Feedback

After I had created my project overview, I sent it across to Manon, a programme officer from Great Place: Lakes and Dales, in hopes to receive some critical feedback on my project so far. As Fresh Perspective already work closely with GPLD already, getting approval from them would carry a lot of weight and create a stronger foundation for us to receive further funding from them or someone similar in the future.

Manon Keir
Great Place: Lakes and Dales – Programme Officer

Great Place: Lakes and Dales is one of 16 pilot projects in England funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund and Arts Council England.

It is focused on the rural corridor linking Skipton in the south and Grasmere in the north, including the market towns and rural hinterlands, extending into both the Yorkshire Dales and Lake District National Parks.

Feedback:

“From what I’ve seen I think it’s getting good engagement, especially with inviting people from outside the core group to collaborate. Each one of them brings a new group of followers with them which means even more people get to hear about what’s important to young people in Skipton and the surrounding area. Are you getting good responses from other people you’ve approached?

I think the way you’re planning content and meeting every week is appropriate for now as it means you can be quite fluid with the changing situation to make sure you keep relevant. The mixture of practical things like the make-up tutorial and baking with the interviews feels like a good fit. I was wondering whether you had any ideas of things that can only be done in this area or in rural places?

In terms of planning for the future I think it’s really important that you try to ask your audience what they would like to see or if they know someone who would like to join in. Equally don’t be afraid of showing them something they didn’t even know they would like.

I like that you’ve now started Joy in Pets as a regular feature as I think having at least one permanent feature means that people feel they can more easily get involved and means that you can then be using content they’ve shared with you instead of all the content coming from you directly. I’ve also seen other regular events on Insta Live have a fundraising element, so people donate to local charities during the quiz/gig/demo. Having something like this as an option would raise Fresh Perspective’s profile locally.

In terms of where it might go in the future, there are so many options. It could simply be that you build on your current brand, continue having weekly live sessions, reach out to a growing number of collaborators and add videos to IGTV. Maybe your audience will feedback that they enjoy certain things in particular so you could focus more on developing content on those themes, but make an effort to introduce the audience to people and things they might not have seen before. Ultimately I think you could use the Joy in Numbers brand to have your street party and include as many elements from the live sessions as you can in it. You already have your What, Why, Who and Hows so make sure that you revisit them regularly to help you make decisions. If something doesn’t tick the boxes then you don’t do it, but equally as time progresses don’t be scared to change the What and How to take advantage of new opportunities.”

Although Manon’s feedback is primarily based on the structure and the further potentials of the project rather than the design element – I found this feedback to be incredibly helpful. Not only has it given me a great insight into how the project is being seen from an outside perspective, but it also has helped me see the true scope that this project could be stretched out to. However, saying that, I know from past experiences how prone I am to ‘biting more than I can chew’ on a project, so keeping that in mind I’m going to try and focus on where the project is now rather than what could be. Manon brought up some interesting points that I’ll certainly be discussing with the FP team in our next catch up. In particular, I really liked the idea of promoting local charities, or charities linked to the activities we’re doing in the live streams that week. Seeing as the live streams we’re putting on every week are free to the general public, I shouldn’t think that it would be pushing the boundaries of us to encourage them to donate what they can to causes in need, however I will have to consider how we’re going to communicate this without it interfering with the activity itself.

“If something doesn’t tick the boxes then you don’t do it, but equally as time progresses don’t be scared to change the What and How to take advantage of new opportunities.” this made me think that for now, I’d be best to keep forming a strong hold on my projects aims, objectives and nature. Only once I’m comfortable with this, can I then move on to test and trial new paths for my project.

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For this weeks live session, we had Poppy from Poppins Presents host a poi workshop. The Poppins Presents team work hard to deliver workshops in crafts, circus, drama and movement meditation. As well as interactive circus shows and walkabout acts.Due to the nature of her work, Poppy was quite comfortable in front of the camera and new how to engage her audience well.

Seeing as this weeks live session required the audience to use specific tools, I suggested that Poppy pre-recorded herself creating a set of DIY poi, using general household items, and send across the footage for me to edit. Luckily, Poppy has her own Youtube channel and has filmed tutorials in the past, so her set up and filming was much easier to work with than the the video Nats Bakery had sent previously. I was pretty pleased with the results of the video, I think it had great energy and it certainly worked well to engage our audience prior to the live.

By offering to edit these videos for the project, I’m beginning to realise just how much enjoyment I get when a video comes together – however, saying that it is extremely time consuming so this is something I need to be mindful of in the future.

Exploring Branding Possibilities

I had previously spoke about potentially bringing in some stop frame animation to help bring the brand to life. I visualised creating multiple short animations using different techniques and materials, similar to the idents you see on MTV and E4. Potential methods of creating said idents that I’d like to explore are; stop frame animation, digital animation and short reversed videos.

I began experimenting with stop frame animation using some cut out pieces of foam I had. It was extremely simple and rushed, but I think just jumping into it gave me a good insight into the kinds of things I should be considering (lighting, software, materials). As you can see, for some reason there are a few frames where the lighting completely changes, creating a disjointed look to the animation. As this was extremely rushed, I hadn’t even fully prepared what materials I would be using. Instead of having different sized foams lines for each one, I instead opted to cutting down the foam lines between each frame. This opened plenty of opportunity for mistakes to occur, with that being misplacement of the line after I had cut it down or knocking the other components during the switch.

After doing some digging around I came across a local animator, Virpi Kettu from Kettu Studios. I had previously seen her work around Skipton but admittedly hadn’t looked further into her work before. Her website shows just how varied her animation skills are, however the project that really caught my eye was her Dogs’ Dales series.

HOPE AND SOCIAL- SUNRISE LAUGHING from Kettu Studios on Vimeo.

I reached out to Virpi in hopes to receive some advice on stop frame animation, as I was a complete novice on the craft, any helpful tips and tricks I could pick up at this point was going to take me a long way. To give her a glimpse into what I’d be using it for, I also sent across a copy of my current project overview and my previous animation experiment. The response I got from her was brief, but really helpful. It was nice to receive some positive feedback on my project proposal as well as direct feedback on some work I had already done!