and see where the handle would have been attached. We chose these as some of the centrepieces for our display.
Hard at work
An example of our wonderful illustrations.
With the help of the museum's curator, Natalie McCaul, we set about trying to arrange our artefacts in a way which would engage the viewer and tell a story. We decided upon a theme that would have linked the artefacts together in the Neolithic, which also related to the developments in farming and domestic life. This theme was cooking (everybody loves food!). We wanted to appeal to all age ranges, so we decided to do illustrations along with the textual information. We had one introduction label which introduced the Neolithic and our theme, and then tried to reduce the amount of text on the other labels. More than forty words were not allowed on each label, therefore it was a challenge to be concise and creative at the same time. However, we think we managed to work around this, as the illustrations demonstrated the use of the objects.
For our labels, we decided it would be effective to use 'quotes' from a Neolithic man to explain what the objects would have been used for in the cooking process. We thought this would be a more interesting way of putting across facts which were more conversational and relatable for the viewers. Take a look at our photos and let us know what you think...
Our finished result!
We learned a lot about how to make an exhibit visually interesting whilst trying to put across all the factual information required. It was definitely a challenge and we'll never take museum labels for granted ever again!
Today we spent the day at Yorkshire Museum learning how to put together a mock exhibit. We were split into different groups from the groups we have been working in on the films so today I was working with Lizzie and Katrina worked with Astrid.
Close up of our axe head display
A Bronze-age spear head
Our group was given a selection of Bronze Age objects. We got to handle everything from axe heads to pots. It was rather terrifying handling such delicate objects (especially the pots!). But, after getting over our initial fear we were left in awe of the craftsmanship and age of all the objects.
A work in progress
With our exhibit we chose to focus on the development of technology in the Bronze Age using the axes and spear heads as examples. This is because the range of items we had represented the change that took place during this period; from flat heavy axes to more advanced 3-D spearheads. We thought this would be an interesting approach to take to show the fact that change took place during one period, instead of from Bronze age to Iron age, for example. To make it more relevant and understandable we used mobile phones as a comparison. In both cases technology has changed so much!
A close up of the pottery
Following on a similar theme from the axe and spear heads we used a computer and a tablet to illustrate the differences between the two pots. The larger pot we found to be less portable but had more storage (like a desktop computer) and the smaller pygmy cup to have less storage but more portability (like a tablet). See where we were going with this...
Lexi having fun
While coming up with the idea of a theme was fairly easy actually writing the labels was challenging. They had to provide some information while being engaging all in 40 words or less. While we found the depth of information we gained interesting, the general public may not have, so we chose to write only very short descriptions of the artefacts, with an informal feel.
Hi all! It's us again, with an update on our happy adventures into film making...
Pretty storyboarding...
So, over the weekend Lexi and I have been working on our storyboard for our film (which is due in two and a half weeks!!) and working out the questions we are going to ask the archaeologists. I drew some (pretty!) pictures of the different shots we could potentially use in order to engage the viewer with the archaeologists and what they are drawing. There's a variety of shots we've decided to use to try to create a more personal perspective of the archaeologist and their relationship to Star Carr... even if we do get in their personal space. All in the name of heritage!
Ideas of the kinds of shots we can use in the film.
To experiment with the sort of angles we could use and the overall dynamics of the film, we've shot a 'test' film of our ideas using each other and our very enthusiastic teaching assistant Kat. (We hope all our interviewee's are going to be as enthusiastic!) We found that the more intimate shots, such as their hands as they were drawing and over-the-shoulder shots, had more impact than the generic long-shots and focused the viewers attention on what they were drawing.
We then conducted interviews with each other just using the dictaphones. We discovered that being put on the spot and being asked to discuss your drawing, even when having prompts, was very challenging - there was a lot of stuttering! We've therefore concluded that it might be a good idea to let people script their own responses.
The drawings which we produced from our 'test' interviews.
We've also had a visit from Colleen Morgan, a professional film maker, who gave us a lot of constructive criticism of our ideas and the form our video will take. She made us think a lot about the practicalities of working with the archaeologists and also the practicalities of having the video in the museum.
We're now in the processes of editing our 'test' films which means we've officially launched ourselves into the wonderful world of Windows Movie Maker - happy days! Whether those days will be so happy when we're snowed under with footage is yet to be seen... we're going to remain optimistic though and we look forward to sharing our videos soon. Watch this space!
Hi everyone and welcome to our blog! We are Lexi and Katrina and we're two undergraduate students from the University of York currently reading Heritage Studies at the Department of Archaeology. We are about to set out on our very first journey into the diverse and exciting world of heritage... one small step for us!
We've created this blog to take you along on our exciting new journey as our first small steps get bigger and bigger... We've immersed ourselves in our summer term heritage field school project, where we've been asked to create a three minute film about the Mesolithic site of Star Carr. This will be installed in the Yorkshire Museum. This means it's going to be viewed by loads and loads of happy museum go-ers, so the pressures on us!
A small collection of our ideas!
Currently we're one week in we've got big ideas, now we just have to realise them. After a brainstorming session our biggest and brightest idea appears to be making a video on what Star Carr means to the people working on the site; the students, professionals, volunteers... anyone who knows and loves the site. Our plan is to appeal to the emotional side of working on Star Carr, to get them to express what the site means to them. We aim to prove to the public that Star Carr is special and it is worth caring about; that the archaeologists that are working on the site don't just dig in mud (or peat bog in the case of Star Carr!) to find information, they really do care!
So how do we get the archaeologists to emerge from their professional shells and express all that gets them hot-under-the-collar about Star Carr? This might be quite a challenge and pointing a camera at them may not help this much! Our plan then is to give them a pen and paper. Through asking them questions such as 'Draw one thing that comes to mind when you think of Star Carr' or 'Draw what Star Carr means to you' - we want to find out what makes Star Carr special to each of the people who work there. Rather than going for the talking head approach we intend to make the interviewee more comfortable by having them discuss their views of Star Carr as a voiceover whilst showing shots of them doing the sketches, digging, having fun, laughing...! Anything to show how special Star Carr is!
These are our initial ideas... it's going to be a long and eye-opening journey over the next few weeks but we're ready! Feel free to comment on our idea, we welcome any feedback. Thanks for reading and until next time...!
